Pot Luck Planning Dinner

Pot Luck Planning Dinner
Sue Klappa


Thursday evening, April 29th, our group met to talk about packing and our service sites. We were also able to skype with several members of the Creighton ILAC PT group to hear about two of our service sites. Thank you to Lana, Susan, Amy, and Christie! We have some great ideas for our service work at Hospicio, CONANI, and the general ILAC experience.


Saturday we will travel all day and arrive in Santo Domingo around 10:40 pm. We will be staying at Bettye’s Guest House in the Zona Colonial until Monday morning: http://www.santodomingohostel.com/.


Sunday we head to Batey Cayacoa (a Haitian community) near San Pedro de Macoris for mass, a tour, and a conversation with the women of the community. Batey Cayacoa bears the name of the original native Taíno name for that region and has been chosen as the model and lab community for future consolidations of batey communities. The idea of the consolidation process is to concentrate several small bateyes into a few large ones, in order to facilitate regular services, such as electricity, water supply, health care, schools, ambulance service, etc. "Nuevo Cayacoa, Phase 1" was inaugurated on Sept. 2009, and that phase includes a Catholic church, a new school, a new clinic, a community center, soccer field, basketball court, a few spaces for shops called the "Cayacoa Mall" and new houses. Since Cayacoa is on the road to the northern district of San José de Los Llanos, it´s very conveniently located, and it is being studied as a model for what will be done in other bateys.


We will return to the Zona Colonial for a tour in the afternoon and enjoy our evening in our new world. Monday morning we will head up to Santiago, about 2 hours to the north of Santo Domingo and get settled at the ILAC Center, our home away from home.