The little cigar making room, entered through a small corner tobacco shop in the Zona Colonia, has four men inside. One is reading the paper, another is watching the cigars being made, two men are working – making cigars, by hand, one at a time.
” He is muy rapidio, ” I remark.
” He can do 300 in a day if we don’t talk to him, ” one of the non-workers says.
By the look on both men’s faces, who are working, they must be paid by the cigar. They are intent on what they are doing, responsible for making cigars so people that smoke them won’t smoke any flaws.
This workplace smells like tobacco.Tobacco leaves, dry and thin, are clumped around a press on the floor. There are pieces of leaves on the desk of the man in the gold colored shirt, and more on the work table of the man in the blue shirt.. It appears the two workers make a team. One man makes the rough cigars, stores them in a wood sleeve that the other man pulls to his table and finishes. The tools both men use are simple and not any different from what either might have used a hundred years ago to do the same job.
I watch the finish man pick several cigars up from his finished stack to check the smoking end to make sure, once lit, the cigar will draw air and keep its combustion.
These men take pride in their work.
If I was a cigar smoker, I would like to smoke the ones they are making this day I am watching them.
Men will turn themselves into machines if it profits them, but men, bottom line, were never made to be machines.
Every time I pass, I see customers at this little empanada stand – ordering, sitting in these plastic lawn chairs,visiting, stopping a moment in life, standing, moving away, replaced in moments by someone else.
It is all very random. The process is like those parts of the atom scrawled on our high school Biology board – the protons, electrons, neutrons and all the things not up there that we still don’t know about, and may never know about.
The empanada menu here is extensive and all are less than one U.S. dollar apiece. This morning, for breakfast, my order is a ham and cheese empanada, a pollo empanada and two orders of pineapple juice naturale, served with ice in a dixie cup.
I should have tried these empanadas earlier in the trip but stuff always crowds you on trips, distractions and diversions, side trips and just plain not getting around to it. The point is, there are always places to get a quick bite within walking distance of where you are staying, if you look.
I appreciate fine dining with exquisite tastes and beautifully designed plates served on white tablecloths with a candle and the best silverware, but I always regret having to pay for a meal and then having to go buy more food to feel full.
If I lived here, I would be a regular and D would give me the local price, like anyone else.
Words, bless their little hearts, can say a lot of things. They can take the form of a contract, come firing out of mouths like an old gattling gun . They can make people love or hate us, and, in the right mixture, sooth and calm the most indignant customers.
This afternoon, words escape me, as a young woman carries a basket of baked goods for sale atop her head, past me on the sidewalk.
By the time i turn to get a photo she is past me, only a fleeting mortal being moving across a busy Zona Colonia intersection.
At this moment, the only words that some to mind are ” Poetry in Motion. ”
In my mind, she will always be frozen in time, beyond words.
Dirty laundry catches up with all of us.
Only bringing a carry on suitcase this trip, and looking at my pile of dirty clothes on the bed, I am down to my last clean socks and shirt. I could have brought a bigger suitcase but I wanted to travel as light as I could. Doing with less always takes more imagination than taking the kitchen sink.
In my neighborhood, this lavenderia takes my dirty clothes in the morning, gives me a receipt, hands my clothes back clean, folded neatly in a plastic bag, after lunch. The charges are six bucks, which seems high, but, then again, someone has to deal with my clothes by hand. Putting them into the washer and dryer, unloading them, folding them nicely, putting them in a plastic bag, writing up the receipt, taking my money, takes human time and human effort.
It turns out, when I get back to the La Puerta Roja guesthouse, where I’m hanging my hat this trip, they have a washer and dryer I could have used for free, just paying for the detergent I use.
Since dirty laundry is a traveler’s constant companion, I resolve, next time to be patient, to ask before taking my dirty duds off the premises.
After all, dirty clothes don’t care how long they sit in a pile on the floor or whether they ever get clean.
Dealing with dirty clothes is one of life’s dirty little chores our mother’s warned us all about.
Having worked construction for years, customers have always appreciated a clean work place.
Construction sites go through a lot of stages and there are times when clean is the last thing on a builders mind. There are times it is best to leave a room dirty rather than clean it now and then re-clean it in several hours.
Still, the men who left this temporary sidewalk, on a downtown street, should get some kind of ribbon to pin on their T shirts.
Who says construction people can’t be tidy?
This, from where I am walking, is a sight to see.
Those going on this day trip from Santo Domingo to Sanoa Island start at the Pizzerelli Pizza Palace at six forty five in the morning.
There is no one on the street this morning when I walk to our assigned pick up point, but, at the pizza place, there are five of us who are met by Isidro of Colonial Tours. We follow him down stone steps, out of the Colonial Zone, where we load onto our tour bus transport. Picking up more passengers in Boca Chica, along the way, we are full by the time we all get to Bayimbe where we board several small boats and a catamaran and putt putt out to Sanoa Beach, our destination.
Santo Domingo is, I have found, far away from the best beaches of the Dominican Republic. The real sand and surf activities are on the north shore of the island at Punta Cana, Bayimbe is a cute little town being discovered and developed by foreigners and Sanoa Beach is clean and secure for all travelers even if locals walk the beach selling their jewelry and local crafts that you have already been showed a hundred times.
On our sail back to the mainland at the end of the day, where we re- board our tour bus and return to Santo Domingo, there is dancing on our catamaran, too much booze, but very happy passengers.
It is dark when we all get home, a twelve hour trip for sixty five bucks, a value when you add all the pieces.
I never see these beaches without wondering about sailors marooned, Robinson Crusoe, pirate treasure buried by the foot of palm trees marked by an X on a yellowed map hidden deep in an old chest that has been in storms around Cape Horn.
A trip to the Dominican Republic isn’t complete without getting sand between my toes.
After each trip, new moments join old moments in one big jigsaw puzzle.
Today’s moments can stand on their own, but, they seem to pick up depth and velocity when they hold hands with older ones.
Comparing moments brings wisdom, but learning, I have been told, is best done with a Pina Colada in one hand and a barbecue wing in the other.
These are a pair of Scott’s work shoes from when he used to work hard.
Instead of being covered with paint, which was Scott’s trade when public school teaching became intolerable,one of these shoes has residue from floor tile adhesive on its toe.
The problem with these shoes comes up in Caribbean or Latin American countries where shoe shine hustlers want to clean them on sight. They swoop down out of nowhere and are fiddling with my shoes before I can wave them off.
Part of travel is using precautions. Make a copy of your Passport to show to people in lieu of the real thing. Don’t wear flashy jewelry. Don’t tell strangers where you live. Don’t drink water, except bottled. Go in groups at night. Don’t do things abroad you wouldn’t do at home. Get all your shots. Use sunscreen. Use local currency. Don’t insert yourself into police business or arguments between men and women.
My newest precaution, added to this list, is going to be to clean this adhesive off my shoe.
I could wear my Croc’s but they are the worst walking foot wear ever created.
The main water supply line from the street to the house is accessible from the sidewalk. You lift a little metal door in the sidewalk and quickly find a leaking coupling that joins the city part of the water line with the homeowners part of the water line.
This plumber has removed the old connection, a rigid piece of PVC, and is replacing it with a flexible, expandable, temporary PVC coupling.
This plumber has an audience with the lady of the house watching him through her wrought iron front door, and a neighbor and me making sure he knows what he is doing.
Water continues to bubble out of the break as he works.
When he closes the little door, the leak fixed, he might be the only one in this entire city to solve a problem today.
What I’m wondering is when is someone taking out the flexible coupling and installing the meter that measures the water usage of this household?
Water, last time I looked at my bills, wasn’t free.
I’m guessing, as I leave, that, before long, a long bill will be sent and paid.
In the end, we always have to pay, and, leaks that aren’t fixed ,cost us dearly.
The last police band i saw was in Cuenca, at a celebration for ex-pats and foreign business development in that Ecuadorian city.
This Santo Domingo events aim is to support women and fight domestic violence in Latin America.This police band provides some of the entertainment. There are uniformed officers patrolling all the tourist destinations in this ” old City.”. and, except for getting hustled to buy things you don’t want or solicited to take a guided tour from one of the many guides in the area, the Zone is very safe.
The police band’s music is contagious, in a good way.
It is good for the police to show their gentle side since most of their job deals with locking up family, friends, and strangers who choose not to follow rules.
Police are still humans, we sometimes forget, who wear guns, handcuffs, badges, drive official vehicles. play in the police band, and put people in jail.
They can never lose their humanity no matter how much bad they have to clean up.
When public servants and institutions lose their humanity, we all lose.
For those who have trouble putting up a shelf on the wall, someone had to build the house you live in, the car you drive. Someone had to educate your kids, grow the food you eat. Someone in the background has to mow your lawn, do your tax forms, listen to your heart, fix the pothole in the street.
In every place Scotttreks goes, people are at work doing unglamorous,tedious, dirty jobs that keep civilization going.
Luckily, people are gifted to do different things.
A world of actors would be all talk and no substance.
In a world without financial men and women, nothing would get paid for.
On a planet without ministers, we would all get big heads and believe the world rotated around us alone..
Without dreamers, there would be nothing new around every corner.
There is always work happening wherever Scotttreks goes.
Working men, and women, are worth celebrating.
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