Welcome to La Republica Dominicana :) These two flags fly outside my office and work well as signposts for the content of this blog. I'm in the Dominican Republic, and I'm working for a UN agency, namely UN-Instraw (Which is an acronym for...Deep Breath Here...'Institute for Training and Research for the Advancement of Women'), which is, to quote the Fast Show, 'Nice'. I will be here until mid January 2009 and hope to share some of my adventures with you, the reader, on this blog. I like taking pictures too and shall endeavour to do so and post some from time to time.
I have quite a bit so far but mostly it is work or logistics related (sorting out accomodation etc) so I'll focus on day one, my favourite so far,to give you a flavour of my experience. ..
I arrived on Hispaniola (the island DR shares with Haiti) late on Saturday night (which is early Sunday Morning UK time, DR is 5 hours behind) and after some difficulties finding my hotel, got settled and slept until about 1200 on Sunday. Then the fun began; I went for a stroll around the local area, which it being Sunday was very peaceful (every other day the streets are packed with the worst traffic I have ever seen). The hotel was on the same street as Instraw, so I checked it out, also on the block is the US embassy, which is a little more inviting than the one in London with the new concrete anti terror defenses, and then kept strolling.
After passing numerous building sites, the Czech embassy, and a university (there are 3 or 4 in the city, and they which runs classes on weekends) I bought some food from a bodega, or 'Carballo' as they are called. These places dot the landscape every few blocks and are the equivalent (ish) of corner shops. However they also serve as hubs for local men to sit, drink, talk and play dominoes. Depending where they are and how big they might also have a small bar and/or sound system, to flood the street with the sounds of regaeeton, bachata, merengue (I can't tell the difference between these two yet but I'mworking on it) or salsa. They also deliver by moped, and it seems that often the same guys talking, drinking etc will be the ones riding around delivering groceries, booze and cigarettes, which can only add to the chaos on the roads.
I stopped by a small bar to try the infamous 'el presidente', the local beer which everybody drinks (I have also tried out their Rum, 'Brugal' which is cool too) and took my little plastic seat out on the sidewalk like everybody else, sipping my ice-cold litre bottle of beer in a paper bag (they call this 'Bride in a dress' in Spanish, because of the white coating of frost) and thumbing through my Sapnish dictionary, before plucking up the courage to speak to the group of Dominicans sat next to me. I'm so glad I did. Despite the fact that only two of the group (of 5) could speak English; an English teacher and his graduate student (the rest were learning) and I have so little Spanish it hurts (which makes life quite difficult here ), they welcomed me into the discussion and then took me around the city for the afternoon, at least around some of its bars!
I spent the next five hours with this group, stopping off at 4 different bars, and also getting my first proper Dominican Meal; Pork Fried Rice and Fried Chicken from a neighbourhood diner. We went into the Barrio, where the chasm in Dominican society between rich and poor was immediately evident (more on this below) and then on to a much more upmarket place with a dancefloor for Salsa (where I embarassed myself with my lack of coordination; not for the first time and certainly not for the last! All the while we moved in new circles of people; some my hosts knew, some were new, but everybody got on well, sharing beer from plastic cups, laughing and joking, whiling the hot Sunday afternoon away. By the end of the festivities I was pretty tipsy and my hosts dropped me off safe and sound at the door of my hotel. This is both the highlight of my trip so far and a microcosm of it. Most Dominicans seem friendly, open and understanding of hapless visitors such as myself. I haven't even scratched the surface of their culture (I haven't got to the beach yet, let alone left the city!) and can't hope to do so in 4 months, but I can start to repay some of their hospitality in kind by improving my Spanish and thanking them in their own language (though I can do 'Gracias'). Below are some more general observations on the city.
"Life in SD: An impression
Kids sit on the steps up into their tiny one storey wooden homes and electricity cables hang down into the middle of the pavement, heavy in clumps where different wires have been patched in to tap the grid 'informally' whilst a few minutes drive away gated communties loom. There are low overhead cables everywhere and the electricity system is unsophisticated and unreliable. There have been three or four black outs since I arrived (only one at night thankfully) and it's cool to see how nochalantly people go about hteir business when the entire city is plunged into pitch black darkness. Families have car batteries rigged up as back up and ready supplies of candles to hand. There are public toilets in the poor area which are like little outhouses; a wooden cubicle with barely enough room to stand up and an unlocked door right out onto the street, with a tiny urinal. These are slotted between buildings, weemingly whevever they fit. This ethic of ingenuity and economy is pretty characteristic of life here so far. Another great example being the 'public cars' ; unlicensed mincabs that roam particular routes across a straight section of town and take on as many passengers as they can concievably fit (on my first journey 8 in a normal saloon car!). Such methods of getting around are invalauble as there is no (zero, nada) official public transport, which coming from London is pretty hard to get to grips with. Other points (I shall bullet for the sake of the reader's time and patience and my workload).
- The coffee is amazing! Like pretty much the best you'll taste. Maybe even better than Italian Coffee.
- Local seafood, meat and vegetables are dirt cheap; Calmari anyone?
- There are shoe shine boys roaming the city and they make a living; many men wear chinos and leather shoes, heat or no heat.
- The vegetation is lush, verdant and plentiful! I can't wait to see the countryside
- There has been some rain and low air pressure but (touch wood) there won't be a hurricane again any time soon despite fears.
- Instraw is cool. My work is all web based though which is A/ Good (because it will help my IT skills; uploading and editing web content) and B/ Bad (Because there's an element of guilt creeping in. I could do the job from anywhere in the world so why should I be here) The answer so far to the question in B is 'Because I'm paying for it!' The UN isn't wasting any resources on me and I'm getting a great opportunity to travel, learn and meet people.
- I miss my friends and family but (transport aside) not the Uk itself (yet?)
- I'm meeting the British Ambassador tommorow!
- Speak and read Spanish to a good level.
- Learn how to Scuba Dive.
- Visit at least two other countries in the region
- See a cock fight (my friend Rosa's dad owns some Fighting Cocks) I'm not sure I'll like it or that I agree with it but they arer a pretty big deal culturally here
- Try and understand Baseball! Baseball is THE big deal here. I will try and promote Cricket and Football surreptiously.
- Start medidtating regularly (not really DR specific but I am committed to giving Zazen a go and it seems like the right time).
Ok. I can't (perhaps thankfully fo the reader) be sure that all posts will be this long but I've taken in a lot very quickly and wanted to record it for posterity! I leave you with another couple of pictures of Instraw and myself. Enjoy, comment if you like, take care and stay free.
Peace!
Derek
Ps. Now I'm aware that it might seem quite irresponsible to jump into a car with strangers in a strange land on one's first day but how else would I meet people :) At Instraw some of the staff are Dominican but the younger people are all expats from either Europe, the US or Canada. Obviously I didn't know this on Sunday but I guessed this would be the case. I am in touch with one friend from the web who I linked up with on Monday and who has been really accomodating too but in the spirit of adventure I took a bit of a gamble and it paid off. Some of the other interns who have been here for months seem to socialise as quite a close knit little expat group, which is cool, and safe, but rather misses the point of living here, which to me is as much as, if not more of, an opportunity to learn and develop as the internship itself. They are mostly women however and Dominican culture so far seems overtly macho in a lot of ways which can be quite intimidating. I promise to be careful; especially if I go to Haiti, but one cannot insulate onself from risk entirely without losing something in the process. Hasta Luego!
