Leelanau native’s leaps of faith land her in Latin America

,

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

As January drapes her heavy mantle of ice and snow across northern Michigan, many residents clamp on their flapped hats and thermal gauntlets, and wrap on Caribbean fantasies of golden skies and silken beaches. Sarah Wigton Dominguez’s tropical dream looks a bit different, however. The 26-year-old, who recently earned double master’s degrees in social work and public health at the University of Michigan, pictures a lush island –— say, Hispaniola, home to the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic — that includes clean water, blooming mothers with healthy babies, and thriving communities empowered to make educated choices about their daily lives.

Sarah’s vision actually began years ago, as a youngster growing up in peaceful Burdickville. However, with her parents Tom and Joan Wigton working in nursing, she and her younger sister Theresa were hardly sheltered from the facts of life’s complexities.

“With both my parents being involved in healthcare, they’d come home and have dinnertime conversations (not with people’s personal details) about cases or other aspects of their work,” Sarah recalls. “I was also very involved with Glen Lake Community Reformed Church: Praise Band, worship teams, vacation bible school with younger kids. At school, I did Project Hero and Big Pals. I always liked mentoring and a lot of service-related stuff.

“But it was the summer between sophomore and junior year of high school when I went on a mission trip to Panama for a month that really opened my eyes. Teen Mania Ministries takes groups of kids — I think there were about 108 of us! — in different teams of about 30. We did drama ministry on the streets in town squares, or open space in apartment complexes. [The drama] was about a man journeying through life, with all these things like greed, drinking — he felt so lost … In the end the message was Jesus’ sacrifice to save him. It was a way to connect with people, share our personal stories with others. I had studied Spanish at school, could barely speak the basics, but once I got to Panama, I really liked it.”

She continues, “We went to a Kuna Indian village for a week; we had to get there in a dugout canoe. In was kind of crazy in the jungle; so many people were in need, and FARC guerillas would attack villagers from across the Colombian border. I saw indigenous people coming into cities, how they were changing — markets, language, dress. As far as health goes, they don’t have the same access — language, financial, information — so many barriers.

“It was the first time I had seen a lot of poverty: real, physical poverty, and it really, really struck me. I started realizing more of what was going on beyond my own community. When I came back to the U.S., I got reverse culture shock, thinking, ‘There are a lot of things wrong with my culture, my life.’ That can be a really big struggle; it was hard to handle. Eventually I worked through it to be more productive, not just overwhelmed,” Sarah says quietly.

“I realized I wanted to dedicate my life to serving the Latino people, whether in the U.S. or abroad. My [career choice] evolved over time; I didn’t know how, but felt that was what I was called to do.”

The 2003 Glen Lake High School graduate chose Hope College in Holland, Mich., because of its strong programs in both social work and Spanish, smaller size, and focus on the Christian faith (not merely lockstep religion) that includes people from all walks of life. The school also has a semester-abroad program, which introduced Sarah to another Latin America country: the Dominican Republic.

“I wanted to immerse myself in a Spanish-speaking culture; that started my relationship to the country.” While there, she also met a young man, Marxengels (pronounced Marx-angels) Dominguez, a Dominican student and fellow musician, the son of teachers from the rural northwest province of Valverde.

“Having a boyfriend there, now husband, I went back several times,” after the semester abroad, Sarah laughs. The provincial capital Mao (from a Taino Indian word meaning “land between rivers”) became her base, as she roomed with Marxengel’s aunt to be near him.

“It was very much a leap of faith,” she notes, one of many in her young life. “The town has a small-town feel, very agricultural, but people live close together. It gets very hot, and there are two seasons, rainy and dry.” The main crops are rice, plantains, and bananas.

“I didn’t know ahead of time what I was going to do; I had to take up work teaching English, and volunteered at a local music academy, teaching music [she plays flute, piano, and sings]. Pianos there are very few and far between, and once I found this one, a lot of other things fell into place.”

Sarah observes that as a developing nation — “It’s more respectful than calling it a third-world country, and reflects how most people are trying to do their best,” she gently instructs — the Dominican Republic faces many challenges. Like its neighbor Haiti, it has a long history of colonization by the Spanish and the French (and in the 19th century, by Haiti itself, a fact that still rankles) before independence, a more stable yet repressive government by a series of leaders since the 1930s, and even a 1960s U.S. invasion.

“They share the same island but they’re so different in terms of language, political stability, culture and color. There’s a lot of what you’d consider racism of Dominicans toward Haitians; it’s historically rooted. … I see a really big resemblance between Haitian immigrants into the Dominican Republic, and Mexican immigrants into the United States. One country is much better off than the other, and the kind of work the migrants have is usually physical labor, like construction, cleaning, farming. Migrants keep their own language — they don’t plan on staying, their goal is to become self-sufficient enough to return home. I see this in a lot of places; it’s a human norm to try to improve your life.”

The country, which felt little physical effect from the massive earthquake one year ago that brought Haiti to its collective knees, nevertheless has been affected by the scope of the tragedy. While they provided generous humanitarian aid, they also mobilized the military at the border to stop refugees, and are now actively deporting displaced Haitians who lack paperwork on buses and streets, according to Terra.com. In addition, public health workers have begun to medically screen legal Haitians returning after the holidays to minimize the spread of cholera, among other preventative measures, like mobile sanitation units.

Even in the relatively better-off Republic, Sarah says, “Resources are limited, problems need to be addressed. The people in charge are put there as political favors, they’re not generally knowledgeable in the jobs. For instance, the bigger rivers have dams, and the people in charge don’t understand hydrology, geology.”

One result that Sarah witnessed was flooding in Valverde where people were not only washed out by the water, but suffered water-borne diseases. Other chronic problems there that she has worked on include HIV treatment and education, and other reproductive health issues, like “my favorite topic, maternal and child health!”

As in the States, public health is piecemeal and limited. “If you have money, you can buy your way into better services. If you can’t pay upfront, you can’t get treatments like cancer chemotherapy or radiation.” And public health training, until just a couple of years ago, was literally nonexistent for most of the people who work in health and human services.

Sarah says, “Social work is not yet really a profession down there. They had cut all their educational programs in 1986, except for epidemiology for doctors. This new program, at the University of the Americas, is using Canada’s model for social work, starting with child welfare. And the way Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti [read his memoir Mountains Beyond Mountains] partners with community members to become health workers in a really good way to go.”

Her own extensive education includes a stint as an interpreter at the migrant community health clinic (see August 2010 Sun story on Gladys Munoz) in Traverse City, diabetes management in Detroit, and an internship in Monroe County’s health department, which has recently hired her to work with clients on reproductive health issues, as well as the area’s large Hispanic migrant and settled-out communities.

“Long-term, my dream is to serve the Latino population through accessible, compassionate care. Someday I hope to return to the Dominican Republic and start up a clinic offering maternal-infant health care.”

For now, in Ann Arbor with a new husband, job and degrees, she says, “I really trust in God’s providence in directing me in what I should be doing. I feel pretty content that things are falling into place.

“The mission tool – you can use that right in your own backyard, one step at a time, one thing that you can do differently, realizing that as one person you can’t change everything, but there are certain things you can alleviate. We’ll never totally get rid of poverty, but I think education is so great because once your eyes are open, you can work, more people can come together to make change.”