Tree Planting

A friend of ours from my job put together an environmental advocacy group aptly named The Green Team. As a follow-up to their Green 5K run a few weeks ago, the Ministry of Environment donated a bunch of trees to the organization. About 20 of us joined about 30 or 40 Dominicans and trekked out to Bonao in the interior of the country to plant a few of the trees. The plan was to head out of the city around 7:30, drive out to Bonao, plant a few trees and be back home by noon. As with everything else in this country, things didn’t go quite as planned.

After meeting up with the other tree planters, a caravan of minivans made their way through villages en route to the forest. After a brief hike through an open field, our guide passed out small bundles of tree seedlings and explained to us the planting process. Given that we were standing in an open field devoid of trees, neighboring a fairly dense stand of trees, we all assumed that our goal that day would be to extend the already established forest into the open fields. On the contrary, we were tasked with planting trees on the fairly steep hill on the other side of the trees…in nearly 100 degree weather.

Hiking up the side of a steep hill in the blazing heat was not what any of us had signed up for. Needless to say, many of the volunteers for the day felt blindsided, unprepared and generally miserable. Jahkedda and I were doing alright, but even we weren’t exactly having the best time. Once we all finished planting our bundles of trees, we hiked back to the vans for water and prepared to head home. However, the rest of the group had other plans.

Backtracking through the village and barreling further down the highway, the caravan turned off the main road and through another village heading to a waterfall close by. By this point, Jahkedda was getting fed up with the heat, the hiking and the general outdoors. After great deliberation, we decided to follow the trail towards the waterfall with the intention of turning back if the trail became too arduous. On the first half of the route, things were going fine in terms of gradation of the trail. Also the sun had dipped behind the clouds, so the temperature had fallen significantly. But then it began to drizzle… and then rain… and then pour! Our only choice was to turn back and retrace our steps back to the van. The only problem with that plan was that we had already walked 20-30 minutes so it would take at least that long in the pouring rain to make it back.

The first 10 minutes of trudging through the pouring rain were fairly miserable. But then, we reached a point of saturation at which point we realized that we were completely soaked and it no longer mattered that it was still raining. We were then able to appreciate the cooling raindrops and take in the amazingly beautiful view that we had previously managed to completely overlook: the lush greenery, the jagged rocks of the mountains, the rushing river below. We finally made it back to the van, and about 45 minutes later the rest of the group returned and we made our way back to Santo Domingo.

Although it wasn’t exactly how we imagined and there were some frustrations along the way, all in all it turned out well. There was a good crowd, amazing scenery and we got some good exercise. And that’s basically how most things tend to turn out in this country: it’s never perfect, it’s never how you imagined, but when it’s all said and done, you’re always glad you did it.

Drenched in sweat after tree planting

Military Guard. Not exactly sure what he was there to protect: The Cows? The Seedlings? The Volunteers?