Quick hits on the DR

I am in the Dominican Republic this week viewing some of the charity operations performed by Food for the Poor, a 25-year-old charity based in Coconut Creek, Fla., that was recently tabbed as the second-largest international charity in the United States by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Today, I’d like to give you some general thoughts about the Dominican Republic. I’ll keep it light and hit you with the heavy stuff later.

-- We were based in the town of San Juan de la Maguana (roughly three hours west of the capital city of Santo Domingo) for the past couple of days. The city of around 40,000 is pretty vibrant, with an active nightlife. It was great hearing San Juan ake up this morning. When we sat down for breakfast at around 6:30, the town was still asleep. Over the next hour it gradually filled with the sound of cars, motorcycles and people gathering for work and school. As if to herald a wake-up call for stragglers, a car blasting meringue and plenty of bass drove by, setting off car alarms. The day had begun!


Moto boys
-- Motorcycles seems to be the preferred form of transportation in this country, and they zip between cars and trucks in traffic with a cavalier attitude. On the way out of Santo Domingo, I saw a motorcycle have a run-in with a truck. Either he was run off the road, or he was trying to cut off the truck through a turn, but the motorcyclists got the bad end of the deal. He was fine and jumped up immediately after the low-speed accident. But I never found out what happened from the ensuing argument between the trucker and the biker.

-- The most prevalent form of graffiti that I’ve seen on signs throughout the country is “Cristo Vive” (Christ lives). Maybe the evangelicals in the Dominican Republic are outfitted with cans of spray paint at their baptisms.

-- In and around San Juan, I have noticed many depictions of Ernesto “Che” Guevara on buildings. Guevera ran Fidel Castro’s death squads following the Cuban revolution.

-- Major roads are better than I thought they would be in the Dominican Republic. They are generally smooth and paved. As you move inland and closer to the Haitian border . . . well, just imagine taking your jeep four-wheeling.
A man and his horse
-- There is still plenty of agriculture performed manually in the Dominican Republic. The larger farms are mechanized, but I have seen farmers working smaller plots of land with a horse and plow. Horses are also used to transport goods.

-- People in the Dominican Republic love their meringue music. You can hear it out of just about every radio playing, and even morning music broadcasts start with the lively beat.

-- You haven’t live until you’ve watched “The Simpsons” in Spanish. I’m an admitted fan of the show to begin with, but there’s something about hearing the characters done in another language that is a bit jarring and very amusing. They made an effort in the Spanish-language audio to mimic the voices of their American counterparts. I wonder if the SAP broadcast at home sounds the same.

-- While I’m writing about television, I may as well touch on baseball broadcasts of Dominican league baseball. If you thought the advertising was ubiquitous in American broadcasts, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Between pitches of Dominican baseball games, an ad comes across the bottom third of the screen. This is for every pitch. Considering the average baseball game features 300 pitches or more thrown, that’s a lot of marketing exposure in addition to regular commercial breaks.

-- Livestock roams the land close to roads here. I get spooked when I see a big horn sheep or elk close to the road when driving to the high country, so you can imagine what it’s like to see a bull or goat wander into the middle of the road. It was kind of funny, though, watching a bull in the road begin to charge the bus we’re riding in.

-- In towns everywhere in the countryside, there are little stores called “calmados.” These small shops are basically storefronts with very little merchandise inside. Think of them as 7-11a, Dominican style.

I’ll give you more later, but I figured it was enough for the time being.