Flies, rats, mosquitos, oh my!

Well, I have a blog for the school, but sometimes I want to talk about other things, so this will be more of that. I want to talk about what life--and specifically my life--is like, here in the Dominican Republic. You should know that I'm an American ("norteamericana"), a Christian missionary to the deaf, and I live at about a middle-class level. Make that lower middle-class. So that is the viewpoint I'm coming from. I don't have a car; I use public transportation. I eat like an American at home, and like a Dominican when I go out or visit friends.

[Note: here I had to stop and put on mosquito repellent. My new house is in an area that is just swarming with mosquitoes. Before the move, I hadn't had a mosquito bite in four months. After...well, bunches of them.]

I want to talk about things that are on my mind. Like moving. I don't want to whine, just inform. This is a tell it as I see it blog, and is not written with the intention of offending anyone. I don't claim that what happens to me happens to everyone. It is just what happens to me, OK? It is my experience here. Disclaimer done.

Having said that, I'll tell you about my recent move. First of all, I had only been in my other place for about six months, when I was informed I'd have to either sign a contract or move. I chose to move. That apt. was rented from a friend, whose father-in-law decided that the house belonged to him. She and her husband had built on top of the mother-in-law's house with the parents' permission. Unfortunately they had no legal rights when the father-in-law decided he would require a contract which included a raise in rent. Doubtless the extra money was for his pocket not theirs. And they had no say in anything.

Nevertheless, I began to see this as from the hand of God. For one thing, my old apt. was missing a sliding glass door, the front door, and two windows. It had bars, so no one would break in, but I covered the openings with canvas to keep out the rain. With another hurricane season upon us, I wasn't looking forward to what I went through last year.

A friend helped me find this place, just three doors down from her own apt. It's just a two minute walk to the church I attend, as well as to get to public transportation routes. It's on a paved road that turns to dirt, just a couple of houses before mine. So it is muddy when it rains, and dusty when it doesn't. I'm in walking distance of a deaf couple who are friends of mine, although the neighborhood takes a turn for the worse over there; it's a drug infested area and robbers on motorcycles are known to sometimes cruise around mugging people. Usually if you give them what they want (your money, cell phone, camera etc.) they will leave without harming you.

Big cities are often like that. But I digress.

Suffice it to say, that I'm mostly pleased with the location.

The house itself, has lots of problems. When I first agreed to rent, the landlord--well, he really is the guy who works for the landlord, but he does the work, so I'll just call him that--agreed to repaint, which was badly needed, and to put all the plumbing and electrical stuff in good working shape.

Here, you maintain your own place, at least the inside. So if you have a plumbing problem, it is your problem not your landlord's. For this reason, it is important to get the apt./house in good shape.

I had to buy a $100US pump to pump the water up to the water tank, so as to have running water all the time. Nevertheless, for the first two weeks I had serious plumbing problems. It seems that the house had previously had a serious leaky pipe, and instead of tearing up the whole second floor to find the problem, they had diverted the water through a system of other pipes outside. So the bathrooms had pvc pipes coming in from outside, as did the kitchen. The landlord evidently didn't realize the extent of the previous problem and reconnected the built in pipes. This caused a major water leak that filtered down every cement wall in the house for the first week I was there. The new paint job was ruined in every room; it is now peeling off all over the place. Mold started to grow on the doors, but thankfully not on the walls. (Could be that bleach spray helped.) The landlord finally heard me when I showed him that it was raining in my bathroom, and that a bucket had caught about an inch and a half of water from the roof overnight. I reminded him that our agreement was that he hand it over in good condition.

He called in a handyman who is not a plumber, because he was much cheaper than a plumber. This guy could only work after his regular job and on weekends, so for the first two weeks, I was using buckets for my water supply. Every time he fixed something, it would need refixing, because, nice as he is, he isn't a plumber.

In another two weeks, the walls had pretty much dried out. I put out damp rid to try to save all my paper and cloth supplies from mold, and that worked pretty well.

So for now, there is only one leak. Daily a puddle appears, seemingly out of nowhere, in the bathroom.

After the water, came the rats. I had done major sorting of everything into its room, and now was settling down to the more detailed unpacking. The closet close to the kitchen I was using for sort of a pantry/garage, to hold some foodstuffs and tools. As I took everything out to resettle it more nicely, I noticed that there was linguini all over the place, and that a package of crackers and another of pretzels had been opened.

The neighbors recommended "Tres pasos"--literally "three steps." Supposedly when the rat eats the poison, it takes no more than three steps before falling over dead. There is rat poison outside and inside (no pets around) and one rat outside took the bait. The "plumber" told me there is a rat's nest on the roof.

Mosquitos don't usually like me. But here there are so many starving mosquitos, they'll take anyone. Usually after a small taste of my blood, they go elsewhere. So I found myself with literally hundreds of tiny mosquito bites on my feet the first week. Since then, I wear repellent as if it were the finest lotion. They still manage to get me from time to time, but not like before. Now mosquitos here are dangerous. They carry dengue, and dengue can be deadly. Usually the first time you get it, it's like the flu. The second time it is more dangerous. Maleria is a lesser concern here in the capital, but out near the border that is an additional danger.

I sprayed for roaches when I moved in, and have been finding dead roaches almost daily. Most homes here, including mine, don't have screens, and roaches like to fly in the windows when the humidity is up. [I remember a missionary was asked why don't we have screens here, and he replied, "How would the flies get out?]

Oh yes, flies. The neighbor likes to put her garbage near my kitchen door, and anytime I put food out the flies come over for their share. In general, there is a lot of garbage thrown on the streets, so flies are a perpetual problem.

Noise. I visited this place at least three times before moving in, and ask two of the neighbors about noise. Both assured me it was very calm around here, just as it was when I visited. They lied. No, I shouldn't say that. They told the truth from a Dominican viewpoint. They are so used to the noise that they no longer consider it noisy here.

This house has three floors. The first floor is mine and I share it with a hair salon. The hair salon is normally pretty peaceful. We have daily blackouts. When the lights are out and someone wants their hair dried, it means turning on the gasoline run generator, which is very noisy. That will be on for at least a half an hour.

The gay couple upstairs likes to play music very loud. One of them is a cop, so I guess I can't call the cops on them, LOL. Fortunately, they only do this ten or fifteen hours a week, and not usually after midnight.

The small corner store on a street behind me also likes loud music, mostly on the weekends.

The people to the right and in front also like loud music.

Sometimes, generally on the weekend, I can hear three or four different clashing styles of music all at once. There is a conglomeration of popular merengue, american music, rap rock in Spanish and English, sometimes with very vulgar words, and yeah, it gets annoying. So I put on my earmuffs, the noise-reducing kind, and seek refuge in whatever room seems to be the quietest for the moment. I've lived in both less noisy and more noisy environments. A lot of the music goes off when there is a blackout; it's pretty bad when you are praying for the electricity to go off!

Internet and phone. Here, you usually have to have a contract with your internet company. In my case, I had an 18 month contract with Codetel. The deal is, that if you move out of their service area, there is no penalty; otherwise you have to finish up the contract. In my case, when I moved, I called them up and ordered my service moved. After three or four calls, and eight visits with corresponding waits in line, just a month later, I was informed that there was no service in my area and that I would be released from the contract. Before that, I was told at each visit, that they would be out to install my internet in 3-5 days.

Now I have another internet service, tricom. Well, sort of. It works at a snail's pace and cuts off and on at any time, necesitating a reset of the equipment. Speed tests show it to be faster than 25% of the country--translation: slower than 75%. After a single day of this, I called to ask them to up the speed. They said I couldn't do that for three months! It turns out it was a special price. Well the guy had told me a month. But I told them I don't care about the sale price, charge me the regular price now. They said they would do that. That was last week, and it was supposed to happen very quickly. They still haven't done it. I called again. "It will be done within 24 hours." I'm not holding my breath.

When the phone service was turned on, I was supposed to get a phone. I've been calling the man each day, asking for my phone. He's always going to bring it today. But somehow, today never comes. I have an older phone that I can use, as long as I hold the wire in while I'm talking. :P

There is nothing particularly unusual in any of this. This is just my normal Dominican Life.