Dominican Republic

I worked there for 6 months. A Caribbean island, the send, the sun and the sea were all together. Moreover, I was a sailing teacher. For the eighteen years old that I was, it is the perfect job and spot. Everything was cheap. It was party, friends and all of what you can dream of. I met some other French that opened a restaurant next to the resort I was working in. I learnt to speak Spanish. An extraordinary experience.

While you are at the end of a work day, the sun is leaving slowly, you look away and you are sure everybody would have thought the same thing as you: “Why do not I stay to live here? An easy life, the work is not hard at all; life is not expensive. They have a cool culture. Why not? I mean really, no joke. No more tests at school, no more duty, no responsibilities, I found a perfect way of life”. Nevertheless, you leave. Why? Because you feel that you can get so much more in life. Society told you how successful you will be. Medias show to consumers what they can be. This is the reason why you came back after 6 months. I am sure that everybody feels like they are on earth to do great things. Every human being feels special. I guess that it could be seen as a lack of modesty. But honestly, who does not feel that way? Not looking for glory or to be famous, just that the day I look back at what I did during my short existence, I want to be able to say that I did something with my life. It sounds like a cliché, the kind of sentence you hear in a Hollywood movie. Whatever, I am sure you get my point.

Dominican Republic is one of the main tourism destinations in the Caribbean. It has known a significant increase in mass tourism, Punta Cana for example. Other spots are developing such as Bayahibe and other resorts. Tourism is recognized as being an efficient way for those kinds of countries to develop. Right now, a lot of constructions are taking place, money is being invested. It does give job to local population. Tourist dollars or euros are entering within the country. Then, where is that money going to? Most likely it goes back to foreign investors and companies.

There is another issue linked to the construction of the resorts. They are built by Haitian that crossed the border. They are in Dominican Republic illegally. They are exploited, very badly paid, and are treated as slave. A look at the camps where they live and you understand. Where is the respect of human rights there? Then people ask to athlete to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing because they are not respected in China. But why are not the tourists doing the same thing for Dominican Republic? If you think about it, a boycott by the tourists would have so much more impacts. Tourism is a significant industry in the whole world. If suddenly people decide net to go to a place because it does not respect human rights, it will have a lot more impact than any political pressure. Nowadays, we live in a world where everybody consumes everything. Modern society is under the influence of Medias and advertising all the time. Customers have the power to make things change by boycotting a product, as everything is run by the economy. That is already taking place, but not in the tourism industry. Population should stop being obsessed with their purchasing power. Customers should focus on the fact they have the freedom to choose what they want to buy or not.

To conclude as mentioned at the start of this paragraph, mass tourism takes place in Dominican Republic. So mass population is not aware of the situation, and if people are, then it is even worst…

Rapholie