Sam Dean

photojournalism: Haitians in the Dominican Republic

A struggling economy and local prejudice keeps most Haitian immigrants who come to the Dominican Republic in undesirable living spaces and jobs, if they can find work at all. This series of images documents the their lives as they struggle to reconcile reality with their dreams.

A rooster wanders muddy streets in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
   
Street children shine shoes along the beach walk in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
   
Sticking together for safety and friendship, children walk the streets of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, looking for shoe shine customers.
     
  
At a park in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, street children take a break from selling sweets and shining shoes.
   
Jonel, one of the Haitians living in a boys' home, completes his given chore of dishwashing.
  
Jonel, one of the boys living in Project Esperanza's home, practices writing in Creole during school at the home. Project Esperanza pays teachers to come to the home for private instruction since most of the boys have no way of getting into the public school system.
     
  
A favorite pastime for the boys in the Project Esperanza boys' home is dominos. Theirs is an animated form in which they violently slap the table with their pieces in a round that leaves a loser with clothespins pinching his face until he can win again.
   
A couple of street children take a break from selling sweets and shining shoes.
   
A young Haitian girl plays in an alley near her home. A struggling economy and local prejudice keeps most Haitians who come to the Dominican Republic in undesirable living spaces and jobs, if they can find work at all, and many of their children do not have the opportunity to attend school.
     
  
Conditions in rural Haitian villages, known as bateys and built near sugar cane plantations, are deplorable.
   
A student prays at the close of classes in one of the schools that Project Esperanza supports in a Haitian community outside Puerto Plata Dominican Republic. Project Esperanza refers to them as "grassroots" schools because they want to involve communities in both the Dominican Republic and the United States in the effort to better the lives of Haitian immigrants in the DR.