Santa Barbara de Samaná

It was March 25th, 2008. It was a bright Tuesday morning during my Spring Break. I ate breakfast aboard a cruise ship as it anchored just off a bright, abundantly green coast. It was my first time taking a vacation entirely on my own dime. I had made sure this island was one of my destinations.

On the cruise itinerary this stop was listed as Cayo Levantado, a lush resort-y island off the coast of Samaná, a peninsula that juts out into the Caribbean on the northeast portion of the Dominican Republic. Cayo Levantado was listed instead of the actual port of call: Santa Barbara de Samaná, probably as a scheme to get more people to book the cruise.

I made sure I was on one of the first tenders to arrive at a small dock with a handed painted sign ¨Bienvenido a Samaná.¨ A huge line of taxis and vans waited, offering to bring people to great beaches nearby, or to Las Terrenas-the location of a beautiful waterfall on the north coast of the peninsula. Others offered ferry rides to Cayo Levantado. I looked to my left, past the line of taxis, and into a town bustling with activity, motor bikes, and beeping horns.

Accompanied by a few of my roommates who had joined me on the trip, I took the ten minute walk into the heart of Samaná. I don´t have anything against trying to get a tan or seeing nature at its finest, but I only had five or six hours in the Dominican Republic. I had to see the real side of it. I had to talk to its people, drink its drinks and eat its foods.

Cruise ships are fairly new to Samaná, making it a mostly "authentic" town, meaning it lacked the truly built up tourist-centric shops found at most other ports of call; a turnoff to most people taking tenders to shore that morning. The Red Sox had opened their regular season in Japan earlier that morning, making my first stop the town sportsbook, where I quickly found out they had won 6-5. Next, as we walked through tents selling Presidente beer t-shirts and cheap cigars we arrived at the town center, a rotary with a few rundown shops, a restaurant/bar, and a large open green space with a horse tied up at the center, perfectly happy to be minding its own business.

After stopping in at a few shops, I was happy to find that my thirteen years of taking Spanish were quickly coming back to me. We eventually stopped in at the restaurant/bar, named Mi Restaurant Terraza Bar, to eat. We were quickly greeted by a freelance taxi driver named Tony who offered to bring us to the beach. When I politely declined, he sat down outside the bar and waited for the next person he could solicit his services to. Very few foreigners had ventured to walk all the way to the center of town and it turned out Tony just lounged and chatted with people at the bar. We were warmly welcomed by two friendly Dominican waitresses and the dueño, a young German ex-pat who wore pajama pants and didn´t seem to have a care in the world.

As I sat having my lunch, two young boys carrying a wooden toolbox came up to me, seemingly struggling to find the right words before blurting out "Shoeshine one dollar."

I was wearing flip flops.

Confused, I replied hablame en español, como vas a hacer eso, tengo flip flops - speak to me in Spanish, how are you going to do that when I have flip flops? The boy responded, yo todavia podría limpiarlos...si quieres - I could still clean them if you want. I kicked off my sandals and each boy took one, grabbed a toothbrush and a bottle of water mixed with some sort of cleaning solvent out of their toolbox, and went at my flip flops. I had no idea how dirty my sandals actually were. Two more boys showed up and ask my roommates if they could clean their shoes. My friends, at first hesitant, gave in when I basically yanked off their shoes. The boys each took a dollar and ran off down the street, returning a few minutes later, each with an ice cream cone-money well spent when you're 10 years old.

As the boys came back, I noticed that across the street on the green were a few kids about the same age, but dressed in what would amount to Catholic school uniforms in the United States. ¿Por que no vayan ustedes a escuela? Why don´t you go to school? Their answers were simple: no es posible and porque puedo ganar dinero en esta manera. Their families needed income from them and their siblings in order to get by. I sat there thinking about the situation, realizing how right then and there there was nothing I could do. I took a picture with the boys and I still regret not asking them their names. That picture will adorn the main page of this blog for the next ten months.

After talking a little more with the waitresses, with the owner, and with Tony, I asked them to take a picture with all of us, after all we had spent most of the afternoon there. We closed our tab, took the ten minute walk back to the tender and headed back to the ship to continue on with the rest of our trip, but the boys' predicament still lingered in my head.

Here I am four months later. I´ve graduated from school, I´m finishing up my summer job with the Cape Cod Baseball League, and I´m preparing myself for the next ten months of my life, which I will spend in Cabarete, Dominican Republic as a volunteer teacher for a non-profit organization called the DREAM Project. My goal? To educate those who otherwise would not get the education they deserve.

At some point I hope to take the four plus hour trip from Cabarete to Samaná so that I can visit the staff of La Terraza and so that I can finally ask those boys their names. Hopefully I´ll find them on the town green dressed in their Dominican school uniforms.