A suburban house in a medieval village

We we first arrived in our Peace Corps site, I was surprised to discover that our small mountain village near the Haitian border was full of American suburban-style houses. They might be made entirely of concrete but they follow essentially the same "ranch" style floor plan that I grew up in.
Even the lot sizes are similar. 




It makes sense when you date the construction - 1990 - and for other reasons that I'll get to later but it was still something of a shock. A slightly bigger shock was discovering that our new neighbors raise pigs in their "suburban" backyard.




It's just enough space for the two pigs to roam and wallow as nature intended with room fo the out-buildings.

I shouldn't have been surprised and the host family where we initially lived raised chickens, and I later learned  (that is to say, I noticed) that the neighbors on the other side raised chickens and pigs. And that my preferred chofer raises rabbits in his backyard. And that people graze mules on their front lawns.

I also shouldn't have been surprised since this type of homesteading was once common in the U.S. and is only a generation or two out of fashion. And what is more it is coming back into fashion. Maybe not pigs, but a backyard flock has been a pretty cool things to have in certain circles for a few years now. Also, I actually used to work for an organization that promotes backyard "farming" as a solution to food scarcity in poor neighborhood.  But that was in the inner city, in the poor neighborhoods not far from the cool neighborhoods where people raise chickens. The American suburbs have staked out their identity by being located squarely between the city and the country while being neither.

I suppose that the suburban style houses made me think on some unconscious level that the pattern of living had something in common with the American suburbs, when in reality where I live is more like a medieval village, with the population clustered in the middle of productive agriculture lands.

When Americans think of farming they think of a large swath of land with a single house in the middle of it, like a lordly manor or castle. This layout works when you have lots of land to raise commodity crops like corn or soy in huge quantities and reflects our individualist culture.  But Dominicans collectivist culture doesn't lend itself to that and nor does the distribution of land. It's hard to grow row crops on the steep slopes of the hills outside (or regrettably, sometimes inside) the national park and in case most people don't own land in enough quantities to make it profitable. Some grow corn as feed but that is in flat parts and those families are few. Most grow a few tarea of cafe or abichuelas (beans) or other staple crops for home consumption and supplement with the kind of backyard ganadería (livestock) or other sources of income if they are fortunate enough to have it.

Last weekend was the Día de la Virgen de Nuestras Mercedes (The Day of the Virgin of our Mercies) and a friend invited Cat and I to a fiesta on his family finca (farm). After a short Catholiic oración before a shrine inside a small house called a rancho we got down to the business of drinking and dancing to merengue típico under the roof of an outdoor pavilion.

"Why do you have the party all the way out here?" I asked my friend.

"We used to live out here!" he shouted over the music. "There was a small pueblecito (village) out here - mostly my family. My abuelo was the last one out here after everyone else moved to town."

This pueblecito was one of many that moved into the main pueblo when the concrete houses were built. I don't know if incentivizing relocation was part of the governments plan when they built the houses but it makes perfect sense from a services perspective. Centralization makes it easier to set up public services like electricity and water.

The rodillas y llanuras (foothills and valleys) that surround the pueblo are cut through with alambre barbed-wire that marks the boundaries of family property. Some of these used to house small family settlements like my friends'. His property is about 2 km outside of town, which is a short distance by motorcycle but a long distance on foot in the rain. Many men and hired hands make a similar trip everyday.

When I think about this daily journey out of town, from home to work, the first word that comes to mind is "commute." In a sense, it is pretty suburban after all.