Listen to my story....

Although I have visited the Dominican Republic five times, each year I am amazed by how life perservers even through the greatest of challenges. Often without even a conversation I can learn about their hardships. Their eyes tell a wordless story of watching their children grow up without an education and watching them grow sicker as medicine becomes harder and harder to provide. Their strong callused hands tell a story of working endless hours in the garbage dump or sugarcane fields to earn only a few pesos. A few pesos that bought the food that the callused hands had to give to only some of their children, as there was not enough for everyone. And a story is told by their shoeless feet that has walked over rocks and mud and scampered into the darkness with sex tourist that visit Sosua, Dominican Republic every night.

A few days ago I was told an all too familiar story as I visited my friend Luis. Luis is a teenager I met last year at the garbage dump. He has a friendly smile, loves to sing and needed some help collecting bottles. As I helped him organize the bottles into piles he asked me if I would be going to his village with the group and if I would come to his house to help him learn English. I returned many days last year to the little house that he shared with his grandparents to teach him English. When I returned to his house this year it was exactly how I remembered it to be from last year. The house is one large room that is divided by bedsheets that are used as curtains. The walls have gaps between the boards and the roof has large holes that would easily allow rain in. Luis and his grandmother offered us a seat on their two chairs that basically only consisted of its metal frame. Their simple seats were formed by upside down empty buckets. As I looked around the house it was almost completely empty. There was nothing. I began to talk with Luis about his past year and how things were. I heard of how his grandfather passed away, how he lost his job that provided about $17 a month, and how someone stole his prize possession.... sneakers. Why? Simply because of where he was born and the situation into which he was born. Luis is stateless and therefore he does not have a birth certificate. Therefore, he can not go to public school, he can not get proper medical attention and can not apply to most jobs. Simply because where he was born.
Luis is only one story of thousands and thousands of stateless people in the Dominican Republic. Refugees International estimates that there is about 12 million stateless people in the world. It is up to us to work together to give these people a new story. A story of humility, fairness and hope.


-Rana Saunders