The Embarque.

flying into Santiago - hola, beautiful Cibao!

Hello! & Cuanto tiempo.

After a fabulous visit to the States, I’m back in the DR and back to work. The past couple weeks have been spent getting the school ready, and doing the teacher training workshop (more on that at a later date). Home was great - a chance to refresh and reconnect. I loved it. Thanks to everyone for making time to meet up with me. To those I visited and those I missed - come here soon! ..Can only really say that for the next 9 months so seriously - visit! Aside from seeing many lovely people, home even featured a little Dominican adventure. Namely how to get all 160ish pounds of these education materials:

back with me to the DR (without breaking anything - important!) for our teacher training workshop in Montessori. So, after realizing (pretty instantly) that only about two thirds would fit in suitcases as planned:

we had to think of another option. Sending the remaining materials via embarque. 

For those unfamiliar, an embarque is a shipping company or shipment from a shipping company. Many Dominicans receive things this way from their Stateside families. I’ve seen all kinds of things come into the country by way of embarque - food, clothes, shoes, electronics (both out-dated and brand-new), 80’s Coach bags, baby strollers, bikes, car parts, medications (in English), toiletries (also in English)...I could continue, but you get it. So many things. And what do people do with all this stuff? Use it, sell it, ask the gringa to translate it (note: tiny bottles of shampoo, face lotion, and foot cream all look exactly the same if you can’t understand the label), or give it away. People love to share. :) 

So mid-vacation I found myself in a mini-dilemma - shipping these remaining materials to my site. (Yes - essentially mailing mail to myself. Cute). And to be honest, I didn’t really know how to do this/where to go. So I called a few Dominican friends for help, turned to Google, and discovered something pretty crazy along the way. Turns out there are 10-15 or so embarque companies that ship exclusively to the DR in Boston/Greater Boston. I was shocked about how many companies are in the area, and how frequently each brings shipments to the DR (even learned that some companies bring 4 large shipping containers into the country on a weekly basis - ayy, cuantas cosas!). Bueno, that’s a lot of stuff, but crisis averted. We had a way.

My mom, grandmother and I traveled about ten minutes from our hometown to one of the embarque companies. Passing bodegas with signs in the windows advertising jugo natural and La Bandera, it was pretty plain we were in a Dominican neighborhood. After breaking out Spanish with the Dominican-Americans at the company, I got a little tour of how everything works there. And there is just so much stuff - bikes, furniture, boxes and boxes with who knows what inside, bins of shoes and barrels everywhere. And this is only one company of many just in Massachusetts. Imagine how many other cities all over the country are shipping to the DR on a regular basis? For sure places in NY, NJ, and Philly, por lo menos. Crazy.

very small sampling of the shipments

shipping container...filled with anything you can think of.

And I know its all just a lot of mail, but in part, it speaks to how one community can impact another. Or how you can never be sure what someone will do with what you send their way. Or how just a little from everyone can equal a lot (literally). That’s also how I feel about teacher training. And that’s how I feel about all of you donating to the project to buy the materials, to train the teachers, to develop students’ individual abilities, so that more can learn to read and write. ...We’ll see about all that - but just as these Dominican embarque companies are a community effort, so too was fundraising and getting the Montessori materials to my school in the DR. Thank you, because it wouldn’t have worked without you.

So even though I’ve seen people receive a lot of things via embarques, I was still in awe of just how much stuff is sent to the Dominican Republic from my home state. And how often its all sent. And how this is a business that I didn’t even realize was so expansive. 

In the end though, I sent our embarque to a Dominican friend’s house (I technically don’t have a real address here, as “across from the little pink colmado” probably does not suffice), saving 10 dollars (yay, haggling), and am now left hoping the materials arrive soon. Si Dios lo permite! ...But seriously all, cross your fingers.

To close - a bit of good embarque news: turns out sending oil and rice is completely free of charge! Which actually is good news, since just about every single family here cooks rice on a daily basis. (note: Mom - not an invitation to mail me bags of rice). :D

gracias! cuidense!

XO

Happy early Birthday, Aunt Julie!