Bombita

One of the most exciting parts of our trip to the Dominican Republic was visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna in the village where she has been living and working with an organization called COPA. We arrived in the evening to Anna's friend Diego making a wonderful dinner to share with us and the other people living in Anna's compound.

Anna's cat Chinola helping Diego with cleanup.
Photo Credit: Cousin Anna 

The next day was Monday and Anna needed to go to the school where she worked. Luckily we were able to walk around school with her and see classes in session. COPA runs two schools. One is in Bombita.  Anna lives adjacent to that school. The other is down the road in La Hoya. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to check out both schools. Anna and Kathleen had fun comparing these schools to the school where Kathleen worked in Guinea. Dominican schools have a long way to go before they provide children with the level of education expected in most first world countries, but they stacked up well compared to schools Kathleen experienced in West Africa. 

Photo Credit: Cousin Anna

In the afternoon we went into the regional capital of Barahona to shop. There are groceries stores in Barahona but we ended up going to the local open air market. Again, Kathleen and Anna had fun comparing these markets to those in Labé. Unlike Labé, where electricity and refrigeration are hard to come by, after shopping we had the pleasure of getting yummy ice cream before heading back to Anna's house. 

Tuesday was no school so we a bunch of us went to the beach. Going to the beach is a common fun day off activity for the DR. Which makes sense, there are beautiful beaches everywhere and the water is warm and inviting. We spent some of day relaxing under trees and some of the day swimming in the warm Caribbean. Anna even brought her snorkel so we did a little bit of snorkeling out in the reef.  

After heading back from the beach we went into the sugar cane fields where boys picked us fresh sugar cane to chew on. Apparently this is another fairly common past time. It makes sense given how much cane is growing in the area. It was super tasty and the surroundings were beautiful.

Photo Credit: Cousin Anna

Like all parts of this trip down to the DR, visiting Anna went by quickly but it was great to get to see how Anna is living and get a feel for the real Dominican Republic and how local people live.