Los bateyes

Today I got to go out into the field with Aneliya, the director of development at Save the Children. I really enjoyed it because I got to see all of the projects that the foundation works on.

It was about an hour's drive out to San Pedro de Macorís, where the field office is located. The zone near San Pedro has twelve distinct bateys. Bateys are small communities located within the huge sugar cane plantations. The communities have about four thousands people total, so a few hundred per batey. The communities are very very poor, and Save the Children has different projects in each, such as building latrines, repairing homes, reconstructing schools, constructing aquaducts, training teachers, and planting community gardens.
(I found this if you're interested! Los Bateyes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batey_%28sugar_workers%27_town%29)

I took a picture of the map in the field office for Dad. He loves maps. (Dad: We started in San Pedro, went up to Don Juan, and went to the East and made a loop through Margarita, to Cachena, and back down to San Pedro.  I'm sure you'll look it up on Google maps :] ).   And on the right their list of projects in each batey, but she said its a bit outdated.

This picture doesn't nearly to justice to how ginormous these fields of sugar cane are! As far as the eye can see in every direction for miles. But I did like the burro so he took photo priority over field-size.

Children at recess at the school in Don Juan.

The communities are very far out in the country. Aneliya said that many of the kids have to walk very far to school.  There are wild dogs, chickens, and horses all over the place. At one point our driver had to honk at a cow to get out of the road!
We spent all day out in the country, so I'm pretty tired!

Feel free to leave me lovely comments to read tomorrow! :]

LOVE,
Abby