A week of Rallies!

The past few weeks have been filled with lots of school visits, English classes, days with friends, and two great rallies! November 20th was the day of rights for children, November 25th International day for awareness about violence against women, and December 1st was UN HIV/Aids prevention day. We celebrated the first two with a rally on the 23rd with one of the schools in Andres, our EPE high school group, and Dartmouth's baseball team! It was quite the mix of people and the American boys doing "Chuly Chuly" was the highlight for all the kids... let's just say they were NOT helping my case that Americans can dance.

Some of school children showing off their signs! Together we chanted "Yo Tengo Derecho" (I have rights!). In the Dominican Republic, children's rights are not legally protected like adults.

Violence against women (and children) is a problem in the DR (not to be said it is much better in the US, or anywhere else in the world!). Some of the problems, in the thoughts of my colleagues at Caminante, are hyper masculinized culture. This culture includes a very masculine identity for males, especially in the role of husband, father, boyfriends etc. They are the disciplinarians in the family, multi-partners is "excepted" (this is in quotes because this is not actually true, more truthfully, it is disliked by most women and men but continues to be commonly practiced... Divorce for infidelity is much more common now, but yet not yet the norm), and fighting with other men is very common. My girl friends have taught me to quickly leave the scene when an argument breaks out in the disco, festivals, or even in the daytime because fights here are a serious problem and escalate quickly. In addition, the cultural hyper masculinity, according to some of the girls at Camiante, also creates a space for jealousy. Lastly, my teen girls in DPV talk about how alcohol makes boys (they mostly talk about hypothetical boyfriends/husbands) angry and tough. 

Its hard hearing the teens talk about violence they have seen in their own communities or families because the culture here is still silence. Caminante's goal is to be a place where women and children can come for help and to report violence, but unfortunately reporting is very rare and many women chose to live with the violence instead of coming for help. The fiscalia has had more success combating violence and abuse of children than that of adult women.

Yessica and Julissa helping one of the students address the crowd! 

Saturday, December 1st, Caminante held a second rally. We brought together several groups of Chica's Brilliantes, all the youth from Monte Ray, EPE students, and more to get the word out about HIV/Aids prevention and more importantly, try to break some of the stereotyped beliefs about HIV/Aids. Caminante's kids are very well informed and many are very passionate about sexual education. It is great to see how Caminante's staff have impressed and educated the kids so that they too, want to educate others. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this day as I chose to participate and hang out with the kids and let others do the picture taking! Check out Caminante's facebook page here for pictures of our events!

I have been so neglectful of my blog for the past few weeks... a new goal for December: two blog posts a week! Friends and family, keep me honest!