Sewing Initiative in Peralta

Once again, we headed to the mounainous region of the Cibao to visit our friends in the tiny town of Peralta. The ride there is an adventure of its own, as the first half we ride in an air conditioned bus with lots of other passengers from urban Santo Domingo, yet after an hour-and-a-half we transfer our transportation.

We hopped into the back seat of a beat-up minivan once we got to Azua, to soon be accompanied by five sun-leathered men, a rooster tied at the feet, a giant bag of potatoes and a to-be-needed balded spare tire. Although my description is lacking, the drive from Azua to Peralta is lined with tin-roofed little homes, beautiful untouched rainforest-ish plants and flowers, men plowing fields with oxen, naked children and very few vehicles coming in the opposite direction.

Halfway there, we got a spare tire and had to sit on the side of the road for a short ten minutes while normal procedure happened. Because the roads are like driving through small boulders, I'm sure "goma pinchado" (popped tire) is an everyday thing on the road to Peralta. The "chofer" (driver) hopped out, grabbed his spare tire and popped it on while the rest of us found chairs to sit on from the house where the van stopped... a few shoeless little kids came over to watch the spare get put on and we got back in.

We stopped two more times on the way to Peralta: to drop off the potatoes at a local "colmado" (small store) and to refill a petroleum gas tank for the chofer. Normal procedure.

Anyway, we arrived in Peralta and were greeted by three people as soon as we hopped out of the minivan at the corner where the church is, without them even knowing that we were coming. Mark's almost famous there now since he visits so often. He has been coming to Peralta for months to assist them to get their sewing co-op off of the ground.

The town has 80% unemployment, and the people who are employed work in the Zona Franca in clothing mills. A team of 20 community leaders (including the pastor we work with, who would be the key leader) who have experience in clothing production are interesting in coming together to start their own clothes-making initiative, which would allow Peralta to have more job opportunity (for possible 250 people) and gain some economic strength. We had a six-hour meeting with a group to discuss next steps in the development of this cooperative project. It was a good meeting and we'll see what happens at the next one where we talk about marketing.