Luto

Tonight is my last night in Las Terrenas for 2 1/2 months, and it´s the quietest night yet. No music, no parties, no people drinking, nothing, and it´s a Friday night. The town is in an official state of mourning (luto) because yesterday there was a horrific bus accident in which 15 people died. The express bus from the capital, Santo Domingo, crashed head-on with a lorry and the whole bus crumpled. There are 15 dead and more than 20 seriously injured so far, with some of the injured still unidentified. The bus was packed, with people standing in the aisles.

The preliminary reports are that the 3pm guagua from Santo Domingo to Las Terrenas (the last one of the day) was about halfway to Las Terrenas when the driver went into the opposite lane going around a curve and crashed head on with a lorry. The driver died in the collision, so this account is according to the driver of the lorry, who needed surgery but survived. Almost everyone on the bus was from Las Terrenas or El Limón, the next town over. It happened at 4pm, my housemate saw a big commotion when she was out running at 5pm and heard then, and I went into work at 6pm. The whole evening more news trickled in. Nothing was on official news channels, because it´s not that fast here. Instead, people sent photos and videos from the scene by Whatsapp and Facebook. That was something that shocked me - before any emergency services had moved bodies, there were dozens of people milling around with cameraphones taking videos and photos. The photos are horrific, and shared on everyone´s Facebook wall.

By midnight last night, hundreds of people were waiting in the covered basketball court, where bodies were being brought to be returned to families. This is a small town, of 20,000 people, and many of the people who died were well known. I didn´t know any of them, because I´m a blow-in, but locals know everyone. A 10 year old boy was among the dead.The phone company, Orange, had sent 3 of its staff to a training day in Santo Domingo, and those 3 women died, one of whom was pregnant. It seems a lot of people knew them, I heard so many people talk about them.

Yakaira, one of the women who worked in the Orange shop.

Alba, one of the women who worked in the Orange shop.

By law, funerals have to happen within 24 hours, because there are no facilities here for preserving bodies, no embalming or anything. So today, at 10am, 18 hours after the accident, the funeral processions of Yakaira, Alba and Emilia, three friends, started up the main street. There were three pickup trucks, holding a coffin each, with family sitting inside the cab and around the coffin in the back. Each truck had its own procession, with people all around holding on to the sides and walking beside it and behind it. There were three other trucks too dispersed along the length of the procession that only had speakers on them, all blaring the same song on repeat - Adios mi familia. The whole town walked with them, some people wailing and crying and sobbing. There were some news cameras there, and lots of people filming it with their phones. At one point, a women broke out of a crowd wailing hysterically, and the news cameras all swung to film her. She was walking up the street wailing, with someone holding onto her, and a young guy in front of her, not a metre away from her, with his phone up, filming her. Here they don´t seem to think that is disrespectful. I don´t know if it´s to do with the fact that nobody here was able to make videos or take photos until very recently, or another cultural difference I don´t understand yet. All the photos I show here I took off the internet. I wanted to be able to show people what this kind of mass bereaving looked like, but I did not want to take photos.

I left the procession before the burial, but these photos were shared online.

The police shot dead an innocent young man, sparking a riot earlier this week, and now this awful accident has happened. Las Terrenas needs some good luck, you can feel the sadness everywhere. I am ready to leave, I need a break. This is a wonderful place that I want to come back to, my time here is not finished. But it´s not easy some of the time. Some things that we take for granted just aren´t true for here. Those people who were lucky enough to survive the crash are now in a dirty, understaffed, underequipped hospital. If they make it out of there alive, they won´t have rehabilitation, or prosthetics, or follow-up care, or a disability allowance. I haven´t heard of anyone getting treatments like chemotherapy for cancer, and I´m starting to think that maybe they don´t get it. 

So while this is a glum post, I am fine, and my friends are fine, and the kids in my school and all their parents are fine and that is something to be very grateful for. As I was writing this post, my housemate Mackenzie dropped in a goodbye card to my room that she made. She painted me juggling teaching (Las Terrenas International School 4th grade math) and waitering in Lazy Dog, and it was so darn sweet it cheered me up no end! So I´ll leave you with Mackenzie´s picture, and post again from my new, temporary life in Cape Cod.

Holiday! Celebrate! Part 2.

Wow. I´ve had a wonderful 3 weeks, filled with trips and friends and a fair amount of food and beer. My second visitor, Meaghan, just left and so I spent the day doing laundry, tidying and reading on the beach. But more about Meaghan later. For now I´m going to try and pick up where I left off.

Paul and I went to Santiago from Jarabacoa, which is the next biggest city after Santo Domingo. It was not the nicest city, but it was exciting to be somewhere with a shopping area. There are so many things you can´t get in Las Terrenas, but Santiago has a load of Chinese stores with everything you could possibly want, and lots of things you don´t want at all. For a small town country girl like myself, this was amazing. But Santiago takes it a little too far with Dennys, a shop that occupies an entire block and is 4 floors of complete chaos.

Yep. This is a shop floor. (Photo: Paul Devlin)

(Photo: Paul Devlin)

Dominican mannequins have the dimensions of Kim Kardashian. (Photo: Paul Devlin)

We spent the night in a cheapo hotel and got up early to get the guagua to the 27 charcos, which are 27 connected pools. You go with a guide (and a helmet and lifejacket! How un-Dominican!) and walk, jump or slide from one to the next. They´re pretty beautiful and the water feels gorgeous, but it´s all a bit touristy. Groups are bussed in from resorts to do the charcos, and I know it´s stupid but I hate being lumped with all the other tourists! To a Dominican, I am an American tourist, no matter how Irish I am or how much Spanish I speak or how long I live and work here.

So we did the 27 Charcos  and hopped on a guagua to Las Terrenas, where I was excited to show Paul my town and my life. Unfortunately there were lots of other people excited to get to Las Terrenas. LOTS. The guagua was a 5 hour nightmare of crammed minivan with people hanging out the door and the driver constantly trying to pack more on. Of course we chatted to people and exchanged phone numbers and had a few laughs. What else can you do?

Dubh le daoine on the guagua (Photo: Paul Devlin)

The guagua was particularly bad because it was the Wednesday before Easter, where the world and its mother start to head to Las Terrenas. The town itself was mad - speakers set up on the beach, and advertising, stages and marquees everywhere. It was absolutely packed and everyone was drinking rum and dancing all day and night. It was kind of like a Carribean Funderland without the amusements. We had a ball. It was madness, and lots of fun.

Best place to get seafood - shacks on the beach right where the fishermen bring in the fish. (Photo: Paul Devlin)

Fruit truck (Photo: Paul Devlin)

Ambulance in field beside my house. Normal. (Photo: Paul Devlin)

Paul left on Easter Sunday, and had one more little Dominican adventure without me, He got on the bus to Santo Domingo, it was jam packed full of people so big boy Paul spent the journey practically sitting on top of a Dominican woman. So of course he made friends with her and her family, and went back to their house in Santo Domingo. He had a bit of time to kill before going to the airport, and spent that being shown around their barrio and eating home cooked food. He was a tired but very happy man when he left the DR.

I had Easter Sunday and Monday to do laundry and catch up on some sleep before I was off again. I go to a bar here called Lazy Dog, owned by an Englishman, Eddie and a Canadian woman. Bekka. When my house gets too mosquito-y but I have work to do, I just head over there with my laptop and hang out for a while with a coffee/cuba libre/plate of chicken wings. Eddie has another Lazy Dog in Cabarete which is a surf/kitesurf beach town on the North coast near Puerto Plata, and he invited me along to see it. My friend Nikki (who also works in Lazy Dog) came too. We had a house to ourselves, air conditioning, hot water, a double bed...I´ve never known such luxury. Eddie looked after us well and we had two days of hanging out there, enjoying all the delicious food Cabarete has to offer. Cabarete is like Las Terrenas, but sportier and more American. There´s a strip of beach bars and restaurants, and everyone speaks English. People do yoga, and there is a cafe with organic falafel burgers and the like. That kind of stuff has not reached Las Terrenas, as the foreign money seems to come from older French and Italian people, and they´re not so into wheatgrass shots and meditation.

A strange beach we stopped at on the way. It was very pretty but it absolutely stank due to a disgusting, stagnant pond. 

Cabarete beach

Nikki killing it at bottomless pancake breakfast. We had a competition, she won. Nikki - 15, Kate - 12.

I came back to Las Terrenas on the Thursday, and Meaghan arrived on the Saturday. Meaghan is one of my favourite people in the world, a beautiful lady that spreads joy wherever she goes! We met in Madrid, now she lives in Seattle. We hadn´t seen each other for over a year so it was truly wonderful to get to spend a week together and catch up. 

In one week Meaghan had a lot of Dominican experiences, starting with when she got off the bus. I was waiting at the spot I had told her to tell them to let her off at. A bus went by, but it was a small guagua and I didn´t think she´d be on that one, so I continued waiting. Eventually she turns up behind me. Turns out the driver decided to let her out at another stop, where they told her to get on a moto, with her suitcase and all. She did as she was told and they drove around asking people where Casa Paz, my house, was. Eventually she got there, and luckily my housemate was sitting in the garden. The next day we went to the arroyo, the natural swimming pool, in El Limón. We lay in the sun, played with a baby and had a few beers. After that we went to a barbeque in Nikki´s place with Nikki, her boyfriend and all her boyfriend´s friends. We danced bachata in her garden and drank rum. It was lots of fun.

Girls on guagua

Man, fully dressed, casually sitting in water.

Nikki and Betsy, her puppy.

The next morning I had to go back to work after two weeks off, which was pretty hard. But, I finish at 2:30 and spent every afternoon hanging out with Meaghan, so that was pretty sweet. Meaghan has a busy life in Seattle so was happy to chill out on the beach during the day and chill out with me in the afternoon.

Manipedi time!

 I got to take the Friday off as a personal day so we went to Cayo Levantado/Bacardi Island. We got up too late and so didn´t have as much time as we wanted there, but it was heavenly nonetheless. Last time I went was with school, so this was infinitely more relaxing than the last time.

Coco loco of course!

 

On the way home in the guagua I took this picture. Sand that looks that white against my skin has gotta be pure as snow.

On the Saturday we had a crazy night out in Las Terrenas with girlfriends where we danced loads and had one too many santo libres (rum + Sprite). The next day, Meaghan´s last, we dragged our hungover asses straight out to Playa Bonita, where we spent the day napping on sun loungers, drinking Coca Cola, eating pizza and reading. It was pure heaven. Best way to kill a hangover.

Bestie selfie

The Lemon

Today we went to El Limón, the next town over to hike to the waterfall (I went up on horseback before). A 9 year old boy called Carlos asked did we want him to be our guide, and we couldn´t resist. It seemed like destiny for he was wearing a wonderful t-shirt (most people buy their clothes from second-hand stores with donations from America).

The guagua to El Limón with Jess, Leire and Andrea

My main man Carlos

View from the hike

Carlos was wearing wellies, and he bounded over rocks and swung off branches on the way to the waterfall. When we got up to the top, he jumped in the water and with all the other local boys started doing tricks. Some completely insane teenagers climb up, scale horizontally the face of the waterfall and leap off. Terrifying.

Carlos´s cousin

The kids from Las Terrenas often don´t know how to swim and rarely go to the beach, even though they live in a beach town, but the kids here work at the waterfall so their relationship with it is totally different. They go to school Monday-Friday and on weekends or public holidays they take tourists up on horseback or walking. Besides the usual independence a Dominican kid displays, these kids are country boys and jump off waterfalls, scramble up and down rocks and swim like fish. All the guides wore wellies, and a lot of them swam in them. Madness.

After we went to el arroyo, a natural pool with a bar and thumping music. No firearms or knives allowed, as the below sign helpfully informs us.

We swam in the fresh, cold water and had a couple of Presidente beers before getting the guagua back. Only the foreigners swim in bikinis. For some reason, the Dominicans all swim fully dressed. But they have a good time doing it.

I leave you with a girl and her dog, waiting for a lift at the side of the road.