The fixer

Words by Anna Gronewold
Photos by Andrew Dickinson

Sunday’s final interview was difficult. Ten-year-old Berlinda speaks in one-word whispers, and her answers were masked by motorcycles and crying neighbors. We were driving back to our hotel in dark silence.

“So what do you all think about birth control in China?”

That was Tito, our translator, friend, driver and Renaissance man. He’s our fixer, the journalistic term for an in-country contact who helps you navigate your new surroundings. The rest of the hour we spent laughing as we discussed contraceptives, Tito’s dancing mishaps and a story about a man who woke up at his own funeral, ran outside and was hit by a car.

“Many people say it is true,” Tito assured us.

Every day we discover more about Tito. He likes to wear the hood of his “winter” coat to keep the Dominican sun off his head (Old Red Riding Hood, he calls it). He plays recorder, teaches himself snippets of Japanese and spends hours winning online chess at the Internet café while we process the day’s work.

What I’ve learned from Tito, though, isn’t from the dozens of anecdotes he shares throughout the day.

It’s when he sneaks 100 pesos to a woman in Los Cacaos and shows her sons how to reinforce their mud walls with weeds. It’s watching his newfound mission to find a talking doll for Berlinda, just because she mentioned it in our interview. It’s sitting on a curb in Elias Pina as he tears the top off a Styrofoam container, fills it with bottled water and sets it in front of a donkey in the market.

I’m overwhelmed when the world is not how it should be, when children are hungry and people are hateful. But when Tito sees something wrong, he does whatever he can, as soon as he can.

“I believe there are still very honest people in this world,” Tito said. “For that, it is worth fighting to keep those values alive.”

We met a woman in the Elias Pina market who buys 200 pesos worth of sweet potatoes each day. She needs to resell it all for 250 pesos, but that day hadn’t sold anything.

“That is sad. This is all very sad,” Tito said softly. “I think you cannot be completely happy after you see these things. But there are happy moments, and you must find the happy moments.”

So Tito drinks his coffee mixed with orange juice, because he likes it. He tells us why Superman is a sham and the people of Metropolis are stupid. He shares candy every road trip, and laughs when we call three wrong telephone numbers for the same woman.

Tito fell into a river climbing a mountain near El Cercado. He didn’t get out, but rearranged the boulder path that just failed him.

“It’s for the next person.”

Keeping the peace

Words by Anna Gronewold
Photos by Andrew Dickinson

We met the mayor of Elias Pina by accident.

The town, about a mile from the Haitian border, hosts an open market every Monday and Friday. From 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. vendors, many from the Haitian border town Belladére, are free to cross into the Dominican Republic without papers.

The market is a hot whirlwind of Kreyol and Spanish, old and new clothes, empanadas, plantains and knock-off purses. It’s shoulder-to-shoulder business transactions and two enormous speakers blasting Merengue music next to a string of just-killed chickens.

But the mayor isn’t needed at the market, where Haitians and Dominicans have been trading across the border by necessity for more than 20 years.  If the mayor visits, he comes later in the afternoon, to the line of enormous trucks waiting to carry vendors back to the border before it closes.

On Friday, Andrew, Ben and I were watching 50 people, and their merchandise, cram onto the first truck when the crowd began to shift and squeeze. A dozen angry voices rose above the market noise.

A Haitian woman was trying to board a truck with her sick 8-month-old baby. They had been visiting the baby’s father in Santo Domingo, she said, and she wanted her child to ride safely in the cab of the truck, rather than piled in the back with the others.

Taking a later truck was out of the question. The later she arrived at the border, the more likely she would have to bribe a guard to let her cross.

But the driver had no room, passengers were angry at her attempts to violate the first-come-first-serve policy and her uncle wasn’t about to lose his niece’s argument. The shouting match lasted for more than an hour as police, military and complete strangers shoved Andrew’s camera further back from the conflict.

That’s when we met the mayor.

Luis Minier, who has been in office for seven years, strode in with arms raised and voice booming. Two minutes later, a decision was made. The baby would ride in the cab of the first truck for protection, he said. He’s not always called in to resolve conflicts, but the combination of market day, Christmas and a sick transportation supervisor meant chaos.

And his job is to keep chaos at a minimum.  He all but scoffed at our question of whether Haitians and Dominicans can live in peace. They must, he said. At border towns like Elias Pina, Haitians and Dominicans need one another to survive.

The beginning

We arrived at our apartment in Santo Domingo about 5:30 a.m. yesterday after three gate changes and four hours of flight delays in Atlanta, one lost bag upon arrival and lots of airplane peanuts. So it went pretty smoothly overall.

During the next three weeks, this group of 13 University of Nebraska-Lincoln student journalists, led by professor Bruce Thorson, will be exploring issues in the Dominican Republic.

On this blog you’ll find updates from our stories, which range from child prostitution in Boca Chica to the citizenship issues, looked at through the border town Elias Pina and various bateyes throughout the country, to cock fighting in Santo Domingo. We hope you enjoy and learn something from following this blog, and  after today you won’t have to look at pictures of us anymore.

–Andrew Dickinson