República Dominicalcantarilla (destapada)

Foreword: I don't actually know the girl who fell in an uncovered manhole and had to get stitched to the 80th.

In any case, you're never safe here. In order to be prudent (read: like a well-behaved gringo with a target on your back) it is necessary to sidestep through the streets of Santiago like a zombie Michael Jackson, posthumously moonwalking ever so cautiously, so as to stealthily avoid the ground giving way beneath your feet and falling to an embarrassing injury covered in, well, the typical contents of a sewer.

Or maybe that's just me.

Moral of the story, don't take manholes for granted. Nor womanholes, nor non-gendered holes. Okay, now it's starting to get too risqué for my liking.

P.S.

Watch out for how many times the word "coconut" appears in this blog. Whoever finds them all wins a prize.

Repúplaya Dominicana

Con una brisa poca fuerte

Los palmares cargados de coco

Traen una muerte sencilla

Y rápida, y bacana

With just a slight breeze,

Palms laden with coconuts

Bring a simple, swift, and badass

Death

DR Fun Fact: Six people die from getting hit on the head by falling coconuts every year.

But that barely chips away at the tip of the (melted) iceberg that is the balmy coastline of the Dominican Republic. No matter which direction you go (except the wrong direction), within a day's (or three, depending on the number of bus-trapping potholes) drive, you hit the playa. Warm waves lap against soft sand, sunburnt-pink Eurotrash lay like beached humpback whales, bold tiburones with gringo-happy glints in their eyes shove cigars, artesanato, and boat/snorkel/slum tours in your face, and loads of shapely locals gracefully descansan en la arena. And the water is blissfully clear, save for errant plastic cups, coconut shells, beer cans, condoms, and thongs that never made it back to their rightful places. As well as wonderfully cooperative starfish.

I apologize for the overabundance of adjectives and adverbs, so not professional. As soon as I decide to unburden my camera, you'll be able to see everything I didn't mention, because everything I didn't mention is the part that's worth photographing and that defies words. For real, yo.

Santimachete de los Caballeros

Están por casi todas partes, como hombres que faltan de una cosa particular.

Security culture meets machismo meets rough and ready thirdworldness.

Guarding mansions, cracking coconuts, stripping wood, artfully peeling citrus fruits.

Hacking working-class bacanos one finger at a time.

That's an overweight haiku about machetes. I hope y'all enjoyed it.

Santimoto

Motocicletas, motoconchos, motowhatever.

Sometimes they try and run you over.

Sometimes they pick you up and take you places, and you have to hold on for dear life, onto the exhaust pipes and try with all your earthly power not to burn your hands to the second degree. It's even more fun when you're carrying an absurdly stuffed backpack that impedes your grasp onto said exhaust pipes. And the roads traveled make Worcester streets seem as smooth and relaxing as a tempurpedic mattress.

They're everywhere, and due to their small size and maneuverability they routinely zoom through red lights (just about the only guarantee of a pedestrian's right of way) and during rush hour tend to use sidewalks as additional lanes of traffic (more about that in the near future).

Moral of the story: Beware the moto. Respect the moto. And never, never, never look it in the eye, because it will pounce at you...err...run you over. Maybe.

Otra vaina...

I've appropriated a list of "20 things one is about 1,000 times more likely to encounter in the Dominican Republic than in the U.S." from my friend Raquel, who's been living here en La Quisqueya for almost six months now.

1. Motorcycles
2. People walking around with machetes
3. Beautiful beaches
4. Uncovered manholes (the girl who lived with my host mom last spring had
to get 80 stitches after falling into one)
5. Pitstains
6. Happy children content with just running in circles
7. Lizards
8. Use of sidewalks as additional motor traffic lanes
9. Individual and systematic racism
10. Individual and systematic sexism
11. Litter
12. Palm trees
13. Exposed beer bellies
14. Drinking and driving (which is not illegal)
15. Street vendors with delicious food and drink
16. People walking through the streets screaming aguacate
17. Hanging out with your neighbors
18. Matching outfits
19. Diarrhea
20. Bottled water

Over the next few weeks I plan to discuss each and every one of these.

La religión del cabello

Cabello lacio. Cabello duro. Cabello rizado. Cabello desrizado. Cabello tejido. Cabello aumentado. Cabello negro, moreno, rubio, marrón, castaño, rojizo, color de café con leche, cabello bueno, cabello malo.

El cabello domina la sociedad dominicana. Afecta a toda la gente igualmente.

Hair dominates Dominican society. Hair issues affect everyone equally. Women want straight hair and men want "hard" hair (cabello duro) because straight hair makes you look gay, apparently. The Dominican Republic has the world's densest concentration of barbershops and salons. Thanks to the racial-ethnic dynamics of the country, sharing a tiny little island called La Española with Haiti, which if the DR had its way would be floating miles and miles away, keeping one's hair looking a certain way is crucial.

Said racial-ethnic dynamics result in Dominican women denying any trace of their African heritage, which of course results in coarse natural hair. Such hair is unacceptable in the workplace or indeed anywhere in public. Thus, women spend hours every week getting their hair relaxed, straightened, weaved, extended in order to satisfy a rather impractical and whitewashed standard of beauty. Many women will not go outside when it's raining for this very reason; imagine treating your hair with such not so tender, loving care on a regular basis and that care coming tragically undone within minutes of exposure to water droplets falling from the sky. On rainy days, it is common for school classrooms to contain boys only, as it's understood that parents are not going to send their hair-relaxed or straightened or weaved daughters out in public when the pains taken could be so untimely ruined. A girl's first weave or relax is considered a rite of passage - women take their daughters into salons for the first time on average at the ripe age of 8 or 9, once girls gain enough of a consciousness to mercilessly mock their peers for having cabello malo. Only for their hair to fall out when they reach maturity.

At the same time, the Dominican brand of machismo appropriates blackness to suit its needs - men proudly wear natural hair because to have straight hair makes you marica. Thus, your Spaniard-descended uppercrust Dominican men slather gel over their heads every morning to achieve acceptable cabello duro.

The importance of hair in this country is such that in my Spanish class earlier this week we spent no less than 45 minutes discussing it. Imagine Chris Rock's Good Hair documentary applying to an entire country, and there you have it.

Disclaimer: I do not want to speak with any authority on the dynamics of racialized Dominican hair. I'm merely discussing my personal observations and I apologize if it the tone sounds mocking at any point. I don't intend to devalue people's lived experiences.

My apologies...

Así que I've realized I'm phenomenally bad at keeping this vaina updated. I heretofore comprometo keep track of every single interesting acontecimiento que me pase.

Signed,

Dan Davis