The Water Boy

This story was written by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer in country, and was published in our Peace Corps DR Magazine, The Gringo Grita. The Gringo Grita is a volunteer-run magazine that publishes stories by volunteers, and other random things related to serving as a Volunteer here in the DR. I typed up below the following story which I found very inspiring and I thought that you all would enjoy it. It was actually the first time that I shed a tear hear. Make sure that you have your tissue nearby. Here it goes:

“As much as prospective Peace Corps Volunteers like to read, inquire, and dream about what their service will be like or what they will be able to accomplish, nothing will ever suffice to replicate the feelings and connections Volunteers experience until they learn for themselves.

I have been in a rural campo in the southwest of the Dominican Republic for just over a year, and my efforts as a Health Extension Volunteer have shown little “statistical” success. Though our experiences are truly about personal connections and augmenting self-discovery among the people with whom we work, as well as within ourselves. One of my greatest successes, thus far, has been just that: a relationship that has developed slowly and unexpectedly, one that infused me with a genuine curiosity to learn more about the way people think and feel about themselves and who they are in their world.

I first met Yilo when I was living with my host family and his gravelly, low-toned, monotonous voice gave me a tweak in my neck. How curiously odd he was: always leaning up against the struts of the doorways, listening to familias talk amongst themselves, and nibbling the end of the rope that he uses to secure his waterbucket to his head.

Yilo is stout, extremely dark skinned, and broadfaced. He is my campo’s water boy, a self-fashioned job. He carries water from the river in a five-gallon bucket balanced on his head, with two one-gallon jugs in each of his hands. He makes this trip to houses in the campo about twelve times a day and gets paid five pesos a trip. Yilo was born in the mountains to a single mother of eight children, who has, for the most part, renounced him.

The children are surprised that Yilo and I are such good friends. He is a smart young man full of positive intention and genuine inquisitiveness. He is a good and loyal friend. His pure innocence is bitterly and sweetly heartbreaking. He brings water to my house for five pesos a gallon and waits to eat my left-over oatmeal with raisins at six-thirty in the morning. He has never asked for more than I offer and never expected it either. I am amazed, when I stop to think, how much distance there is between us most of the time. This difference is the driving force behind our curiosity of one another. Often I am pleasantly surprised when he is my first visitor of the day, and I am interested in what he is thinking and feeling, almost always.

No one that I have met thus far in my community is more dedicated, less-intrusive, or more judicious about his work than Yilo: I have never seen him wear shoes; he works during thunderstorms and when it is dark, bearing the same hole-riddled turquoise polo-che and worn jean shorts. He endures constant teasing, which stems from the Dominican cultural distaste for Haitian-like attributes. He is called crazy for his eccentric mannerisms and awkward voice. I believe though, that the community desperately adores him for the work he does, only they do not know how to embrace him.

Yilo has won my full respect. When I began an acta de nacimiento project with my community members I quickly learned more about Yilo’s blind, fierce determination. Even without understanding the true significance of an acta – without which one cannot attend school past eighth grade, participate in the national health care program, nor enroll in the national food program – Yilo immediately realized the importance of getting his own. He recognized it was the ticket to some sort of “freedom” of opportunity, although most of his neighbors and friends mocked him for the desire to want more for himself. After learning the requirements for the acta, Yilo would pass my house daily, carrying his water, asking me how I could help him get to the pueblo to get his own.

Community member began openly discussing the absurdity of his desire to get an acta. “What would Yilo be able to do in the pueblo?” most of them mocked. And when I would ask Yilo how old he was, Yilo would turn to me with a blank face, as if I could decipher his age. Who really knew? That was, and is, trouble. Even though Yilo has made a way for himself here, where people know him and “love” him, would he be able to make a way form himself outside of this world?

We came to the conclusion that Yilo is twenty-six years old. After several weeks of finagling his mother (who was afraid of the white woman) into giving us her cedula in order to make copies, we found his birth date on a tattered old sheet of paper, tucked away in a plastic bag in her house.

Yilo arrived at my house on the arranged day, at the appointed time, with a freshly shaven head (the wrinkles on his head from the pressure of bucket-carrying, now more pronounced), in a clean polo-che, a clean pair of stone-washed jeans, and wearing tennis shoes. I had never seen Yilo in tennis shoes.

We proudly cruised down the mountain on two motors, one trailing the other. I could feel the grin on my face as I watched Yilo brace himself for the trip. Was it fear, excitement? This is something he had anticipated for a long time. After the commotion of the motorcycles zooming past our final destination, paying the motoconchisto, and fending off the hum of the traffic, I heard Yilo mumble to me under his breath in that very predictable monotone, “Adrianna…Adrianna, I have never been here before.”

I was distracted a bit. “What Yilo?”

He said, “I have never been here before.” In that moment, I felt his innocence. I felt his excitement. He looked at me wide-eyed and was grinning, a little nervous.

“Really, Yilo, you have never been here before?”

He said honestly, frankly, without shame, “No Adrianna, this is my first time in the pueblo.” Time stood still for a moment, and I forgot what I had been thinking: errands I must run while with him, who I must contact in the States now that my cell phone had a signal. My energy was focused on him; he hadn’t left the campo in twenty-six years. Imagine that. TODAY was the day.

After all of the hubbub of figuring out how to get him here, I realized why the whole world was making such a big deal about Yilo’s trip to the pueblo. Why hadn’t anyone told me? Why hadn’t anyone else in the community thought to bring Yilo to the pueblo? Was it for lack of resources, or the fact that the others are so focused on their own needs and desires that no one would stop to think about Yilo? During those first moments of his day in the pueblo, I sat thinking: What had I done in the past twenty-five years of my own life? What had I learned? Where had I been? To place myself in his shoes, in that instant, blew my mind.

Perhaps the community members were right: what would Yilo do in the pueblo? But I began to realize, watching Yilo cross the street by himself and looking to me for guidance, that was not what mattered. This is what he had been waiting for – something new, something different. “Today is a very proud day,” I told him. I was beside myself; Yilo was too. How amazing it was to discover the streets of the pueblo, for the very first time, through Yilo. He was attentive to every moment, alive and alert.

Our experience as Peace Corps Volunteers often befuddles so many people back at home. What can one person really do to help a village of hungry people? How can one young person possibly do anything to help change a peoples’ future? On a grand level, I have asked myself those same questions. When the days are slow and projects seem to be failing due to cross-cultural miscommunication or a lack of self-motivation, I do, indeed, question my own desire to help. But then I remember what it is that teaches me to continue to move forward.

Our job as Volunteers is not to save villages of malnourished children. It never was. We are only catalysts for change: intermediaries. When we work to create opportunity for others, the true joy and responsibility of our service comes to life. Yilo came alive the morning he recognized he had moved beyond a world that seemed stagnant to him. Yilo was a voice that needed to be heard. Who would have known his need if no one had been there to recognize him? The impact of our friendship reverberates within those community members who witness our interactions, despite our differences – the color of our skin; our gender; our ever-so-obvious economic disparity; the sounds of our voices. Perhaps this is what will drive him for the rest of his life, whether or not he ever moves beyond the boundaries of the world from which he came. What can we do to ensure that our efforts are productive?

I feel helpless, though, that he is waiting for ME to be the one standing in line to shift all of the right documents through the judge’s hands in the Oficialia, only to hear her accuse him of being illegal, or previously ill-declared, or God only knows.

His dignity and self-value grows among the members of his community every time a child learns to respect him for his work. His hope is renewed every time he moves one step closer to being a fully documented Dominican citizen. Finally, the government will recognize him as an individual. We must be true to ourselves as humans with hearts that are open to connection and understanding. Yilo still does not have his acta de nacimiento; we are still waiting. I am certain that his dreams for his future are strong, much stronger than they were before. Maybe he will never stop carrying water; years from now he may still go barefoot, walking the muddy streets with a bucket on his head, proudly determined. Perhaps when the opportunity presents itself for him to ‘move forward’ he will have realized that his work is too important, his place in his world too special and too valued, despite the constant controversies he faces. I am almost sure of that. But I do know that his story will have echoed in the lives of so many people, inspiring them to work harder, dream bigger, laugh harder and love deeper. Yilo has made my job effortless in this way. My job now is to continue working for him to guarantee that his story will live on.”

-Adrienne Gilbert
Healthy Families
El Batey, San Juan de La Maguana

I will continue to post stories I like that are published in the Gringo Grita. I already have one lined up. Once I get it all typed up I’ll be sure to post it