The economic history of my town told in 7 houses

Before the Massacre

My mountain valley pueblo didn't used to be a Dominican town along the Haitian border. It used to be a sparsely populated part of Haiti along the border of the Dominican Republic. It's original name is Gabinzal, which I have been told translates to "dirty cane" in Haitian Creole.

When two very poor nations share a common rural border it is not uncommon for the line to be fuzzier in real life than it appears on the map. For much of it's history Haitian-Dominican border was  often in dispute, sometimes violently so. My town it didn't become a clear part of Dominican possession until after the Parsley Massacre of 1937 in which thousands of Haitians in the disputed territories were killed at the order of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Trujillo's continued to "secure" the border by building la careterra internacional (international highway) along the line on the map and building colonias ("colonies") of recently released prisoners and their families on the Dominican side. (I don't know how these men landed in prison but given Trujillo's penchant for locking up and/or murdering opponents I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt). 

This was the beginning of the story of my town. The rest of it is told in the different types of houses you can see walking around town.

1. Trujillo House 


Old timers tell me that in those days there was a wall around the settlement. Inside the wall were 28 homes built by the government, with wooden floors and walls and zinc roofs.

This modest home may not be one of the originals but it has the same form. This is a classic "campo house" design that is seen all over the country in rural areas.

2. Choza
The original settlers were satisfied enough with where they landed: clean water, lots of unoccupied land, good timber. and others began to follow. The colony began to grow as word spread to family, friends and others. These newcomers did not receive government constructed houses and had to do with local materials.

With time the original government houses were outnumbered by small chozas ("huts") with walls of woven branches and roofs thatched with yagua - the part of a palm leaf that connects to the trunk of the tree. In those days, no one was rich but the families in the chozas were even poorer than those in the wooden houses.

These days, a few chozas exist on the outskirts of own and they are still inhabited by the poorest of the poor: Haitian immigrants.

3. Ladrillo House
For fascinating reasons far too complicated to go into here, my town came to the attention of a a group of volunteers from Northern Europe in the early and mid-1980s. Much of the infrastructure in town, from buildings to institutions, can trace its roots to this admirable group. But instead of mere charity the volunteers worked alongside Dominicans, teaching them construction techniques using natural materials. The ladrillo (bricks) are made of the native clay of the soil.

These houses are handsome and durable but few. The program was successful but short-lived. The new "president" of the DR has other plans.

4. Balaguer House, unmodified
Joaquin Balaguer was Rafael Trujillo's right-hand man. While his legacy is less universally evil than his bosses  - Balaguer's environmental policies were particularly admirable - he shared his master's obsession with fortifying the border. In the late 80s he began the construction of 150 concrete block houses with reinforced cement roofs. Whereas Trujillo built homes to establish Dominicans on the border, Balaguer built houses to incentivize Dominicans to stay.

Cat and I live in one of these houses. They are built of cinder block and have the indestructible feeling of bomb shelters. But durability does not guarantee wealth. Here the poverty of the occupants is obvious: subsistence farming has left them with little money to modify or even maintain it over the course of the last 30 years.

5. Wooden house with block base and zinc roof 
While this house is nearly identical in layout to the Trujillo house it is more valuable because of the durable concrete block foundation. 

While smaller than either the brick house or block house and more modest in appearance it is a more reliable indicator of wealth because the owners of the house built it themselves without help from neither government or foreign volunteers.

6. Non-balaguer block house: In the rural economy cinder blocks are practically a currency. As with the last house, the owners of this home had enough to build themselves a handsome, sturdy home.

The parabola (satellite dish) is also a clue to the owners wealth.

7. Modified Balaguer block house:

With his public housing program, Joaquin Balaguer didn't just build homes. He created a source of wealth in the community. These houses are prized for their solid construction and modern design (they come with indoor plumbing and electric outlets). The recipients received a title to the home and land, which means they were legally able to sell them.

When a house is sold it is usually to a person rich enough to maintain and sometimes expand upon it. This house is owned by the one of the wealthiest couples in town and has been so thoroughly modified you can scarcely recognize the original design.

Nice to be noticed!

My entry "A Day in the Life of Hombre Serio Cero" has been republished on the Peace Corps website! They trimmed off some of the fat but the meat remains.

I put a lot of time into this blog so it's nice to know that I'll have chance to reach a broader audience.

What a Dollar is Worth

As I write this the current exchange rate is about 47 Dominican pesos to one US dollar. It has been pretty stable throughout my PC service, fluctuating around the 45 peso mark. When converting in my head I round it up to 50 for simplicity's sake.

Dolla dolla bill y'all.

Here is a list of things that cost about 50 pesos or $1 USD.

• 1 botellón (5 gallons) of water safe for the foreign stomach.

A single serve (.5 liter) bottle of water? 10 RD ($.20 USD).

• 50 minutos of cell service 
• .175 liters of VERY low quality rum 

The local nickname for this stuff is chiribita - "sparks."

I can easily eat a full meals worth of calories for less than $1 USD.  50 RD buys:

• 5 sobres de avena lista (individual packets of instant oatmeal)
• 5 heads of ajo (garlic)
• 5 heads of organic butter lechuga (lettuce)
• 10 individually wrapped loaves of "bread" (think hotdog buns).  
• 10 huevos (eggs) bought wholesale by the carton of 25.
• 1 lata of tomatoes

• One used gorra, bought from a street vendor. It seems to be the standard price for a piece of previously worn clothing.

The last time I wore this, a woman called me Donald Trump

.

All of this probably seems pretty comparable to US readers, and it is, until we get to big ticket stuff.

For instance, that same $1 US will cover 2.5 months of our municipal water bill.

50 RD will also buy a 45 minute ride to the nearest town. Sure it's only 7 miles but gas is a lot more expensive here. When I left San Francisco (a 7x7 city) the going rate was $2.25 USD (112.50 RD) for any ride of any length.

A complete shave and a haircut? 100 RD, ($2 US). And by haircut, I mean "straight razor shave to the scalp", why is my preferred style. In a big city, I would pay 200 RD ($4 US) for such service.

A hotel room in Santiago, the nearest big city, is 750 RD ($15 US) a night.  Sure, the accommodations are on par with Motel 6, but it's located in the heart of downtown.

The largest single expense Cat and I pay each month is rent. For a fully furnished, 3 bedroom ranch style house with fruit trees in the back yard we pay 3750 RD - about $75 USD. I defy you to find a place in the US where you could rent a single room for so little. This $75 was after we bargained down from 4000 RD ($80 US) and locals still think we are getting ripped off. A Dominican family would expect to pay about 2000 RD ($40 US) for the same house sans furniture.  

Cat and I had an in depth conversation about money on her podcast El Cuerpo de Cuentos:

• Episode 1
• Episode 2

On the Road

I just got back from the capital. I was there for a Peace Corps Conference to mark the 1 year of service in country. The journey is about 330 km, or 200 miles.

The DR is roughly the size of Maryland

Google Maps says that the journey should about 5.5 hours. A pair of capitaleños were in town recently and they made the journey in less than that but they did it in the middle of the night and had a hot shit 4x4 vehicle to navigate the rough roads.

August 2016

In the US, I can imagine a town-to-town journey of that distance taking as little as 3 hours, depending on traffic. On public transit in the Dominican Republic it usually takes Cat and I around 7 to 9 hours. The first 1.5 are spent just getting to the nearest paved road.

Conditions of the road vary depending on the rain. We're in the middle of the rainy season now and things have been deteriorating steadily, so that 1.5 is now about 2 for a journey of 35 km. The grader truck that comes by 2 or 3 times a year won't be by until the pause in rain that comes in the fall.

I try not to think about it.

The dirt road intersects with the paved road at a military checkpoint where la guardia civil desultorily checks the papers of anyone who doesn't ¨look Dominican¨. Sometimes that includes me but normally it is limited to those of obvious Haitian descent. El chequeo is at one of the peaks in the mountain range and afterwards our route to town is a descent down a curvy mountain road.  

I do this in the back of a pick up truck - the cabina is reserved for ladies, children, and the elderly - so I literally need to hang on to my hat. Passengers share space with the cargo: crops for sale going to market, empty gas tanks or empty water bottles that need refilling, etc. Sometimes, it's standing room only.

At least 10 more will fit in comfortably.

Two or three trucks leave the every morning. They are the only reliable transport out of town. It's possible to get a later lift but far from certain. If you want to be sure to make it to your destination you leave early.

The truck drops us in town outside the small local office of a large bus company: Caribe Tours. Accommodations are comparable to a Greyhound bus but in term of cultural importance CT is American Airlines.

I am a veteran long distance bus rider: I haven't owned a car since I was 19 and I am almost twice old that now. For much of my early adulthood I was too broke for airfare. In my early 20s, when every trip outside of Michigan was worth hours of discomfort, I considered any trip under 24 hours to be short. I took the bus as far east as Rhode Island, as far south as Atlanta, and far West as the boot-heel of New Mexico. A journey of 6 hours doesn't phase me.

The bus makes stops in most of the towns along the route, including a 10 minute break in Santiago, the DRs second largest city. I usually sleep part or most of the way.

We arrive in the early afternoon. From the main parada (bus stop) in the capital it is another half hour to the retreat center. Instead of a guagua (local bus) or carro público (imagine a sedan with 7 people in it that drives a fixed route), we opt for a direct cab. As it is an official PC event we get reimbursed for the passage: otherwise the trip would cost nearly 1000 pesos each - exactly 1/14 of my monthly salary.

The conference was held in the same retreat center where we were first received upon arrival in country. It was nice to see it again. The opportunity to catch up with old friends and share our experiences of the past year made the journey worth the while.

This view didn't hurt either.

A Day in the Life of Hombre Serio Cero

This is not the story of any one particular day.  Some days I am not nearly this productive and - and some days I have even more to do. What follows is a sketch of the "average" day.

04:00 Awake to the sound of screaming roosters.

04:30 Fall back asleep after much tossing and turning.

06:30 Alarm on cell phone. Wake up and get up.

06:30 - 07:30 Morning meditation and old man stretches.

07:30 - 08:30 Breakfast: black coffee and oatmeal. Brush teeth, shower and shave.

08:30 Holler into the street to remind neighborhood muchachos about math lesson at 9 AM.

08:45 - 09:15 Talk about the day ahead with Cat

09:20 - 10:10 Math lesson with two or three muchachos. It's a surprising amount of effort but is a good way to warm up my Spanish for the day.

10:15 Leave for the community bank, in theory a two minute walk.

10:30 Arrive at savings bank having briefly chatted with at least five neighbors and politely but firmly resisted at least one invitation to sit and have coffee.

10:30 - 10:45 Chat with the cajera (teller) catching up on important local news: deaths in the night upcoming and/or religious holidays I might not not know about.

Most important: is the Señor (my project partner) in today? He was but he left on an errand while I was teaching math. When real news gives way to chisme (gossip) I know it's time to get to work.

11:00 I finally sit at my desk. I review my email and calendar to see if I have any reports due to Peace Corps (they are surprisingly frequent). Nothing today, but I do have an appointment with a business student at 02:30.

11:15 - 1:00 I review my notes about what the Señor and I need to discuss, writing an informal agenda of questions and bullet points. To avoid about 15 minutes of increasingly frustrating back-and-forth questions, I take special pains to identify and look up any jargon that I don't know necessary jargon: e.g., "Cartera de prestamos" (loan portfolio).

12:00 - 12:45 I review notes and terminology for the afternoon's appointment and print out and examples of simple accounting ledgers for us to practice with.

12:45 - 12:50 I repeat the same hello/goodbye gauntlet on the way "home" (host mother's house across the street from where we actually live) for lunch. It takes less time because less people are outside in the the mid-day heat. The president of the bank's credit committee is on his front porch, in the shade. I stop to remind him of the meeting we have scheduled one week from today.

12:50 - 13:50 Lunch, la bandera in all it's glory: beans, rice, a little bit of pollo criollo (backyard chicken) still on the bone, and a mayonnaise-based salad featuring boiled, cubed tayota squash.

During the meal, I help Host-Mom badger Host Brother into getting ready for school.

Cat shows up at 13:30, done up for the afternoon class session and whisks off Host Brother with her.

I let the food settle as I watch the last half of a telenovela with Host-Mom. We chat about the silly plot and how her grown kids in the big city are doing. I let her know that Host Brother behaved himself during the morning math lessons and is really starting to get the hang of it.

13:50 -14:00 Sit at home with the doors and windows shut so I can enjoy an afternoon cup of coffee in peace and quiet.

14:05 I arrive back at the office, having said adios to anyone who said saludo to me - which is culturally appropriate and I greatly appreciate it. While I wait for the 14:30 appointment I write idle fragments of poetry. 

14:45 My 2:30 appointment arrivals.

2:50 - 15:30 After small talk we get to work. Instead of reviewing the practice ledgers, she wants to talk about getting a loan for her small business. We talk about the pros and cons of loans and how they aren't always necessary even if you qualify for one. We brainstorm likely expenses to put together a budget for her project. Around 3 PM el Señor pokes his head in to let me know he's here.

15:30 -16:30 Finally sit down with the Señor. We discuss his oficios (errands) outside of the pueblo: business or personal? As always, both.

On the agenda: the accountant says we should increase the size of the loan portfolio if we want to offset our troubling spending deficit. He also recommends initiating a promotion campaign to promote other financial products. Is that realistic with a staff of one and a half people?

The door is open so we notice when the President of the Board of Directors comes in for a routine transaction. The Señor and I form a friendly tag team and force him into an impromptu meeting. We review all of the above. The afternoon rain kicks in, keeping us inside a little longer than planned.

16:45 - 17:45  Home sweet home. I sit in the shelter of my front porch and scribble notes for this blog entry while I watch muchachos play in the street.  The mom of one collects laundry that she has hung on the barbwire outside my house and lets me know she has an English exam at the university next Monday. Could we study tonight?

18:00 - 18:00 We practice English in her out-kitchen as screaming children run in and out. In 30 minutes we have maybe 15 of actual concentration but she is steadily coming along. I leave because the sun is setting and the light will come late tonight.

18:30 - 19:30 Romantic dinner by candlelight with Cat: lentil soup (she made it) supplemented with individually wrapped single-serving pieces of bread from the colmado ("corner store"). Cat tells me we are running low on key provisions (e.g. lentils) that we can't get in the pueblo. We talk schedule and logistics about heading into the nearest big city - an entire days errand. We realize we can't go tomorrow but the day after works. It's been a while and it will be nice to take a break from our campo.

19:30 - 19:45 Romantic dish washing by candlelight.

19:50 We hear the scrape of the front gate against the sidewalk and the tell-tale call of  "¡Vecinos!" (neighbors). It is, of course, Fulano. We are tired but he is a good friend so we invite him to sit on the front porch. While we chat, the evangelical church three houses over commences and it's raucous service. We botar Fulano at 20:30 because we are tired.

20:30 - 21:30 Meditate, brush teeth and collapse into bed with a good book by light of electric, solar-powered lantern. The church service has wrapped up.

22:00 Pitch black tranquility gives way to an impromptu celebration as the light arrives. Every family on the street turns on their televisions all at once and the corner store turns on loud music just for the hell of it. So much for reading! Cat and I load an episode of /Narcos/ on the laptop.

23:15 All at once everyone remembers that they have to go farming tomorrow morning. The TV and music go silent. Cat and I close our eyes. Somewhere, for some reason, dogs begin to bark in the darkness startling a lone rooster who begins to crow.

"Away"

The tube burst again.

We've been 8 days without agua but there has been no rain.

So, I walk this dog . . .

. . . along this path . . .

.. . . to this cañada . . .

. . . to fill buckets to flush the toilet. (We have, no joke, asked our landlord to install una latrina - an outhouse.)

This little pilgrimage takes me past these modest homes.

This is one of the Haitian enclaves in town.  Here, there is no running water and no electricity. Food is cooked over a fogón -  a "stove" that, lacking a chimney, is basically an indoor campfire. When we signed up for Peace Corps service these are the type of living conditions that I imagined Cat and I would experience, but to be honest, I'm glad we don't. I am grateful for the luz and water - fitful though they might be.

This particular enclave only has two houses. There are other houses much larger. For the most part the Haitian community of our pueblo lives in the old houses where the Dominicans lived before the installation of the concrete houses that give the pueblo it's congnitive-dissonance-inducing suburban appearance.  The enclaves themselves tend to be on foot trails off the main, paved streets.

These homes are often literally behind the homes of Dominicans, like a shadow. This is sadly appropriate. The Haitians make up a good half of the population in town and do more than half of the agricultural labor in town - the type of work that many Dominicans have left (or hope to leave) behind as their increasingly educated children head to university instead of the finca. That is to say, as their society develops.

I have written 30+ entries in this blog and this is my third about water scarcity. I write about it because it is a much bigger part of my life here than I anticipated, because I find it interesting, and, because it helps me process the stress of the experience.

I hope that it doesn't sound like complaining because I know that however challenging this is to me, it is that much harder for the inhabitants of these humble houses.

In your face

So this happened:



(It happens a lot actually). Pictured is the ruptured tubería that brings agua from a gravity-fed aqueduct to our pueblo. As you may have guessed, we don't have water right now. We haven't for a week, actually, which is the longest dry run since we moved here.

We haven't bathed in the better part of a week and have restricted dish-washing to once a day. Our standard go-to-meal - soup - has been replaced with something less liquid intensive. Thankfully, it is raining. A lot. I have written previously about how we often have less water when it rains due to the peculiarities of the aqueduct but that was in the summer when the rain would knock out the pipe and then promptly disappear. Now, in the tropical winter the rain comes, on average, a couple hours a day. So at least we don't have to hike to the river to replenish our stores. We can collect it more or less directly from the roof.



The dictator that built our house didn't think to include rain-gutters in the design so we need to locate strategic corners.




Each of these buckets holds about 2 gallons of water. We have been using the rainwater to off-set the water we use from our main storage tanks, which we fill from fresh water from the tap. 5 buckets * 2 = 10 gallons, or about 1/4 of one of our storage tanks. What are we doing with all this water, you ask, if we are not cooking, washing, or bathing much?

We`re pouring it directly down the drain.



This jarra is about 4 liters, or one approximately 1 gallon. If we aim it right we can flush with just the jarra but if there's a lot of waste it might require an entire cubo. Or two. In one day, if we are not careful, we can literally flush 10+ gallons of water down the toilet. When things work as they should we can waste this water without thinking. But when things break down you can't lift the lid without the waste being in your face.

When Cat and I first moved to our house we were relieved to see that it had a proper inódoro as opposed to a latrine but now we are considering asking our landlord to install one. There are many houses here that have both. At first I thought this was anachronism but now recognize its utility. In makes sense in the same way that many houses keep their solar panels even though there is luz de la calle. Or how many homes maintain a fogón (wood-fired stove) in a separate outbuilding away in case the gas goes out.

Left: el tanque. Right: la estufa. Center: la goma that makes it all work.

When the gas goes out it is not because of infrastructure fracaso like el agua, or irregularity, like la luz but because there are no gas lines here. To fill your propane tank you pay your friendly neighborhood chofer to load it in the back of his camioneta (pick up truck) and take it to the nearest filling station, located conveniently 2 hours away. His surcharge is reasonable because he know how important it is.

But if you've had a bad harvest, or the market is bad, you just might not be able to afford it. It pays to have back up even if it means la mujer spends the better part of the day tending the fire and inhaling woodsmoke while the muchachos fetch firewood instead of going to school. This contributes to deforestation, of course, but that is a secondary concern to poor, hungry people trying to feed their families.

A few weeks back I wrote about how "suburban" this mountain village sometimes feels, but these superficial similarities hide profound differences.  The differences I speak of here are not just the gap between the level of infrastructural development but also the extra time that this gap adds to everyday tasks and the subsequent psychic toll it takes on individual aspirations.

At a similar house in the US the utilities arrive with such regularity that people literally don't even think about where they come from or at what cost. They are thus free to think of other things: their careers, their children's education, etc. Cat and I talk about a projects a lot but we talk about water even more. We talked about it much less in the United States, despite inhabiting a state in the midst of a five year drought.



We recently baked a birthday cake. We used a special stove-top pan (the oven uses way too much gas) and mixed everything by hand because there were no electric appliances. It took 5 hours. Without a gas-powered dryer and a single chamber washing machine, doing the laundry takes the better part of the day. And this requires the right combination of sunshine, running water, and luz. This doesn't happen every day. We try to plan for it, sometimes even plan our week around it, but if that day finally comes after too many days without our plans change. Instead of going to work, we stay home and wash clothes.

In this context it is obvious why parts of the Dominican Republic are so slow to "develop," why it is so hard to get a parents group going at the school, why people are so reluctant to volunteer for the advisory councils that oversee the savings cooperative. It's not that people in the campo don't care about these things, but like the environment these are secondary concerns. When resources limits are right in your face it can be hard took think about anything else.

Buen provecho, buen tiempo

When you see someone eating in the DR it is customary to wish them "Buen provecho," which more or less translates to "Bon appetit." This is a ritualized greeting. You say it like you say "salud" (health) when someone sneezes. This is more common in the campo than in the city, which leads me to believe it is an older custom.

You are especially obliged to say "buen provecho" if someone sees you see them eating and first wishes you "A buen tiempo." Not responding to "a buen tiempo" with "buen provecho" is straight up rude, like not saying "You're welcome" when someone thanks you.

Confused? Allow me to translate.

A buen tiempo means literally "A good time."

Buen provecho means literally "good advantage" or "good benefit."

Still confused? Don't feel bad. This custom continued to mystify Cat and I long after we had adopted it ourselves. I recall clearly a visit not long after we arrived in site while we were making our initial introductions to the community. We entered a house to find an older man eating who was quick to wish us a buen tiempo. Seconds ticked by painfully and his smile turned to a frown. He stared at us impatiently as if we were holding him up. "Buen provecho," he prompted us. Only Cat stammered "buen provecho" did he return to eating, clearly annoyed at our maleducación.

Later, at home we attemped to process the incident together.

"What the hell was that about?"

"I don't know!"

We imagined the encounter in English.

"Good times over here!"

"Well, good on you for taking advantage of it!"

Guandules, pigeon peas. ¡Good times!

What kind of person, when eating, looks at a stranger who is clearly not eating and not only brags about what a good time they are having but also gets mad when the possibly hungry person doesn't congratulate them? It seemed uncouth. Especially since Dominicans in the campo are normally so polite and generous.

Maybe it was a hunger thing. The people in our pueblo are mostly well-fed but real hunger, as in not having enough food, persists within living memory. Or maybe it was sarcastic?

"Check it out! I'm eating!"

"Good for you, daddy-o!"

Whatever. The first days, weeks, months, were intense and overwhelming. We accepted this bizarre custom like we accepted the fact that people dip bread in their hot chocolate and call that dinner. Culture is just weird sometimes. It can't be helped. It's like in English how the correct answer to "How are you?" is "I'm fine," regardless of how you really feel.  What's truly weird is not to play along.

Well, after 8 months in country and 6 months in site we have finally figured it out. We now have friends with enough confianza that we can ask delicate questions and our Spanish has advanced to the point that we can understand the nuance of their answers. So we asked. (Cat did).

It turns out that we had all the pieces of the puzzle but had just put them together in the wrong order. Yes, Dominicans are generous and polite. Yes, real hunger is a thing here. Yes, it is important to wish someone "a good advantage" when they are eating, especially if they first tell you what a good time they are having.

Because A buen tiempo is not a brag.  It's an invitation to dine.  As in, "Come share this good time with me." And when you wish them buen provecho you are saying "No, I'll be happier if you to take advantage of that." It's a mutual expression of care. Beyond polite, this is generous. And it means so much more in a society where hunger is still a thing.

So now when I greet my rounds and saludar my neighbors I always respond to their "buen tiempo" with "buen provecho." That is, if I don't beat them to it first!

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.

On living without running water

Before we moved out, Cat asked our host mother if people in the pueblo collect rain water. We lived on the Big Island of Hawaii for a while, which has a similar climate and rains a similar amount. There, the people use catchment tanks the size of above-ground swimming pools as either their principal source of water or to guardar it in case there is a drought.

Our Dominican mom said ¨No, not since they installed the acueducto." Most of the houses have running water now, though some poorer families still take plastic buckets to the river. Later, after a couple of days of steady rain, the water stopped coming out of the tap and we put out buckets to collect the rainfall.

Yes, you read that right. When it rains a lot we are less likely to have water. The acueducto draws from the river in las rodillas of the mountain nearby. Due to erosion free flowing sediment sometimes clogs the pipes. When this happens you abre el llave and the pipe coughs like an asthmatic.

The longest we've gone without water is five days. When we moved house one of the first things we bought was a 50 gallon tanque and a mangera (hose) to fill it with. I just passed 3 days by myself (Cat's in the capital for a conference) with no water from the llave and was able to get along fine thanks to the tanque. Instead of taking a shower, I washed myself from a bucket. Instead of flushing the toilet, I dumped a bucket in the bowl. Instead of filling the sink to wash dishes, I- you get the idea.

This machine has changed my life.

The water from the llave is safe use to brush your teeth but not safe to swallow. You have to boil it if you are going to cook with it. For straight drinking we use a botellón, which you might recognize from your office water cooler. This purified water costs $50 RD (a little more than a dollar) a jug and lasts the two of us about a week.



When we walked to Naranjito the guías drank straight from the river near the acueducto. I have heard that the water is generally cleaner and safer straight from the source but I declined to follow their example. They probably wouldn't have let me either, being concerned for my safety as they were.

I have tried the agua filtrada, though, and I did not die. The filters are a previous PC project. All of the houses I have visited have them in their out kitchen. The local water is heavy with calcium and prior to filters the incidence of kidney stones was alarmingly high. There are three filters in the acueducto system but I believe they only filter particulate matter.

And that water? It´s cold. I have yet to encounter a hot water heater in this country, even in the capital. I imagine they exist in the all inclusive resorts where the high energy cost can be bundled into the price of the package. But out here Cat heats up her bath the shower "traditional" way by putting a plastic jug, ideally painted black, in the sun to heat up over the course of the day.

"Solar Power"

Not being able to rely on either water or power makes doing laundry an extra chore. Poorer families still use the river while wealthy (relatively speaking) people have washing machines. This still takes time more time than back home, though. The type of machine than can run on a solar inversor has only one chamber, which means you have to rinse off excess soap in a bucket. There are no gas lines to power machines so the wash needs to hang on a line or the roof to dry. This is yet another example of how much extra time and works it takes to be poor. 

All this thinking about water hasn't facilitated the sort of change in consciousness that living without reliable luz has. California, the state where we lived for five years before coming here, is entering its 6th consecutive year of drought. Cat and I were a "if it's yellow, let it mellow" household there and we continue to be here, though I have taken to peeing in (you guessed it!) a bucket and later using it as fertilizer for the compost pile. I'll post an entry on tropical gardening as soon as I have something to take pictures of.

On living without power

I have electricity. Sometimes. Cat and I have it most of the time, actually, if we're careful. Which we usually are.

Our house has two sources of luz, actually. The first is the el panel. This was a gift from an NGO, I forget which, that gave panels to the majority of la gente a few years ago.

It weighs about 20 lbs. I heft it up onto the roof every morning to and take it down every evening to keep it from growing legs and sneaking off in the night.

El panel came with the house we are renting. It connects to batteries that store the electricity it collects throughout the day.

These are connected to an inversor that connects to the wiring in the house. You turn on the inversor and voila! there's luz.
 

The second source is municipal electricity. You plug a cord into the wall and there's power. It works exactly like in the US except that it doesn't work all the time. Sometimes there's just not power. Most of the time, actually. This is common throughout the country, even in the Santo Domingo (link to thoughts on the third world), though para alla and in other places that have political capital there's a schedule. Not here.

La luz arrived in the pueblo shortly before we did. In this town, lacking a paved road to connect it to the rest of the world the sight of concrete palos de luz (streetlights) along the hillside seems shockingly modern. Especially when el cable connects to a wooden house with a zinc roof.

When the la luz is off we use the panel. There's a switch that flips between the two.



These two sources more or less keep us in la luz 24/7. Just like the US, right? Wrong. La luz literally means "light," and the current in the inversor isn't good for much more than that. We can charge our phones and laptop, but forget about having a refrigerator.

The house of our host mom had a hefty inversor system gifted by a son who is a técnico de la luz. It has two car batteries and an inversor of the same size. For point of comparison, our inversor is the size of a paperback dictionary.

Even with this system her TV and fridge can't run at the same time. When using panel electricity the food only stays fresh-ish: leftovers don't keep that long but at least the lettuce doesn't wilt. And that TV? It's just a TV and quite modest at that: no DVD, no home stereo system, no Xbox, etc. All of that uses more electricity than a small home solar system can provide.

Some people still have that stuff but they can only use it when la luz is on. We can tell when it's time to switch from the inversor when our neighbor is bumping Rihanna.

This makes for a lot of small differences that add up to a significantly different lifestyle. For example, people don't have carpet here. Maybe this is because it's not a very "tropical" thing but ask yourself if you would have wall to wall rugs that couldn't be shaken out if you couldn't reliably run a vacuum cleaner. The same is true for power tools. They work when la luz is on but when you're relying on an inversor any motor with a good torque makes the lights blink.

There is a phrase I have been thinking about lately, one I have read in older texts: "all the modern conveniences." These are the things to which those words refer.

Life can still get lived, and quite well, without them. It's just less convenient. Things take longer and require more work. Which mean more labor. In the DR where power is inconsistent you see two things that used to be ubiquitous in the US but are less common these days: full time housewives and domestic help.

I think that it's no stretch to say that the edifice of modern feminism was founded on a platform of cheap energy, but that's another essay for another blog.

Another entry for this blog might be an investigation into where la luz comes from and why it is so irregular. I have done zero research but I'll dare speculate that it has something to do with the fact that DR is an island that, unlike my homeland, does not span a continent and cannot mine it's own coal.

This is one reason I am skeptical of the idea of a purely green future in which everything runs on paneles and wind farms with nary a smokestack or topless mountain to blot la vista. For this to work we would need to less energy, but instead we are using ever more. I am using electricity to write these words and you are using it to read them right now, aren't you?

Our community has a Centro de Tecnológico that it's full of computers. They run great when la luz is on. When it's not, it runs off it's own generator which is the size of a minivan.




That black stuff on the pipe? That´s soot from exhaust.