Compassion Without Borders

I landed in the Dominican Republic in the summer of 2008. Upon arrival, I was greeted by the father and son of the family hosting my stay, who had me hop in the back of their truck for the ride home. Transportation was chaotic, and it suddenly began to pour rain. I huddled in the truck bed, as the vehicle’s speed pelted rain against the back of my head and neck like stones. Once we made it to their home, I met the rest of the family and some of the others who had made the journey here from the United States, and we ate dinner. After the meal, I stood on the rooftop drinking a cup of the region’s rich coffee, basking in the music that permeated the air and the sun, as it set on the city. Sleep eluded me; the tradition of drinking strong coffee after dinner, in combination with the hot and humid climate, left me lying in bed awake for hours, nearly choking on the thick, stagnate air.

Day one of my trip, we drove out of the city and into the thick forest where houses became nothing more than huts made of scrap metal. It was our mission to build a home, and the first step was moving earth for a raised foundation. The ground was made of a thick clay that was seemingly impossible to move. The intense labor, accompanied by heat to which we had little time to acclimate, made the day mostly intolerable. It was the enthusiasm and kindness of the locals that made it bearable. I was frequently approached by a young boy named Chico, who followed me a good deal after he found that I could effectively speak Spanish. He wanted badly the sunglasses on my head. I continued to use them for the trip but decided to myself that I would give them to him before I left.

It was within our goals to build a home while spending one day in the village helping to conduct a sort of health fair. Among the group visiting was a family, the father of which was a doctor of osteopathic medicine. Medical care that day consisted of treating malnutrition with vitamins and stitching up children, the majority of whom had sustained cuts on the bottoms of their feet from walking around shoeless. The construction of the home didn’t come to completion during our stay -- a tropical storm came and flooded the entire area. We left the village while rain was still pouring, with water levels rising right up to the house. Just before our crowded bus drove away, I handed Chico my glasses.

In the winter of 2015, I landed in the capital of Nicaragua, and after spending a night, traveled with a group of medical students and our guide to the volcanic island of Ometepe. There, Natural Doctors International had maintained a clinic where, nearby, our hosts lived. The family that housed me and my roommate welcomed us graciously. They treated us like their own, even offering me their best horse to ride to the beach during an enjoyable afternoon off. The clinic was run by a local naturopathic doctor and stocked by donations that we had brought across the border in our luggage. Trips like this were conducted through a couple of naturopathic medical schools in the US, and these visits would be advertised in the area, as it meant an influx of treatment supplies and human resources. The ten days I spent there were filled with screening and treating patients, and in the evenings, we learned from our guides, an American family that included the ND who had been running the clinic for the past year. In our discussions, we went into the details of the local healthcare climate, political policy, and history. A couple of the more significant subjects discussed were the unfortunate doings of the Reagan administration (the Iran-Contra affair) and the effects of the current Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA-DR. Nicaragua is the poorest nation in the area, and with growing political corruption, it has been recently punished by the US, suspending future investments in the country, which will likely increase the devastation felt by the collective.

As I look back on both of these experiences, I see that I’ve been given important opportunities to learn a humble amount about what it means to live poor in a lesser developed nation. I’ve seen firsthand the importance of access to clean water and how a little help can truly bless the lives of those receiving it. These lessons are followed by an appreciation of how federal policy continues to exploit others. Trips like the one I took to the Dominican Republic are certainly welcomed by those whom they directly affect, but in reality, they serve mostly as volunteer tourism and have few lasting implications. On the other hand, organizations like NDI, whose clinic serves year-round treating and educating locals, supporting women’s rights, and working to support subsistent agriculture, provide much more to a community and have a much greater impact. Ultimately, though, the most critical thing that we can do as Americans is vote. Free trade agreements like CAFTA-DR, and NAFTA, in combination with subsidies to the large agriculture businesses, ruin the economies of these governments. Excessive subsidized agricultural products either turn into the junk food ubiquitously found in America, or they are dumped into these countries with little regard to how they affect the ability of their farmers to compete. Exports have grown in Nicaragua thanks to CAFTA but in textiles and apparel from companies with little control or perceived concern over how their cheap goods are produced, or where they end up. A study in 2009 by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) revealed dismal labor conditions after three years of investigation. Additionally, the EPA estimates that individuals throw an average of 70 pounds of clothing away per year.
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Although political means can be disheartening, voting is the best way for the individual American to make change for these people. Along with our right to choose whom we vote for in elections is the right to choose what we consume. Purchasing products made locally or marked Free Trade can greatly contribute to the success of both our country and others. Cost is often prohibitive, but traveling abroad to these underdeveloped nations has taught me to focus, not on having a mountain of cheap goods, but instead on surrounding myself with a supportive community of quality people. We don’t need to travel thousands of miles to make a difference on a global scale. Rather, each day we can focus on maintaining responsible consumerism and strengthening our own communities, reaching out to neighbors, friends, and loved ones. For, when we reach out locally, the ripples are felt across the world.
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About Alexander Arrington