Thoughts on the Third World

There's a movie I have seen about the Third World. Actually it's not one film but many, so many that I can't recall one specifically. An exotic montage of unrelated images run together in my mind.

You know exactly what I'm talking about: crowded market places teeming with brown people chattering in non-English, farm animals walking in the street alongside motorized vehicles, auto exhaust shimmering in the heat, beggars missing limbs. The images are quickly intercut and jarring, setting the scene until Indiana Jones or some other asshole comes charging through.

I live in the Third World now. The Human Development Index in parts of the Dominican Republic is on par with parts of Africa, even near the capitol city. I have seen all the images listed above, here, in my own life. But this does not tell the whole story of this place. The DR is no more a Third World cliché than I am Indiana Jones.

The residencial where I live gets water two times a week. I get to brush my teeth everyday because my house has a cistern beneath where Don Pedro parks the car. One of my neighbors keeps horse in his garage and I have seen cows grazing in a vacant lot. But Santo Domingo has a metro that will get you downtown safely and cleanly - it is much better maintained that the one in San Francisco. The government recently established nueve once -  911 - to handle emergency calls. We have the only IKEA in the Caribbean.

Sometimes when I am walking, I can believe that I am in that Third world cliché. The woman who passes me in the street is loudly hawking avocados from a bowl balanced on her head. She is so thin that she has to be hungry. The sidewalk that we share is mostly rubble. We are inches away from a road speeding with motocicletas that carry three passengers plus the driver, none of whom are wearing helmets. And then I turn the corner and enter the parking lot of a supermercado, air-conditioned and as well-stocked as any Walmart. They play, and sell, American pop music.

The rapid switch can be jarring, but more jarring is how regularly these two worlds overlap. People in my barrio walk for exercise in new sneakers but brandish big sticks to fend off perros callejeros (stray dogs). The man behind me at the ATM has a machete in his belt and I am unafraid because I know that it is used from chopping caña (sugar cane) and not unsuspecting victims. The guagua (bus) that takes me across town has broken seats and missing doors but the one that takes me across the country has wifi. I can write this blog on my laptop as it charges because today is not Saturday. That's when the luz (electricity) goes out. The power company schedules the day of the shortage but not the hour.