DR: Synthesizing
By EmilyRuskamp. Filed in Uncategorized |
One of the most difficult things about living in the Dominican Republic is thinking about life back home going about as usual, especially as the holiday season is getting started.
It is also difficult not to feel bitter. After living for 10 days with a family of five whose wardrobes combined are still smaller than mine, the last thing I want to talk about is what I want for Christmas. Yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving, it was such a disjointed feeling to think about my mom, sisters, aunts, and cousins waking up at 6 am to go shopping.
I do not think this is necessarily bad in itself. But the tears in my eyes when I read about Jdimytai Damour, a Haitian man who was trampled to death by shoppers in New York, tell me that it’s not all okay, either. The significance of this event is undeniable; I cannot tell you how many people I have met, Haitians and Dominicans alike, who have family living in Queens or Washington Heights who work those same minimum wage jobs to support their families back home or to make a better life for themselves. Nor can I describe how it felt to visit a Batey, an extremely poor and marginalized community of Haitians living in the DR, and have the children beg me for a drink of water out of my Nalgene.
Should this not serve as a wake-up call to consumers everywhere? It is one thing to realize for ourselves that our general spending patterns and consumer lifestyles affect the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; I understand the difficult in making that connection, because it’s not easy myself. But yesterday, consumers, in their ruthless quest for things, literally killed a man with their own physical bodies. What are we doing?
I think it’s time for something to be done. I don’t know exactly what and I don’t know exactly how, but something has to be done. I’m not saying everyone has to quit shopping, quit going to stores, quit buying Christmas gifts, but at the very least we need a consciousness about the way we are living. Why are things so important anyway? What is so urgent and important about buying stuff? I think it’s a signal that something else is missing, and I think it’s time that we figure out what that is.
By Emily Ruskamp