Day 48

Universal characters at schools world wide: the phys ed teacher, the cafeteria ladies, the kindergarten teacher. Watching the Haitian soap opera. I dropped off and picked up Benjamin from school today. When returning to pick him up, I got to watch the anarchy that passes for recess – kids of all ages running madly over, around and through the schoolyard strewn with trash including, most distressing to me, broken bottles. While watching the madness, I noticed that I was able to pick out several personalities – the phys ed teacher who, even if he wasn’t wearing a shirt saying “educacion fisicul” (or something like that), would have been recognizable by his attire which, besides being completely non-uniform - compared with the rest of the teachers – included the previously mentioned t-shirt, sneakers, a baseball hat, and a gait that you aren’t allowed to use – more of a strut – unless you get a degree in physical education. Even though this school doesn’t have a cafeteria, you can spot the cafeteria ladies, who in this case sell fried dough, hot dogs on sticks, and a variety of candy - that would make the Cumberland Farms back in our ‘hood jealous - off of a couple broken wooden tables

I’ve been getting bolder and bolder in my Spanish vocabulary excursions. This has resulted in two responses – a) the person on the other side assumes that I speak Spanish, and responds at full speed, leaving me to weakly say “I only understand a little” (yo comprende un poco). b) they look at me with a look of incredulity that says, in any language, “WTF?”

Big thought for the day: what ten words (and their combinations) are the most important words to know at the beginning of any language?

Day 47

I went into Samana today. I spent a couple hours at the internet café which allows me to plug the laptop in, where I caught up on mail, my website, and software downloads. After that I went looking for sneakers, spending an hour and a half looking through bins of Air Jordans, older Air Jordans, and Air Jordan knock-offs. I couldn’t find any my size or cheap enough to warrant buying, so I wandered back to the gua-gua stand, finding the bakery which folks here have discovered makes a great banana bread and the grocery store which has CHIPS – good ol’ basic tortilla chips – and wraps.

When I returned I helped Richard at his new internet location. I helped him drill a couple holes, and cut a couple wires. I wonder what his business plan is – he has 8 new computers, but he’s building a piecemeal system of desks, and it’s a small space. Will he get business? Will he get business after the tourist season? He told me I can plug my computer into his network which, if it works, will be a godsend, but it will probably be up and working the day before we leave. I want to try and help Richard, by either recruiting people to use his system or starting a “club-“ a group of people who will pay a monthly fee to use his lines for a limited time. For example, I will pay him something up front if he will allow me to use his lines before or after hours. Should I be involved? Or should I sit, like most here, and wait to see if somebody else figures it out, and take advantage of it after they do? Especially since we’ll only be here for 3 more months.

I’ve been thinking about corruption. Being in my Haiti mindset, and hearing stories about the Dominican legal and real estate system, I’m becoming more aware of the corruptions all around us here. At the same time, the town council in our small Maine town has just, by a 3-2 margin and despite an enormous popular opposition, voted to give a contract extension to a town manager who, at best, can be described as ineffective and, at worst, as incompetent. These 3 councilors have acted alone on almost every issue they’ve faced in the past two years, ignoring increasing public comment on these issues. Since they did this through an established “system,” does it make it any more legitimate than the Frenchman here who has paid the local electric company to shut off his meter and allowed him to siphon energy from his neighbors who, despite going to the local authorities, have had no recourse? It seems very easy to write off third world situations – hey, it’s their fault because they are poor – but when a corrupt situation happens in the “developed” world, it is due to the ingenuity of the victor.

Day 46

I was on my way to the soccer game when the guys on the motorcycles all gestured to me, pointing towards the Plaza Lusitania. I saw Richard there, waving to me. I went over, meeting him outside his soon-to-open internet and phone shop. He had installed 6 computers on a wall, a main computer for himself or whoever worked the main desk, and several fans and, I guess, a telephone or two. This weekend he was installing a satellite dish, which I was banking on as a possible wireless system to link the laptop to. Richard brought me inside and, in our wonderful language of half-Spanish and half-English - him trying his English out on me and I my Spanish on him – he told me that they had gotten the satellite dish erected this weekend when the owner of the building told him they couldn’t put it on the building. He claimed she wanted $1000US a month to put the dish anywhere on the building. My first thought was to ask Richard why this problem hadn’t been dealt with long before they put all the equipment in the shop, but my half-language skills weren’t that good, and I didn’t want to burst his enthusiasm. He told me that they would have to move the whole shop, and they were moving it to an empty space on our street, next to the French deli we like. I spoke with Mel about it afterwards at Gri-Gri’s, and we were on the same page – we hope he has a wireless signal, and we can sit in Gri-Gri’s (or me at home) and use it. We can only hope.

Soccer was low key tonight – the usual Italians, Me and Mel, and a bunch of local kids. It is frustrating on many levels – I am improving a bit, but still feel like I get in the way of the Europeans; the kids just plain get in the way and, most importantly, Cyril and the Haitians don’t show any more. After the game Mel told me that Cyril had started a Wednesday night game with the Haitians. Jean / Juan had told me earlier in the day that Cyril was very upset with the Italians, so this made sense. I am torn – I am just happy to play with anyone at this point, but I agree with Cyril – even though I don’t understand the language I can tell that the Italians have been treating the Haitians poorly. However, I’ve gotten into the rhythm of the Monday – Friday games, and I don’t want to play on Wednesday also. Plus Cyril will be leaving soon for a month. I think I’ll go looking for a basketball game.

Day 44&45

The first weekend we’ve had to ourselves in a while. We hung out, Lane played with a French girl she met who lives down the street, we swam at the beach at Las Galeras and Casa Marina, which had some fairly decent snorkeling offshore. We ate at the comedore outside of town, where the owner said his headache was too bad to make empinadas that day, so we had some fried yucca and chicken, and I went back home to get him some aspirin.

We have big-toe-sized cockroaches, who appear at regular intervals around the house. We have developed the skill of sweeping them out the open doors and then off of the outdoor living room / porch. They are a favorite meal for the geckos, and when we sweep them off, a gecko will run right up and swallow the cockroach, running away with the body sticking out of his mouth. We have large spiders, also. When we sweep them off, they run right back onto the porch – I haven’t seen them get eaten by geckos, so I don’t know if that is out of fear or just wanting to be back on familiar ground.

BOOK CURRENTLY READ: “The Comedians,” by Graham Greene. While fictitious, another oppressive book on Haiti. Reportedly you were retained if found with this book on your person in Haiti when Papa Doc Duvalier was in power.

Day 43

I was at the Verizon internet center when Hadjii came in. He runs the tours place right next to the Verizon center, and he always asks nicely if I need any of his tours. He speaks English pretty well, and claims he is Pakistani. We ended up switching computers - he needed mine because it had speakers, and I needed his because I could put my CD in and send files from it. He needed speakers because he went right to YouTube, where he searched and found a famous Bollywood movie from 1965. He sat back, with the songs blared, and said “Can you imagine? Indian movies here in Las Galeras.” I understood.

The pharmacy is our source for forbidden treats – they have candy bars and ice creams at a higher price. We stop in in the evenings for ice cream, and I sneak in every now and then for a peanut and peanut butter granola bar. There is a 20-something man working there in the afternoons who plays western music, and much more modern than anything else we hear around here. Last week he had some techno playing, and today he was playing some Mexican rock group that had obviously listened to some American and Brit bands.

BOOK CURRENTLY READING: No book, but I am watching the second DVD of “The Departed,” which features a short piece on the Southie crime history, a feature called “Scorcese on Scorcese,” where Martin Scorcese talks about all his films, and a piece showing crime and crime movie influences on Scorcese.

Day 42

Amy, Kurt and Bobbie went to Samana, I took the kids to school. We ran out of money for the first time. Kurt attempted to figure out the Casa Marina network, to no avail, although it was fascinating to watch Kurt analyze all the available network connections, as he is a Berkeley grad, well-versed in unix, and worked on the original military internet in the early 1980’s. He was able to open all the available networks, communicate with them, and almost figure out what was set up. I say almost because when we got down to the base network at Casa Marina, it wasn’t telling us what it was doing.


Arturo is working at Casa Marina.


On the way back to the comedore, where we told them we’d return, we ran into Raphael, a man we had met on the gua-gua one day who helped Amy find her missing cell phone. Raphael is convinced we are looking for a Spanish teacher, and every time I see him he tells me how he will get a teacher for the children and me, even though I’ve never told him we are looking for such a person. Me being the nice person I hide inside, I’ve not taken the opportunity to tell him no, I’m not looking. I guess I forget the persistence of someone down here who smells the possibility of making a buck. So tonight, on our way to the comedor, we run into Raphael, who tells us (me) to meet him at his house, where he will have the Spanish teacher I have been looking for. Realizing I have failed to nip this in the bud, I go, trying to figure out how to tell him ‘no’ diplomatically. As I enter his office, I meet another two gentlemen, one who speaks good English, the other who doesn’t. The one who does introduces himself as Jonathan, and says the other man is a builder who works around here. I think nothing of this until he says “so I hear you’re looking for land here. I have much land, and he (the non-speaker) will be able to build something for you. As I begin to regain my senses, I say “I’m sorry, but we never said we were looking for land or a house.” I said this at least 10 times, as Lane and Amy both told me to stop saying I’m sorry. Raphael returned with the Spanish teacher, who turns out to be Arturo’s brother, who we’ve met before. He is very nice, although he speaks poor English, and I’m relieved – this is a person we know, who won’t be pressuring us into yet another business situation. We explain that we aren’t looking for a Spanish teacher for the kids, and that I might be interested in Spanish lessons AND looking at property, but not tonight, so I leave it that I will stop by some other time.

I realized today that there is an interesting paradox here – you have to wait for things to happen – what we call ‘Dominican Time’ – yet take advantage of any opportunity as it occurs, for worry that it won’t occur again. Maybe that’s not such a paradox.

We went to the comedor – it’s a nice place, and several ex-pat friends have told us it’s the best local food in town. It isn’t the most seats in town, though. There wasn’t enough room for the 6 of us, so we ended up getting the good, inexpensive food to go, taking it home. When we got home, Sonya was there to give Lane dancing lessons, which took place while the rest of us ate. After dinner, we all danced, then went out for ice cream at the pharmacy, which was playing Guns ‘n’ Roses, we think. On the way home, Gris-Gris was playing some Lou Rawls.

Sonya is Daniel’s, the man who owns this house, girlfriend. Daniel is a French musician of some note – he was in a French band called Johnny Hallyday, which he told me was a famous rock band. It seems he made some money in the biz, as he built the house we’re living in, plus the two bungalows next door, and is now building a large house down the street. He told us he has plans to build a commercial building on the site next to Juan y Lolo’s property, between our houses and the town center.

Sonya is Dominican, a former dancer in a band Daniel had here, called Daniel’s Brown Girls. She is from Santo Domingo, in the neighborhood they razed for the gigantic Tomb of Columbus (“Faron de Colon”). She has become a regular visitor, partly, I think, because Amy speaks Spanish and partly, I think, because she is lonely. Sonya is a little taller than Lane, slight, and with dark skin. She has told Amy that she has 3 children back in Santo Domingo of which the oldest, 15, is watching over the other two. She has told Amy that she needs money to help her children with medical problems but she is afraid that, if she goes back to Santo Domingo, Daniel will “find another girlfriend.”

THE ELECTRIC BILL – Last week we received our first electric bill. The electric bill is separate from our rent and we pay monthly, based on usage. Juan told us it was $150. We had two reactions – a) is this real? b) if so, how do we cut it down? Fortunately or not, Amy also mentioned this to Sonya, who told Daniel, who contacted Juan / Jean about it being so high. I felt bad that Juan / Jean might interpret this as us going around him – I only wanted to talk with him about the particulars and how it could be reduced. (Would this blow our cover of passing as rich Americans?) While Kurt was here, he and Amy checked our meter and tried to calculate how many kilowatt hours we had used. We spent an afternoon with one person posted at the meter while others shut off and turned on various appliances - lights, the refrigerator, etc. – to see what affected the meter’s movement. We decided that all of the meter’s influences were ours – there didn’t seem to be any other activity (we have heard all kinds of stories here about people siphoning off electricity from unsuspecting tourist-type neighbors) when everything was disconnected.

When I spoke with Juan / Jean, he told me that all 3 houses – our large one and the two neighboring bungalows – were on the same meter, and he based our bill on what he knew to be the bungalows’ usage – as they were occupied fulltime – subtracted from the entire bill. Based on our experiment I didn’t think there was any trickery involved, and Juan / Jean has been pretty straight with us to this point. When I asked him what appliances / items were using up the most electricity, he mentioned the hot water heater, which we use sparingly, the refrigerator, which is a concern, and the water pump, which was the bulls-eye. We have been washing dishes with the faucet running, and the pump was running while we ran the faucet. Since receiving the electric bill we have started washing dishes in a pot, and rinsing them quickly. We’ll see. We also have wanted to leave the lawn lights – ground lights out in the yard – off at night, but the night guard has disagreed with us, turning them back on after we turn them off. We asked him to leave them off, and he acquiesced, but Juan / Jean came by today and said someone had tripped on the front sidewalk because it wasn’t lit, and he would like to keep the light on.

He also came by the day after I spoke with him about the electrical bill. He brought the bills with him to show us how the totals changed, depending on which houses of the three were occupied. Again, no trickery seemed to be involved – he had to estimate from one bill covering all three properties. He said he would knock a little off of ours.

When he stopped by to tell me about leaving the lawn light on, he also mentioned that the night guard told him about us leaving the side kitchen door open while we were gone one night. The guard made it clear to us that that was a problem also. We think the guard is a little frustrated with us for disagreeing with having the lawn lights on. The first couple times we turned them off he made it clear to us he wanted them on. He went to Juan / Jean this time about the open door – he may be worried that, if something ends up missing from the house, he will take the blame.

Day 41

Tito the fish man brought his daughters by to play. He left them here while he did his fish sales – for an hour or two. When he came back, he stayed and had something to eat.

The guard asked us for food again.

Day 40

Bobbie and Kurt have been filling me in on all the pop culture news from back in the states. It’s been interesting to live without the constant barrage of celebrity news and ironic references. Even though I absorb them as much as anyone else back home, I like living without them. That said, tonight we watched “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which I had never seen before. They also brought me a DVD of the Sarah Silverman show.

There is a guard sitting outside of our house, watching a property across the street. This is the property that someone – a French woman who has lived here for over 15 years, we’ve been told – was starting to build a house when a local group, who has been contesting some of the European-owned properties here, showed up and took sledge hammers to the concrete block walls that had been started. When I asked what the guard was doing, Paul said “ he probably held the hammer for them.” The guard is a different person every couple of weeks – it seems to be some sort of agency. Someone is on guard duty 24 hours a day – a post split between two men. This guard is young, and he has been very friendly. He always speaks to me as if I fully comprehend Spanish, even though I’ve told him I don’t.

Today this guard asked us if we have any food, as he was hungry. We brought him a sandwich.

We received our first electric bill, from Juan / Jean, who manages the property. It was for our first month here. It is $150. Yikes.

Day 38 & 39

Bobbie and Kurt are here. We have gone to Playita and Rincon. We went to a “Dominican Dinner” at Isabelle’s, where Bobbie was stuck because she is a vegetarian and they were inflexible even though they had advertised a buffet. The French couple who run the place were very friendly until we asked if we could substitute something for the main dish, a Dominican specialty called "san cocho" (sp?), which must be Dominican for "we've emptied all our meat scraps into this bowl and poured stock over it." As I said, they advertised a "Dominican buffet" which made me think there would be a variety of foods - but they offered one entree only and, as I said, when we asked for a non-meat substitute they didn't seem pleased. And they didn't offer us any options.

There was a lunar eclipse during dinner.

After Rincon we had dinner at home – fish and beans and plaintains and rice. I feel bad about the food here, especially since our visitors have been foodanistas. I think they expect to come down here and find an exotic food mecca, only to discover a bunch of uncreative restaurants and markets that are at the end of the produce delivery line. The best food we have had here has usually been made at home.

BOOK CURRENTLY READ: “Landmarks in 20th century Murders” by Robin O’Dell, a compilation of the author’s choices of the most famous / infamous murder cases in Britain during each decade of the 1900’s. Very British in its writing.

Day 37

I am in Samana, waiting for my friend Bobbie and her husband Kurt to arrive on the bus, after what was close to 24 hours of travel from Oakland. Today I worked all morning, stopped by the Gri-Gri club w/ Amy for a soda, and took the gua-gua to Samana. En route, I lost my hat as it blew off on the back of the pick-up truck. The men in back motioned to stop so I could get off and get my hat, but I felt it was my stupidity and didn’t want to stop the truck. Now I wonder if they thought me stupider for not getting off and getting the hat.

In Samana I went to one of my favorite internet cafes. It’s a little more expensive, but the man there allows me to plug in my own computer, which allows me to work much more faster and get out all the drafts I’ve been saving since I last used my computer.

I had time to go walk the BRIDGE TO NOWHERE. It had become more grown over since I first walked it a couple years ago, but the new all-inclusive resort had built new handrails , making it easier to access it than before. Of course, they also had put up “proceed beyond this point at your own risk” signs.

I like Samana, with no reason to, other than it’s on a beautiful bay and the city grows into the hills surrounding the bay. It’s a VERY rundown city – plenty of garbage, shacks galore, a healthy emission-spewing vehicle population. This is a city that was thought of at one time but the thought never got finished. In reading I have discovered that Samana has, at one time or another in its history, been sought after by Napoleon and the US for military purposes.

Samana has shoeshine boys. I haven’t experienced a lot of third world begging situations, but I thought shoeshine boys were something from a 1950’s movie. Since most of my exposure to Samana begins in the tourist area by the malecon, on the bay, I have often been accosted by the shoeshine boys, who look very young. They often ask simply “can you give me a dollar?” and retreat when you turn them down. One day I had an entertaining back and forth with a shoeshine boy who was very persistent, even though I pointed out that none of us were wearing shoes – we all had on flip flops and sandals. Usually the shoeshine boys don’t get much of an emotional response from me.

Tonight I was in the midst of negotiating a taxi ride back for me and my friends. The normal taxi rate for us has been 600 pesos. I was approached earlier by a man who, when I asked him the price, told me 700. I thought this was typical highballing of which I’ve learned to expect and enjoy the anticipated back and forth, so I countered with 500 pesos. He said “no, it’s 700. That’s the official rate.” I said that’s ridiculous, I’ve never paid more than 600 (blowing my negotiating cover.) He called his friend over and his friend pointed to a painted board that had on it various taxi rates around the region, and next to Galeras it had 750. I had an hour to wait, so I told him I’d be back and talk to taxis then. 15 minutes later I ran into another person who asked me if I needed a taxi and I asked him for a quote for our ride. He said 700, and I countered with 600. He said no – 700, and I told him I’d look around. He said okay – 600, and we agreed to meet back here when the bus arrived. As I walked back by the bus station, I heard yelling, but saw several families greeting each other, and thought the noises were of the emotional reunion variety.

I went to the ice cream store next door, where I had practiced my Spanish for the question – “quanto horas cerrado?” (which I thought meant “what time do you close?” having researched “cerrado” earlier on a closed store front.) the woman behind the counter looked at me as if I had just gotten off the Mars shuttle. I didn’t panic – I tried again. Then I panicked – I said it in English. Then she panicked – she asked another worker behind the counter and, even though I couldn’t understand what she was saying, I was pretty sure it was along the lines of “There’s a crazy American trying to pretend he knows Spanish here. Should I ridicule him while smiling or is it your turn?” The co-worker wanted a turn. Since I though it might just be a dialect thing, I tried it again on the new person, my confidence restored. She looked at me with the Mars shuttle look, countered with something I couldn’t even pretend to understand, and waited. I panicked and went to English, at which point she gave me the universal look for not knowing what I was talking about. At this point I smiled and said give me a minute to decide which ice cream I wanted. I hid over by the cooler, picked one out, and paid for it. Since I was now an economic participant in their lives, I thought we had connected, and tried to make light of my bad Spanish. I said (or thought I said) “sorry, I speak Spanish badly” at which point she said (or I thought she said) “I speak English badly.” Since we had both relaxed, I asked her again what time they closed, although this time I pointed to a pretend watch and didn’t include the word closed, substituting instead a cutting motion across my throat and the word “fini.” She pointed at the clock on the wall. I said “fini?” again, with a change in emphasis that is impossible to share via the printed word. She said “dix.” YES! 10:00! We did it!

Happy with my bi-lingual breakthrough, I went to eat my ice cream. I heard the yelling again, as I was on the other side of the bus station area. For a couple minutes I thought it was children running around and screaming again, a sound I am very used to as two children practice it in my house every morning. After listening some more, I realized one of the kids was screaming because the other one was beating him up, another sound I was used to, from an earlier time in my life. As I looked the scene over, I learned a couple things – a) that the kids involved were two shoeshine boys, and 2) that they were amidst a group of people sitting in the bus station, who were pretending that they didn’t notice two young boys beating the snot out of each other right before them. It was at this moment that the mystique and allure of a foreign culture disintegrated right before my eyes – how can you sit there and let two little kids beat each other up right in front of you? Do you ignore them because to acknowledge them would make them human, something you’ve been trained not to do? This wasn’t a dangerous situation – it was just two little kids beating each other up, and I was confused – should I step in and break it up, which I would have done back home? Hey, this is a country where I’ve seen strangers yell at children when they get off the gua-gua and step into the road – what changed in this situation? Or, by stepping in, would I be a stupid gringo who didn’t understand what was going on here? Just as I was about to step in (you have to trust me on this) the shoeshine boys broke it up, with the bigger one walking away, the littler one crying and following. There seemed to be some bullying going on after this – the bigger one wouldn’t let the littler one walk a certain direction, for example – and they started to walk away, their kits in hand.

The sound of two little kids fighting, and one of them crying, really hit me. I wasn’t able to get there and break up the fight, but I followed them for a minute as they walked away, still fussing with each other. So I did what any red-blooded American would do – I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out a twenty dollar bill, and went up to the shoeshine boys. “El chico, here.” I gave the bill to the little one. It was too dark to make out the bill, but he was looking kind of incredulous at it. I walked away, and when I looked back I saw the bigger kid trying to pull it away from him. I went back and said “dix for him, and dix for you” with a lot of hand pointing. I think they got it, because they both nodded enthusiastically. I watched as they went over to the lit bank parking lot, and both took turns holding and looking at the bill, holding it up close, one of them smelling it, looking at it in the light. They saw me, and I walked away again, but found a spot where I could watch them, and they treated the bill like a sacred object.

As I sat down and started typing this, I saw them walk right in front of me, holding the bill before them as if they were afraid to dirty it. I had this desire to follow them through the night, seeing what became of the bill. I’m afraid there is some sort of pecking order, where they will lose it to some bigger being in the street poverty scene. I worried that they would be too reverential with it, and destroyed if something should happen to it. I hope they knew it’s official worth, and didn’t trade it for two 100 pesos notes, for example. I hope the brief elation it seemed to give them is diffused through the next few days for them, that it actually helps their lives, and that it doesn’t just shine brightly and go dark, like a US Treasury-produced match. I can only hope. I feel like a stupid western white person, who feels helpless so throws money at the situation.

While typing tonight at the bus station, a group of children came over and started looking at the computer. They also started picking up the cell phone and pressing buttons. The computer looking was cute. The cell phone use was not. The oldest, Mairobi, is 10 and stayed at my table a while trying to figure out how to type her name. Her mother joined them, and typed out the names of all the children – Mairobi, Mejia, Yossy, Franiel, Victor, Charleinny, Yeisson, Leonora. While doing this, she was trying to teach Mairobi proper typing hand positions. In my newfound comfort with the Spanish language - even though I know 12 words - mentality, I tried to talk with her, but her response was so fast that I realized I had no chance, so I smiled and shook my head a lot.

Day 36

I think I’ve run out of foreign words / phrases to use, and run the risk of having boring conversations with people here unless I learn some more. This came to me today as I approached a Dominican I recognized and realized all I was going to say was how hot it was (mucho caliente), which I said to him every day. My most used phrases:

-are you very busy today -which can be followed, if they say no, by “oh, very calm, eh?”
( muy occupado oy? Muy tranquilo, eh?)
-how are you? (and all the possible responses)
( como esta? Bien, et tu? Bien bien. Caliente. Muy occupado. )
-is this here? there?
( -whatever it is – aqui? Ayer? )

HERMIT CRABS

PAUL AND KATIE – Paul is a retired Boston policeman who moved down here 7 or 8 years ago. I say moved, because he is here 10 months of the year, but he says he lives in Scituate, outside of Boston, where they have a house on the ocean. Paul is from Southie, and his godfather is Billy Bulger. He likes to send postcards to friends in the Boston area signed “Whitey.”

Katie has made us a must-stop on her morning rounds through the town. She has lived and traveled all over the world, and is a fount of information on all happenings Las Galeras. We had a nice conversation this morning, where she perfectly phrased something I have been thinking about as I get more accustomed to the rhythm of life on the island – “there aren’t that many emergencies.” I think of it in terms of my newest pride in being here –I haven’t answered a phone in over a month, hadn’t felt that little shock of compulsion that I have when a phone rings. I realize how much I’m enjoying that feeling, even though Paul points out I still have to check my e-mail. I hope to take these lessons of relaxation back north with me.


“THERE AREN’T THAT MANY EMERGENCIES.”

Day 35

I have been harassed by a mosquito the past couple nights. I know it is one particular mosquito because, even as a species, they collectively couldn’t be this cruel. I have sprayed all the bathrooms regularly, sprayed the bedrooms irregularly, and put spray on my ankles each night. I cover my entire body up to my neck, wrapping myself in the bedsheet. Still, I wake up in the middle of the night with bites on my arms, scratching. Then, just as I’m getting back to sleep, this particular mosquito starts the torture campaign – it starts dive-bombing my ears. At first, I swat the air or shake my head as I hear it approaching. Then, I try to wait it out – I allow it to land, hoping to crush it after it’s settled, like the slow-moving, dim-witted northern mosquitoes back in Maine. But I forget that all the animals down here are hyper-versions of northern varieties. They all move much quicker than ones I have encountered before. The lizards are faster. The birds are faster. The snakes are faster. And the mosquitoes are faster. So I end up swatting myself about the face and head for a while before giving up and getting out of bed.

We have been trying to sleep in the bedroom without a mosquito netting. The other two bedrooms have netting. One we have the kids in – they need it more than we do. The other we have our guests in. Ditto. We need to find another mosquito netting. I also have to try one of the other methods folks have mentioned. These include burning mosquito coils or plugging in some kind of electronic device that either makes a noise or burns some sort of chemical tablet that you place in it. I’m very motivated now, at 4 o’clock in the morning. I hope I’m as motivated when I go to the store later.

We went to Playa Fronton yesterday. We have been hearing about Fronton for the past couple years, but haven’t made it over there – one person we met last year said it wasn’t great swimming, a couple people this year have said the water’s too rough to go there. So we’ve been waiting, but not rushing to get there. With Brad and Hope here, we thought it would be good to check out, and Paul and Katie mentioned going last week and invited us to join them, so the critical mass seemed to be here.

Fronton is in the opposite direction from Rincon, in many ways. Rincon is enclosed, a horseshoe beach on a cove, with sandy swimming, north of Las Galeras. Fronton is southeast of the village, a much rougher boat ride outside of the reef, to a straight stretch of beach with the entire Atlantic Ocean before it. The beach, which sits at the base of 300+ foot cactus-topped rock cliffs is much rockier, and the water is coral and reef-filled from the moment you step in. It is by far the best snorkeling we have seen here – the coral is still faded, but there are grander stretches and depths, with a greater variety of fish than any other beach we have seen. We saw barracuda, a puffer (or was it a cow?) fish, a trumpet fish, and a single scorpion fish, who must’ve been very disgruntled with us, hovering over him while he was trying to hide on the bottom, waiting for unsuspecting fish to swim near his mouth. He kept on swimming to new locations and letting his camouflage settle in again, with us swimming overhead to each new location.

The beach feels deserted and remote but, of course, there is a restaurant there. This one was a little more in character – the thatched roof and wooden limb construction made it seem to grow out of the rock wall and palms on that end of the beach. When we ordered beer and sodas, the man behind the bar said he was out of most of the things we requested, and the soda was all warm. (after we ordered, we realized his “cold beer” wasn’t much different.) He also didn’t have any change, which we thought was a nice trick when you’re on a remote beach and serving mostly tourist clientele who don’t probably don’t have correct change but most certainly do have money on them to pay for the boat ride to Fronton. Fortunately we were able to foil his plot by coming up with the correct change. (note to travelers – carry as many little bills as possible, to swart (?) remote beach vendors.)

It was Independence Day in the DR, yet another opportunity to get misleading information from a variety of people. We were told by different people in the past couple days that Independence Day was Monday, Tuesday (the actual day) or Wednesday. We were also told that all of the businesses would be closed, some of the businesses would be closed, and none of the businesses would be closed. Some were, and we couldn’t tell whether that was for the holiday or just because Tuesday is a good day to be closed.

TRIVIA QUESTION: which country in the western hemisphere is the only country NOT to celebrate its independence from a European colonial power? The Dominican Republic, which declared its independence from Haiti, and has been spitting on Haiti ever since.

Day 34

I worked, while everyone else went to Playita beach. (in translation, that’s “little beach” beach, so Spanish-speaking readers please bear with me).

At the soccer game tonight the Haitians returned to play – the first time since the fight. And the first thing the Italians did was say they couldn’t play. Fulvio, the older Italian who had lost his temper so badly in the fight, told them they couldn’t play unless they paid him to hire someone to mow the field. He had asked me for money for the same reason earlier. I gave him 100 pesos. A week later the field looked like a bad haircut, or else the person cutting it had been shooing away one of the donkeys that lived nearby – there was evidence of some cutting, but there where obvious patches of tall grass that it would be hard to understand how they were missed.

It was hard for me to tell what was going on. It was obvious that they were arguing, and it was obvious that Fulvio was playing the boss roll. But I had no idea what was being said, and I had no idea of the history involved, other than the recent fight. I asked Cyril what was going on, and he said the Italians were causing trouble, and did I want to play with the Haitians on a side field? I said sure, but things finally got patched up, and the game started – the Italians, with me, against the Haitians, with Cyril. Ugh.

After the initial spasms of intensity on both sides in order to establish national pride, the game settled down and was pretty enjoyable. I always like the feeling of running down the field with people yelling at me in languages I don’t understand – that’s freedom, my friend. It’s also fun when the Italians tell me something – they obviously know I don’t understand, but they continue to talk to me as if I get every word. I think they know I don’t, but need to get it out, and we both seem to feel better afterwards.

Day 33

It rained hard last night, and continued through the early morning. It felt like it was going to be here all day, but things change very quickly here, and the clouds broke and the sun came out mid-morning.

We went to Samana today, for carnaval. Carnaval happens every Sunday in February, and the last Sunday is the largest (most official?) carnaval. We took a taxi from the gua-gua stand in Las Galeras. The guy we negotiated with had a gun packed in his pants. He told us carnaval started at 3:00. When we arrived, around 2:40, there wasn’t much going on. We asked someone else what time carnaval started, and he said 4:00. We walked around a bit, and decided to sit in a café, out of the sun. While there I asked a man what time carnaval started – he said 6:00.

When we first saw carnaval in Samana last year, the practice that caught our eye was the “whompers.” I’ll look up the official Spanish name somewhere, but they originated as inflated goat bladders, which are tied to a string. The teenaged boys all have one and, at the first carnaval we witnessed, they were in costumes for a parade. As the parade ended the costumed teenaged boys all started running around and hitting women in the butt with the whompers. In the reading I’ve been doing on the DR, each community has standards for whomper use – some hit in the butt only, others allow hits on the entire body, and some are reknowned for the ferocity of their hitting. Lane got hit very hard – she was unsuspecting of being a target – and had a cruel introduction to the world of boy-girl relations.
The carnaval at Samana features rides like those found at most county and town fairs back in the states in my childhood. In fact, the rides look like they might be the same rides used from my childhood, having been sold to someone in the DR after they could no longer pass safety inspections in the US. They are rusty and creaky, and we were wary to ride on any of them until we witnessed others riding, and surviving, them. Lane, Benjamin, Brad, and Walker rode on a car ride, the ferris wheel, and the swinging chairs. I rode on the ferris wheel. Each ride had a long wait to start, as it took the people operating the rides some time to get everyone seated and re-position the bubble gum. Once they started, the rides were opened up full, and went for a long time, guaranteeing each of us a full centrifugal force experience.

Carnaval at Samana is one of the rare times in my experience that there are more – much more – black faces than white faces in the crowd. And the Dominican features so many varieties and shades of color – the book I’m reading on the history of relations between Haiti and the DR tells of both countries having regulations at one time classifying citizens by color percentage, and those lists being at least 25 designations long, for example, someone with 90% mulatto blood and 1/18th white blood having a certain designation, so they wouldn’t be confused with their neighbor who has 3/32nds Spanish blood, 53% African blood, and is a distant relative of Pat Boone.

I saw our gua-gua driver during carnaval, parked by the side of the road, with he and his co-driver playing hand held musical instruments to the CD that was blaring from their vehicle. On the ride to Samana, he had mentioned something to his co-driver - we only heard the word "Americano" - and the co-driver removed the Dominican music CD and inserted a CD of 1970's American soft rock hits - Leo Sayer and the BeeGees were featured. When we rode back, we asked him about music, and he told us about some live music that was played in Samana every Saturday night at 10. He also told us he carried a gun because he was a gua-gua driver and "you never knew."

We stopped at the pizza place on the outskirts of town on our way back. We have been told this is the “italian” pizza place, as opposed to the “french” pizza place in town. When we got there, Walker and I had to go to the bathroom, and we headed to the doors with “caballeros” and “damas” on them. We entered to find a pile of rubble, with no visible plumbing fixtures. I though it was one of those quaint third world bathrooms, so I told Walker to go ahead and pee. While he was going, the waitress came up and told me no, no, no – the bathroom was around the back of the restaurant. Oops. We walked around the back of a building in back of the restaurant, and into a door in this building. I saw a bathroom, but it was obviously someone’s private home. I went anyways, not knowing how hard it would be to find the official bathroom and hoping someone wasn’t in the bedroom on the other side of the bathroom.

Day 32

We went to Playita today. It was overcast on the walk there, and there were dark clouds offshore, but they looked to be blowing by quickly. They did, but there were bigger clouds behind them, and it started to rain while we were there. We stopped at the new restaurant that had been built there in the past year, to have drinks and wait for the rain to pass. The restaurant is open air, with tables on a patio. It had plastic see-through bags full of water hanging up in all the archways. We asked the guy working there what they were for, and he said they kept the flies away, but we weren’t sure of the translation.

The rain didn’t pass. Instead, it continued to come down with more intensity, and we ended up walking home in a downpour. When we got back, I took a shower but, as Hope and Brad pointed out, it would have probably been a better shower from the freshwater rain than from the salty well that feeds our faucets.

Day 31

Wow. A month here. I woke and went for a run, and after breakfast we packed up to go to Playa Rincon, our third time going to that beach. We got a ride from Kelbin (?), our new favorite boat driver. We got to the beach early, and prepared to walk to our favorite shady spot. We were met by a guy with a microphone on his shirt, and some people holding a rope across the beach. It turns out there was a German film crew there filming spots for ads to visit Samana. They told us we couldn’t use the beach until they were finished with this shot, and they needed a deserted beach for their image. We were pretty upset – couldn’t they have told the boat drivers in Galeras about this, so we wouldn’t have spent money getting to a beach that we couldn’t use? I asked if we could go around their production to a spot further down the 3 mile beach. They asked if we could just wait and they would have their shot in 10 minutes. My limited experience with the film world told me this was not exactly the truth – more an optimism tossed at us to get us out of the way. We were in frustration mode – we had brought our friends to this remote beach, probably the only time in their lives they would ever be here, and we couldn’t even use the beach? Amy found the site manager, or whatever that person is supposed to be called, and told him this was a problem – we hadn’t been given warning, we had no chance to return with our friends, and beaches are public property here. They gave us the 10 minute promise again, and we set up on the tiny bit of available beach. Then someone from one of the beach restaurants came out and complained to Amy that they were losing business today because the film crew had taken over the beach. This motivated her, and she went back to talk with the site manager guy. I pointed out to her that these productions usually had budgets, and to ask for our boat money back, at least. When I came over a couple minutes later, Amy, Brad and Lane were in a heated discussion with this manager guy. It was a little baffling – again I was surprised at either the lack of planning or the arrogance – they expected to have a popular tourist beach, which is somewhere around three miles long, to themselves, without dealing with any of the peripheral peoples or activities? The guy again told us it would only take 10 minutes, and we decided to give him that, after which we would walk on the PUBLIC beach, leaving footprints on its deserted beach shot.

After 10 minutes of planning our attack, one of the German filmmakers came over and said that we could use the beach, if we could avoid leaving footprints in the 100 yards used for their shot. We took them up on it, and went down the beach. After we started walking down, three boats with tourists pulled into the beach which, if we had waited, would have been enough numbers to give the filmmakers a bigger problem.

I joined Brad for a walk to the other end of the beach, one of my favorite things to do there. There is a river, the Rio Frio (cold river) that comes out at that end of the beach, below a house built on an outrageously-graded hill. We walked upstream a bit to look at some local boats, which one of the men there told us they rode upstream.

When we returned, we discovered that Amy, Hope and the kids had moved again – to a spot further down the beach, away from the restaurants. They told us the film crew had asked them to move again. Amy said she had gotten into a conflict with the site manager, and had threatened to walk across their shot. Somewhere in the middle of this, she had told him that he had cost us money, and was costing the restaurants at Rincon money. He told her to wait right there, and returned with 2,000 pesos, which she promised that she would use at the restaurant.

We swam awhile, and went to one of the restaurants for lunch. We tried a different place than usual, because we had tired of the usual place and Katie had highly recommended the other restaurant. The food was good. We had been told to ask for a coconut dessert, which was tasty, until Brad pointed out that it was composed of coconut, brown sugar, and pig fat. (We later learned that it isn't pig fat, but that coconut "meat" has a very high fat content.)

We all received a lot of sun, and I have a burn stripe where I hadn’t put enough (okay, any) sunscreen.

We snorkeled after lunch, and Brad found a sea skate.

When we returned, I checked e-mail quickly at the verizon store. After checking in, I peaked into the space where Richard is opening a new internet café. He was there, getting desks ready, and he was very happy to see me. We have very fun conversations – we both assume the other can understand more English / Spanish than we do, and we both pretend we can speak more of those languages than we do, so we end up shaking heads and laughing a lot, because we like each other right now and want to connect. We also both resort to many one or two word expressions – desk here? many computers? beautiful space – to find an area that we meet in. Based on these lingual forays, I take it that the café will open soon, there are many computers, he will allow me to plug in my own machine, and Alain will work there, all exciting news bits. I won’t get too excited about it yet, as things take time here.

We also shared the joy of possibly putting Merko out of business. (Hate is a universal language)

The conversation went so well that Richard pulled out the fishing net he uses on Las Galeras beach, and through another lingual volley I took it that he catches many fish, big and small, he made the net himself, and that he keeps all the fish for himself to eat. Did I mention that Richard isn’t his real name, but the name he told us? Later other people, with him there, told us his name is really Fermier, or something like that.

BOOK CURRENTLY READING: “Why the Cocks Fight,” by Michelle Wucker, a history of the relations / tensions between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.


MOSQUITOES? The mosquitoes haven’t been bad, except when they get bad. With company here, Amy and I have taken the bedroom without mosquito netting. When we first got here, this was the room the kids used. We noticed, like we do every year, that they were waking up covered with bites, and not getting bit during the day, so we moved them into the downstairs bedroom that has a mosquito net, and we moved upstairs, where there is a net on the bed. When we moved downstairs this week, we weren’t getting bit – we were just getting annoyed by one or two mosquitoes every night that would whine into our hearing ranges – like a miniature propeller-driven airplane flying into our ears, waking us enough to make a failed swat, but waking us nevertheless.

During the day the mosquitoes aren’t bad except when they bite my ankles when I sit at a certain table. I’ve taken to spraying my ankles with repellant before sitting down.

Day 30

I had stayed up late the night we returned, drawing a cartoon. I finished it this AM, and had no wait at the verizon store. There was a new guy working there – Francis. He told me Alain had left, and he was there. He had used to work at Club Bonita, which is slowly entering cult status. We had stayed in Club Bonita last year. It is / was a beautiful hotel on the beach, with a great pool and bar, and a decent restaurant. All of the staff was very friendly, even though few of them spoke English. Club Bonita was where we met Arturo. We arrived here this year to discover Club Bonita closed. After talking with some folks in the know, we found out the owner was an older Italian woman who had become sick in the past year, and sold the hotel to a development company. The people working there received one week’s notice. We run into the entire staff at various junctures around town – some at one restaurant, one or two at another. Many of them recognize us, the family with the Dominican-looking kid, and we feel honored.

Things went so smoothly at verizon that I was able to go back home and draw another cartoon and get it out at verizon, freeing me up to go to Rincon the next day. That night we had Paul and Katie join us for dinner, as Brad and Hope made a fish (dorado) and vegetables with rice dinner.

This day couldn’t have gone any more smoothly. I’m worried about how low my standards are.