Global Studies Reflections
Dominican Republic Service Trip (November 22-30 2025)
I am no liar; this is why advertising the DR Service Trip to people is really hard, because it isn’t a fun trip. You can pick up and spin around as many kids as you want, but when you come towards the dying man, and all he asks for are prayers, that’s what sticks with you. I like cracking stone and smashing walls, but there are too many things you cannot shake from the trip for me to say I really enjoy it; to me, it is more like a sour memory of a friend who has died. It’s something you cherish, but something that stings deep.
There was one experience this year that made it as good as it could be for me; Talking with Moses. I think, sometimes, about what it must have been like when the Israelites watched as Moses descended the mountaintop and delivered them His commandments, and this Moses is as close as I will get to knowing it. Moses, the CEO of the Good Samaritan Hospital/Organization, was born condemned to a Batay. He was born to a mother who died in childbirth, for upon arriving at a hospital, she was turned away as it wasn’t a hospital for Haitians, and she died on the way to a hospital that was. Moses grew up on a Batey; Moses went to school through the church, and Moses devoted himself to God. He says that God has given him all his prayers. He and his organization and congregation descend from the hills and deliver upon the indentured Haitians, who came to the DR seeking the promised land, food, medicine, and affluent high schoolers like me.
I do not know how the Israelites would have reacted if, from Mount Sinai, came Moses with the word and will of God… and 30 or so White people in blue t-shirts, but I hope they’d think how Moses told us he thinks. Moses told us that the most important thing we bring is love. Moses told us that the most important thing we can do is show some spirit and have some heart for the Haitians with nothing to their name, and also have no hope in the world. Moses told us that we Americans reached the promised land, that we made a nation where everyone is equal, where every immigrant, even undocumented, has rights, and where every everyone prospers under the sun. Some of our number tried to stir these assertions, for “no no Moses, isn’t the most we can do is bring our money,” and “no no Moses, America is not such a beacon of hope.” Moses said to us again, after listening with diligence and care, that money can give the poor man another day to live, but love may just give him a day worth living for. That all the fruits of prosperity grow from the rain of love and from knowing somewhere from half a world away, love them enough to come to them.
Moses spoke with such conviction that when, on Batey 30, we arrived at one of the 8x8” square houses in a line, and there was nothing inside of it except for the 8 rice packs and a blue bag of oil and corn and the sort we put there, and then outside sat an old man. Mrs. French approached the man and, through our Creole translator, called those around her to come fulfill his one wish and pray for him. I did not know the love Moses spoke of as we, in two languages disconnected from this man, prayed for him to feel no pain and be delivered to the kingdom of Heaven. I do not know if I felt God’s love when I tried to ask what was wrong with the man to a lady nearby, all she said was “todo esta bien ahora,” all is good now, but I hope the man did. This man, who knew not our names, and we knew not his, cried seldom tears when it was over, and for a moment it looked as if he would make a full recovery, but then the tears subsided as we walked away, and he looked again as if he were already dead.
Many of our members on the trip left saying that “certainly God is not with them, for why would he allow such suffering to occur?” Moses is certain God is with them, for there are miracles abundant to them, he tells us. I do not know if God is with them, but Moses today tells us He is with us all, and I hope to believe him. It is also not lost on me that Moses of 4000 years ago told the Israelites as they traveled through the desert that God is with them all, and we preach that as gospel. I do not know if there is a promised land for the Haitians. I do not know if they are still in Egypt or marching through the desert, but I would have been a fool not believe Moses if I saw the Israelites leave Egypt with him, and so I must amend my previous state, for I know God is with them, for I see another Moses with his flock, maybe not marching towards a promised land, but making one.
Globalization in Literature (Fall Semester 2025)
In Ms. Alferi’s Globalization in Literature class, I learned how to truly conceptualize just how fast the world changed in the twentieth century. I had always known, in a basic way, that empires collapsed and new nations formed, but I never really understood how sudden that shift was. When my grandparents were born, only a handful of states like India and Pakistan were free from imperial rule, and by the time my parents were born, the final months of the Portuguese colonial wars were already behind them. That speed is hard to imagine, and I often take it for granted today. Borders may shift on maps, but people do not change so quickly, and cultures and resentments do not simply disappear when flags are lowered.Before this class, I could easily criticize European intolerance or condemn the nation-state as an outdated and harmful idea. Still, I did not really think about what decolonization did psychologically, both to the oppressed and to the former oppressors. Independence did not automatically bring clarity, stability, or healing. Instead, it often left people unsure of who they were supposed to be, where they belonged, and what history meant for their future. This made me realize that political freedom does not always resolve deeper social and personal conflicts, and that the legacy of empire lingers in ways that are not always visible but are deeply felt.In the main text of this class, Zadie Smith’s historical fiction White Teeth, these questions about identity and historical change are unpacked through characters like Archie Jones, a WWII veteran who feels largely disconnected from the world except for Samad Iqbal, a Pakistani man he served with in Bulgaria, who later moves to London in the 1970s. As the novel moves from wartime flashbacks to moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, we see Jamaicans, Muslims, Jews, and the English all struggling with what it means to be British in a society shaped by migration and empire. What unites them is not blood or birthplace, but something more abstract and shared, something “in the air” rather than something you can physically point to. Through these overlapping lives, Smith shows that national identity is less about purity or tradition and more about the complicated, often uncomfortable mixing of histories that cannot be undone.
