I've ever been in before. The first or second day I was here, we
went to spend two days and a night out in an outlying area of Santo
Domingo. Earlier this week, I went into a barrio wedged into a
riverbank that was more central and more hectic.
The way I arrived in both situations could not have been more
different (in the first case with a host who has deep connections
with the place, in the second on a feel-good bandaid mission giving
out mosquito nets with a rich christer) but that's another story.
The thing that ran through it was how formless any feeling associated
with poverty was. You hear people say "people are really, really,
really poor" but those really's seem just stand-ins for general
anxiety about their own wealth and otherwise content-free. I read a
Nicholas Kristoff column the other day, and comparing the two
experiences now, I think that for a rich outsider reading Kristoff's
columns would be a more valuable experience (in terms of the poor
themselves) than a month or even a year working in a barrio here.
This was definitely true in the case of the christer, for example.
Context is essential, and very difficult to grasp and bring to bear.
