Reconnection

January 28, 2023

Day 28

Today it will be a short post, in part because I'm extremely tired and I have to do this on my phone with extremely unreliable internet connection.

One thing that I wanted to do for a very long time was to revisit my dad little hometown, a very small town called Enriquillo in the province of Barahona in the Dominican Republic. In part because I haven't visit it in over 25 years (I think the last time I was 8 or 9 years old), but also because in part to bond a bit with dad and understand his upbring a bit better now that I'm more mature.

You can also add that I wanted to reconnect a little with my family roots and analyze my life through a different perspective considering that even though the town used to have a lot of family members around, nowadays, not that many because everybody has left for a better life. You see, the "Sur Profundo" (The Deep South), as this area of the country is known, is a very poor area that is highly under develop even in 2023 so it's hard to blame family for leaving.

Nevertheless, they have left but not forgotten their town, since they are always coming around and watching my dad talk with his old friends, you realize that a lot of them are always coming back, and you can tell that a lot of the ones that have left, have been sending money to build better houses for them or their families in the town.

Talking with my dad I realized that my family is even bigger than I thought, and just so you have an idea, my dad had - just from his dad side of the family - 15 aunts/uncles so imagine how many cousins and family relations are in the area.

On top of that, I learned that his grandfather (my great grandfather) was named Enriquillo, the same name as the town, and that's just an example on how deep the connection to the town my family has on top of it, the people around just tell me "You look a lot like your grandfather Gabriel" which is kind of cool, I think.

From this visit I'm pretty sure I'll be able to connect some things related to my dad upbring but also, unrelated to my dad, I can analyze a bit better the development of a very small town in a 3rd world country through my modern eyes, is not nice though and it pains me a little see a town losing its identity but that conversation will be for another day, I'll make sure to get lot of insight prior to that.