Hi,
Denise and I didn’t feel a thing on the day of the earthquake in Haiti, but we do seem to feel more with each passing day since then.
The natural inclination has been to go to Port au Prince, but that would contribute little practical help and would only interject another hungry person into a chaotic situation.
Instead we have joined with neighbors and have sent trucks of rice and powdered milk and potable water and tinned food. We also made a contribution to support nurse volunteers who are traveling to Haiti supported by donations coordinated through their union.
The union is sponsoring all of the administrative costs and so every dollar contributed goes directly towards supporting a nurse volunteer in Haiti. Over 8,000 union nurses have answered that call. If you wish, you can make a (US tax-deductible) contribution in support of their effort at: www.SENDANURSE.org
Coincidently, we were in Santo Domingo to pick up friends at the airport a couple of days ago. The scene was surreal. The disembarking passengers were: 1) jubilant Dominicans eager to hug waiting friends and family, 2) slightly stunned-looking tourists and, 3) purposeful rescue workers laden with equipment and dogs.
There are quite a few Haitians living in and around Las Galeras. They all lead what is pretty much a hand-to-mouth existence.
It is sobering to see the more fortunate among them going daily to the temporary and indefinite employment that will provide a little less than $18.00 in return for a full day of physical labor, knowing that many of them are worried and wondering about family and friends in the Haitian capital.
For us, Las Galeras is safe, comfortable and secure. I suppose that the same can also be said for where most of you are living; but that’s really just an accident of birth and geology, isn’t it?
Bill
Tags: Dominican Republic, Las Galeras, Living in the Dominican Republic, Retire, Retirement, Samana
Hi,
I say that “It’s good to be me” without even a hint of irony.
This is interesting to me. I don’t believe that I’ve ever heard the phrase used in English without an ironic intention.
Take clothing as one small illustration of the goodness of my life.
Those of you who’ve known me for many years would never confuse me with a stylish dresser, although I will modestly admit to establishing a minor trend or two–those of you cruising about the union’s HQ offices in Washington DC without a necktie can acknowledge that fact with a small tip of your fedora in the direction of the Caribbean. It’s close enough.)
After leaving academia in the late 70’s and rejoining the workforce my clothing, if anything, got even more casual. Funky, even.
As a business agent in Seattle I settled on a uniform: white button-down shirt, blue jeans, and one of 3 pairs of matching cowboy boots. More formal or “official” functions brought out the blue blazer (no brass buttons.) At regional or national events of our union I often set the sartorial floor, the most underdressed guy in the room. In the Painters Union there was sometimes pretty stiff competition for that particular floor.
My wardrobe did step up a few levels for our decade in the “other” Washington, DC, but never approached the realm of the thousand-dollar-suit, even if I did slip into pinkie-ring land for a few years–and without irony too. An electrician from Texas told me that in this “other” Washington the cowboy boots would be the last item to go. Denise and I pulled up stakes just as it began to appear that he was correct.
Early retirement brought us to the Dominican Republic unexpectedly soon, but not altogether unprepared. For instance, I had accumulated what seemed at the time like a lifetime supply of talking tee shirts.
Which brings me ineluctably to this morning when, kitchen shears in hand, I went after the sleeves and neck of my tee shirt du jour: “One Strong Voice for Worker’s Rights!” and the realization dawned that I’m pretty casually dressed by Dominican beach standards, too.
And so I hope that the end of 2009 finds you also comfortably dressed and even, as the New York Times said of Betty Paige in her obituary, “..always comfortable in (your) own skin.”
Happy New Year.
Bill
banderson@elotrowa.com
www.elotrowa.com
(809) 840-4150
Hi,
I suppose that wherever you may be reading this, you do have road conditions.
How are they, generally?
You might not realize it, to hear the way some people complain, but the condition of our roads locally has been consistently improving over the five years that we’ve been coming to Las Galeras.
This isn’t to say that on any given day, you might not take an unexpected detour through Quinengo’s front yard or be diverted across the beach by a herd of cattle or a bit of construction. But, consistently, the roads are improving here, which is more than I can say for many cities in which I have lived in the United States, where road conditions are often more devolutionary than not.
Pittsburgh, for example, is perpetually bracing for the annual spring thaw and the consequent crumbling of Davey Lawrence’s infamous asphalt base that underpins any road in the county more than 45 years old, and that includes most of them. Also, the heart of Seattle will always be constricted between Lake Washington and Puget Sound, Miami will always have way too many vehicles for the available pavement, and Washington, DC has some version of all three problems. I could go on, but why get you started?
Across the North America and in northern Europe where most of you are living, the road construction season has come to an end for the year. Here in Las Galeras, we’re in full swing and enjoying the benefit of a kind of Dominican stimulus package of the sort that turned your summer highway travel into one extended work zone in the United States.
Perhaps you recall my mention of the aqueduct now being built along the North East coast of the RD? It’s a huge infrastructure project including the construction of dams, water treatment plants and storage facilities and, most notably, the laying of water pipes.
Probably, in your neighborhood, when they dig up the street to service utilities it is returned worse for the experience. Here the opposite is true. In fact, the smoothest track between Las Galeras and Samana is along the inland-side of the road, on the paved patch covering the water main buried under the road over the last couple of years.
This year Odebrecht, the Brazilian contractor for this part of the project, has begun to plant a smaller secondary water line along the other side of the same road. This pipe is not quite as deep as the main and is the one that will in theory someday connect homes and businesses to freely flowing potable water.
If our experience is consistent, this second water line will also have the more immediate and tangible result of nearly repaving the entire width of the road, leaving only the unrestored middle for some future stimulus project.
A few years ago I posted a road condition photo from our little barrio on the El Otro WA website. The picture was of a single and somewhat pathetic rectangle of concrete arbitrarily placed along two rough tracks that are the road to our house. This chunk of cement has since been replaced by two sturdy concrete tracks that have withstood two rainy seasons. If you’d like, I’ll put up a photo of those concrete tracks. This may also answer, in part, what it is that some of you wonder that we do with our time here. “I’m a Ceement mixer, putti putti.”
Perhaps I’ll also post a picture of the vicious powerful Odebrecht machine that will obliterate one of those concrete tracks within the next few days.
Incredibly, and seemingly in a spurt of holiday fervor, the Odebrecht Company and the trailing aqueduct have finally arrived in Las Galeras. With an excess of holiday generosity, the stimulus package has also delivered a second, slightly smaller but still monstrous tracked trenching machine directly to our little neighborhood where it is quickly planting a water pipe that no one I know wants or needs. Perhaps the future will reveal another surprise. Vamos a ver.
Anyway, for more than a year now I have been impressed with the evenness and durability of the asphalt patch over the trench running between here and Samana. In the face of the Caribbean sun, and subjected to some seriously overloaded trucks this patch has generally not succumbed. It does not sag and it has mostly not crumbled and yesterday I think I discovered why. It’s all in the backfill and the compacting thereof which–come to think of it, only stands to reason. But here, in this little village at the end of the road on the North East coast of the Dominican Republic, on the even smaller and completely unpaved thoroughfares in our sparsely populated neighborhood, I saw something that I’ve never noticed on any road repair project in the United States: a team actually MEASURING the degree to which the backfill in place was compacted before layering an additional measure of dirt into the open trench.
I’ll be surprised if any of you have ever seen a utility company in the developed world take such a measure before topping their cut with asphalt. And I guess that may go some way towards explaining the sagging and crumbling utility patches that are an arterial feature of so many cities in the US and elsewhere.
Now we, too, have got pipe in the neighborhood, if not yet up the road near our house.
Our roads are still unpaved, even though well-compacted and we sometimes take little diversions through the pasture or across the front lawn of Sr. Quinengo. But our roads are consistently improving.
Perhaps, given the appropriate stimulus package, one day you will say the same.
Bill
banderson@elotrowa.com
Tags: Dominican Republic, Las Galeras, Living in the Dominican Republic, Retire, Retirement, Roads in Dominican Republic, Samana
Hi,
Once again, it’s Thanksgiving Day again here in Las Galeras and once again we’ll sit down to a semi-traditional US dinner with an assortment of American and European ex-pats and a Dominican and Haitian or two. Once again we do have much cause to be grateful, beginning with the accidents of birth and the myriad twistings and turnings of our relatively full lives that have brought us to this point, and ending with friends–which is really what I want to write to you about today.
Denise was born on Thanksgiving Day. As you North Americans know, Thanksgiving is a movable feast, always falling on a Thursday. Of course, Denise’s birthday falls on the same date but a different day each year (although sometimes it seems as if she would like for her birthday to expand and encompass an entire week.)
This year, Denise’s “compleano” fell on Tuesday, when she turned a large number, one divisible by 10. Let’s admit that the number is not 50 and let it go at that, shall we?
Unlike any of the 20 or 25 other birthdays that I’ve shared with Denise, this one was fraught with a certain off-balance significance, manifesting in several mostly insignificant ways in the couple of weeks leading up to last Tuesday. In response to her understated concern, I determined to make a reservation for a lovely dinner for two at El Cabito, arguably the finest dining establishment around Las Galeras.
Several days before her compleano, and before I had gotten around to contacting John at El Cabito to make the Birthday Dinner arrangement, I received a telephone call from a friend and neighbor inviting us to join he and his wife for dinner at El Cabito on the following Monday or Tuesday. Naturally, I suggested that THEY join US to celebrate Denise’s birthday on Tuesday, an idea that was enthusiastically supported by Denise. My friend faltered for only a moment before announcing gravely, “Bill, I must speak with you, ALONE.” Sensing the work of elves and fairies, I agreed and walked over to have a chat.
And, of course, there WAS mischief afoot. It came to pass that one of Denise’s best friends–a sort of wonderful daughter and sister and spirited fellow-traveler person–had somehow managed to locate our neighbor in Las Galeras from her home outside Bern in Switzerland, where with the assistance and company of several of our neighbors here in Las Galeras, she managed to arrange and remotely pay for a birthday fiesta for Denise at El Cabito (still arguably the finest dining establishment around.)
Denise’s surprise, relief, and delight at this turn of events was only heightened when her pal awakened in the middle of the European night to place a telephone call to Denise during dinner. Here’s a photo.
This Thanksgiving Holiday we are particularly aware of close friends and family and all manner of enjoyable and abiding and enduring relationships at home and abroad, however we may find them.
Best regards–and Happy Thanksgiving!
Bill
Tags: Dominican Republic, Las Galeras, Living in the Dominican Republic Retire, Restaurants, Retirement, Samana
Hi,
Maybe you’ve lived in a small town at some point in your life? I never did, for any length of time before moving to Las Galeras and so it’s something of a revelation to discover that everyone knows my name. This includes small students with large backpacks walking beside the road and the anonymous farmer in the campo as well as the shopkeeper and grocery clerk and the gomero who repairs flat tires.
My name? It is “Memo.”
Go figure.
This name was bestowed on me by a squirrely little guy who taught night courses in Spanish at the USDA in Washington, DC. It’s apparently the familiar or diminutive form of “Guillermo,” just as “Bill” is the familiar form of William. So, to the Spanish-speaking community in Las Galeras I am known as “Memo,” and everyone does know my name.
This is true, in part, because I physically stand out here. Big, middle-aged balding white guys are a dime a dozen in the United States and are not much more expensive in Santo Domingo–but we are still notable in the village of Las Galeras. I imagine that this will change over time, and that the change will come more rapidly once the aqueduct is complete and the road is rebuilt and the world economy recovers and tourist facilities are developed in and around this little village. But by then I suppose I will be an old man.
With these changes will come a flood of large men, many of them white and a number of who will be non-European. Until then, I’m one of an actual handful of Americans here and, as one member of this small group, am automatically imbued with a certain level of notoriety.
But I hope that is not why everyone knows my name. I hope it’s because I often stop and give someone a ride on the road or because I do not expect everyone to speak English and have the good sense to be amused and a little embarrassed by my own Spanish. Or maybe because I work alongside the help that we occasionally employ around the house or in the garden.
I will never be Dominican, but I think that “American-Dominican” non-Ugly variety is a worthy goal.
So we do stick out here, but the challenge and opportunities are not very different from those you encounter when integrating into a new community in the United States.
This is the first time that I got to change my name, though.
Bill
A note about software:
Maybe you are among the legion of users who grow weary of about a million software features that you never asked for, don’t need, and find confusing. I know that I am. And Microsoft is certainly the foremost offender in this regard.
But I can’t blame Microsoft for my recent hiccup in transmitting e-mail to you.
It seems that the Internet server providing satellite access to the Internet Cafe in Las Galeras uses a clever system to detect potential spam. I think that it works like this: when it detects a single message going out to a couple of hundred people it holds the message while it delves into the sender’s address book. When it confirms that a recipient is indeed in the sender’s address book, then the message is released for delivery.
Using an e-mail list does not confuse the verification process because the software is intelligent enough to burrow down and see if members of a particular list are also individually in the sender’s address book. HOWEVER, this anti-spam verification software does seem to be confused by LISTS OF LISTS, rather than the LISTS OF NAMES that it expects to find.
And so it has recently appeared to me as though mail has gone through, when in fact it has not.
I think that I’ve got this figured out now and, be assured, you’re on my list. At least until you tell me otherwise.
We can talk about Microsoft later, eh?
Bill
Tags: Dominican Republic, Las Galeras, Living in the Dominican Republic, Retire, Retirement, Samana