Windsor's Joan Tinkess recalls turbulent times in Dominican Republic in new memoir
Joan Tinkess can still remember the night she landed in the Dominican Republic as a young nun in 1958.
It was September, it was hot and she and her colleagues were dressed in wool habits, as they rode in a car en route to the town of Yamasa, which is located about 40 kilometres from Santo Domingo.
"It was like a sauna in that car," she told CBC Radio's Afternoon Drive, in an interview on Wednesday.
"And when we got to Yamasa, you couldn't see a thing. There was no electricity in the town at that time and along the road, of course, none."
Along the way, they passed some people on foot, as well as an occasional person riding a donkey.
'A band struck up a merengue'
"We got there. The nun who was driving said: 'Well, here we are. You can get out here,' and I thought we must have been at the door of the convent, even though I couldn't see anything," said Tinkess.
"We stepped out and we were on the bridge outside of town and a band struck up a merengue right there…the whole town was there to welcome us. Who knows how long they had been standing there, waiting for us."
Tinkess, who lives in Windsor, Ont., today, spent the next 12 years in Yamasa teaching — first at the elementary level and later with older students, when she was asked by her congregation to start a high school.
"There was no high school and the kids had to go to the capital, or someplace else, or stop their education," said Tinkess.
'I felt an obligation'
Tinkess has written a new book about the 21 years she spent in the Dominican Republic, teaching, working with the poor and advocating for their human rights.
It's called No Turning Back.
The author told Afternoon Drive that the title refers to "the big decision" in her life to go back to the country, after a return to Canada following her teaching work.
"I felt an obligation, almost a commitment to stay with the Dominican people," said Tinkess, noting that the events of the Second Vatican Council had an impact on her thinking, too.
When Tinkess went back to the Dominican Republic, her later work took place in a town called Cutupu, which lies further north in the country than Yamasa. Her work there involved working with women and helping them with micro-loans. She stayed there until 1980.
'It seemed like a great adventure'
Before she went to the Dominican Republic the first time, Tinkess didn't know much about the country, other than the fact she she wanted to go.
"It seemed like a great adventure. The sisters who were there would come home with stories," said Tinkess. "It seemed exciting, it seemed as if it was meaningful."
Her early years there coincided with the dictatorial rule of Rafael Trujillo.
And Trujillo had actually built the convent where Tinkess and the other nuns were living in Yamasa.
"In that time, the first three years I was there, you just had to be careful. You couldn't speak, you could not say that man's name out loud," said Tinkess.
"He had his own political party. Every four years, he'd have an election and strangely enough, he won an overwhelming majority. Nobody ran against him."
It was a scary time for the people living there.
"We got used to it, we just knew enough not to talk out loud," she said. "For the people, it was very bad for the people."
Trujillo was killed in an ambush in 1961. But more turmoil followed in the years ahead, including the ousting of a different leader and a civil war.
Not just 'a place for destination weddings'
Decades after she first landed there, Tinkess goes back to the country as much as she can. It's a place where she still holds close relationships with many people she has met there.
"My students are grandparents and the women we worked with — oh my gosh, they're just the best, they were the best," she said.
A book launch for No Turning Backwill take place at Mackenzie Hall this Sunday. The event is free to attend and it will get underway at 2 p.m.
Tinkess is hoping people who read her book will learn that there is more to the Dominican Republic than recreational activities.
"I'd like them to realize that the Dominican Republic isn't only a place for destination weddings and for Punta Cana, which I've never been to," she said. "That it's a people that have really struggled for freedom."
