Life in the Dominican Republic

Caminante participates in the FIRST INTERNATIONAL CROP WALK in the Dominican Republic.

Julia Alverez, author of “In the Time of the Butterflies,” from the Dominican Republic teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. She participated in a CROP walk there and after realizing that Church World Service supports several projects in the DR she became interested in hosting the first International CROP walk in her sustainable organic coffee farm in the mountains of the DR.

Yesterday Caminante traveled together with Servicios Sociales de la Iglesia Dominicana, (Social Services of Dominican Churches), to the mountains in Jarabacoa to walk in solidarity in the struggle against hunger and poverty in the world.

I have participated in many CROP walks with my church and community growing up, but this was by far the most powerful and unforgettable. The idea of a CROP walk is to bring people of different faiths, cultures, and ages together to walk in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized. The slogan “we walk because they walk” took a whole new level of meaning. We hiked through the hills of los Marranitos, a little country village in the mountains, and as we walked children and different people from the communities joined in the walk. As walking one of the local coffee farmers described to me the entire process of coffee production and taught me names of different plants and fruit trees native to that area. We were accompanied by different volunteers from Europe and the US, the young girl who organized the event is from India working as a volunteer for a year in this community. And the hike ended with each organization sharing of the work that they are doing in different communities, sharing of food and listening to a local Haitian musical group playing traditional country music. Relationships were established, information was shared. It was truly an inspiring mix up different cultures, faiths and ages all recognizing that we are in this struggle together.

The CROP walk is to raise awareness and funds to support many different projects and programs around the US and the World. Caminante and SSID are just two of those programs that are supported through CWS. In this country it is the poor who walk. We work with children that every day walk miles to get water for their family, then walk 20 minutes to get to school and then after walking back to their homes continue walking selling sweets to the tourists on the beach. In the country town where the walk took place most people do not have a vehicle and if they need to go to town, to the market, visit a doctor they must walk miles to get to town. The name Caminante means ‘to walk the path’ or ‘the walking ones’ developed by the first children in which Caminante worked because they were always walking. The symbolism of walking together in the first international CROP walk was inspirational and powerful and a great experience of solidarity with this international Community Responding to Overcome Poverty.

Community Kids that walked with us