Telly III

January 2009

 

Fewer people live on Loma de Chivo so it is quieter these days. Some of the old people have died, some have moved away and many of the tigueres have been killed. Just this week police entered Popit’nŐs house and shot him in the hip as he backed away against a wall. His parents were in the room. The goal was to give him a dosis, or a permanent crippling but it seems he will walk again. His parents paid $700 to the police and they released him today. We sent a bowl of rice pudding over to his house since he is a tiguere who does not rob from his own barrio.

            Rubia, who used to butcher chickens across the street sold the little pink house and moved away with her son and Anita, her 16-year-old daughter with her new baby.

 

The colmado next to the house closed, to everyoneŐs relief. The speakers Rubio had hooked up to the jukebox got bigger and bigger until we couldnŐt hear our own phone ring, much less talk on it when the music was playing. He evidently had borrowed a lot of money to make improvements on the colmado, squirreled the money away and stopped making payments so the bank closed the place down after confiscating the jukebox. Rubio tried renting the space out as another colmado but the guys who rented it gave up after one week for lack of business. At the moment it is a hair salon but I never see any customers in it.

            Christmas day, during the short time the new colmado was open there was one customer who, when drunk, refused to pay for his beer. The second time it happened Kiki happened to be in the colmado and when the drunk reached across the counter and cuffed the colmado employee Kiki suggested he lay off. Kiki walked out and was right in front of my marquisina when the drunk emerged from the colmado and yelled at Kiki—who had also been drinking all day—that he should mind his own business and keep going. Kiki turned around and, when the drunk walked up fast and threw a right at KikiŐs head, Kiki launched an overhand right that I could hear connect from the galer’a and a left that floored the drunk. When he got half up Kiki kicked him in the stomach and connected to the head twice more. The drunk was sprawled in the center of the street but managed to sit up and say something I couldnŐt hear. Kiki took a step and a half like he going to kick a field goal and kicked the guy in the head so hard that the sound of the shoe hitting the skull was almost indistinguishable from the sound the back of the guyŐs head made when it slammed against the asphalt. As Kiki moved in to stomp the guyŐs head into the pavement Niningo, Domingo, and Altagracia herself who had been trying to pull him off all this time finally succeeded.  It was like watching an efficient predator on the Discovery Channel dismantle a confused wildebeest. A couple of us dragged the unconscious wildebeest over to the curb and it took a long time before his chest moved with his breathing. He was out cold for 5 minutes and we donated two buckets of water from the cisterna to bring him to. Kiki was ushered up to ChavelaŐs apartment in case police were called, and when Jhoanglish started to lecture him about something from the Bible Kiki grabbed a knife and lunged across the table at him but only managed to nick him although the baby fell and started crying. So KikiŐs girlfriend took him down the street to her apartment and on the way Kiki threw another punch at a passerby who had made a smart remark. This was on Christmas Day, which is also KikiŐs birthday.

            The next day the drunk came around and apologized to the colmado and to Altagracia and she said his whole head was swollen. A few days after that he came around again when he realized he would probably have permanent cosmetic damage (at least), with a pistol this time, but Kiki was not around and we have not heard anything more. He is nonviolent when not drinking and has five children, all younger than 7, with a tall slender woman who often walks past the house with two or three babies in tow and a bucket of water or laundry balenced on her head. They live in a two-bedroom shack with a dirt floor.

 

Tibur—n

earlobe surgery

Metro

Residencia renewal

Channy

This is what Altagracia smokes --A historic crop still alive
The historic tobacco crop called 'andullo' is alive and well in the south of the Dominican Republic. Andullo is a long, sausage-like roll of tobacco leaves that is tightly wrapped in palm seedpods (called "yagua") and aged for years. Each 25-pound andullo sells for between RD$1800 and RD$2000. This is a product for internal consumption, still used in Dominican rural areas for smoking in pipes and for chewing. 

Because of their watertight packaging, andullos have a history dating back four and a half centuries in the Dominican Republic. Shipping records show tobacco being sent to Spain in the mid 1500s, and andullos were the only way to survive the wet storage spaces of the old wooden ships. 

According to El Caribe, this year's crop will produce RD$275 million for the province of Azua, with over 10,000 tareas being planted with the tobacco used for this product. Some 14,500 andullos are expected to be produced.

 

 

Feb 16,2009

After months of tranquilitude la Loma de Chivo heated up. Popit’n and Fabriccio are the two the police are after the most. Popit’nŐs leg healed well and within three weeks he was back on the street and his limp disappeared after a few more days. Rivals shot Gavil‡n in the leg and he was not seen for more than a month.

After sleeping for months on ChavelaŐs floor in her new apartment, which is where Ambar used to live, Kiki had moved in with his girlfriend Mariela in Chavela's old apartment. Mariela was KikiŐs childhood sweetheart when they were growing up in Ban’ but she dumped him when his fights escalated along with his drug use years ago. Mariela moved to our neighborhood to be near Altagracia who was a mother figure for her when they were neighbors and found work shampooing hair and sweeping the floor in a hair salon in the Zona Colonial. Before renting ChavelaŐs old apartment (where you can see into our bathroom if you peer through the percianas at the right angle) she lived with a different boyfriend a couple of blocks away who worked and had a large flat screen TV. But as the weeks passed she began taking up with Kiki again and since the boyfriend spent quite a bit of time away working she was able to entertain Kiki in his apartment.

            One afternoon during this period Kiki found himself short of money and thirsty so he pawned the boyfriendŐs giant TV for $30 and when that money ran out he sold the pawn ticket. Drunk he argued and pushed Jhoanglish around so Jhoanglish went and borrowed MarielaŐs cell phone, which of course had the boyfriendŐs number listed, called him and told him what happened. So, with Mariela without a place to sleep she joined Kiki on ChavelaŐs floor. Mariela quickly got pregnant, quit her job and the two of them rented the space over the old colmado. The Venezuelans paid their first and last month deposit.

            I met the Venezuelans New YearŐs eve the night my wallet was stolen. (I had never taken such precautions before sallying out to the Malec—n outdoor concert thronged with people event. I had removed my ID cards and had put my spending cash in other pockets, the wallet was in my front pocket  when I waited to use one of the portable outdoor toilets. While I was in the line a large man with a hat pulled low cut in the front of the line two or three people ahead of me—a number of us told him to move, that it was a line etc. but he only moved laterally cutting in front of the line for the adjacent port-o-san. I now believe that while this intentional distraction was going on, he had a friend who was lifting wallets from behind.) At any rate, Altagracia and I and Niningo and Chavela, along with Kiki and Mariela had driven to the Malec—n together. I gave Kiki and Mariela $15 and the same to Niningo and Chavela for refreshments and we all milled around in the crowd. At one point Kiki brought us over to cluster of people he was drinking with and proudly introduced us to four Venezuelans as his business associates. I was impressed at first, the VŐs were dressed in black sport jackets and spoke enough English to want to practice their conversation. Later I learned that they had all met in prison. Kiki goes out with them occasionally and returns with money and none of us knows what they actually do.

            MarielaŐs pregnancy began with very bad malestar or morning sickness, which is not a phenomenon I am expert on, but I do know that she vomited at any time and with no warning and was weak and dizzy. Stress could be partially to blame since Kiki told her that if she lost the baby he would kill her. She told him to go make some money, and she didnŐt care how. She got her severance pay and secretly gave me 2000 pesos of it to me to hide for her for the next monthŐs rent so Kiki couldnŐt spend it. Her malestar got worse and whenever Kiki stole or earned some money (he actually worked construction for two days but decided that his hands were not suited to rough labor) he bought rum and drugs. When Mariela started a tab at one of the local colmados Kiki slapped her, hard on the street and did it when Belita (an ex of Kiki) was passing by. A sonogram showed the fetus somehow badly placed. Mariela had had enough and I gave her back the 2000 pesos, she gave Kiki 250 for food money for a few days and she left for Ban’ to be with her family. Within 15 minutes Kiki bought a bottle of rum and in an hour he bought another one. While I was eating dinner in the kitchen his voice came croaking in from the street that he wanted to talk to me to borrow 500 pesos ($15) so he could take a guagua to Ban’ where he suspected her family was advising her to get an abortion. I said no. Later he was seen up by MansoŐs colmado with another bottle. Altagracia and I went to bed around 10:30, Niningo turned out his light a half hour later. A cement block crashing against the front door woke us all up around midnight. Then another boulder hit the steel burglar bars, then another. We were under bombardment. Kiki was hurling the chunks of block and stone from the street and screaming at us to come out and be sent to Hell. We did not know if he was otherwise armed. Some of the blocks hit the tin roof of the galeria mangling it in places. Niningo called the police, then 5 minutes later called again. We waited inside in the dark with baseball bats. We could hear Chavela out in the street screaming at him to stop, we later learned she had a knife but never got close enough to use it.  Finally 4 police on motorcycles, a police SUV and a paddy wagon showed up. Kiki was dragged out of ChavelaŐs apartment where he had run when he saw the cops coming and Altagracia hysterically identified him and challenged the cops to shoot him in the feet, to lock him up in Najayo (a tough prison here) for a real long time. They stuffed him in the SUV and took him to the station house in Villa Mella. We followed in the guaguita because Altagracia would have to sign to keep him locked up since it was a family matter. At the station house, when we were in the front room signing the complaint Kiki lunged out of the back room howling, ÓMommy, mommy,Ň and was hauled back in and slammed up against the wall a few times. We went home and wended our way through the rubble and broken glass on the galer’a floor and went to bed.

            In the morning Altagracia had to return to re-sign to keep Kiki in for 24 hours, which is the maximum when no one in a family dispute is injured. I went to sell photos in the Plaza. Altagracia called me at noon to tell me that he had escaped the jail. I figured he would have run far, foolishly thinking that it was a crime to escape from jail in the Dominican Republic. When I got home from work we heard that he was with a bunch of neighborhood tigueres drinking and snorting drugs in a local disco. Later in the evening he turned back up at MansoŐs colmado. Around 11 PM when we were getting ready for bed we heard a shot but didnŐt think anything of it. Around midnight we awoke to Chavela frantically pounding on the front door saying that Kiki had just killed somebody. We talked to some near-eyewitnesses in front of the house and pieced together that Kiki had been with a guardia and had either borrowed or taken his pistol in order to rob someone—he had pistol whipped the guy then pushed the gun into his chest and pulled the trigger repeatedly but the gun did not go off, got about $5 from him and while yelling ŇYouŐre useless, tu no sierves!!Ó and taking off on the motorcycle had reached back and shot at his head, the gun fired this time but only took off a piece of his ear. But until we knew how bad the injuries were and who the guy was we had to prepare for immediate repercussions. He might have armed brothers, he might be part of a gang. Niningo, Altagracia and I turned off every light source in the house, double checked the door bolts and sat behind a concrete wall and waited silently. Well, Altagracia kept hissing for us to be silent while she monologued in a high whisper about all the things that could go wrong. We waited like that for about an hour and eventually concluded that neither the police nor the avengers would come that night and went to bed tensely listening and twitching at every cat scratch, dog bark and distant pistol shot. At 3:30 in the morning we heard somebody hitting a padlock with a hammer maybe two houses away. It was ValentineŐs Day.

            As I write this on Monday Kiki is on the run based around Ban’, where he knows the woods and where he figures Mariela will protect him. He still has the pistol but only one bullet. The guardia has been thrown in jail for losing his pistol and his father is trying to negotiate its return. At the moment the proposal is that the father pay 4000 pesos ($120) to Chavela and Jose, a local trusted tiguere, and they go to Ban’ to buy the pistol from Kiki for 2000 pesos with Jose getting paid the other 2000. So far Kiki has not agreed. Mariela is bleeding and has severe abdominal pain, is not eating and has not seen a doctor.

            Altagracia and Alicia cleaned the rubble off the galeria using shovels and 5-gallon pails while I was at work and dumped it in the vacant lot across the street. The pile of brickbats would fill more than two wheelbarrows.

 

Feb 27

From Ban’ Kiki went to his Uncle Tito«s house in Dajabon, then returned to Ban’ then went to Elias Pi–a. After about a week in Elias Pi–a he started running into some folks he had fought with last year so he fled back to Ban’, but not before attacking a moneychanger and stealing 5000 pesos from him. His second night back in Ban’ (where Mariela is still pregnant) a friend of his asked to borrow 100 pesos and when he took out his wallet two other ŇfriendsÓ, one with a pistol and one with a machete, helped the 1st friend rob him of the 5000 pesos. They scattered. Kiki went for a machete and waited outside the 1st friendŐs house and when he came home Kiki attacked him and cut him up bad enough that he had to be sent to Dario Contreras Hospital here in the capitol with head and body wounds. So if the guy dies Kiki will have to flee Ban’. He still wonŐt be able to come back here because the guyŐs face whose ear he shot last week is swelling up because the bullet passed under the skin near the cheekbone on its way to his ear and the guy, whose name is Hansel, had been known as a handsome fellow and is pissed off about his face.

 

 

April 29, 2009

            Some of la RubiaŐs children are still in the pink house. It seems that if the kids donŐt sign off, the sale is nullified. So they still have the house, the buyers are out their money and La Rubia is supposed to pay them back but since she already spent the money buying a piece of land no one is holding their breath.

 

 

Altagracia has gone back to work. She has been working Sundays cleaning a gallery/pension for Bettye a Tennessee expat for 500 pesos or about $15 for the past few years. She has filled the rest of her time she has aggressively cleaning our house. Through my recommendations she now works three additional days per week. One day cleaning the apartment of StanŐs wife, Elizabeth, and two days cleaning and doing laundry for a couple who are friends of Stan. It seemed that her getting out of the house and earning some money that is really her own would all amount to a good thing but. . .

            On the Saturday I drove her to her first day of work with Adrian en route she unleashed a string of invectives against me out of the blue. This is not unprecedented, Altagracia speaks nearly every thought that enters her head and filters nothing but usually I have done something to spark a frontal attack like this one. That night in the house she ignored me completely. Sunday she, Niningo and I drove to the Plaza, which abuts BettyeŐs—I sell photos under my canopy in the flea market and Niningo sells bead, and shell jewelry  that we buy wholesale in Villa Consuelo. We get to the plaza around 8:30 AM and usually Altagracia drinks tea which a walking vendor sells out of thermoses and chats with the other vendors setting up their stalls but that day she sat down and shouted insults at me whenever I walked by. Ramon heard some of them and was really shocked. To tell you the truth, for all I knew, this treatment was a common Dominican cultural phenomenon. When I offered her a cup of tea her response was Go to the Devil, co–azo. After a week or so things calmed down but I donŐt know why. We would sleep more or less normally, make love more or less normally but in the morning either silence or insults.

            One of the problems is that, even when she is working outside the house she is determined to maintain the house the same as when she is home full time. This includes sweeping water off the roof of the marquisina after it rains, ironing everything in the laundry—my paint stained tee shirt, perma-press polyester button down shirts, underwear, the babyŐs clothes, the pillowcases, my handkerchiefs and the dishtowels. Sometimes I hang clean stuff that does not need ironing in the closet to keep her from doing it but she ferrets them out and irons them anyway. Even though, at $250/month she is making more than a secretary, more than a full time policeman and more than any military personnel up to about the rank of lieutenant this may not be worth it.

            So the timbre of the relationship has changed. It seems to me that when she calls me a stupid campesino (which had been a term of affection between us and perhaps best translated in this context as sodbuster) that there is a more cutting tone; that when she says that she does not know how I can be so stupid while being a professor and all it sounds, these days, like she really means it not like before. We have been together almost 6 years now but separate for about half of every year, which makes it 3 years together physically. It has always seemed to me that the 3-year mark is the big hurdle in relationships. I donŐt know if 3 years is the period of best behavior, if our habits of consideration and kindness slip a little, or if we do not really change much but our perceptions of the other shift. Even though I was clear that I was not rich—which is the perception about all gringos here—and that we would both have to work to get ahead somehow a latent impression of rich gringos lingers and she may be a little bitter that she wound up with a poor one. It also happens that she is working in houses where the owners are more concerned for having things more luxury than I do. As long as there are pictures on the walls and the chairs are strong enough to hold us up I donŐt really care. I lived in tipis, barns and foundations when I was younger and somehow never lost the taste for living in unimproved conditions.

            People think of her as the wife of a gringo who does not have to work but works just to keep busy. Perhaps she feels like she is getting the worst of both worlds.

            She woke up late this morning and when I suggested that she take the Metro—the new commuter train—to avoid the traffic jam and difficulty in finding a taxi she said that the Metro was for the rich people and she would be ashamed to take it wearing her work flip-flops.

 

 

When I left last Spring I left the keys to the guaguita with Niningo who had acquired his driverŐs license. The gas gauge does not work so I explained briefly to him how to keep a record of the mileage when one fills the tank and to fill it about every 350km. I showed him the notepad I used in the glove compartment and thought that was that. From time to time when talking on the phone from Massachusetts Altagracia would mention that Niningo ran out of gas again somewhere on the street and that he did not understand how to keep track.

Yesterday before Niningo and Altagracia drove off to look for an apartment for Kiki, I asked Niningo to calculate for me about how many kilometers worth of gas there was and he couldnŐt do it. I thought maybe I was making him nervous looking over his shoulder so the next day I wrote the two numbers—mileage at time of last fill-up and present mileage on a piece of paper and left him alone. When he came to me with his answer, which should have been 274 km, his result was -25 km after having somehow mis-subtracted the bigger number from the smaller. He gets his high school diploma next month.

            Altagracia bought Niningo a computer with her first earnings. Well, she says she will pay me back, $150 and he mainly uses it to listen to and mix reggaeton mp3s. He also edited many pictures of himself using a copy of Photoshop.

At the moment Niningo is in the marquisina building an inverter for a battery charging system for electrical back up for the house. It is the culmination of a 2-month free course he is taking. We are not sure if we will sell the inverter or figure out how to install it in the house.

 

Chavela is proving to be a terrible mother. Channy is 1 1/2 and still tiny. Chavela speaks harshly to her, makes her feed herself, get the mop herself when she pees on the floor, lets her walk on the street barefoot and leaves her locked in her apartment alone at times. At the moment Calder—n has been expelled for not giving Chavela money to buy milk for the baby or for rent. He has a baby with a15 year old girl a few blocks away and has been ordered by the court to pay child support. He swings by from time to time to give Channy a ride on his motorcycle and Channy has been instructed to say that he is working whenever is not around. Altagracia on the other hand, and perhaps surprisingly, has a wonderful way with the baby, extremely upbeat, positive energetic, concerned about her drinking enough water and milk etc. Chavela is planning to attend UASD, the huge public university in the fall and has decided on early childhood education as a major, because everything else seems like it would be too hard. She cannot recite the alphabet correctly from A-Z.

 

 

CAVE STUFF

In April 2008 Alain Gilbert and Eric LaBarre discovered a previously unreported cave in Cumayasa, Dominican Republic and named it Cueva de Pe–on. Several areas of the cave contain rock art including a group of pictograms of about 5m long containing ~ 50 figures deep in the cave in total darkness. Other than some signs of guano mining near the entrance there is no sign of any human activity—i.e. no graffiti consisting of name and date, no discarded refuse, no signs of stalactite or stalagmite removal. Most of the rock pictograms reported in the DR are assumed to consist of charcoal but the big mural in Pe–on is lighter brown, consistent with the color of the bat guano which is found abundantly and conveniently underfoot. The cave was thought by us then to have two usable entrances and to have been divided into two parts separated by an open doline at the bottom of a 20m wide vertical shaft.

(Another interesting find in this cave was a boulder ~1.5m x 1m covered in finger flutings in moonmilk. We did not touch the face of the rock but on the back side and on nearby undecorated walls the calcite was soft in places and firm but not hard in other places.)

In April 2009 Gilbert and myself discovered a previously unreported cave very near to Cueva de Pe–on which we named Cueva de Vidal after the presumed owner of the property. Less than 100m in, but in total darkness we found a room containing 15 pictograms. There is a natural rock shelf below the murals where the artists must have stood while drawing and, tucked in and around this shelf, there are several recesses—some an armŐs length deep—and these contain small piles of charcoal—consistent with the deep black color of the pictograms. While there were pieces of charcoal almost everywhere in this vicinity which could have arrived through natural vectors, perhaps carried in by flood water from surface level charcoal ovens either hundreds of years ago or recently— I can not imagine how the charcoal scraps could have arrived in the cubbyholes other than by being placed there by someone. The cubbies might also have been used as natural mortars in which to pulverize the charcoal, perhaps to mix with manatee fat or other nonpolar agglutinant as the pre-Columbian indigenous have been reported to have practiced. I collected three samples in zip lock bags—two from the protected cubbyholes and one from a pile of charcoal in an unprotected area. Later I collected a fourth sample from a surface charcoal oven of obviously recent vintage.

Another interesting feature here is a layer of calcite maybe 1cm thick covering part of a pictogram in Vidal. In one area the calcite has fallen away revealing both the previously obscured marks behind it as well as the thickness of the remaining calcite. If this thickness could be measured perhaps minimum age dating of the artwork could be estimated if average rates of calcite deposition were known. I do not know  how the date of the falling away of the calcite could be estimated or how long after the execution of the pictogram the deposition began.

In other caves in this region of Cumayasa charcoal pieces can be found both scattered on the floor of the cave and in small piles in natural rock basins or surrounding the bases of stalagmites. Where these pieces are found—almost always—there are markings on the walls often near an intersection or narrowing in the cave; apparently done with charcoal. In most cases the markings are not figurative but appear as disorganized lines. Where there is no charcoal litter there are no wall markings. There was charcoal litter near black pictograms in Pe–on but not near the guano-colored mural—although subsequent deposits of guano could have covered them up. In other areas of the Dominican Republic, in caves with black pictograms, I have not observed such charcoal litter—most of these other caves, and I am thinking primarily of the region of El Pomier, are subject to substantial human visitation by caving groups, students and guided tourists.

On our second visit to Cueva Vidal, Gilbert and I discovered that it is actually contiguous with Pe–on although to get from the presumed charcoal mural of Vidal to the presumed guano mural of Pe–on without exiting to the surface would require a vertical rope descent of about 6m.

 

PROPOSED METHODS

 

á      Infrared photography. Photography using an infrared light source e.g. a photographic strobe and a filter that removes virtually all visible light from exposing the film or digital sensor may be able to distinguish differences in the substances used to paint the brown mural of Pe–on and the black mural of Vidal. If the pigment on the wall of  Pe–on appears identical to the available bat guano on the floor and appears different from both the available charcoal scraps and the black pigment of the Vidal mural it would argue that the mural in Pe–on was in fact painted with bat guano. I suspect that this technique will not yield any dating information.

á      MIcroscopic Examination—I have purchased a Carson MM640 26x-130x optical zoom USB camera that attaches to a laptop computer. The unit uses integral LED lights and can be used handheld without touching the substrate, or by touching it only lightly with the two short plastic legs that are wide enough apart to straddle most pictogram lines. While neither the resolution nor the sharpness are likely to be stunning, close-up photos of wall pigment may reveal whether the substance used contains wood fibers in the case of charcoal; or undigested insect parts or fruit seeds? in the case of guano paint. The LED illumination is a cool light source and will not damage the art with heat and an IFRAO scale can be photographed as well. The Carson MM640 cost $30 U.S. plus shipping and so, if it works, could be a valuable, affordable tool for rock art research.

á      Carbon Dating—the charcoal samples I took are now at the University of Cologne where they are, hopefully, waiting to be dated. It might be possible to date the calcite layer covering part of one painting mentioned above but I do not have the expertise to take a responsible sample.

á      ŔCould a drop of a reagent to check for the presence of animal or vegetable fat be applied to a tiny area of the pigmented surfaces to learn more about the composition of the pigment without removing any?

á      Alain Gilbert is preparing a map of the Pe–on system but in the meantime I plan to sketch at least a rough diagram assisted by Auriga software on a Palm Pilot and a crude golf yardage laser measuring device accurate to only within 1m but which should serve until more accurate cartography is completed.

 

 

 

 

 

May 7, 2009

 

Sunday at the Plaza a woman invited me to be on television on Monday to talk about cave art in the DR—the next day. So I went. CDN channel 37 on the midday show Hogar. Very professional interview by Nereda, she put me right at ease. There was one question I did not understand and faked my answer and I think no one knew. Chavela saw it but, so far, I have not run into anyone else who did.

Then Wednesday I was invited to give a slide show for the WomenŐs Group. It was in Cacicazgos very close to one of AltagraciaŐs jobs—house with an indoor pool, servants etc. CanapŽs. Slide show well received lots of questions and afterwards the women looked through prints I had set up on a table and spent $500 in about 20 minutes. Good day!

 

Usual Kiki stuff, he was in a disco inside the Haitian border when some friends of someone he cut up with a machete months ago opened fire but he escaped somehow. We got a call that there had been shots fired in AltagraciaŐs house and that there was a horde of cops there and a corpse inside but little of that was true. There were cops looking for Kiki but he was holed up in a shack down by the river where he could watch them through cracks in the wall. He has reportedly sold his most recent pistol, bought and sold two junk motorcycles and is now deep in Haiti.

 

 

May 10 Plaza

May 9- Plaza

May 8- trip to caves with Bettina

May 7- frame sold pictures to bring to Plaza Sat.

May 6- Slide show AM, la Sirena with Altagr  and dentist PM

May 5- prep slide show PowerPoint, mat prints

May 4—TV interview, shop for flashlights

May 3 Sunday—Plaza

May 2—Plaza

May 1 prep prints for Plaza

Apr. 30—buy tires for Guaguita

Built shelves for kitchen, varnished front doors, went to Altos de Chavon, las Maravillas to try to sell photos, set up guide for Pe–on, Chloe to vet for teeth clean, work for Bettye three days, built cabinets for under kitchen sink, paint etc., dig up drain pipe from outdoor set tub with Guangu to find a comb with various plastic bags clogging it perfectly, take care of baby, haircut Chloe,

 

SUMMERTIME

I spent the summer in Massachusetts painting houses and writing an article describing the new rock art finds in Cumayasa. I finally finished it and mailed it off to Rock Art Research in October. I quit painting and devoted more time to marketing the cave photos.

Chloe came back with me and will now live with my Mother and her dog Wilson.

Telephone conversations, almost daily, with Altagracia were strained at first but slowly evolved back toward their previous casual affectionate mostly tone. I resolved to try to get out of Villa Mella and move closer to the center of the city whether Altagracia wanted or was able to come with me.

 

 

Nov. 4, 2009 Arrive back in Villa Mella

 

 

 

Death of Carlos

Dec. 10  During the early part of the summer Kiki lived in the newly roofed house in Elias Pi–a and had reportedly settled into a rhythm of moving items back and forth across the border. Sometime in August he and his uncle Carlos, AltagraciaŐs brother, went on a clerŽn and crack smoking bender. Carlos was about 36 and had been one of the friendlier relations when we visited Elias Pi–a. On the 4th day of the bender they had a slap and push scuffle and shortly after Carlos slipped into a coma. Pipina and some others threw him in the back of a pick-up and brought him to the local hospital where he vomited something green and died. Altagracia and Niningo took a guagua to Elias Pi–a the next day and found that all the other brothers and sisters were accusing Kiki of murder, claiming that he had heart-punched Carlos knowing that he hade a bad heart. The autopsy concluded drug and alcohol overdose as cause of death but nevertheless. There were some shouting screaming and pushing fights. Altagracia was accused of being armed. Pipina claimed rights to AltagraciaŐs house in Elias Pi–a. Kiki was jailed in shackles. Pipina later is said to have paid some police 5000 pesos to kill him in prison but they only beat him up. I suspect that Pipina and the others—Papito, Violeta, Felix, and even Anna and Momona, his grandmother are just sick of having him around shooting off guns and stealing and eating their goats and pigs.

Altagracia continues to work for Bettye on Sundays and for Adrian and her Haitian retired husband on Tues and Fridays. She would like to quit Adrian but needs to send money to Kiki in jail from time to time and knows better than to ask me to donate. But I have never heard her (or anyone) complain so much about working 3 days a week. Other than analysing the gossip on Loma de Chivo that is the only topic.

Niningo searched for work daily after graduating from high school including trying to get into the air force academy. He evidently almost got in but his school was not able to produce his graduation papers by the deadline. A month ago, with a recommendation from Adrian, he got a job at the Napolitano Casino on the Malec—n watching the video monitors in a locked room with one or two other monitors. He watches for dropped dice and cards and checks that the tellers examine bills for forgeries. He already has spotted 300 counterfeit Euros. His shifts are 10PM-6AM or 2PM-8PM and he has not had a day off since I have been back due to understaffing. 8,000 pesos a month plus the overtime. On his last payday he gave Altagracia 1000 pesos and me 500, and was proud to do it.

 

Jhoanglish continues to drift unmoored. He does not give the mother of his son any money, does not live with them and sometimes hits her arguing about money. At the moment he is living in a rented room up around the corner and eats at ChavelaŐs.

 

Haiti

Huh, I guess I never mentioned it. Two years ago Alexa Voss, an archaeologist of French/German extraction who had worked extensively in Cuba and now lives in Santo Domingo, contacted me to include my photographs in an exhibit she was contracted to install in the French Embassy here. It turned into a lot of work for me consulting in the construction of the vitrines and designing 3x6 foot informative panels with text and graphics and so on. The show ran for about a month and was a success and we reinstalled it in the Alliance Francais in Santiago later in the year.

Last year I worked with Alexa in the formatting and editing of her 300-page thesis on pre-Columbian Cuban archaeology. She had completed all other doctoral requirements but the defense. The bulk of it had been written 5 or 6 years ago on a Cuban computer that had crashed and the salvaged files came out damaged and it turned out to be 100s of hours of work for me. We have become friends, she is a very good contact for me as she has a post at the Museo del Hombre and knows everyone in the field. She has helped me navigate the petty political foibles that characterize Dominican academic life.

This year she has somehow been contracted to build a private museum for Jean-Claude and Kathy Dicquemare in Cap Haitian, Haiti. The Dicquemares, who have just broached their 80s and are a striking couple, have a slowly crumbling but still 4 star resort named Plage Cormier on an isolated strip of beach a half hour from Cap Haitian, the second largest city in Haiti. Baby Doc used to party and stay there and Jean Claude is friends with Jacques Chirac the ex French prime minister. Jean Claude dove for years with Jacques Cousteau and was with him when they discovered the Santo Maria, ColumbusŐs shipwrecked caravel. Jean Claude and Kathy have collected Ta’no pieces for years and now have over 5,000 ranging in size from thumbnail to anvil.

Alexa, her two children Ariel 11 and Neno 9, and I took the luxury Caribe Tour bus from Santo Domingo, passing through customs at Dajabon and continued on to Cap Haitian. We were met by a private car and taken over the steep decrepit dirt road for a half hour to Plage Cormier. For the next six days I photographed 1000 pieces of the collection, assigning and archiving each piece by number and including a color calibrated ruler in each photo. We took breaks only to eat and gained weight. Lobster, shrimp, poisson tartare, steak etc. Crepes and omelets for breakfast, espresso/cappuccino, Barbancourt rum and Prestige beer at the bar on the beach. Before dinner we had drinks and trays of hot hors dŐoevres with the Dicquemares seated on the thatched roof veranda. Often there was time at lunch for a dip in the ocean. The wireless Internet sometimes worked but there was no telephone. When I got back to Santo Domingo friends asked how was Haiti and I had to say that the only Haiti I saw was in motion through the bus window and I had spent the week eating more than I have ever eaten in the hungriest country in the hemisphere.

On the last day Jean Claude secretly contracted me to assemble the photos in a book and have it bound as finely as possible as a gift for his wife. Today is December 4th and they should have received it at their apartment in Coconut Grove in Miami by now.

Alexa and I and her boyfriend Gustavo are now working on designs and material lists, electrical plans etc. for the vitrines and informative panels for the museum. This afternoon I will drop off a couple of images for some proof prints on Plexiglas and canvas at a plastic fabricatorŐs shop on Padre Billini.

 

 

December 26, Saturday 2009

 

The holidays stop everything here. I dropped off my big camera flash at Kemil Camera last week. Kemil is supposedly working on it but was closed at noon the day before Christmas Eve and will, hopefully, reopen Monday the 28th, certainly only to reclose the day before New YearŐs Eve. If he canŐt fix it I will have to mail it to Quantum.

I finished my article on the new caves in Cumayasa and submitted it to Bednarik the editor of Rock Art Research in October. He replied a few weeks ago that it was conditionally accepted but needed revisions. A jury of referees sent me comments and criticism. I finished the revisions and emailed the paper back to Bednarik and now it is accepted for the Nov. 2010 issue. I can start on the Spanish translation but cannot publish it here until it has come out in RAR.

The big Christmas craft show in Parque Col—n went well after a very slow start-- $24 total for the first day but finished at $1000, same as last year. I made tee shirts with the cave logos. They are on handmade cotton shirts and are nice. I put them on eBay but nothing.

 

Kiki is out of jail. He was found innocent of killing Carlos and the six months were enough for the other charges. He is staying in Elias Pi–a.

 

ChavelaŐs baby, Chanel, is almost 2½ and is a happy baby although Chavela is a careless mother. Chavela has left Calderon, again, and is living in the pink wood house across the street where La Rubia, who butchered chickens in the front yard, used to live. Chanel has been sent to the colmado across the street barefoot, with 10 pesos to buy a pat of butter by herself.  She is tiny but spunky and chatty. She loves to drink coffee with Altagracia after lunch on the galer’a. Sugar and Nesquick in her milk, daily icecream and frequent candies have resulted in her having all her front teeth pulled. Nickname is Vampira.

 

We had lunch at Peperoni with George and Mitzi Stein on Wednesday. The dinner at Vesuvio was more fun since it was her first fancy restaurant. She picked at her salmon and did not like the risotto. She loved her margarita but not the chardonnay. No time for desert, George and Mitzi had to catch a plane for Chile.

 

Things in the house have been mostly ok although there was a explosion last week that sent me looking for an apartment downtown. I actually looked at one on the edge of the Zona Colonial—decent location behind the Shell station on Independencia but on the third floor, through the landladyŐs living room and out onto a rooftop hallway to a room in which the bed fit but nothing more. The private bathroom measured about 3 square feet and the toilet was directly underneath the showerhead. $5000 pesos or $140 a month.

 

 

April 26

Have not had the right kind of available time to write. Time has been devoted mostly to cave stuff.     

 

            A few weeks ago Altagracia and I stopped at EPS, the mail service I use, so I could pick up a package and the New Yorker. She waited outside while I went in. While she was standing on the sidewalk a bunch of motorcycle cops drove by followed by a series of limousines in one of which was Leonel Fernandez, the president of the country. She waved and he waved back.

 

 

I now rent a street level stairwell on El Conde Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays where I sell the cave photos. I rent it from Jeanette who has two hair salons on el Conde. About 10 nieces and nephews live upstairs allof whom, except the littlest, work in the salons. Sundays I still sell in the Plaza Maria de Toledo in the antiques flea market.

In February and March Alain Gilbert was here and we searched for and mapped caves Mons, Tues, and Wednesdays. We worked in Cumayasa, Hato Mayor and el Seibo mostly.

One of our searches concerned the alleged Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) reported in Pedernales, a desert region in the south near the Haitian border.  Alain and I rode with Domingo Abreu, who is the government official in charge of all the caves in the country. The two of them know more caves than anybody in the Dominican Republic—Alain has measured and mapped 400 caves and Domingo has been exploring them for 40 years. The cave had been reported in about 1990 by Morban Laucer, then director of the Museo del Hombre, now deceased, in his book Arte Rupestre in the Sierra Bahoruco. There is a photograph of Laucer in the book standing next to a guide named Donovan, or N—van, PŽrez a montero who lives by hunting feral goats and cattle in the mountains around Pedernales. There were also black and white photographs of red handprints on the cave walls We eventually found Nov‡nŐs house in Enriquillo by asking random people on the street. His wife was home but Novan was out hunting. She said she had just spoken with him by cell phone but when we tried calling there was no signal meaning he had moved into a valley. Armed with his cell phone number we continued driving on towards the town of Pedernales trying to call him every hour or so.

On our way we stopped at two caves near the highway that Alain and Domingo knew and photographed the rock art in them. We ate lunch in Pedernales (waitress named Misou) and continued to ask people if they knew someone who might know where the Cueva de Las Manos was. We eventually located a lawyer who had reconnoitered many of the caves of the area—he showed us a human skull he found in one—who said that Nicolas Corona might know. We called Nicolas but he was working in Bayahibe on the other side of the country. We drove around a barrio of Pedernales and found a brother of Nicolas but he did not know where the Cueva de las Manos was. We slept at a $10 hotel in town.

The next morning on our way back toward Enriquillo we toured a limestone quarry as part of DomingoŐs job with the Dept of the Environment and then stopped back at NovanŐs house. There were twenty or so people outside the house sitting on plastic chairs under an improvised blue poly tarp awning. NovanŐs mother-in-law had died that night. He was hiking out of the mountains to attend the wake.  We offered our condolences to his wife and started the 4-hour drive back to the capital.

Eventually Domingo called N—van and made a date and the next week we drove back to Enriquillo. We arrived at night, Novan found us an $8 hotel and the next morning we picked him and drove as far as we could to the cave. We parked off the road in a gravelbed. Following Novan through the cactus and spurge desert we arrived at an enormous sinkhole in red limestone after about a 20-minute hike. If you trip it is better to fall than to grab a branch to steady yourself—the spines can take weeks to get out of your skin and become infected easily. Our friend Eric Labarre who I hiked with through mountains for 11 hours to reach the Cueva de la Cidra a few years ago refuses to explore Pedernales anymore because of the cactus and rough walking. Four years ago he and Alain spent three days traipsing through this same desert looking for this same cave unsuccessfully. The jagged rocks tear up shoes, there is permanent drought and the sun is ferocious.

The sinkhole contained many petroglyphs and a few paintings, and was very interesting, but did not turn out to be the Cueva de las Manos but to be a cave called P—ciman JŽ. I photographed everything including an iguana turd the size of a German ShepherdŐs. Novan could not remember where the Cueva de Las manos might be.

We went on into Pedernales, lunched in MisouŐs restaurant and I remembered that I still had NicolasŐs phone number. We called him. He was in town but about to leave but could meet us for a few minutes. We met him at a nearby gas station and he drew us quick directions on how to find the cave, two caves in fact.

We found the first cave; in fact, we drove right up to it at the end of a 4wd only track. The entrance was about 15meters up a sheer cliff face. We could see red paintings on the cave ceiling from the ground. To get to it we had to climb up around the back of the promontory and then descend down to a skinny ledge, step over a gap in the ledge in which was a colony of honeybees. (Novan stuck a smoldering branch in the hole to keep the bees calm) and belly crawl into the small cave.  The ceiling and walls were covered with mostly geometric designs in red pigment. Since it was already middle afternoon I only had time to photograph rapidly and we climbed back down to go to the Cueva de las Manos. Following the map Nicolas had given us we searched up one dry ravine called the Ca–ada de los Huesos or Bones Creek and then down the other until dark. There were clouds of small mosquitoes—but slow and slappable unlike the lightning quick mosquitoes in Villa Mella—there were interesting natural red patterns in some of the cliff walls that I think might have inspired the indigenous artistsŐs abstract designs—but we found no Cueva de las Manos.

Now, weeks later, Alain has gone back to France to his job as architect of historic buildings for the Dept of Culture, and Domingo is still trying to track down Nicolas for a better map, and Novan, who has forgotten where the cave is, is trying to relocate it when he is not hunting wild goats.

 

 

Last week I came across a web page that reported that some kids had captured a live solenodon in Hato Mayor. There was a link to another page called Save the Survivors Solenodon and Hutia, which was run by Joe Nu–ez. Nu–ez had recorded the first ever video of a wild solenodon in Pedernales—as cute as a venomous insectivore that looks like a small opossum can be. There was a photograph of Nu–ez wearing a heavy leather falconry glove with a solenodon perched on his hand. I joined his Facebook page.

Two days later I am sitting on the bench in front of my tiny gallery on El Conde when two men stopped in their tracks in front of the gallery. I had put my photograph of a cave painting of a solenodon in the front of the display that day and one of the men was Joe Nu–ez. He bought the picture. He had actually been up the Ca–ada de los Huesos and had visited the same cave full of red paintings that we had, but knew nothing of the Cueva de Manos.

 

 

 

May 14, 2010

Gilbert Murdered

Chavela now has spent the past 5 years working at the banca selling lottery tickets. The banca is a kiosk sized building just on the other side of the colmado next to our house. She opens lazily around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and then hangs out on the front step with Chany and chats with neighbors or plays dominos. Across the street in front of the banca is GilbertŐs colmado. It is a grungy little colmado in a perpetual state of failure. Gilbert is, or was, a kind of goofy harmless tiguere who, when smoking drugs, would stay up all night cranking the jukebox in the colmado. He had long arms, short legs, a drooping lower lip and had two sons one 6 and one 11 years old. Altagracia and I were out of town when she got the call that Gilbert had been killed.

The banca was open and Chavela, Chany, Gilbert and 4 or 5 others were hanging out on the front step. The phone rang inside GilbertŐs colmado; one of the kids answered it and yelled out that it was for Gilbert. Gilbert got up, went into his colmado and when he did two men no one had paid much attention to who had been loitering nearby followed him in and pumped four 9mm bullets into his chest. They ran out, sprinted up an alley and disappeared. Gilbert slumped against the counter and died almost instantly. Both his sons were there. Chany heard the shots but has since been told that Gilbert went to Nueva York.

The prevalent theory is that the two assassins were hired to kill Gilbert by the father of Omar. Omar was murdered a month ago and his father had heard a rumor that Gilbert knew who the killers were but would not tell the police. The phone call that was placed to the colmado was so that the killers could identify who Gilbert was by seeing who got up to go the phone. The rumor that OmarŐs father heard was wrong. We are now waiting for one of OmarŐs brothers to be killed in retaliation by one of GilbertŐs brothers.

 

 

Kiki mostly stays in Elias Pi–a but pops up from time to time. When he is in the area he stays with Chavela who has moved into an apartment down a narrow side street behind the banca (she and Calderon are back together). A couple of weeks ago before leaving to work in the Zona Colonial on Sunday, Altagracia and I swung down her side street so we could deliver ChanelŐs clean laundry. I knocked on the door and after a few minutes it opened a crack and KikiŐs face appeared. We were equally surprised. He said, ŇGood morningŇ, I said, ŇGood morningŇ, I handed him the bundle of laundry and turned and we left.

 

Joanglish continues as before. He is now working as a Municipal Policeman two days a week. Altagracia sends a plate of rice and beans daily to his apartment a block or so away. He is still not allowed in the house.

 

Niningo is still working 7 days/week at the casino. Altagracia has taken his banking passbook and deposits the money he gives her on paydays.

 

I have rented a street level stairwell on El Conde three days a week and set up a little gallery of the cave photos. In general it has gone very well although this Sunday is Election Day and tourists have been warned to stay away. Yesterday I sold $0. Campaign activities paralyze the city daily creating huge traffic jams. The activities involve setting up bandstands with loudspeakers the size of tractor trailers to play reggaeton at volumes at which you cannot hear a car horn honk, itinerant clowns on 5-foot stilts and free rum. I have heard of individuals being paid as much as 1000 pesos ($27 at todayŐs exchange rate) for their vote. When the election results start coming out the celebration can include pistol shots either into the air in happiness or horizontally in revenge.

 

As I type this on my laptop I am sitting in my stairwell on El Conde. Just sold two prints to a tall blond woman named India who spent last summer in Great Barrington and will be there in July!!!!!!!!! Maybe I am the only one but these small world coincidences blow my mind every time. In 2007 I ran into 5 people either in Santo Domingo or NYC who I had met the same year on the street selling photos in the other city!

 

Jon Anderson passed by the other day. I met Jon 5 years ago through Stan who I met here in Santo Domingo and spent parts of the past two summers eating hamburgers with where he worked in NYC on The Barge. When Stan introduced me to Jon and we began exchanging our living in the DR stories he suddenly recognized me as the author of this manuscript which I used to publish on the DR1 website. At the time, he actually had written some replies to some criticisms of me in my defense. Small world! Shortly after meeting him, he moved with his Dominican wife to Bonao for health reasons but now has moved back to the capital for the same reasons. On a bad day now he can only walk less than half a city block without resting, and for 5 minutes—he has TwinTower Syndrome. He has a cough that can stop traffic. He was one of the first journalists on the site and spent the first two days with no breathing filter whatsoever.

Speaking of Stan Tankursley. I have not seen him this year although he is reportedly here in the DR. His brother and only remaining relative who was mentally impaired and lived in a small town outside Dallas, TX, died in the Fall and Stan inherited about $80,000. Stan and his wife moved to Santiago to be near her family. Stan started a restaurant in the hills outside the city but I hear it did not go so well. Flor, of FlorŐs Amber, saw him a couple of months ago and said he had gained hundreds of pounds. The last email I got from him said he was on his way to Haiti from NY with relief supplies.

 

Earlier this year I gave a PowerPoint type talk re Dominican Cave Art for the 6th grade students at the Carol Morgan School to prepare them for a field trip to La Cueva de las Maravillas and the daughter of Pedro Martinez—the future hall of fame pitcher recently of the Mets--was in the class. Her bodyguards were outside.

 

The Ta’no museum project in Cap Haitien is on hold for the moment.

 

 

May 15, 2010, one day before elections, but not presidential

Day at work in the Gallery.

Up between 5:30 and 6:30 depending on which day. Coffee and listen to WAMC on the computer at the kitchen table. Fill Iced tea jar and a Tupperware if there are leftovers for lunch.

Drive south on Hermanas Mirabel—I finally have what I think is the best route. Straight through Ovando, over the new overpass, left on Pedro Livio Cede–o, straight to Avenida Duarte, turn right at the Texaco station go straight through the Duarte shopping district. Even at 7AM street venders are setting up their stalls with new and used clothes, baseball hats, belts, text books, fruit, cell phones; heating up cauldrons of oil to deep fry platanos, empanadas, spam, pigs ears and chicken feet to sell for breakfast. Vendors unpacking their merchandise from soggy cardboard boxes, cheap suitcases, unloading from the trunks of taxis or from horse drawn carts or tricycle carts and hand trucks.

After crossing Avenida Mexico and the two blocks of Chinatown what traffic there was drops off to almost nothing. The Colonial Zone sleeps late. I cross Avenida Mella and pass la Sirena, downhill past the Monastery of San Francisco (I have a great composition of these ruins that sells well), cross Mercedes a few blocks from where Alexa the archaeologist lives, cross El Conde, turn left on Arzobispo Noel, left on Hostos and park as near as I can to El Conde. If I am more than 4 spots from El Conde I reconnoiter during the day and often am able to get the first spot on the corner, which is important if it is Saturday when I haul everything home at night.

If I am early I stroll off to buy an empanada, if I am really early I nap in the guaguita.

My stairwell is closed to the street with a galvanized steel roll up door. Flor, the housekeeper or Londres or one of the nieces who live upstairs either opens the door for me or tosses me the keys from the balcony. If it is Thursday I carry my tables, cases of matted and framed photographs and tee shirts in about 5 round trips. If it is Friday or Saturday my stuff is stashed under the stairs. It takes me about an hour to set up. I bring my GE Superradio and listen to Radio Francia 93.1 FM; the news alternates between French and Castilian Spanish and the music is a mix of Euro pop, American Jazz and eclectic rock but the general mood is NPR.

I am usually the first shop owner to arrive on my block. Suqui, directly across from me also opens early as does the pleasant woman who manages Coco Zen three doors up. Domi-Habana opens next and then my immediate neighbor to the left La Morena. Suqui is a diminutive Dominicana of apparent Asian extraction and has had her gift shop for more than 25 years. She pays just $400/month and is petrified the rent will go up. She and her husband Carlos have two daughters one in Long Island and one in Paris. Suqui spends her days watching television in her shop and leafing through a French phrase book in hopefully preparing to visit the Paris daughter. To my right is another stairwell where Vilma sells beach clothes, mass-produced Haitian paintings, baseball hats and canvas shopping bags. Vilma lives in an apartment upstairs and mentioned once that she does not pay anything for the use of the stairwell—in fact I heard that her building has no owner and nobody in any of the 10 apartments pays any rent to anyone. Most of the ground floor was a gift shop at one time but is now sealed up by steel doors. Hmmmm.

Across the street from me-- and by the way, El Conde is a walking street only, no cars allowed, street lights and benches line the center-- next to Suqui is JeanetteŐs Salon. I pay Jeanette $20/day for my stairwell; Jeanette rents the building I am in. Upstairs are a series of rooms where 10 or so of JeanetteŐs nieces and nephews, all brought in from Haiti, live. Most of them work in one of her two salons. The two leaders of this pack of kids are Alexandra 21 and Myrtha 25 who work in the salon across from me. They are helped my Marybell 10, when she is not in school. Gina, 17, Polita and Chantel work with Jeanette herself in her other salon near the other end of El Conde. Londres is the alpha male who once in a while washes a window or fixes something in the salon but mostly hangs out. He goes to the gym every day and plays basketball every evening in the parking lot on Luperon and. Judging by his acne and rope like veins in his arms he is injecting vitamins (i.e. steroids). But he is pleasant enough. On days when there are many customers Myrtha and Alexandra work hard all day from 8AM to 8PM with only a short break for lunch.

Myrtha and Alexandra are either cousins or half sisters; they have each told me different stories and it could be they donŐt know for sure. They are both short and very cute with large round faces and gigantic eyes. When the salon window is dark and Myrtha, who has darker skin, looks out, sometimes all you can see are the white crescents of her eyes. When I asked them how much money they made working in the salon they said nothing but that whenever they wanted to buy something there was money. When it is quiet in the evening Myrtha sometimes brings out her laptop and connects to Facebook where she is Myrtha Zamy but she recently told me her legal last name is Kelly. What could she say, she said, her mother had lived in La Romana. Alexandra likes working in the salon because, as she put it, she gets to be a little boss.

I initially inquired about renting the stairwell because I had noticed it only sadly displaying clothes for sale with never any interest. I was directed to the distant salon where I met Jeanette. She is 55, not large but imposing, high cheekboned, large eyed, dark skinned and wears flowing white tessellated dresses. She greeted me in Spanish with a Haitian accent and after asking where I was originally from she announced that she was not Dominican but Swiss. It eventually came out that she was once married to a Swiss and lived in Zurich for a while. I had had in my mind a daily rate of $20-25 so when she asked for $20 I agreed without bartering. During my first two weeks in the stairwell I sold very poorly and at one point I asked if she would consider lowering the rent until I got going. I had the money I owed for that week in my hand and as it dawned on her that I was asking to pay less, she kept glancing at Gina, who was sitting in a salon chair not really paying attention, and asking her to translate, and as what I was asking finally registered, as she finally allowed it to register, her eyes got even bigger and she seemed to suddenly grow taller and I handed her the money and thanked her and escaped. Since then we greet each other warmly and I donŐt ask for any discounts. Yesterday she came into the stairwell and sat down and we chatted. I was able to explain why I needed to go to Massachusetts for a couple of months and she assured me that the stairwell would still be mine when I returned, especially if I paid in advance but even if I didnŐt. Her eyes stayed the same size the whole time, to my relief.

Much of the day is spent hanging out. I read the New Yorker and listen to the radio. Sometimes I have computer work and I bring my laptop. For example—a couple of weeks ago Alexa was able to borrow a complete set of USGS maps of the entire Dominican Republic for two days only. The first night I photographed all 150 maps at home. I had to set up a stepladder in the living room and lash a tripod to the top rung so I could get the camera far enough away to take each map. The next day on the computer I was able to process/crop/tweak each map so I was sure we had usable files. To buy the full issue would have cost about $2000.

When it is busy I have long conversations with customers, some of whom keep in touch later through email. I get the inside gossip scoop from Vilma and was getting it from Santos who worked in the big gift shop La Morena to my left before he was transferred. La Morena is a family operation run by the matriarch known as La Morena and her husband Eusebio. Their son Francis and EusebioŐs brother Santos work for them along with an unrelated rotund employee named Maylenny. They also use the services of guides known as Buscones who are the annoying guys on the street who tug on tourists sleeves saying things like come to my gift shop, everything 40% discount, no cost to look, cheapy cheapy, and then lead them toward holes in the pavement so they can say, Look out!, Watch you step! When a tourist who has been successfully dragged into La Morena by a buscon buys something, the buscon gets a cut as does the person who makes the sale and a cut goes to store overhead. How they divide it up at the end of day I do not know. Sometimes there are fights. Francis almost never sells anything since he drinks all day. Motorcycles from various local colmados deliver jumbo Presidente (1L.) after jumbo Presidente, curbside estimates reckon he spends about 500 pesos a day on beer. Sometimes when I am in La Despensa, the small supermarket one block away I see him in line buying a12oz. single beer. Santos sells the most souvenirs for La Morena. He is 54, short and wiry with a shaved head and horn rimmed glasses and wears heavy metal tee shirts that hang down past his jeans pockets, baggy jeans and oversized sneakers, but when he peers up at you over the frames of his glasses and lowers his voice to a confidential near-whisper he is very convincing.

There is a local cast of minor characters, beggars, prostitutes and homeless who come and go. Jasmin is a crack addict who also hangs around the plaza on Sundays. She is scrawny, toothless 4 feet 10 inches tall and probably no older than 25. She wears rags, sleeps in the middle of sidewalks until the tourist cops shag her off and collects empty beer bottles for a peso each and begs. She spends time in Najayo womenŐs prison every year and, reportedly when she sleeps on the rocks on the seaside of the Malec—n the bums there fuck her for $1. I had not seen her during the past month and when I asked Vilma if she knew if anything had happened she told me that some tigueres had beaten Jasmin nearly to death, that she had spent a month in the hospital Dario Contreras, that her mother had even come to help and that she had lost an eye due to the beating.

An old woman with a bundle of rags comes every afternoon and sits on a stoop in front of the sealed up gift shop and waits for people to give her money. She is graceful about it and never begs but readily accepts. La Morena fills her water bottle for her when she is thirsty. One day a geezerly part-time peddler reeking of rum set his two or three broken souvenirs on her stoop in an unlikely attempt to sell them and when the old woman arrived she demanded her spot. When the peddler refused and the argument escalated Santos launched out of La Morena brandishing a large machete and ran past my stairwell toward the arguement—when he sped past my doorwar he glanced in at me with a wink and a smile—the peddler, who looked to be an arthritic 60 took off like a gazelle and turned the corner at Meri–o without breaking stride and without looking back. Santos collapsed in laughter but passerbys gaped in horror. Eventually Asoconde, which is the equivalent of a chamber of commerce for El Conde, heard some version of this story and now Santos has been deported to another gift shop owned by his sister-in-law in the Mercado Modelo up on Avenida Mella. Along with Vilma he had been the most fun to hang out with.

Aside from the buscones there are a host of other guides who all expect a cut from somebody for any sale made on El Conde. Many gift shops have agreements with individual guides and one can see small flocks of tourists being bum-rushed past store after store until arriving at their guideŐs chosen locale. Because I have unique merchandise I have no agreement with any guide—most of the gift shops here have nearly identical inventories displayed slightly differently i.e. one store puts the Indian made saris in front, another places the Panama hats more prominently and another their Haitian paintings—I sometimes have trouble with them. One day two French women stopped at my gallery, looked at some photos, asked about pricing and moved on. About an hour later they reappeared and started selecting photos and negotiating a discounted price when suddenly a guideŐs head insinuated itself between the women and looked at me smiling and told me to start bagging. The women bought about $60 US worth of stuff and the three left. An hour or so later the guide reappeared looking for his due. When I looked surprised that he was asking he said, Ňaw just enough for a soda?Ó but when I offered him 30 pesos (about 75˘ almost enough for a soda) he took umbrage. We were in the street and he started yelling about how he was not like the others that he was a good and honest guide and I yelled back that he had not brought anybody to my shop, that I had met the women on their own before and that I was not going to pay anything and he could feel free to get lost. He yelled the whole way down the street and to this day (2 months later) gives me a dirty look every time he passes.

As I type this in my stairwell at 11:15 AM a hard rain has completely cleared the streets of all foot traffic. A few guides huddle, here and there, under awnings and overhangs but not under mine.

At lunchtime, if I have not brought leftovers or stuff to make sardine sandwiches (with a 45˘ avocado purchased from a fruit vendor around the corner), I put a be right back sign on the front of my display and walk fast to one of two or three comedors that are within two blocks. Lunch price ranges from 70 pesos ($2) for rice, beans and a veggie, to 100 pesos for rice, beans, potato salad and a stewed meat choice of beef, pork or chicken to 140 pesos from a different comedor for the same thing presumably tastier or from a cleaner kitchen. I bring the meal back in a Styrofoam compartment plate complete with plastic spoon and eat it when it cools off.

So, I sit in the stairwell and read or write for most of the day and when the shade reaches the bench out front I sit on it with Vilma and the girls from the salon and we shoot the shit. Sometimes Ruddy stops by after closing his concession in Mundo Artesanal and we drink beer. Ruddy is a 55 year-old (same as me, in fact Jeanette is 55 also, Santos is 54) athletic German ex-pat who had a silk-screening business in the Zona Colonial for a couple of years. He eventually got tired of the low quality of the Chinese tee shirts available so he studied and thought and bought some used sewing machines and now he designs and makes the shirts that bear his designs and he makes mine too and we have become friends. He is getting married next Saturday and I will go to his wedding.

Around 7:30 or 8 I pack up the photos and either store them under the stairs or haul them to the guaguita if it is Saturday since I still sell in the Plaza Maria de Toledo on Sundays and drive home. At 8 there rarely are traffic jams although one night, and Altagracia happened to be with me, there was a bad one before crossing the bridge after Ovando. It was so bad and so anachronistic that I commented to Altagracia that it could only be due to one of two things—a bad accident or a dead horse in the road. As we finally reached the other side of the bridge and passed the Metro subway station we saw the horse, dead and splayed out across a lane and a half.

 

July 21, 2010

I am back in Santo Domingo for a three week summer sojourn both to maintain a prescence in my stairwell and to see how bad summer sales can be.

Follow up on Jasmin after her beating. I saw her the other day. She is back on the street and still smoking crack. She did lose one eye and her whole head is now shaped differently and all scarred up. Alexandra from the salon told me she saw her right after the beating and that the eye had been hanging by a thread and that her mouth somehow was ripped off her face as well. The tigueres evidently slammed a cement block repeatedly against her face.

 

The Culata

Last week Niningo asked to borrow the guaguita so he could attend the graduation party of his girlfriend. He brought five friends with him and brought the guaguita home in one piece.  I set off for the Zona Colonial in the morning and when I was in the middle of the long bridge over the Isabella River it made an ominous clicking noise and died. I managed to coast it over to the right hand curb and called Cojo the mechanic. He showed up in ten minutes, parked behind me, turned my ignition key once, got out some wrenches and had the broken timing belt out in no time. Cars trucks and motorcycles skimming past his legs as he worked bent into the driverŐs side door. He said to wait for him. He got in his identical Hijet, except that it is a flatbed pick-up and backed up against traffic the full quarter mile before he U turned to look for a new belt. A half hour later he returned, installed the belt, turned over the ignition and pronounced the culata,  or cylinder head with all its incumbent valves, dead.

He nodded toward the back of my guaguita, where I positioned myself and pushed. He steered it across the four lanes using his free hand to slow down traffic. He then U turned through the same traffic and after backing up in front of the guaguita fished out a snarled handfull of green, nylon clothesline and braided a four foot long tow rope, tied the two vehicles together and we started off. The nylon cord had enough stretch in it and, without the motor running, my brakes were soft enough so that we never broke the rope although there was some bungy motion when I did have to brake and after about 5 kilometers we turned into the alley where his mechanicŐs shade tree is. I took the Metro to work—I had luckily left my whole display with all the photos in the stairwell the night before. That evening he finished the work and I picked up the vehicle after paying him $218 for everything.

The following morning was Sunday and Altagracia and I drove to the Zona together so she could work for Bettye while I sold in the Flea Market. The guaguita had about one half the power as normal, barely even climbing the overpass at the Ovando intersection in second gear. It rained hard in the afternoon but I sold ok. Altagracia got out of work a little early so I packed up, loaded the guaguita and we set off for La Sirena to buy some birthday party stuff for Chanel. We went the back way via Avenida Central and, just as we were coming up on the broken stoplight at the entrance to the Cancino barrio, the guaguita made a brief, light grinding noise and died. I pushed it through a couple of potholes to get it over to the curb and called Cojo. I waited for him out under the stoplight in the rain under my blue umbrella while Altagracia walked off to buy fried chicken. He eventually showed up, popped off the valve cover, pronounced the new cualta dead and got out his green clothesline again. This time as we lurched over the potholes into the five-way intersection under the broken stoplight not all of the traffic stopped and Cojo had to stop suddenly, I hit my brake pedal and it went ro the floor and I crashed into CojoŐs rear bumper, well more of a jagged piece of metal than a bumper, Cojo moved forward again, flagging cars to stop by waving his arm out the window and we made it across. This time we had about 12 kilometers to go. Up hills down hills I had to brake with the emergency brake and unbrake in time so the rope did not snap. Cojo«s pick-up overheated and we had to stop so he could borrow a fuse out of my guaguita so his radiator fan would run. We made it through a tapon at the interesction to Sabana Larga and went through the tunnel under Hermanas Mirabel near La Sirena and down the freeway Jacobo Macluta turning left and wending through Guaricano barrio where Cojo lives. The only damage done by our fender bender, as far as I could tell, was a loosened headlight.

The next evening Cojo drove my guaguita with its second newly installed culata to my house, picked me up, I gave him a ride back to Guaricano to his house and bid farewell. I pulled out of his alley in the dark, turned left and within a kilometer felt the guaguita slowing down. I could keep going but needed more and more gas and lower and lower gears. After about two kilometers i realized I would never make it home, U turned over a median strip to return to CojoŐs and made it only a 100 meteres or so before the brakes completely locked. I called Cojo but his cell phone was turned off or the battery had died and I grabbed my umbrella and started hotfooting it back to his house leaving the guaguita parked in the dark and questionable neighborhood where it stopped.

I got there in about fifteen minutes but he had already left for points unknown. His mother lives next door and after inviting me to have a seat in the galeria she sent a kid to look for CojoŐs brother Eddy. After about a half hour Eddy showed up, listened to what had happened, gathered an armload of tools and drove me back to the guaguita in his pick-up with no hedlights and a maximium speed of about two kilometers per hour faster than I can walk.

Using his cell phone for a flashlight he peered up under the dashboard at the brake pedal linkages and started working the pedal up and down. He fished a fingertip full of grease out from somewhere, smeared it on a joint somewhere up under, we pushed the guaguita back and forth, braking , unbraking until he pronounced it cured. I got his cell phone number before I pulled away, but I made it home.

The next afternoon the same thing happened but this time I noticed in time to get back home. Cojo eventually came and we discovered that in our fender bender under the dark stoplight a piece of metal had been pushed up against a part of the brake pedal linkage that caused it to gradually seize in the braked position. Cojo excised the offending piece of sheetmetal with a hammer and cold chisel. I think this chapter is done.

 

 

November 22, Monday

I have been back for about 3 weeks.

Jeannete rented the landing above my stairwell to a nephew who installed two barber chairs and opened a barber shop. He painted stripes and arrows on the walls of what had been my area and clumps of hair drifted wafted through on downdrafts. After getting my hair cut I went to Mundo Artesanal and eventually persuaded them to rent me their doorway on the corner of El Conde with Duarte for much less than Jeannette had been charging.

 

Today I drove Altagracia to Las Mameyes where she had heard there was a cheap clothing wholesaler. En route she got a phone call from Kiki saying that he had not been able to make any money trafficking across the Haitian border because the border had been closed due to the cholera epidemic and that he was hungry. So we asked some directions to Western Union from 3 different people, got 3 different answers—some of the wrong directions were very specific but none of them lead to a Western Union. We eventually wound up at Mega Centro and sent him $27 but since he has lost his cedula again we sent it under a friendŐs name. This all took an hour and about 10 cell phone calls most of which were only to find out how to spell the friendŐs middle name Meran. So we return to Las Mameyes and start asking people where the big clothes wholesaler is and after a half dozen vague responses Altagracia decided to bag the idea and go to Villa Consuelo where she had bought cheap jewelry before. She walked into 6 Importers and, after looking at blouses and jeans and asking prices, asked where the stuff was made and when they told her China, walked out. Walking out of an importer in Villa Consuelo because they sell clothes made in China is like walking out of a butcher shop because it sells meat.

Kiki never called to say that he got the money and eventually we found out that it was because he was arrested just before he went into Western Union. Police had planted some marijuana seeds in his house.

On our way home I bought two sheets of plywood at Papaterra lumber yard to make a display case to use in Mundo Artesanal.

While I am cutting up plywood in the marquesina Altagracia got a cell phone message that she won $25,000 pesos—about $800 US. I explained to her and the crowd of gathered neighbors that it was probably a scam. But Niningo took over, called the number, borrowed $25 pesos and proceeded to buy the required phone cards and remit them to the company that had promised the 25gs. At one point when I came back up out of the marquesina to cry SCAM I turn the corner to the kitchen and see Felo, a neighbor with my $50 MacyŐs ChefŐs knife inverted over a can of guandules and his fist poised to drive the tip of the knife into the can to open it. To this moment—5 hours later—no one can understand why I yelled at him. The knife is worthless anyway now after it has been used as a screwdriver and to prune the guanabana tree in the garden next to the house. But I couldnŐt take it anymore. So about this time Belita enters the house and asks if anybody has heard about the phone card scam and Niningo freaks and starts calling the police because none of the phone cards that he has bought and entered in the last half hour have taken. Has a Dominican ever won a Nobel prize for Physics? For Long Division?

Two weeks ago I spent 2 days with Charles Beeker in Bayahibe snorkeling the shipwreck of Captain Kidd that he discovered and that aired as a National Geographic special. Later in the Capital i visited the lab where conservation efforts take place to clean up and/or identify and describe the varous aftifacts discovered in shipwrecks as well as Taino stuff from the Manantial de la Aleta, another National Geographic covered project of BeekerŐs where they have retrieved many underwater artifacts.

I returned to Bayahibe with Domingo Abreu and Espeleogrupo to check out a botanic garden and arqueological park that was abortively designed by Adolfo Lopez. We may be involved in its rehabilitation.

 

Dec. 1, 2010

A couple of years ago Pipina, AltagraciaŐs sister, lost a son to a motorcycle accident.

A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday morning on our way to the Plaza we saw a motorcyclist down in the northbound lane. He had been hit by a SUV that had sped away. By the time we stopped passerbys had loaded hm into the back of a passing pick-up that had stopped and had dragged his bike to the side of the road. The pick-up took him to the hospital but he was dead in the road.

This morning when I got to work at Mundo Artesanal Richard told me that ModestaŐs oldest son, 22, had been killed on his pasola, or motor scooter, the night before when a, SUV, or jeepeta as we call them here, ran a stale yellow which had been mistimed since the pasola had had a green and was in the middle of the intersection. There were lots of witnesses and the driver of the jeepeta was detained by the crowd and arrested. I went to the funeral home in Gualey with Jocasta and her husband Juan Paulo and then on to the cemetary in San Luis just outside the city past Hainamosa.

 

Dec 15, 2010

I just worked about 10 days straight between the big christmas crafts fair and the store. Day off in the house today finally and our internet is working again. Deliciously cool last night hung out on the porch shorts, flip flops and a green chamois long sleeve shirt. We sleep with two sheets and no fan--

 

Here are two photos of my new locale. The first one is a view from the street, I have the right hand side of this corner entrance rented. The second photo is a view of my setup from inside.

 

All things considered it is going well. Cruise ships don't really bring my kind of customer but sometimes they do. There are a few tourists and because they are the independent type in coming here off season they are good customers for me. Doctors and nurses returning from or en route to Haiti are good customers too. Before it was the earthquake now the cholera. A Danish doctor who bought a tee shirt from me in April finally finished her shift, passed back through and bought a replacement shirt. She went for the earthquake and was kept on for cholera, 8 months. She said that the cholera in Haiti is, I quote, out of control. So far here only about 40 cases and epidemiologists are apparently puzzled that it has not accelerated yet. Dominicans do have fastidious personal hygiene, several showers per day, so maybe despite the street filth, street food and vegetables for sale on the sidewalks, lack of soap in public bathrooms we can escape an epidemic?

 

Worst part of most of my days is the commute. I hope I get things organized eventually so I am not transporting boxes of stuff or bulky items every day and so can use the subway and guaguas. The traffic jams for no reason drive me nuts, just stupidity like cars filling up a clogged intersection so when the light changes nobody can go anywhere. Cars turning left from the right lane through busy intersections. Traffic cops directing traffic in intersections that have broken stoplights but then the cop wanders off and leaves chaos behind him. The other day a cop was directing traffic in a busy intersection in a shopping district, pedestrians crossing everywhere, motorcycles slinking and weaving their way to the front of the lines and squirting out across the road. I was in the middle lane stopped with a guagua to my right and a car to my left, we were in the very front waiting for the cop to signal us to go. He stops the other lanes, waves us on and just as I accelerate a Haitian runs out from in front of the guagua and I hit him. He goes flying to the pavement. I stop, the Haitian gets up, I look at the cop and he is just watching the Haitian shaking his head, the Haitian apologizes and limps off, I continue.

 

Mundo Artesanal (Craft World would be a likely translation) is top heavy in administration. David Morrillo is the owner along with his wife, Dany. His sister-in-law, Jocasta, is the manager, a son is the evening in charge person and there is an administrator who I think is a cousin, a cash register girl, an odd jobs guy, a housekeeper and two retail sales people. One of the retailers is Richard Bristol, an intense young Haitian who speaks Spanish, Creole, French and English and has a couple of his own paintings for sale in the store. When I am not around it is usually he who makes sales for me and when he does I give him 10% which is great for him since he only makes 2% commision in the other parts of the store and it is good for me because he is motivated.

 

Much of Mundo is stuff on consignment. Apart I rent my space, Ruddy the German (who makes my tee shirts as well as his own) rents two spaces. In one he has his tee shirt store right behind me and in the other he sells fancy knackworst and German beer-- Polaner at $5/bottle. On the other side of the store an Italian has a small diner type restaurant-- spaghetti with a tuna/tomato sauce, capuccino andmixed drinks and in the other doorway a jeweler who sets up on a card table and sells larimar earrings.

 

The other retail person in Mundo is Modesta and she really is the glue that holds the day to day business together. Over the years when I have had photos in Mundo Artesanal on consignment it was almost always her (she?) who I dealt with. She is also the type that will grab a mop when the house cleaner moves too slowly and she will run the hose up to the tinaco to fill it with water when the odd jobs guy is goofing off; she is paid for 8 hours but opens every morning at 9 and stays to lock up at 9 at night while her youngest kid, about 10 sleeps on the floor behind the register. When it is slow and she is caught up during the day she will go into a back room and sleep in a chair with her head on a desk for a half hour or so. She is bone thin, blonde with white-grey eyes and ears that stick out. Last Wednesday when I went in to work Modesta was not there and Richard told me that her oldest son, 22 and a recent high school graduate had been killed the night before in a motorcycle accident. Evidently the stoplight was badly timed; while he was speeding up on green an SUV went through on a stale yellow and killed him instantly in the middle of the intersection. The driver is in jail but witnesses apparently all agreed that there was no red light.

 

They bury them quick here. That day employees went in shifts to go see Modesta in the funeral home in Gualey, a famously tough slum. I asked Jocasta if I could go with her since I did not know the way. She said that she was going to go on to the cemetary too but it would be quick. Around 2 PM her husband, Juan Paulo, picked us up along with about 5 other people and we crammed into the crew cab of his listing pick-up truck. The funeral home was packed. Modesta was seated in the front of the room near the coffin that was closed but had a small window over the boy's face. There was blood caked in his hair and cotton balls stuffed in his nostrils and ears, no makeup. Modesta cried wailing nonstop and hugged hanging on to each person in the line who stepped up. She recognized me and cried ŇOH, DuVallÓ and cried on.

 

The cemetary was a lot farther away than I thought. Outside the city and farther than Hainamosa all the way to San Luis. There were two school busses full of mourners and at least 20 other vehicles not counting motorcycles. We wove our way in through the above- ground tombs and monuments overgrown with grass and weeds, past one that said Morillo, when I asked Juan Paulo if that was his family he nodded yes. The coffin was on the ground. The boy's sister was sprawled on top of it screaming. His father, who had barely been evident in the funeral home-- he is divorced from Modesta and has his own family-- was front and center tears streaming non stop down his face and Modesta was standing quietly a few meters away. A number of tough looking teens had scaled a nearby building and watched from the roof. A preacher spoke for 10 or 15 minutes and after 5 or 6 people hoisted the coffin up on their shoulders and, to a crescendo of screaming and crying, Modest broke down again at this point,  slid it into an opening in the tomb like the middle drawer of a giant concrete file cabinet. The preacher said a few more words and we walked slowly back through the weeds to the pick-up truck.

 

On a lighter note. Last summer while in Egremont I read an article in the NY Times about what to do if you had 36 hours in Santo Domingo and one of the key suggestions was to eat a sandwich at Barra Payan on 30 de Marzo street and the 27th febrero highway. I drive right past it every day going home to Villa Mella but had always thought it was just a bar or a crumby cafeteria. I stopped the other night, jonesing for a real sandwich and fearing the worst i.e. that they would cost $10. Menu with about 20 sandwiches on it all for under $3 each. and a list of juices a mile long with 3 options for each juice-- cut with water or milk or Carnation condensed milk. Counter staff yelling sandwich orders to the short order cook staff money flying back and forth across the register, two deep at the counter. Cops, guys in suits, cab drivers, women on their way home from work. HIgh production, fast efficient evidently it has been there for 40 or so years. I asked for a beer while I waited, no beer, sandwich, juice period and my sandwiches were ready in less than 5 minutes. Later I heard that there have been songs written about the place. I ordered one each of the first three sandwiches on the menu to go. Roast pork, chicken, Payan Especial with varous melted cheeses, tomato etc. We all loved them back at the house. My second time I ordered one each of the next three on the menu and plan to proceed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALAIN

Lynne Guitar La Piedra 1 day

Pedernales 1 day ??? Cueva de la Vuelta de la Colmena 19Q 0223450, 1987404—MIna 0234257, 1983242 101m

Pedro Sanchez 3 days Cueva de Casita, Jengo—0485723, 2086810, Pepe

Cumayasa/Batey Negro Cueva de la Iglesia—0486370, 2037090, de Higo-0486579, 2037052 boyeaux ,cueva de nada y casi nada 3 days

YamasaLuisa Prieta /Comotillo 3 days Y-Cueva de Los Indios-0403787, 2071673, Abrigo de Los Indios-0403811, 2071591, C- Cueva de la Chepa, de la Chepa II 2xentrada 0439239, 2086371, Cueva de Tino and belowDomingo jefe of the aquaduct Denis Cartier

La Piedra III 1 day about 15 puntos Cueva de Maria guia—Rafael

 

April 20 Fake Cigar

Salome Ure–a is a narrow, nominally one-way street one block from El Conde and is where my preferred parking spot is due to the amount of shade. This evening when I was getting in the guaguita to go home a man came out of the farmac’a on the corner, approached me and asked if I worked in the area since he had seen the guaguita here often. I told him I was a clerk in a gift shop and then he hatched his plan. He said that a tourist wanted to buy a $100 (dollars US) cigar from him but that he was going to buy a $15 dollar counterfeit one from a shady cigar store and resell it to the tourist tomorrow for the $100. Said that if I loaned him the $15 now he would pay me back $50 tomorrow after the deal went down. I said I was really strapped and couldnŐt do it. He said it would be fine, that he was 100% honest and always paid his debts and never told lies to anyone. Ever. So now I park in sunnier parking spots.

 

 

April 27, 2011 Maybe the End

Life with Altagracia proceeded in an up and down fashion. She worked one day a week for Alexa cleaning her apartment and spent the rest of her time in Villa Mella cleaning our house incessantly. Sometimes she would cook and sometimes not—in past years there was always food prepared for the table. Kiki is in prison for an undetermined period of time and, I think, that much of the money I left on the bureau to buy food went via Western Union to the jail in Elias Pi–a. She sent all the money she earned from working to Kiki.

 

AlainŐs stay was a strain. I had thought, when I invited him that he would be there one or two nights per week when we not exploring caves but it turned into more like 4 or 5 and he was here for over a month. He eats a lot and has specific food requirements. Altagracia did not like anything about him even though Alain paid for almost all the food and we had more fruit in the house than ever before. On the last day, just before I took him to the airport, he awkwardly handed Altagracia 500 pesos ($15) by way of saying thankyou for the extra work and she accepted it quietly. But when I got back from the airport run she blew up saying that we had treated her like a servant, that the wife of a foreigner should not have to work and then she took it to the street ranting at top holler, going from door to door saying what an abuser I was and that I treated her like a slave, etc etc. We did not speak for three days and I began to look for an apartment to move into.

 

I am working now on the Conde where I rent the inside of the corner doorway to the gift shop, Mundo Artesanal, and when I am not in caves I sell the photographs there. The commute is brutal, ranging anywhere from a half hour to an hour and half if there is a tapon, and I see a near accident every day. I leave the house around 8:45 in the morning and get home around 8:30 at night after closing the store. The guaguita does not have a radio but I put Radio France on a small transistor radio that rests on the passenger seat and it sounds fine. My original plan was to sell on only the busy days of the weekend but I went there on the slow days too, as much to get out of the house as anything. When I am not in the store the sales staff sells my stuff for me and I tip them about 10% of the sale. When I am in the store I can use my computer to write stuff like this and can go online using a wireless modem. While some days are long and slow, the worst  are painless. Around lunch time I walk up to la Sirena and buy a piece of roast chicken and tuna pasta salad from the deli counter and whatever groceries we need in the house. There is also a grocery store across the street from Mundo Artesanal and a branch of Banco Popular across the Conde. Life is convenient.

 

After about my third foray on foot in areas near the store I fould an unfurnished studio apartment through a middleman named Ivan in Ciudad Nueva, about a 15 minute walk to the store, 12 minutes hotfooting it. Altagracia and I had made up by then but the truce was shaky and I reasoned that I could use the studio for matting prints, writing or even a small gallery so I rented it for $216/month. When I told Altagracia she humphed and said it sounded like nothing more than a rapadera or a place to take prostitutes. I bought a portable radio in the flea market, moved the matting and framing stuff there and hung the 26x36 original print of my main logo.

 

I then came down with either Giardia or Amoebic dysentery, probably from a bad plato de d’a (lunch special) and was repulsively sick for 4 days, including experiencing nocturnal leakage while sleeping (and this from a man well known for the strength of his anal pucker). As I recovered Altagracia began her menstruation so as a result we did not make love for almost two weeks. Saturday night I went to sleep around 10 and around 11 she woke me up roughly asking why I was sleeping with my back to her all the time and when I did not have a good enough answer, because I had been asleep and did not even know she was in the bed, she went and slept on the floor of the living room. The next night she slept on the sofa and the next in ChanyŐs room. Monday I went to Las Maravillas with Domingo to take paint residue samples. Tuesday morning I bought lumber to make a bookcase for the office—as we were then calling it—brought the boards home to the marquesina, marked them for cutting and the electricity went out for 7 hours.

 

Jhoanglish has been working as a night watchman but last week he shot himself in the left hand while putting the pistol in his pocket and is now furloughed until the stitches come out which means that he hangs out on the street, borrows money and smokes pot every day. Just after lunch he wandered by and complained to Altagracia about the reheated dinner she had given him the night before and mentioned that he would slap her up if she did it again. She lit off the galleria and grabbed a softball-sized chunk of broken concrete from the curb and chased him until Niningo and Chavela restrained her. He threatened to kill her and she responded in kind, brandishing the brickbat until Niningo wrested it away. Once back in the house she grabbed a 2 foot long piece of iron pipe that she keeps handy in case of thieves and started back after him, Niningo blocked her and she turned and beat the hell out of the concrete set tub we have in the patio breaking off pieces. Channy, 3½ , had been sleeping on the floor of the galleria on a pillow with her bottle and woke up crying because ants had invaded her crotch and were biting her. Chavela picked her up by one arm and gave her a roundhouse slap to stop her from crying. Altagracia, unarmed finally, now went out to the street harangueing about the four good-for-nothing children she has and she has to support them all by herself because the father was murdered and nobody helps her not at all not one peso and even though she is with a gringo she has to clean floors for a living. She went up one side of the street and down the other for most of the rest of the afternoon shouting this litany to anyone with their door open. When the electricity came back on around 6PM I went down to the marquesina to cut my 1x10 pine to length and make the dado cuts with my SkilSaw asking myself what I was doing here. When I was done I packed the unassembled parts into the guaguita along with the tools I would need to assemble the shelves in the office.

 

Although we had not spoken civilly since the interrogation about sleeping orientation, Altagracia and I watched the 10 oclock episode of the Fantasma de Elena on TV and I went to bed at 11. She rolled and smoked a cigar out in the patio and around 11 came in, got ready for bed and went into the spare room. A minute later she charged out and when I looked up she hurled her new red cell phone, the one we called the chihuahua because it was so small, on the floor and it broke into pieces ricocheting across the room. She fled the room but turned and charged again, I was sitting up on the edge of the bed by now, and she launched a volley of punches, I tried to stand up and she stooped and tore a gaping hole in one the legs of my pajamas. She resumed the punching. I was able to grab her wrists from time to time. All the time she was screaming that I had cheated on her, that I was nothing but a no-good cheater and liar and occasionally shooting a glance at the night table. When she retreated I looked over at the night table and saw the AlkaSeltzer.

 

Monday morning before meeting Domingo I had had a headache and my stomache was still a little iffy so, before the drive to the cave, I bought a two-pack of AlkaSeltzer Extreme. Since they were, at least nominally, extreme, I only took one and put the opened foil package, which incidently has trendier graphics than the AlkaSeltzer classic blue foil pack, in my shirt pocket and forgot about it. Tuesday, before the conflagration with Jhoanglish in the street, Altagracia had been doing laundry and evidently found the open packet in my shirt pocket and put it on the kitchen table. When, after the blitzkrieg that night I saw it on the night table I knew what had happened. I brought the packet to her and asked her what it was, she said with scorn, Ňcondones,Ó I said, ŇAlkaSeltzer,Ó as I peeled apart the foils and dumped the broken tablet on the table. ŇWould you like a glass of water?Ó I asked. I watched her face. I had never seen an expression change like that with absolutely no facial movement. Something lit in her eyes and then fell. I got the glass of water, plopped the fragments in, offered it to her, she was still expressionless, and I drank.

 

I went back to bed. She went to the sofa but then came into the bedroom. I said I wanted to be alone. She said that she would not bother me and got into her side of the bed. I lay on my back all night with my eyes riveted on the concrete louvre that communicates with the kitchen and was backlighted. On the underside of each slat silhouetted cockroaches moved around from time to time. I waited until 6 AM and then got up and perked coffee as usual. I packed my camera stuff like I was going to a cave, but I also packed the cash hidden under the mattress and my passport. She slept. I packed my cell phone charger and the all the camera and flash cables. I packed a box of books that I would put on the finished shelves in the office that would be where I would live. When I was done I gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, ŇM‡ndame suerteŇ like I did every morning when I knew I would need good luck. She murmmered but did not waken. I closed the door quietly behind me.

 

I called her later in the morning and said that I was going to San Crist—bal because I did not want her to look for me in the store. Early in the evening I called and said I would not be coming home. She called back, ŇNever?Ó I said, ŇNeverÓ, she asked, ŇReally?Ó There were many more calls like that. In the end she became hysterical and finally ran out of cell phone minutes.

 

The office has a 7-foot tall bookcase, the card table that was MamieŐs in the 1950s and not much else. It consists of one room with a separate kitchen and a bathroom.  It is two blocks from the Malecon and the Caribbean and there is a colmado a half block away that does not play deafening music. There is a school across the street and an empanada vender and juice vender set up on the corner to sell breakfast to the students in the morning. On the next block is the Justice Building where big criminal trials take place so there are always a lot of cops and lawyers around. I am on the 3rd floor, on the roof, with a small patio shared by two other apartments— one is empty at the moment and four young doctors live in the other. There is always a breeze and I can see the sea if I stand up and look out the back window across the adjacent rooftop. Last night I slept in my hammock.

 

April 29, Friday, 2011

7:00 AM-- Altagracia has denied the separation, saying that she will not leave me. I mostly leave my cell phone turned off to avoid the many calls. Today she is going to work with Alexa in this neighborhood and she has threatened to come to the office or to the store before and/or after work. I am barricaded in the office and the guaguita is parked on a side street far away. My hope is that she cannot find the office. Of course in case of a vigil outside the door I would have no defense. When she shows up for work Alexa is going to call me and I will drive to the Loma de Chivo in Villa Mella and get my clothes and other things.

 

10:30 AM-- Around 8 this morning the secure door to the top floor was left open accidently and Altagracia came up and pounded on my door, questioned the woman washing clothes on the patio and finally left. Silently, under siege I matted prints. Later Don Eduardo, the building owner who has temporarily moved into the vacant apartment next door, warned me that the bruja was out on the street, but she did not come up again. After finally turning my cell phone on (in slient mode in case she called from outside my door to hear if I was home) I called Modesta at Mundo Artesanal who told me that Altagracia had been there, had asked where I was and then seemed to be looking for the guaguita in my usual parking spots. It is 11 now and she still has not gone to work.

 

12:30 PM I left the apartment to walk to EPS to get my New Yorker, about 3 miles maybe enough distance to think in, and when I was near the Museo del Hombre Alexa finally called to say that Altagracia came to work, but that there had been complications. Last night Jhoanglish and a friend both armed with pistols attacked the house in Villa Mella, firing into the air demanding money. The details were murky, they may have broken into the marquisina, but somehow they went away and Altagracia spent another sleepless night there. In the morning, on her way to my apartment, she had been attacked by unknown ladrones (thieves) near Parque Independencia who stole her wallet with about $8 her metro card and house keys. Alexa convinced her not to return to Villa Mella, and not to call me either. With Alexa as mediator I drove to Villa Mella, while Altagracia was still working at Alexa's, and met Niningo in a remote parking lot. He then drove the guaguita to the house and packed a bag for Altagracia and loaded a bunch of my stuff that I had left behind. We feared that if Jhoanglish was still drugged he would certainly attack me, so I waited in a secluded colmado until Niningo returned with the guaguita and I drove it back downtown, dropping AltagraciaŐs overnight bag at AlexaŐs. Alexa called her a cab to go to TiMamaŐs where she could, hopefully, stay for a few days and sort things out.

 

9:30 PM I am in my apartment. Altagracia presumably is closing in on TiMamaŐs house in Luperon. I have showered. I have clean clothes and am listening to the new Paul Simon Album I just downloaded. Both Don Eduardo and Papito who lives on the ground floor and is kind of the soul of the bulding have been sympathetic. There is no shooting in the street and no mufflerless motorcycles roaring past and no three year olds wandering on their own. We will see what happens tomorrow.

 

May 15, 2011  Mugged

The separation wobbles along. Altagracia calls 4-5 times a day, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes confused. More accurately she beeps my cell phone because she has few available minutes so that I will call back. Because she is my super favorita number the first 4 minutes are free for each call to her.

 

Monday and Tuesday I was in Gaspar Hernandez visiting Liz who was there on vacation. I took Caribe Tours and when I returned to the capital Wednesday afternoon I walked from the bus station down to the store, about a mile, with my backpack and worked the rest of the day. In the evening I met Mike and Edit and we had dinner near the Plaza de Espa–a in a fancy restaurant. I walked them to their hotel on Meri–o and Mercedes and then continued on Mercedes and turned left on Duarte to get to the Conde and safer walking since it was after 9PM. I crossed Luperon but when I got to the corner of Salome Ure–a where the Hotel Palacio is and one short block from Mundo Artesanal two guys leaning on a parked car on Salome Ure–a sprang into ready crouches and one pulled out a shiny automatic pistol, shot the bolt and, aiming it at me with both hands, yelled, ŇÁDame lo tuyo, dame lo tuyo!Ó I carefully slipped off my backpack, handed it to him at arms length and backed quickly away. They forgot about the wallet, got in the car, peeled out and sped away down Salome Ure–a. I lost my sleeping bag, my little camera, my pyjamas (the same ones Altagracia tore in a fit of rage and then mended), my one remaining issue of Rock Art Research with my article printed, and dirty clothes. I am sure the ladrones were disappointed when they checked out their haul. Now when I walk around I am suspicious of everybody.

 

May 16, 2011

A half block from my apartment is a hole in the wall, Mom and Pop empanada, pastele en hoja stand. The other night I was sitting on the sidewalk in front in a plastic chair eating a chicken pastele and Josefina Taveras walked by and sat down! She is the director of the museum in Villa Mella, Cofradia del Congos, who curated my show there a year or two ago. Beautiful and mysterious it was nice to see her.

 

Yesterday I sold a photo to a young doctor who had spent her summers at the Eisner camp in Great Barrington. Friday in the store I sold a tee shirt to a blond woman with a French accent and we chatted for quite a while before I realized she was Jocelyn, the realtor who has LizŐs house listed.

 

Monday May 16 The Propane Tank

Returned the fotos I tried to sell in the Plaza Sunday to the store this morning after going to Astro Foto to get some prints made. I think I might have found the express line; it took me less than an hour to get in and out, and at 7 AM.

 

Called Ramon this morning and then went, picked him up and we drove to Las Minas, a barrio within Santo Domingo, to look for a propane tank for me so I can start cooking. $700 pesos ($18) in Las Mina and, if La Sirena had had that size it would have cost about $1200. In Las Mina the first place we asked about a tank was just a doorway with a great big fat guy lying in it on a makeshift mattress facedown with his head toward the street. He had been in a car accident some months ago, lost both legs and his brother was killed. He had a tank but it looked a little dodgey so we went down the block where there was a selection of small, 3 and 4 gallon tanks already primed with orange paint. We picked one out and the guy cranked a valve in with a giant home-welded wrench, gave it a quick pressure test and brushed on the finish coat of hunter orange, saying it dries in minutes. I filled it on the way home at a Credigas after dropping off Ramon and stood on the other side of the guaguita as the pressure built, just in case.

 

Bought a 2 burner gas table top range for $800 this afternoon. Tonight I just cooked eggs, the paint is still tacky on the propane tank, the kitchen reeks of oil paint but they were delicious. Tomorrow morning, if the tank doesnŐt explode during the night—Coffee!

 

Tuesday May 17 The Kitchen Sink

My first weeks here I hardly ran any water down the kitchen sink drain. The most I ever washed was a fork or a spoon or a tin cup. The other night I washed clothes and wound up dumping about three gallons of soapy water down the sink and it immediately came back up through the floor drain inside the kitchen under the window, black smelly grease-trap septic. I mopped it up and bleached the area.

 

The next day Don Eduardo bought me a bottle of the new kind of plomerito which, I might add, is a pale shade of the plomerito that almost blew up a toilet and blinded me about 5 years ago in Villa Mella. This producto is mostly sodium hydroxide, a strong base not an acid like its predesseor. Anyway I dumped most of the bottle down the floor drain and forgot about it. A day later, while washing a bread knife I turned and saw a pale, scummy exudate seeping up out of the floor drain. Reflexively I grabbed the mop and bucket, soaked up a load of it and when I started to hand wring it the sodium hydroxide, which is what the liquid mostly turned out to be, about took the skin off my hands. Drops burned the tops of my feet. I thought the mop was ruined, total slime slippery base feel until I soaked it in a pail of water cut with a quart of vinegar. Two days later the palms of my hands still feel like they belong to somebody else.

 

Today the plumber showed up carrying a screwdriver and a toilet plunger that could have been pre-Hispanic. He tore off the little grille over the floor drain and plunged away, then blocked the floordrain with wadded up grocery bags from La Sirena, filled the sink and plunged the sink, knocking all the grout out of the tile counter. When he triumphantly pulled the plunger up water rushed up out of the floor drain, across the kitchen floor and into the living room. All the low spots in the floor are in the corners farthest from the door. There were clots of ante-diluvial grease and black ŇsandÓ everywhere. We swept it out the door with brooms but I had to empty the 7 foot bookcase to move it later and bail out the corner behind it.

 

He then noticed that what water was receding was going down around the floor drain and into the ceiling of the apartment below. ŇOh, thatŐs why they have a water problem down there,Ó he commented and, after borrowing my hammer, began to break up the tile of the kitchen floor. He dug out the broken concrete and tile with his bare hands and cut himself. When he wiped the sludge off the wound I apologized that I did not have a band-aid and he said not to worry that you canŐt get an infection from water. He eventually capped off the superfluous floor drain after borrowing a hack saw blade from me to make a clean cut and went back to plunging the sink. Eventually, with an inch or two of standing water in it, a weak outgoing whirl could be discerned. He dumped in another 5 gallons of water and it came right back. I asked him if he had a plumberŐs snake and he replied that snakes can not go around corners, although my understanding, and experience (snaking the drains of Avalon school years ago to retrieve lost toys that the inmates had flushed) was that that was why they were invented. He called it a day around 2:30 and will confer with Don Eduardo about breaking up more floor to try to root out the clog.