Days 27, 28, & 29

We have just returned from 3 days in Santo Domingo, the capital of the DR. it was great being in civilization again. We stayed at the Donya Elvira, a 17th century mansion remodeled into a funky hotel. Funky features included a large bathtub advertised as a swimming pool set into the former courtyard, a rooftop “jacuzzi” (that’s what the sign said) that was a funny color and featured cold water, and A WORKING WIRELESS NETWORK. I almost wanted to spend 3 days online, but settled for a couple long nights, fit in between walking around the Zona Colonial, the original city built by the brother and son of Christopher Columbus (Colon, in Spanish) from which to attempt to eradicate native cultures in the new world. We saw old churches, old forts, and old buildings. We didn’t see the Santo Domingo Hard Rock Café.

On the first day, after a night walking around, we planned on seeing the zoo. We got a taxi and took the ride out of the Zona to the zoo, which was closed since it was Monday. The Botanical garden was closed, also. And most of the public places in Santo Domingo. So we asked our taxi driver where he would recommend, as he took us over to a large, eastern-European style building that claimed to house Columbus’/ Colon’s bones. (this is in some dispute. two other countries – Spain and Italy – also claim to have his bones.) This building was immense, actually, a giant, cross-shaped, 10-story-high mass of concrete. The guidebook said that when they turned on the lights to create a lit cross in the sky it blacked out the local neighborhoods with the power shortage.

It, of course, was closed. But our taxi driver, Maximus, had recommended seeing the tres ojos – the 3 eyes – which was a “200 meters” walk from the tomb of Colon. After walking a half mile, we asked someone how far to tres ojos, and he said 500 meters. After another half mile we stopped at a comedor to get something to eat, which ended up being pre-packaged sliced cheese which seemed to have gone bad as the kids wouldn’t eat it and I tried one slice and threw the rest out. We asked the proprietor how far to tres ojos and he said 2 kilometers. We continued to walk, stopping after another mile to get ice cream from one of the many ice cream vendors who push carts around with freezers on front. We bought two fudgesicles- one for Lane, one for me – and a popsicle for Benjamin. Being a tropical climate, ice cream melts fast, and Benjamin gets in two or three licks before it melts all over his hand. This leaves me or Lane to grab and try to eat a melted and continually melting popsicle in two seconds. It also leaves Benjamin having a melted popsicle all over his person, as we usually have to wrench it from him.

We met a couple who spoke English, pushing a baby stroller, approaching us from the opposite direction. We asked them where tres ojos was – they said it was just ahead, around a corner, and it was wonderful. We pushed onward, and, after crossing a pretty large street, found the tres ojos, which turned out to be a large underground cave, with three openings of various sizes in the ground. We walked down a long, hand-built stone stairway to an underground river / lake, where we walked for awhile before taking a boat across a medium-sized lake. There were bats flying all around. After the boat ride, we came to a large cave, where we walked a couple hundred yards through until we came to a scene that looked like it was out of “The Land of the Lost” – a sunlit opening, with tree roots hanging down, framing a pond, surrounded by cliffs. If I ever direct a dinosaur movie, there will be a shot from this location.

Our taxi driver met us at tres ojos, that being pre-arranged, and brought us back to our hotel, where we went swimming, enjoyed the wireless connection, and waited for our friends Brad, Hope and Walker to visit from our small town in Maine. They arrived, having lost one bag on their flight, but in pretty good shape otherwise. We went to a restaurant, Meson D’Bari, that had been recommended by the desk guy at the hotel. It was great. It was hidden in one of the back neighborhoods, where we entered a small non-descript location, to be shown to an upstairs that opened into a series of beautiful rooms with a single color in each room (ours was lime green) with walls covered in paintings. I found one of my rare goat dishes, (note: the guidebooks always recommend the “typical” Dominican dish of goat or goat stew. In 4 visits here, I have found goat stew ONLY in hotels in large cities.) which was wonderful.

The next day, we took a guided tour of the Zona Colonial. We had had a specific guide recommended for us by friends in Las Galeras, but he wasn’t around. This was a bit tricky, as we ended up asking other guides about him and they would (of course) tell us he wasn’t available but THEY were. We ended up going with a guide who, as we learned through the trip, had decent English skills but a heavy accent, which became increasingly frustrating. He also, and I don’t know if this is typical of the guided tours in the Zona, took care to point out each and every location of Catholic interest – the spots where a couple Popes had made visits to the DR, the home of the Caribbean Bishop, the “bishop’s bookstore,” where they sold only Church writings. While we understood that the Zona Colonial was the location of much important religious artifacts, and the Dominican is a Catholic country, we were left wondering if a different guide can give you a different emphasis. This thought especially came across when we were shown the Pope’s flower garden, a 10’ x 10’ group of flowers, bushes and fountain.

After the tour finished we wandered about the Zona by ourselves, eating at a little unnamed hole in the wall – good meal – and walking back through a section where another guide, off the clock and without our bidding, told us they had filmed the Italian village scenes for The Godfather II. We then headed down a street where we saw a cigar store indian in front of, duh, a cigar store. We went in, and they had a guy in there making cigars by hand – cutting the leaves, putting in the tobacco, and rolling them. The proprietor of the store was very friendly, and told us about the process and the many brands of cigars they had. We were especially amused by the fact that the cigar wrappers were created using leaves from Western Massachusetts.

When we returned to our hotel, we took turns resting and recreating, while the kids all watched TV. Amy went to Diego Columbus’ (Colon) residence, which had been turned into a museum. Unlike museums we are used to, this one is not roped off –the combination of original and recreated furniture is available to get up close to and touch. When Amy returned, Brad and Hope, both furniture makers, went to look also. I went for a walk down the Malecon, the section of the city that is on the ocean, that some guidebooks proclaim as “the world’s biggest party,” as it stretches for 7 miles in a combination of oceanfront, restaurants and clubs. I only made it one mile before turning back, as that mile was constituted solely of casinos, in front of each which was someone trying to talk me into coming in at 3 in the afternoon.

That night we had dinner at La Briciola, a restaurant that had been highly recommended by friends in Las Galeras. It is beautiful – you enter and then go to a courtyard, with palms on the roof, and a great view of the evening sky. Being Americans with children, we were there a bit earlier than the busy time, and the service was very relaxed, in a good way.

The next day we took the bus back from Santo Domingo to Samana. It seemed very long, and our friends were asking about availability of airports in the region by the time they got here.

Day 26

Network updates for the day: verizon closed. We went to Casa Marina, where I received a full signal, but was unable to access the internet via my computer.

I think we hit a wall today – it was very hot, and after we finally dragged ourselves over to Casa Marina and back (seeing my new favorite fishermen come in, with their beat up wooden boat and blue tarp sail and a LOT of fish for their day’s catch) Benjamin and I both passed out, me on the bed and he on the couch downstairs.

I think I’m entering a Haitian obsession – I’m on my third book involving Haiti, and I want more. I was completely scared of Haiti when Amy mentioned possibly traveling there on this trip, but the reading and conversations I’ve had have me fascinated. So far the consistent reports seem to be:

-Haiti is incredibly poor
-Port-au-Prince might be dangerous, because of the incredible poverty
-the people are friendly

That last bit might be a part of stereotyping – “Gee, they might be poor and destitute, but they sure are friendly.” The fact is I won’t know anything until I go, and even that will be based on a small scale of personal interactions I’ll have.

Our neighbor, Maya, stopped by, she is a Swiss masseuse who, based on her tales, is very unhappy. She told us she’s 55, leaving a marriage in Switzerland (to a Haitian guy she met in the DR) and is trying to start a new career here. She had many negative stories, among them:

-she had Cindy’s job at the Los Serena hotel, which makes me think there’s something about the position that brings out the worst in all who hold the job.

-her separated husband who still lives in Switzerland is Haitian, and she’s visited Haiti a couple times. It is, I quote, “A horror.”

-she told us a story about her husband, when they got to Switzerland, not understanding why he couldn’t kill and eat any animal he saw. She couldn’t understand this. I guess she didn’t pay attention in Haiti.

-she complained longly and loudly about the immigrant problem in Switzerland, saying the country was filling with “Africans who just wanted to wear fancy sneakers and didn’t want to work.

I didn’t ask her if she voted for Bush.

Tomorrow we go by bus to Santo Domingo, the capital. We haven’t been there yet. I’m looking forward to it, and maybe I’ll even find a wireless network that works for me.

Book currently being read: “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat, a fictional account of people living on the Dominican / Haitian border during the massacres of Haitians by Trujillo in 1937.

Day 25

The connection hell is starting again – that one man was on the computer at verizon all morning, and I ended up taking a gua gua to Samana. It was a pickup truck, and I sat in the open back. I loved seeing everything on the route so open, but I probably got fried. When dropped off, I argued with the driver – he demanded 60 pesos, and I told him it was 50 yesterday. I feel stupid, trying to argue when I don’t know the langage, and I must sound like a moron, saying “non – cinquenta pesos” over and over.

I was able to see everything on my laptop at the computer store in Samana, but was unable to access my bank account, despite trying all possible ID / password combinations.

On the way back the gua gua was packed, but everyone shifted to make an open seat for me. I spoke with a young man from San Juan, DR, who had gotten up and headed out this morning at 6 AM to get to Casa Marina, the all-inclusive here, to interview about possibly getting a job for he and his band. He said he was the DJ, and he spoke 6 languages, which he told me he had learned on the internet. he was nice, but had an intensity about him, and he didn’t smile.

When I got back Amy and the kids were out. I did some sketches for Computerworld. They returned while I was finishing. They had gone to a tiny opening on the ocean nearby, and caught hermit crabs.

I went to the verizon store. Thomas was there. I got on the computer, sent out my sketches. Hung around hoping against hope that I would get an immediate response. No go. Thomas was trying to recruit people for the soccer game, including Alain at the verizon store. Alain told him he had heard from people that there had been a big fight at the soccer game and didn’t want to play. I went back home, and Amy left with Lane to go to the verizon store. It was getting near soccer time, and I asked Benjamin to get ready to go to the verizon store. He was staring intently at his yellow plastic bucket from the beach, and told me “ssshhhh – Dad – be quiet. You never caught hermit crabs before.”

At the soccer game, Cyril told me his network was down, and he didn’t know when it would be back up. I asked him if he needed parts, and he said yes, but you couldn’t order them in the DR, because if they were shipped here there was a large tax. I told him I would ask any friends who were visiting to bring any supplies with them.

At the soccer game, a couple of the Italian guys are very friendly to me - an older guy name Fumio (?) and a younger guy, Denali, who is very good. Many of the people at the soccer game smoke.

Days 23 & 24

A couple frustrating days – I had worked to get ahead on C’world ‘toons this week, getting sketches in early yesterday, but Boston had been hit by a snowstorm, and people were working from home, and feedback was delayed. To add to that, the west coast editor was doing the editorial, and he didn’t chime in until late in the day, with a different subject altogether. I worked on a finish this morning, with children entertaining themselves, and rushed over to the verizon store where, for the first time since I’ve been here, someone was on the one working computer ALL MORNING. It was frustrating – I had to get the cartoon out, and committed to waiting there until it was sent out, but this had never happened before, where someone stayed on for almost 2 hours. Lane, Benjamin and I hung out at the Plaza Lusitania the entire time, sitting around, running around, just walking in and out of the verizon place. We had a conversation with Cindy, an American ex-pat who we met at Villa Serena, where she works, and who has very few good things to say about this place, even though she has a Dominican husband and I would think she would be a bit more enthused about the country, its people, and the various communities she has experienced.

The man finally got off the computer, I got on quickly and got my cartoons shipped out, and we came back and ate lunch. I was trying to get everyone motivated for the beach, but no one was, and we hung around long enough for me to realize that the kids were nearing rottweiler mode and I needed to get them out. This is mainly because the school has two days off, for teachers’ meetings and a field trip, and there is open time for Lane and Ben.

We ended up going to Galeras, in a big open sandy spot that stays shallow for quite a ways out.

Amy returned tonight.

Book currently read – “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Tracy Kidder’s reporting of the life and works of Paul Farmer, a doctor who has made it his life’s work to deal with medical issues in poor populations. He was created a hospital in Central Haiti, and created tuberculosis treatment plans around the world. Notable pieces of the book – when he criticizes Mother Theresa for complimenting the Duvaliers in Haiti and, when he is questioned for spending 25,000 dollars to fly a dying boy out of Haiti to Boston hospitals and asked what the money could have been spent on, he asks why no one questions the first year doctor who makes $100,000 why he isn’t contributing part of his salary to help the poor.

Day 22

I had a good old-fashioned day where I couldn’t think of a decent editorial cartoon concept. Good to know some things don’t change.

Saw another motorcycle dragging rebar. Sounded great. I think I should also add make and engine size of bike to variables in symphony.

Ran into Thomas again. I was relieved to see him again, since the last time I saw him he had told me of the hanging dreams and I was beginning to worry about him and worry that maybe I had not ever really met him. This solved both those fears.

He told me a new internet café will be opening in town, run by Richard and his family. I hope it is a) well run and b) well connected. Thomas also told me that Alain (sp?) at the verizon store says he will be leaving the verizon store. That would be a shame, because Alain has been very flexible to me and my ever-changing computer needs here.

Picked up Lane and Benjamin from school, which involved showing up during their recesses to say hi, waiting while they returned to class, and riding the - mostly except for two of us adults - kids school bus home.

Tomorrow Amy takes her mom to Puerto Plata for the day, stopping at the amber museum, and then to the airport the day after.

Day 21

More snake movements – leaves twirling and skitting across a floor in the wind, a sheet drying on a line in the wind.

Today I took the kids to school. Benjamin was a bit clingy, but it sounded like he had a good day. Lane is, no other way to put it – brave. She proclaims nervousness, but does what has to be done. School is an experience like no other – run-down rooms, littered schoolyard with cement corners and exposed roots everywhere. Two white people – Lane and I - standing in yard, with a young black boy – Benjamin - clinging to them, drew everyone’s attention, and many kids walked by just to look up close.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach after leaving the school – both kids seemed to have some trepidations, and I couldn’t decide whether I was projecting my trepidations upon them or they were projecting theirs upon me. I think I was very aware of being in a strange place with no way to communicate. Maybe this is something I’ve been holding onto, but not allowing to surface, and seeing my children in that situation made it real. When I got back home everyone – Amy, Lane and Benjamin – said they had had a very good day, with a breakthrough. Benjamin had gotten his own snack. The kids, during their recess, have a variety of treats available to them – ice cream, hot dogs, candies and, something Benjamin and Lane are fascinated by, a fried dough. As Lane describes it, it’s not a fried dough as we connoisseurs of US minor league ballparks know it, with a heaping of confectioners’ sugar, but a less sweet, thinner and crunchier version, with ketchup instead of sugar on top. When the kids are at recess, they purchase these treats, and Benjamin and Lane have to get in the crowd and let their choices be known without knowing the language. To this point, Benjamin had always stayed out of the line, and either let Amy pick something for him or, last week, been close to tears as the person with the treat cart handed him a jello cup he hadn’t chosen but didn’t know how to say that he didn’t want.


There is kind of a frontier town feeling here - there is no real feel of order, and everyone seems to be solving their own problems their own way. When we moved in, there was a lot across the street being prepared for a new house - they had dug trenches, poured cement sills, and started building cement block walls. One day we came home to discover someone had taken a sledgehammer to the walls, knocking a good chunk of them down. It turns out there is an ongoing property dispute and, even though the homebuilder had gotten a favorable court ruling, the aggrieved party was taking the law into their own hands. What adds to the tale is that there has been an armed guard on the property the whole time but, as one of my neighbors told me, "he probably held the hammer." The last couple days there has been a noticeable (10-12 people) group of people outside our gate, across from the broken wall. There has been no construction since the wall was broken, but the armed guard is there every day. We can only guess that the people are keeping some sort of watch over the property – the group is Dominican, and we have been told the other owner / builder is French.


I played soccer tonight – the Dominican / Haitian players still haven’t rejoined the Europeans, but they watch from the side sometimes, and tonight Cyril started a game with them on a side field.

Day 20

Woke up. Went to Cyril’s. all fine, glad to be back on that swing again. Wrote some e-mails in morning, while it poured here. We went to Samana this afternoon. I checked on a network for my Mac group, got money from bank, and we went on a whale watch with Kim, the Canadian woman who basically created the whale watch industry in the DR, all from Samana. It was a good tour – she’s very informative, and we found a mother and calf, with an escort male, about an hour out. We hung out with them for over ½ hour, in which time we saw the calf ride on top of the mother and play, the mother and the male both show some flippers / flukes, and a very annoying plane continually buzz over as it circled to show whoever they had charged an outrageous price to charter a small plane to see whales.


Today Lane went back into the house for something, and came out screaming – she said she had stepped on a snake, which slithered away in the house. Being herptophobic, I wanted to set an example for my children while simultaneously wanting to flee screaming. I chose the middle ground, and tip-toed into the house, with Benjamin leading the way. We looked in a couple rooms, and under beds, but no sign of a snake, which I was saying (and hoping) must’ve been a long gecko, despite Lane’s statements of disagreement. We were about to give up, when I mentioned to Amy, who had joined in the search, to look in the unaccompanied bathroom downstairs, the door of which we keep shut to keep any mosquitoes from ganging up and attacking from there. When she opened the door, there was a creature we didn’t recognize in the corner of the room. I immediately noticed it had legs, but they were shorter than a gecko’s. Amy tried to pick it up with a bucket, but it started squiggling like a snake and headed under a baseboard. So this might have been a revelation for me – I’m not specifically afraid of snakes but, instead, of snakelike movements – any movement not involving legs. While I considered this possibility, I started recognizing how many snakelike movements are part of my daily routine – toothpaste snakes out of the tube, toilet paper snakes down the toilet when flushed, and liquids snake around their containers, for example. This leaves me with the option of either recognizing snakelike motions as being part of everyday life and physical being, or have a nervous breakdown. I’ll let you know which route I choose. Or else YOU can let ME know.

Day 19

We went to Rincon today. I rode the ATV, fun ride, spectacular scenery. We snorkeled. Richardo got us the boat – he’s very helpful.

Went to market. Stopped by deli, Ormell (?) gave gifts for the kids. She is very nice.

Selma came for dinner at our place. Amy thought she owed $50 for the ATV rental ($25 / day) and it was really $55 / day, or $110.

I’m exhausted. Been reading a lot of Haiti travel info.

Day 18

I got a lot of writing done today, which is one of my relaxation goals. I joined Amy and the kids at Selma’s hotel, Villa Serena, for swimming and lunch. Every angle of Serena is a postcard view – incredible. After lunch Amy took the kids to school, and I came home. I was so tired that I attempted to nap, but sounds are so amplified here that it sounds like the person walking in their house next door is actually downstairs. Today it sounded like someone was walking through our yard, and I ignored it and went to sleep. But it sounded like they were closer, and I heard steps right outside the window. I looked from our second floor bedroom, and saw someone at our outdoor sink, in the cabinet underneath. I thought it may be a gardener-related person, but they kept looking around as if they were afraid of getting caught. I snuck down the stairs, opened the side kitchen door, and made no pretenses of nice Spanish – “What’s up?!” he looked up, with a bag of charcoal briquettes in one hand and the remaining bag of charcoal we had bought in the other. He said something in Spanish, but in my panic I heard none of it, and just replied “No comprende.” I did motion by pointing down and saying “charcoal aqui.” He didn’t act upset, but tried to say a couple more things, and I kept saying “Aqui. Aqui.” I also told him, in very disjointed chunks of vocabulary, that Amy would be home later and she could talk to him. He said “gracias” a couple times and walked away, leaving through the backyard, where he grabbed a wheelbarrow that he had left next door. I didn’t know what to make of it since, with the language gulf, I didn’t know if he was there for a legitimate reason or otherwise.

I was a little worried after he left. Would he be back? Was our house being watched? I wanted to run an errand, but I worried that as soon as I left someone was watching and would come back in.

After ½ hour of watching out the door and windows, I finally decided to leave, thinking that if someone did see me, they wouldn’t know how soon I’d be back, and then they’d be the worried ones.

I went to Cyril’s where he re-set his network for my computer. It worked fine, and we even chatted for, oh, 3 minutes.

That night, at the soccer game, only the white / blanco guys showed up, about 8 guys in all. I played terribly, but Jean taught me how to say “nice try “ – “bueno intendo,” a very good phrase for me to know. (see my foreign phrases of acquiescence.) During the game some of the Dominican / Haitian guys came by and watched, and I noticed / remembered that one of them was the same guy I chased out of the backyard with our charcoal today. I told Mel what was up – “I think that guy was trying to rip me off today” – in case I needed someone to translate for me. After the game, again in which I played terribly – I don’t know the rules, and keep making infractions intentionally – and was exhausted, I approached that guy, whose name I was told is Felix, and tried to make the connection in my disjointed Spanish – remember mi casa? Carbone? Today? At first he acted like he didn’t know me, but after the carbone reference he had a look like recognition on his face. I then attempted to ask him to come by again and I would give him some charcoal – I figured if he needed it that bad I’d be glad to give it to him, saving him from a criminal act (or as Paul, our ex-Boston cop neighbor would refer to it, “a crime of opportunity.”) and possibly earning some neighborly chits – he wouldn’t try to rip off someone he knew, and might actually tell anyone else to avoid us.

Day 17

I didn’t write yesterday, so I’ve lost track of which day this really is, so I’ll just go from the past day. Yesterday I took the opportunity to go to Samana by myself, to try to dig a little deeper into my wireless problems. I went to a pharmacy that advertises a wi-fi network. I went there, connected to the network, and tried to access the internet - full fan, no go. I copied down some settings and sent them into the Mac discussion group that I participate in back home.

In Samana, I saw a couple on a motorcycle - a man driving and a woman in back, dragging two pieces of rebar behind the motorcycle. It made a high-pitched note, which changed when they took a corner. It made me think of creating a rebar on motorcycle symphony, to be played by 30 motorcycles driving through some town. Notations for playing will include what speed the vehicles travel at, what turns are made, and what length rebar is used.

On the way home the gua-gua driver stopped at one point and asked everyone for their payment up front. He was at a store, and I think he must have owed someone money there, so he gathered up his payments and gave them to someone in the store. An interesting side note was that he asked everyone for 60 pesos. When we first started riding the gua-gua’s, we were told that it was 60 pesos to Samana. Friends here have told us that the fee is actually lower, and that we are getting gringo prices, so we started paying 50 pesos, and no one has argued. Yesterday’s interaction was interesting because he asked EVERYONE – native and non – for 60 pesos. Amy had a similar experience – she takes the gua-gua back from the school, and the fee is usually – no, always – 10 pesos. Yesterday she gave the guy 10 pesos, and he said no, 20. She said no, it has always been 10. He said no, 20. So Amy decided to ride all the way into town, to the shack that is the starting and ending point for the gua-gua’s. There, she asked the comptroller, or what passes for the gua-gua comptroller - a guy in a plastic chair who tells you the gua-gua is leaving, which is ironic because while the gua-gua goes through town it trolls for passengers at such a slow speed that I think I could give it a half mile head start and catch up with it before it hits the hills a couple miles outside of town and shifts to second gear and beyond – what the fee is. He said 10 pesos. The driver grumpily gave Amy her money back, so now Amy doesn’t know if there is an enemy lurking somewhere out there.

I ran into Cyril. A correction here – Cyril is a French web designer, not an Italian web designer as I’ve mentioned earlier. Please go back and make all necessary mental corrections- Cyril is French, not Italian. I guess I assumed he was Italian because he was so friendly from the start.

Amy had run into Cyril, even though she didn’t know him. The kids recognized him, and told her who it was. So she introduced herself, and told him about my disconnection from his network. When he ran onto me, while I was talking to Mel the Brit and he was telling me about the incredibly cheap and good dentist in Samana, he told me my wife had told him about my disconnection to his network, and to stop by sometime and he would re-connect me.

As usual, my insecurities were incorrect. With the language fences here, I rely on unspoken language so much more, and my history of unspoken language leaves me fearful of unspoken language. I assume anybody’s gestures are threatening.


Because of this, the first terms I learn in any language are terms and phrases of acquiescence – “I’m sorry,” “Pardon me,” “excuse me,” etc. When combined with the tendency to use and re-use the handful of phrases I know in any foreign language, I end up walking around saying “I’m sorry” in every situation. Locals must think I’m a very guilty person. Or else Catholic.

I ended up getting a full week’s work done this week which, considering the hurdles of production that now exist, is an accomplishment. Since this was Thursday, I feel a wonderful sense of relaxation, which is one of my goals. This allows me to a) think about my relaxing goals – snorkeling, walking, traveling, reading, all with family – and b) work on some of my non-paying drawing goals – some travelogues, some gag stuff, some personal pieces.

TODAY’S BIG THOUGHT: Sammy Sosa is completely justified to cheat in any way he sees fit, in order to get out of the poverty that he grew up in here in the DR. Yes, maybe he’s sullied the image of baseball, but he’s gotten out of the slums here, made money, and brought most of that money back to this country. His cheating has helped many people here, so how is it bad?

CURRENT READING: “Vintage Baker,” a collection of selections from Nicholson Baker’s novels and essays.

Day 15

I am writing this on the next day, day 16. Today has started out poorly. I went to Cyril’s to connect to his network for 5 minutes to send some sketches out. When I put my arrow on the LINKSYS name and entered my password, and got a “you are not entered on this network” notification. I know that I have to be entered via Cyril, which he did when I first got the password from him. I’m not sure what has changed, but I’m panicking. I think that something has happened – I’ve been using the network too much, I pissed Cyril off in the soccer game Monday night, I have been fingered as unworthy of his generosity by some unknown Las Galeras entity – that has me kicked off the network. The truth is probably that his network had to be re-set, or something like that, and I have to go back and have my computer entered into his network again. In the meantime, I have to go to backups, which involve CDs and the verizon store, and doesn’t leave a lot of room for power outages, crowded computers at the verizon store, or general breakdowns in the system. Ugh.

Day 15, though, was full. I went with our friend Arturo and his friend who has a motocoacho to Santiago to pick up Selma, Amy’s mom. I was a little tentative – Arturo speaks little English, me little Spanish – but it was the best fit for all, as Amy was better suited to be here with the kids - they had their first day in the local Dominican school.

A note on Arturo – we met Arturo at the Club Bonita on our visit to Las Galeras last year. He worked in the restaurant with his wife, Anna Maria. We talked with him a lot – actually Amy talked with him, as he speaks little English – and we liked him. He was very friendly to the kids and very helpful for us around Las Galeras. After last year’s visit, Amy and I fantasized about starting Arturo up in business here, as we had talked with him about our desire for a local restaurant that serves Dominican meals and he spoke about his desire to own his own local restaurant. His wife, Anna Maria, is an excellent cook, and we thought the two of them would do well. They also impressed us as having every tool except startup cash. We wrote them from Maine a couple times, and when we got down here we looked them up. Since we were last here the Club Bonita closed, putting the majority of the staff out of work. We see many of them in various locations this year – hanging out at certain restaurants, working at others – and Arturo and Anna Maria are both unemployed. We have spoken to them much since we’ve been here. Maria has cooked us a meal. Arturo has brought over bananas and plaintains and, today, coconuts from his yard. Arturo has told us he’s applying for jobs at a couple of the local hotels, and we wrote a letter of recommendation for him.

On the way out things were fine – I felt a little bad for Arturo, as he was putting in a lot of energy trying to talk with me, and we did an English / Spanish wrestling of conversation, where one of us would throw out a mix of Spanish / English, and then we would both try to figure out what was said, and then we would both try to figure out a response, and then we would try to express the response, and then we would sit back, me wondering if we both agreed with what we thought was said, Arturo thinking I know not what. Arturo’s friend never acknowledged me. He would say something to Arturo occasionally, which Arturo would pass on to me, (he said at one point that my Spanish was very good, so he was obviously an intelligent man) and, when we stopped to eat on the way out, he stood away from Arturo and me at the counter.

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time, waited for the flight to land and Selma to pass through baggage and customs, and headed out, both couples – Arturo and his friend, Selma and me - having conversations in our preferred languages. At one point, a little over halfway through, Arturo turned and asked me something which I couldn’t make out. We tried for a few minutes, and I thought he was asking if we minded if we stopped to visit friends of his in San Francisco de Marcoris, and stayed for an hour. He kept asking “no problemo?” and I was saying “si, problemo,” thinking he wanted to stop for awhile. After some more verbal wrestling, it dawned on me that he was asking if we minded if they picked up friends of theirs to ride back to Samana with us. Once I realized this I did not mind at all, and told Arturo so. We soon slowed down to pick up two young girls at a bus stop. After that we stopped at a comedor, where we got some food, and Arturo, his friend and the girls got beers. When we got back in the car, Arturo switched seats so that he was sitting with one of the girls and the other girl was in the passenger’s seat, next to his friend the driver.

This last move was a bit disturbing to me. Arturo has become a friend down here, and to know his story and have so much respect for him and to see him start acting so immature and unprofessional was hard. I found myself rooting for him to do the mature thing. Just goof around with your friends, Arturo, don’t flirt with that girl, don‘t lean on her shoulder, don’t put your head in her lap ---- nuts. I find myself thinking maybe it’s a Dominican thing, this action that wouldn’t be too cool in my world. Maybe I can blame it on culture.

I’ve met this young man named Thomas. He’s very easy to spot – a thin white guy with dreadlocks. He gives off the air of cool traveler. I had seen him about town our first week here, and then the first night I was playing soccer I saw him on the other team. We were in the same part of the field, and he was one of the few people I spoke the same language as, so we were able to quip during the game. I’ve run into him a couple times since, and he’s fun to chat with. The other day I went into the verizon place late in the afternoon, and he was on the computer and chatting with Aron and Richard. We all talked awhile – Thomas speaks pretty decent Spanish – and did our computer things. After, we met on the steps outside, and I had my first substantial talk with Thomas. He’s from Scotland, moved here in response to a job offer he got over the internet, got fired, and now finds himself hanging around Las Galeras. He told me he is renting a room in a whorehouse on the outside of town for 100 pesos a night. Recently he’s started to have dreams about his friends and family hanging themselves. These dreams were spread out over several nights. He mentioned it to one of the people in the house, and they told him one of the girls that worked there had hung herself about a month ago in that same room.

Day 14

It is Super Bowl Sunday, and based on my experience here, I think the announcement that 100 million people around the world are watching is hyperbole. I asked a couple locals here, and they didn’t even know what I was talking about. I have no idea what happened, so I guess life can go on even if you don’t know which ad Pepsi spent a billion dollars on.

I was wiped out today – we all had a terrible night’s sleep. There was a lot of noise, the kids are starting to get swarmed by mosquitoes in bed, and we all got less than 5 hours sleep. This translated into Benjamin falling asleep on the couch this morning, Lane falling asleep at the table this afternoon, and Amy going to bed before me. Oh yeah, I slept much of the afternoon, between drawing and reading White Fang again.

Anna Maria came over and made coco pollo. It was very good, and the whole family got to pepper her with questions, which Amy had to translate both ways since Anna Maria doesn’t speak English.

CURRENT READING: “Call of the Wild,” and “White Fang,” a collection with a biography of Jack London.

I’ve been reading Jack London these past days – I read “Call of the Wild” to Lane and Benjamin and, remembering how I worshiped those books as a boy, I dove right into “White Fang.” So maybe I’m just in that frame of mind, that constant evaluation of everything being seen as life vs. death, but today seemed to be a Jack London day.

Earlier was okay – we went to the all-inclusive, looked for Caesar the IT guy, were told he’s on vacation, and went to the pool for awhile instead. I came home early, inked a cartoon, and prepared for the rest of the week.

I left for the 1 mile walk to the soccer game, Monday night edition. I had had such a wonderful time on Friday that I was really looking forward to tonight. On the way I saw a dog run across the road ahead. Then I heard a thump, as a second dog who was chasing it was directly hit by an SUV. I’d say a speeding SUV, but everyone drives so fast here – motorcycles, cars, buses, trucks – that speeding is just a relative term. Fortunately, the dog was dead instantly. The SUV didn’t stop. A woman ran out, and looked at the dog, while a pool of blood grew around its head. She didn’t seem upset, just checking on the dog. I asked a guy working on a house across the road if “perro morte?” he said si. Cars kept on flying by, barely avoiding this dog body and woman standing over it in the middle of the road.

When I got to the soccer game, I was early. People started trickling in, and before I knew it a game was started. They mark the field by goals – two sticks placed apart – and the distance between each set of goals is decided by the number of people playing. As more people showed up, the goals got farther and farther apart, and at one point we actually made the field wider. I started out well, actually making a goal on the smallest field of the evening, but quickly morphed into a basket of mistakes. I whiffed on a couple balls, I ran into a couple people, I even made a sliding tackle after being beaten by someone, who angrily let me know that sliding tackles aren’t done in this game. Even though I know it wasn’t the case, I felt that my play cast an ugly tint to the game – that because I was playing badly and overcompensating with aggression, everyone else was following my lead, and the game became very physical. A couple collisions occurred and, after one between what I think was a Dominican player (he was Haitian) and an Italian player, they started exchanging words and shoving each other. All of a sudden the Haitian player punched the other guy, and pandemonium broke out. Another Haitian player flew in, punching and kicking, and the whole field came alive with people either facing off or trying to prevent others from facing off. As the original combatants were separated, somebody came flying through and got a punch in, starting everything off again. While peace was attempting to rear its ugly head, one of the Haitian players grabbed one of the stick goals, and smacked somebody across the back. This caused one of the older Italian players to go ballistic, and he tried to fight through several people to get to the stick-swinging guy. The scary part here is that the stick-swinging guy would have killed the old Italian guy if they ever got face-to-face, but the old Italian guy was beyond reasoning, running around trying to pick up and fling bottles and rocks from around the field. A couple people kept on trying to contain him, but he had this amazing ability, as things were calming down, to throw verbal gasoline on the fire as, despite several languages being used on the field, “mother” and “fungu” seem pretty universal. At points it looked like the fight might continue outside of the field, as a couple combatants got on their motorcycle and started heading out, looking like they were chasing each other, only to (smartly, I think) return to the field.

I asked one person I knew if this was a usual occurrence – he said no, it was the Italians’ fault. I am behind on my ethnic faults, and I thought HE was Italian, so I didn’t comment. Later I was talking with Jean, the man we rent from and one of the leaders of the game, and I asked him if this had ever occurred before. He said not this bad, and that the Italians had to win everything, and that made this so bad. To add to my ethnic faulting library, he said that the Haitian guy would have killed the Italian guy, as Haitians are so much tougher and have been through so much more. I just thought he would have killed him because he was 20-something with 0 % body fat and the other guy was in his 60’s.

After everyone had filed away – I had hung around the field for awhile – I started walking home. On the way I saw an older female dog sniffing around the road where the dog that had gotten killed, his body on the other side of the road. A couple cars sped by and beeped to get the female dog to move. She finally made it to the other side, where she was sniffing the body as I walked past.

Day 13

I didn’t pay attention to the day too well, so the blog notes are empty. The bougainvilleas were breathtaking, though. And we saw a sea snail in the shallows at the beach, which entertained us by squirting ink whenever we touched it.

Day 12

Went to playa Rincon, a beautiful local beach, have to take a boat, as we don’t have access to a car for the long ride there. Lane got fried from several hours of snorkeling. It was the first time Benjamin and Lane had seen real fish while snorkeling, and they were very excited and wanted to keep snorkeling. They also played in the waves with their life jackets on, and they had a blast. We had lunch at our favorite restaurant at Rincon, and once again had a good meal. Amy mentioned that she didn’t want to see any more breasts, as many of the French tourists go topless, and today several women were topless on the beach. Lane stares when she walks by a topless woman.

I played in the local soccer game, in a field outside of town. The locals get together on Monday and Friday nights to play soccer. It is an interesting mix of ex-pats and locals – there was French, Italian, Spanish and English being spoken. My soccer skills weren’t very good, but I enjoyed myself immensely.

I didn’t attempt to get online today, so I’m satisfied. I’ve taken the past couple days off, as I think it took a lot of energy to get through the first 10 days, and I thought it would be good for all to spend some time together as a family. It was very relaxing, but I’m getting itchy to do some work. Hopefully, I’ll get a good weekend in and hit the ground running Monday.


BIG QUESTION of the DAY: Is it required, in any writing that mentions tropical locations, to have a description of the bougainvilleas?

Day 11

Went to Samana – great internet café, run by a Swiss(?) guy who speaks a zillion languages. He had had a motorcycle accident, as his leg and arm were all bandaged up. Found a wi-fi network at the pharmacy next to the internet place - they have a sign hanging outside advertising a "free wi-fi" area – full fan, no access to web. Upset with waitress in lunch place, left. Tried to get cash at bank – teller thought Amy was asking for 12,000 dollars, not 1200, and card got refused. Got first C’world ‘toon through okay, from Cyril’s porch. Kid got hit by car in town – yet another in a daily series of accidents. Folks drive crazy here. Benjamin got mask and snorkel- happiest man on planet. Swam with kids for over an hour at Playa Galeras, making me the second happiest man on planet.

Day 10

I may have my first experience to base a dislike of the French upon. I was drawing at the table downstairs when Daniel, the man we are renting the house from, stopped by with Sonya and another couple. Daniel asked if he could show them the house – they were friends and this was the house he used to live in. after they had left, I was upstairs where I found a pile of cigarette ash in the middle of the floor where they were standing.

We have been on a roll with our dinners. Tonight Amy made Dominican chicken, a recipe she had found back in Maine. We don’t know if it is actually Dominican, but it’s pretty good. Lane and I went to the Mercado to buy the dinner ingredients. This is the Mercado I like, and the people working there, while not rushing to greet and serve me, at least don’t ignore me, which feels like 4-star treatment around here. To get chicken / pollo, you have to ask the man behind the deli counter – so noted because it has a lot of knives and a scale – to get the chicken. He goes over to a cooler, and picks out various body parts. I asked for a full chicken, and he brought it over. One of the first things they do is cut off the claws, which they put in the bag for you. I guess this is to prove the body parts in the bag are from a chicken? Then he started to bag the whole chicken, but I kept asking him, using a highly developed series involving two Spanish words – “no,” and “pollo” and a bunch of chopping gestures. While he cut up the chicken, with a scattered cloud of flies hovering around and his extended knife swings sending bit of flesh and blood flying around, Lane cowered behind me.

I went to the verizon store a little before 6- they close at 7 – and Aron(?), the young man who operates the store, was locking up. He said they were closing, and come back manana. He speaks to me as if I understand Spanish, even though I have made it very clear I don’t understand, so I think that’s what he said. Yesterday I was trying to ask him for a receipt, and the only way I could think to ask was to use the Spanish words for “paper” and “sale.” Aron thought I was asking if he sold paper there, and kept saying no, there was no paper for sale. At least that’s what I thought he was trying to say. I like Aron.

Next topic: I will try to explain why I feel so comfortable in undereducated, male-dominated cultures.

Day 9

The fences / cement walls have an interesting feature here – they use broken bottles, the jagged edges up, as added security. Yesterday Benjamin had a new rubber ball that we were playing soccer with. He kicked it over one of the walls, it glazed the top of the wall, and that sliced it right open. They even paint the glass the same as the wall, for that aesthetic effect.

I’m not sure what I think about the French. There is a sizeable French community here, and I notice something – a certain distance, a refusal to speak any language but French – but I don’t have any exact experiences to go on. I have all the cultural knowledge – the longstanding western animosity towards the French – but none of the specific experiences to base it upon. Perhaps now I can learn to properly hate the French.

Another step in the network trudge – the Italian, Cyril, gave me the password to his network signal, and told me I could come by any morning and use his network. I don’t know how often I’ll be there, but just having the opening is a good feeling. I sent some pieces through the verizon network – they seemed to go okay, with a couple shaky moments when they were denied – and everything seems to be okay. Ugh. It’s going to be a slough of various networks. I don’t know if any of us will have the pleasure of sitting on our home couch surfing the web, but it’s better than losing all of my work.

Benjamin is very free here – he’s talking about race and how he feels about having other brown people around – he likes it. While race isn‘t a huge topic in our family yet, I hope this experience is planting seeds for us to make it an easy subject to talk about in the future.

We had a drink with Daniel and Sonya, the man whose house we are renting and his girlfriend. He speaks French, Spanish and a little English. She speaks only Spanish. Amy speaks Spanish, French and English. I speak only English. Somehow it worked. Maybe it was the rum.

The initial rush of being here is over now, I think. We are into a routine, without wanting to rush out to another must see sight every day. I’m tired. I hope this is not the way it’s going to be the entire trip – I want the energy to be up again, not just making it through each day, counting the days until we leave.

Day 8

Things are starting to hit a plateau – no major intensity today. I went to the verizon store, I finished a book about people working for the UN in third world war situations, and I watched the weekly ex-pats / Dominican soccer game.

Lane is having some rough edges. I can’t tell if this is a reaction to the trip, or a reaction to being 10.

I have to write about the French sometime. They have such a worldwide reputation, and I’m starting to understand why. This community has a large French population, and they seem to make no effort to mingle with the non-French community. I don’t have a lot of experience to go on, but their behaviors are starting to fit in with all the Faulty Tower gags I’ve known.

We’ve been here one week. The internet connection saga has taken up a larger than fair chunk of time. I want to start taking advantage of the limited time we have in a tropical community. I’d like to snorkel at least once a week. I’d like to improve my Spanish. I’d like to get better food. I’d like to take walks at night.

The Super Bowl is this weekend in the U.S., and I haven’t heard a single peep on it. This IS paradise.

Paul the Boston policeman who lives here fulltime and sits in the corner restaurant each morning with a beer and a cigarette told me that the people we were considering buying land here from last spring don’t have the best reputation. As he put it, “If you shake their hand, you better count your fingers afterwards.”

Day 7

I am actually writing on day 8, as I wanted to back off from the need to record / write / and work mode for a day. This included the network search. I had read as much of the network information as I could find in my trusty laptop’s Mac help section. It helped me reset the network and proxie settings for the local resort’s wireless network. We went back yesterday to check it out and sneak into the resort pool one more time. I was able to get a full bar again, and when I attempted to get on my browser, it asked me for a user name and password. Ah, the little victories. Now I have to locate the resort IT guy again and tell him how we got to this point, and hopefully ask him for the remaining contact info, so I may sneak in at night and use their network. Professional, non?

We again got into the pool with no trouble, and then we decided to eat lunch at the resort restaurant. We asked the maitre’de if we could pay for a lunch, and he said okay. After we had sat down and ordered drinks, he came back and said it would be $15 a person, $60 for the 4 of us. This would include everything – an all-you-can-eat buffet, drinks, desserts, and tip. We (okay, Amy) negotiated him down to $45 for us, he said okay, and we proceeded to fill our plates with mediocre resort food. As we were in the buffet line, another person approached Amy and informed her that the resort offers day passes, which would allow us to have full use of all the facilities for $40 per person. It was not something we would be interested in, but we took it as a warning that we shouldn’t walk onto the resort grounds so much. I hope this doesn’t affect my ability to use their network when I finally figure out how to get on it.

I had a dream last night that I was in the middle of a very busy weekend, socially, when someone asked me when I started college, and it reminded me that I had enrolled at the University of Alaska and was due at registration the next day. I was trying to decide whether to drive or fly there, how to tell Amy and the kids about it, and whether – if I worked real hard – I could do all my classwork in 2 or 3 days and come back home each week.

At one of the local mercados, one we have frequented, I went to buy a new water bottle. I took the empty, which serves as my translation device, and walked to the store. In the past someone has usually seen my empty and taken it from there. Today someone looked at it, but went on with their conversation. I didn’t mind, but went through the store looking to see if there was anything else we could use. I found a roll of salami, went to the counter, and got in line. I showed the guy behind the counter my empty, and he said something to me, but my Spanish skills are poor, and I tried to make a primitive hand and single words communication, but he didn’t want to play. I got in line, as my habit at this store is just to get in line and deal with things when I’m at the register. When I got to the register, a woman walked right in and stepped in front of me and the cashier started dealing with her. This was a breaking point for me – I have had this happen several times, always in this particular Mercado. I left the full salami on the counter, picked up my empty water bottle, and went to the Mercado next door. I got another roll of salami, someone asked if they could help me and we struggled through a primitive hand and single word communication, and I showed him my empty water bottle. He asked me “uno?,” I said “si,” they showed me the total on their calculator, I paid, and I walked back home, my full water bottle happily slung over my back.

My dream of two nights ago was visiting my old high school, being invited to go watch a basketball game, being told they had made some changes in the gym, and that this involved getting on a boat to cross the lake they had installed in the gym.

Day 6

Day 6 – I don’t have enough energy to give a blow-by-blow account of the day’s internet search, but here’s the basics :

- I used the verizon store for an hour and ½ - I was able to check up on the past week’s e-mails. Nothing mind-blowing, and I was able to send out cries of help and explanations of my incommunication, but the keyboards were set up for Spanish punctuations, and you had to guess where the @ and the ‘ symbols were.

- we went into Samana, -18 miles away – the nearest city, to look at an internet café. We took the gua-gua, which is the local public transportation system. It’s basically a pick-up truck or a van that tries (and succeeds) to pack in as many people as possible. Today I had an older woman holding a 5 month-old baby sitting on my lap. It’s the cheaper ride around and, while not speedy, very entertaining. Amy’s Spanish skills make for mucho networking on the gua-gua.

In Samana, we looked for an internet café. It turned out to be closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Again I encountered the strange experience of getting a wireless ntwork on the laptop, but being unable to get on the internet. Then we looked for a cellphone store, so Amy could get cheaper international service. The phone store was closing 3 hours early, because (we were told) the power was going out.

When we returned, I stopped by Cyril’s to ask if I could use his network. He was a little more businesslike – he said okay, but I could only use his network early in the morning, and we would discuss a fee.

After that I stopped back at the verizon space, and checked for answers to my missives from earlier in the day. A couple arrived, including one from a client who informed me that there wasn’t an issue of the magazine this week, giving me another couple days breathing room.

We tried to sneak into / investigate a local hotel (Villa Serena – maybe the most beautiful hotel we’ve seen here) tonight to use the pool and have dessert in their restaurant. We headed to the pool first – the kids were splashing away when we were approached by a hotel employee who informed us that the pool was for guests only. When Amy went to the reception desk to ask about us using the pool / restaurant, they informed her that we would be very welcome to do so if the hotel weren’t full, and to stop by in the middle of the week sometime. We taught the kids (okay, and me) how to say “sorry” and “thank you” on the way out, and we made a dignified exit. We then went to a restaurant in town – Chez Denise – which was almost filled with French adults. We got very fast service with our ice cream and crepes – I think maybe because the French adults wanted to get the kids out of there ASAP.

Today may have been the first day I’ve taken in more calories than I’ve burned since we’ve been here.

Holy hola – look at all the non-techie adventures we’ve had!

If nothing else in this 5 months, I hope we can find one good restaurant.