My mysteries family...

In Santo Domingo, I am living with Santos, his 2 years old son, and his young sweet girlfriend. Santos is taking good care of me, providing a good room with bathroom, and any support I need. His son Chris is an active, very handsome little man, whose love to play sometimes limits my ability to work and study, but anyway he is a funny mate. And Maria, the girl friend is cooking and cleaning and washing and still manages to share her warm smile with me all the time.

My big man (he is about 2 metres and 120 kgs!!) is 28 years old LAW student. He has a nice house in Invi-Mosa, an eastern periphery of SD inhabited by mostly middle-low income working class families. His car is a white sport Cadillac, a bit old but definitely much more run-down than its age. As most of the men here, Santos also does not do much domestic work like cleaning, cooking, washing, buying food etc. He spend lots of time in his bedroom, watching TV, using computer... I wonder a lot what he actually does, if he works for instance. It was a big mystery for me.. He told me he works with his father, who is the leader of the transportation federation of Santo Domingo. But doing what???

And one night, the night Santos finished all of his coursework for the university, the mystery revealed when I returned to the house. I came to the house and there were boxes everywhere. There were hundreds of DVDs in another corner of the house, mostly Van Damme, Stallone, Arnold movies, porns and some blockbusters. Then I went to the bedroom of Santos, where I saw three teenagers, and three huge computers with lots and lots of DVD writers. One of the boys were in front of the computer changing the DVDs all the time, another one was printing DVD covers with 2 color printing and constantly filling the printers with ink and the third one, a girl was cutting the DVD colors with scissor and finalising the process. They were working as a machine, seemed to be accustomed to what they were doing and taking the work very seriously. Then I learnt that 2 of them were the nephews of Santos. After that night, every following night up until now, they have been coming to the house at night and working until 2 AM. Now the workshop is moved to the living room, where there are more space for more efficient production.

At least now I know one of the works Santos is doing, my future lawyer friend is a copied DVD baron. :) Once again, it is a beautiful combination of an informal and formal, an illegal and legal.. Of course, other than enjoying this sort of colorful household life, I was using the extensive DVD archive since that first night.

Guaguas, motoconchos, chaos and beauty...

Whilst i was going to work from my home with a GUAGUA (mini-bus) this morning, a huge green truck crashed into a white SUV (see the photo above). Hearing the sound of the accident all the people in the guagua turned towards the accident and started discussing about it.. At the same moment, in our guagua, which was initially produced to carry more or less 20 people, there were about 40 people, all packed and extremely vulnerable to any traffic accident. People were shocked about the experience, which was really difficult to understand for me when considering the overall condition of transportation in Santo Domingo (SD).

Transportation of SD is controlled by total chaos. For sure, living a year and half in London has soften and "civilised" my attitudes towards traffic, even though i come from a country that is proud with the level of chaos on its roads. However, something is really special here, in Santo Domingo. Chaos has another meaning, taste and beauty. It is much more raw, in your face, wild.. And much more accepted as part of the "normal" life. Here, when traffic stacks, when cars crash into each other, or even when people almost die, it is not so much important.. There is no regulation, or an authority to shape, to better the transportation. Therefore, the invisible hand arranges itself.

In such a context, the extremes obviously become really really extreme. I mean, the other day i was in a guagua going back home. Another guagua in front of us broke down. And for about 10 minutes, our guagua pushed the other one by hitting to its rear and causing an acceleration. Of course passengers were coming and going at this time, and couple of times, the pushing activity got really out of control.. These 2 guaguas had passed couple of cops on the way and it was completely OK. And finally, we the people realize there is something wrong with the situation and raised our voice.

Guaguas are part of the informal system of transportation in Dominican Republic, so as motoconchos and publicos. Apart from about a 10% of public contribution of municipalities to transportation, the rest of the workload is carried by these small private transporters. Guagua signifies a vehicle (bus, minibus, van) run by a driver and a cobrador (money man), which carries as many people as the space allows from one direction to another with a very loud Bachata music at the background. Publicos or carros are cars, usually rundown Japanese cars, that run along a route and carries about 6 people at any time. And finally, motoconchos are motorbike taxis that would carry you to your final destination. The common denominator of all of these vehicles are that they are usually extremely run-down and they all love Bachata. The beautiful part of this informal system is that it serves for poors at a very low cost and reaches almost all parts of the country. People are talkative, thus can be a space to socialise. For instance, the other night, in one of these guaguas, Mari (a lady at her 40s living around my neighbourhood) gave me her telephone number to drink some beers after talking 1 minute with me. The down sides are that they are highly uncomfortable, dangerous and causing so many traffic problems.

Majority of these transporters are part of a transportation union called Fenatra, the same organisation that is sponsoring me here to work on forced eviction. Father of William, my flatmate, is the president of Fenatra and William also works part-time with his father when has time from his petite-mafia activities, which i will write another time.

Finally, i am broadcasting from Santo Domingo...

I finally find my safe space (and free source of Internet) to keep the record of my new life in Dominican Republic (DR). I am having so many interesting and challenging experiences every single moment, meeting with so many new people that i am afraid i will not remember most of them and won´t be able to share with the loved ones, if any point i meet again..

So, i will be sharing stories, mostly non-fiction, about myself in DR, people i have meet, and general reflections. It will be retrospective and thematic, rather than sequential.

Here i am, sitting in my new office for the next 3 - 4 months, in the Ciudad Alternativa. The Ciudad Alternativa is a Santo Domingo based NGO, mainly working on the issues of urban development, urban poverty, participatory planning etc. It is a technical/professional NGO, working closely with communities and organised civil society. Today, through Marianella, i met with most of the people working here, about 22 people!!! They seems to be very organised and systematic, and resourceful. Mainly doing research on planning and advocacy work.

I had a warm welcome here, everybody trying to call my name and nobody succeeding.. I have been yesher, jesher, jasher, jashe, jashat etc. Nothing near to Yashar, or even Yasar!! There are two ladies in the kitchen, for preparing coffees and cleaning the offices. One work during the morning and the other at the afternoon. One is Senora Blanca (Mrs. White) and the other is Senora Negra (Mrs. Black)..

After work, i suppose to call Ellias, a hairdresser whom i met at my flat last night. After he learnt that i can speak English, he started to talk in English with his Borat-like accent, and ask, "hey my friend, do you want to fuk wuman? I know lots of wuman because i am a hairdresser.." Hehehehe. And i broke into laugh, after having a difficult day at the beach (yes, difficult day at the Caribbean beach, funny but true). Ellias was a bit disappointed with my laughter but i couldn't stop. I really wanted to spend some time alone at the beach after meeting with one million people in 2 weeks, and while lying down under the sun, it started to rain! And on the way back, the car broke down and we waited for 2 hours on the highway, and finally after everything fixed, just before arriving my house, another car crushed into ours.. At least before going to bed, i had some merengue classes from my flatmates!