At the bottom of the lake.

At the bottom of the lake lies my family’s history...or at least it will once they build the damn thing.

So why is at the bottom of the lake? Why is this a problem I will tell you.

Some families pass their history down in the form of a family heirloom...for some families its jewelry, a doll, quilts, clothes, etc ,for my family is was land thousands and thousands of acres of land in a beautiful valley in the Dominican Republic which is where my family is from. So what does this have to do with the lake and my family’s history at the bottom of it?

The Dominican Republic is having trouble being able to supply electricity to all of its 8 million citizens, especially to the second largest city of the country, Santiago (which is about an hour away from the little town that my family is from called Inoa). So the government’s solution to this problem was hydro-electricity. For this they will have to build a man made lake, and surprise, surprise, where do they chose to make this lake about an hour away from Santiago in a little town named Inoa, in other words on our land.

So as you can see the problem with this is that it’s our land. Now yes they will pay my family for the land, but that is not the point it’s not just about the land, it’s about my families history. My family’s history is so intertwine with this land that it’s so hard to separate the two.

This land has been in my family for over 150 years. It belongs to my great-grandfather who gave it to my grandmother on her wedding day. It’s the land that gave birth to my mother and my 17 aunts and uncles. Its the land that saw my mother grow, its the land that saw her leave only to return later on with her own family. It’s the land that I was taken to as an infant. It’s the land of summer vacation. It’s the land that holds so many of my childhood memorizes.

The land where I have learned so much about my family, the land that keeps teaching me so many new things every time I return to it. It’s the land that calls me late at night when I should be sleeping, the land that runs thru my blood. The land that has made me who I am. The land that keeps my family together because no matter what is going on we always return to it. It’s a place where the new is mixed with the old. It’s the only thing that keeps my grandparents alive...it's my home and now it will lie at the bottom of the lake.