In the frontier provinces there are communities without electricity or water service, and the public offices are in shabby locales and fire departments are without fire trucks SD. When she was born, her father gave her the name of Dichosa Lucky , because the baby was at risk of dying from respiratory complications. But the life of the little girl, one year old, as not been like her name.
She doesn't walk because of a lack of vitamins; she spends the day on the floor, without clothes. On a Wednesday morning, she and another six children-her brothers and sisters and cousins-all play in front of her house. Their faces, feet and hands are full of dirt, which is more like a white dust which emphasizes their dark skins.
Milagros Medrano, Dichosa's father, is a Dominican farmer who married a woman of Haitian parentage who was born in Avila, a rural community in the frontier province of Pedernales. They have five children and none of them are in school. The seven share a small house with another Haitian family with five members.
Of the four adults, only one knows how to read and write. Medrano was able to get the provincial Governor to donate the wood for his house, with a dirt floor.
In one room they have two worn down tables and an old television set. In another there are two beds: The clothing is stored in a bag that the women will wash in the river. Outside, his wife is hunkered down, washing pots and pans under and an enramada. It is midmorning and she has the stove lit, boiling green bananas and macaroni.
