A YOUNG Bermudian who was able to devote some time helping disadvantaged families in the Dominican Republic has returned to the island with a new outlook on life.

Kristin Loving spent four weeks doing volunteer work in Bahoruco, a tiny village on the Caribbean island, as part of a project coordinated by International Student Volunteers (ISV).

She returned to Bermuda just over a week ago, insisting the experience taught her how to better appreciate the small things in life and how a common language is immaterial when people work toward the same goal.

"Going down there really showed me how different lives can be, how different cultures can be and how we take things for granted," she said. "It showed me how many of us don't really appreciate things. These people have nothing. Most of them didn't have refrigerators or anything to store their food in, so they either have to buy everything fresh that day or grow it. They don't have any material things - a couple of people have cars but not like we have here - and they don't complain. I was wearing all this gold jewellery when I went down there and one day looked down (and wondered), 'Why do I have this stuff'?"

A student at Canada's Mont Saint Vincent University, Miss Loving learned about the ISV programme through an advertisement circulated there. The charity was founded 25 years ago and today operates on the strength of volunteers looking to make a difference in communities around the world.

Currently pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Child and Youth Studies, Miss Loving was drawn in by the fact the Bahoruco tour involved two weeks' work teaching disadvantaged children English and other skills.

Aside from that, volunteers would be expected to help with a local project - building a workshop for persons involved in the mining of larimar, a blue stone indigenous to that particular region of the approximately 18,000-square-foot island.

Her initial dreams were slightly quashed when the college student discovered the cost attached to the month-long trip was more than she could afford.

A generous gift from the First Baptist Church of Devonshire covered general expenses. The remainder of her visit was paid for with assistance from her parents and other kind donors who learned of her plans through a Mid-Ocean News interview earlier this year.

"I loved the trip," she enthused. "It was a really good experience. I'm so glad I ended up going. When I first heard how much it would cost I thought I'd never be able to raise the money but it was so worth it.

"One of the main reasons I wanted to do another article is I wanted to say thank you to everybody that helped. I know a lot of people weren't sure what I was going to do - my church sponsored me $3,000. They knew I was going to work with children but that was it. They weren't sure of the specifics because I didn't know (exactly) what I was going to do."

Miss Loving was one of a team of 18 who travelled to the Spanish-speaking nation with ISV.

"They think I'm the first Bermudian that's ever gone on an ISV programme. We had a girl from Wales; we had a bunch of people from the US, a couple from people from Canada - and then me. We were all university students. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 22."

The only rule was that each member had to commit to working as a team - or make their way home.

"They wanted to treat us like adults," Miss Loving explained. "They didn't want to have to be parents to us when we were down there. They said we had to take responsibility for ourselves. If we didn't want to do something we didn't have to do it but we wouldn't (be considered) a part of the group anymore, we would have to find our own way back home, but everybody there was responsible.

"It wasn't what I was expecting. I think I was (initially) shocked. We had to drive a couple of hours on different days and would pass tiny houses on mud, made of tin or brick. They don't have trashcans. In the bathrooms you would have a tiny can because you can't flush toilet paper but there would only be a little one there and may be a small one in the kitchen. Instead they throw all their trash over a wall or somewhere and it really piles up. It smells. It brings diseases. And it's funny, they just walk over it, they don't think anything of it - which surprised us."

Each day was spent in a way that was beneficial to their host community, she added. Their first priority was to acquire basic communication skills.

"I only knew a tiny bit of Spanish, I took French in high school," Miss Loving explained. "The first week we just learned Spanish so we could try and communicate with them but when you're with them language isn't an issue. A lot of (the other ISV volunteers) asked why I was trying to talk with them when they didn't understand me because my Spanish was so bad. (My argument was) they could see my hand gestures, the way I was talking, my tone of voice, the way you look at them they know what you mean. So for me it was easy to communicate - even though it was hard."

The remainder of the expedition was spent educating the children, building the larimar workshop and working on a host of little projects of benefit to Bahoruco.

"Every other day we would do a different thing - Mondays we would do construction, Tuesdays we would work with the children," Miss Loving recalled. "The children's programme was really fun. We taught the kids English. We would play games with them, we'd do arts and crafts or geography, stuff like that but we would try and do it in English so they could try and pick it up."

Although she had no construction experience whatsoever before the trip, Miss Loving said she was a fast learner.

"It was hard," she admitted. "We were mixing cement by hand instead of using a cement mixer. We would then lay the cement on the ground and place brick on it and even out the brick, with the hammers or our hands, and plaster it. We put in windows. We did a lot of endurance stuff, things that I never thought I could do before.

"The very first day we were working and working away. The first morning was the worst. We started at 9. It felt like we'd been there the whole morning but when we looked at our watches, it was only 9.30. But then we got used to it."

Their aim was to create a workshop where larimar miners could cut and polish the stone to make it into jewellery. The area was also intended as a storage place for the unfinished stones and the necessary machinery.

"They weren't able to do any of that before because they didn't have a space for it," Miss Loving explained. "The manufacturers would do all that. They would only be able to sell (the raw material) and get a couple pesos in exchange. It didn't really benefit them. The mine is in Bahoruco. The manufacturers don't live there."

The storage area would make a vast difference to the process. According to Miss Loving, it enables people from the region to be responsible for 90 per cent of the jewellery production. Outsiders with connections to valued wholesalers will continue to run that aspect of the enterprise.

"Larimar is only found in the Dominican Republic in this one mine in Bahoruco, and that's how the community gets most of its income," she stated. "The miners used to sell it to manufacturers who would only pay them a little bit because they didn't have the tools or the equipment to store it and make the jewellery themselves. We built the workshop so that the miners could store it in their own location, so they could make more profit for their own community.

"I think (the jewellery) has been sold to a couple of celebrities and it's been advertised in magazines but nobody really mentions it's from Bahoruco, nobody knows the history behind it. Now hopefully, with them being able to manufacture it themselves, it will bring more publicity to their area. Hopefully the news will get out that it's not (some high-tech company) doing all this."

With waste a significant problem for health and other reasons, efforts were also made to introduce garbage cans to the area. "It is a problem," Miss Loving stressed. "There is so much trash and I think in a couple years it'll become a much bigger problem because of the type of garbage they're getting - Styrofoam cups and things that are bad for the environment. A lot of the kids are sick. On a lot of the beaches needles wash up from trash thrown out by more modern cities like Santo Domingo, where there's more drugs. And the pollution all travels. Things wash up onshore that's not from Bahoruco. The kids play on the beaches - they could end up stepping on a needle, they could cut themselves on something and get an infection."

Her team helped remove garbage from a popular beach in the area and promised to deliver a palm tree there if the residents maintained those efforts.

"ISV wants to get another group to go down and maybe implement trashcans along the beach or teach awareness to the kids about it. I've already told them I'll be back. I want to see the workshop (in operation) and the impact it makes. When we left, nothing was in there. We had only just put the roof on that day. You don't know what's going to happen with it. It's the same with the beach cleanup. We did it I think, two weeks before we left Bahoruco, and when we left the trash was still there sitting on the side of the road waiting for a truck to come and collect it.

"You're not sure they're going to keep (up the practise) but you just have to hope that they're going to really appreciate what we're doing and want to keep up with the improvements. That's the reason why we went there. They didn't really want assistance. It's not like we went there to help them. We went there just to work with them and to do what they wanted. We didn't build the workshop because it's what we thought would be better for their community, because we thought they needed more income, it's what they requested. They have a simple life. They don't need a lot more but I think they want a little more for the community so they can make it a bit better."

Despite being lured to Bahoruco because the work tied in to what she was studying at university, Miss Loving said she didn't really focus on coursework while there. "Even though I went down there with a course in mind that I'm going to use the experience for, to be honest I didn't really do that. The experience was so different from a textbook. A textbook will tell you all the different stages of children - how they grow and so on. This way I was able to experience it. I'm sure I'll remember it more than say, the information from textbooks I read last semester. In going down there I was able to better understand how the kids were at the different ages."

Perhaps more than anything else, she was impressed by the closeness of the community, Miss Loving added. "There were probably about 30 little kids in the village and would all pack together like family. They would send babies of about 11 months old to our programme in the care of children about three years old. Little children would come - no clothes on, no shoes - but they would have a piece of corn in their hand which they would chew on as their food for the day. And they were all so happy.

"Everybody helps everybody. The parents don't care that they send their babies off with children for the day. (In our society they'd be chastised as being) an unfit parent but the kids there grow up with a lot more responsibility. They become independent a lot sooner and they're happy and they're able to take care of themselves if their parents aren't around for whatever reason. In Bermuda, parents aren't always in children's lives (but the difference is the kids in Bermuda) don't know how to cope and I think that's when they start getting into trouble."

Young Bermudians could learn from an experience such as the one she had, the college student feels.

"I think a lot of people need to do stuff like that. Bermuda's in a way like Dominican - it's an island and it's small and you know everybody around you - but it's also so different. Their life is the real island life. It's so simple and it's so humble and they're very content. It shows how innocent life can be. People don't stress out down there. Here everybody gets so caught up in everything - trying to be bigger and better, more flashy. Down there, for the most part, they don't care about that. They just want to live life.

"I found people there to be more respectful. In Bermuda we used to pride ourselves on being respectful but I think we're losing that. It used to be you spoke to every single person you passed on the street - people don't do that as much anymore. Down there everybody was so happy to see everybody. Everybody was smiling, everybody was laughing.

"I think teenagers here, especially the ones that get into a little bit of trouble, they need to go down there to see how life is different and I'm sure they'd come back with a different view on how life could be, that they'd (re-examine) those things they take for granted."

Her experience was such that she would definitely do it again, Miss Loving said.

"We have so much and they have so little. We complain about every little thing - if we can't get the newest car or the newest cell phone. They don't care about all that. The kids were so sweet. They brought us larimar from the mines just to show their appreciation (for what we did) and to show that they had stuff they could give as well. It was really, really sweet because it's all they really had.

"I had doubts whether what we were going to do would make a difference but I'm so glad I ended up going - and that people were willing to help me to actually go. It was a really good experience and it taught me a lot about different cultures and how people should be living, about being content with life.

"I'm now happier about the simple things, with what I have and what's around me. When you go to a place like that you really get to appreciate your life more. They have their family and they have their friends and that's all that really matters to them."