Live the same

What is the Haitian Pit?

It's a neighborhood on the outskirts of Bavaro. There's only one road through it, heading towards the town of Higuey, lined with buildings of varying levels of poverty - some slums, some not so bad. The further you go, the poorer it gets.

At the entrance, the road suddenly drops steeply, as if you were going down a hill. The neighborhood is mostly populated by Haitians, hence the name. At first, it looks pretty decent - there are little shops selling fake sneakers and stuff. Then you see the repair shops - I used to get my scooter fixed there all the time. But then... I'd never been there - well, until the day I decided to take a walk there with four other photographers and an expensive camera. Hahaha.

Anyway, during the day, without a camera, on my old moped, I've been to the Pit many times, and it was generally fine - until that day...

It all started pretty well—we left our scooters at the parking lot of Central Medical Punta Cana (where I was hospitalized with malaria… or maybe not malaria, I still don’t know) and started walking.

There were five of us, all with cameras, of course. By the way, Dominicans love posing for photos, even though they never ask how to get them later! We kept walking down this one street, passing by a kid’s birthday party happening right by the road—it was super lively and fun.

On the way, I ran into some mechanics I already knew—the ones who had fixed my moped before. Then we crossed a “line” I had never gone past before.

To our left, there was a big fenced parking lot full of tourist buses. A lot of them belonged to the company I worked for, and I even spotted a driver I knew. He walked up to the fence and, looking surprised, asked, - What the hell are you guys doing here?

But by that time, three people from our group had already walked way ahead, so Alex and I hurried to catch up with them