Boca de Mao, Centro de Trabajo Popular (CTP)


Biembo Olivé is a twenty-five-year-old Haitian immigrant who works
as a day laborer on local rice plantations. He lives in the part of Boca de Mao
called El Batey; the name comes from the time when it housed the Haitian workers
who cut sugar cane in the state-owned plantations. Rice, bananas, yuccas and
plantains have replaced sugar in this region of the Dominican Republic,
but immigrants like Biembo still supply much of the labor.

Biembo uses his bicycle to get to work every morning in the rice fields.
Before, he walked five or more kilometers each way to get to the farms.
"It used to take two hours walking, now I only take thirty minutes on my bike".
His wife also uses the bicycle to go to the river and bathe and to
do her errands in the community.

As a day laborer harvesting rice, Biembo usually earns 100 pesos
($6 US) a day. Paying car fare out of that would cost him 20 pesos daily, and
given that option before having the bike, he ususally walked.

He came to the Dominican Republic from Cape Haitian, his birthplace,
two years ago. He came "Buscando la vida" as the expression here goes,
"Looking for a living". What money he can save from his earnings, he sends
to his family in Haiti, toward the construction of a better house there.

Centro de Trabajo Popular (CTP) trains Dominican and Haitian youth in bicycle
mechanics and small business skills while supplying affordable transportation to
farmworkers, industrial laborers, and tradespeople in and around Boca de Mao,
north-central Dominican Republic.

Rosa Pye