Day 59

Day 59 – I hiked to Madama again, this time with Amy and the kids. We have heard a house next door to La Ranchetta is for sale. Our fantasy is it would be affordable, and we could lease it to Ronald and Karyn to use for additional rental space with their B&B. We are trying to find a way to contact the owners, who are European - not sure which country. Many people here are "agents" who get a cut of any real estate transaction, so we have to be careful who we ask about the house - we hope to be able to contact the owners without having to pay extra money to a local ex-pat.

Fernes is a Dominican friend of ours. I first met him when, while walking through town, he came out and tried to sell me trips around the peninsula. He used a very badly produced three-ring binder, with pictures and pages that looked like junior high collages. Still, I admired his effort, and his barely working English was a good match for my barely working Spanish. Since that first meeting, we used to run into him frequently – we were using the verizon store for our internet and phone services, and Fernes worked right next door, often coming into the Verizon store to look at YouTube. Oh, and he told us his name was Richard – we didn’t learn it was Fernes for several weeks. Fernes is 18, and still in the high school. One day, about one month into our trip, Fernes told us he was going to open an internet store, and we were very happy – the more competition here the better for us. At the time, we didn’t know how old he was – age is hard to gauge here, and he was working so much we assumed he was older. He worked on the new space in Plaza Lusitania in town– building carrols for the computers, wiring the space putting up the new used computers – and was all set to open about 3 weeks ago. He and his friends spent a Saturday trying to erect a satellite dish on the roof next to their store, only to be told at the last second by the manager of Plaza Lusitania that they didn’t have permission to put up the satellite dish there and, if they did, they would have to pay an additional $1000 / month to stay there. Town rumors supposed that the internet café across the street – the terrible one run by Merko and his family, the evil Italians – had stepped in and, when they found out what was going on, “influenced” the management at Lusitania, who all happen to be Italian, on the status of Fernes’ store. Fernes immediately found a space on our street, in a building owned by Wolfgang, a German (duh!) who owns a vehicle rental and whose building also holds Omall’s deli, a small French store run by Omall (sp?), a wonderful French woman who always gives me good recommendations on cheese.

I had wondered where an 18 year-old Dominican kid had gotten the money for such a venture – it turns out his sister, a mall manager in Santo Domingo, is backing the place. I have no idea where she got the money.

Fernes spent another 2 weeks moving the equipment and setting up the new space. Then he put up the satellite dish for real. Then the signal sucked. If more than one person was on one of the new used computers, the bandwidth was ruined, and everything froze. Since it appears Fernes and his local hires have little to no computer skills, this didn’t look good. Then Fernes had someone come in from Santiago to wire the machines. Then they improved. Then they were so-so – sometimes the signal would work, sometimes not. Then they brought in someone from the capital, Santo Domingo, who did further wiring and hooked up a wireless network, upon which my laptop works wonderfully.

One day Fernes asked me if I danced. I told him not well. He told me he is a Christian, and does not smoke drink or dance. I guess his religion says nothing about online dating services, because every time I look at his computer monitor, he is looking at pictures of girls or filling out personality profiles.

Fernes’ English is on a par with my Spanish. He always says “It is good!” and “How are you my friend!” in almost the type of accent you would expect, even though he doesn’t give that impression of being Desi Arnez.