The Conscious Traveler: Dominican Republic
This, like my previous article, has been taken from an email I sent to a friend of mine updating her on my travels abroad. Some things have been changed and/or taken out to allow her a form of anonymity and some things have been added to give more insight on my journey.
My time in the Dominican Republic was a new and interesting experience in every way. I was going to a place for the first time where pretty much no one spoke English and I had chosen to go to an area of the country where no tourists venture to. I was “amongst the folks” in all aspects of the phrase. Here is where I met some of the greatest and most helpful people I have ever come across, but also had run-ins with some of the most shiesty people in my travels as well. Here is where I came to the realization that I was either going to be a tourist in the places I go or a traveler.
While I travel I am still held to many responsibilities in the United States. One of those responsibilities is to take care of the estate of my late mother who was a singer in the 1980’s into the 1990’s. Now doing so is very hard from a foreign country, but luckily I was connected with two of the most trusting people I have met in my life, let alone on my travels. Linosca and Jose are two lawyers that honestly became my friends. They spent weeks helping me to get the paperwork I thought I had needed to take care of certain obligations back in the United States. Although, in the end, after everything, my U.S. lawyers told me the paperwork was invalid. Not because it was Linosca or Jose’s fault but rather just an issue of jurisdictions. I still appreciate everything they did for me.
The community I spent most of my time in was very inviting. I spent many nights as a guest in people's homes for dinner. I felt like Anthony Bourdain or someone adjacent. By the time I left and continued my travels I knew everyone’s name and everyone knew mine (I must admit I have forgotten a few). I even took a few of the local kids under my wing and taught them a little bit of Muay Thai. Most of my days were spent at a friend of mine’s motorcycle shop hanging out listening to loud ass music and drinking rum.
Training While Abroad
My medium for traveling is muay thai. I go and train at a gym for my time in a country and hopefully if I am lucky enough I can fight for the gym if they have any fights coming up. This time around I had trouble finding a muay thai gym in my area. So I opted to train at a boxing gym instead. This is where I found Lorenzo’s gym. It was a decently sized boxing gym with a dedicated group of fighters there.
When I entered, to my surprise, not even three minutes in, they threw me in there to spar with a guy who had a fight coming up. We went three rounds and in all honesty it was some pretty decent sparring rounds. As a guy who does muay thai, I am still no stranger when it comes to boxing. I have had several sole boxing matches over the years and I didn’t think my sparring partner expected me to not only hold my own, but make him work. It was a great time and they invited me out to watch the fight card, which was… interesting, but more of that later.
Fond Memories
There was this one instance that I had forgotten about all the way up until now. One of the kids that would hang out in the neighborhood was in his own way introverted. He was the type to get subjected to a tad bit of teasing and he would always stop by without the other kids because they would go off and play without him. He would always come by the place I was staying around noon to play with my dog. I would say we grew a bond together. Anytime I would leave my home here he came. It’s unfortunate that I can not remember his name at the time.
One day he had a bloody nose and I asked him in my broken Spanish “what’s wrong?”. He had told me that a couple of kids from a neighborhood close by had stolen his bike. From that day forward he would come knock on my door so that I could teach him muay thai. It was okay at first till one of the neighbors informed me he wasn’t going to school and he was deciding to come over to train instead. The neighbor also informed me the kid had come from a home that, let's just say, wasn't doing too well. From there I told him he had to go to school to continue to train with me, but for the life of me I can’t remember if he did or not. For the sake of this article let’s just say he did.
I think this interaction I had with him and with the community is a good example of how accountable you become to a community and how quickly it can happen. In the short time I was there, here was a kid who looked up to me in some way and I looked out for him in some sort of way. Traveling this way also makes it hard to leave places as well. It can be hard to make a friend, teach a kid something new, or to build any sort of relationship and then suddenly be off to the next place to do it again, but it is what I signed up for in a way I guess.
- And if you are asking yourself If I got him a new bike. The answer is yes!
Life in DR
The beaches in DR are much warmer than the ones in the Bahamas. Although I will say the beaches are nicer in The Bahamas than DR overall. If you want a beach that can rival a Bahamian beach then you can go take a trip from Punta Cana to one of the islands off of DR. A friend of mine from back home in New York came out to visit me and we spent a couple of days off the coast of the mainland of DR with some of her friends that came along. It was beautiful and the tour we took was all inclusive.
The night life is basically Dykman in NYC or any area of the city with a large Dominican presence every night, so I was used to everyone ridding around on dirt bikes and motorcycles, listening to music so loud you hear a ringing in your ears the next couple of days (DR is by far the loudest country I have been to). The clubs are very fun, playing pretty much all the Dominican music you can think of. It was a romantic and sensual nightlife, but also I partied a little more than I should have and felt I was also being more of a tourist than a traveler having even the slightest purpose. I loved being with the people though and it seemed although I personally felt I could have been doing better, the locals had taken a liking to me for some reasons I was shy and nervous about. I built trust and relationships with many people that still hold up till today.
Something that caught me completely off guard was once when I was out at this bar. I looked over the counter to where the DJ was playing and to my surprise he was DJing on a point of sales CPU. Now as a DJ myself I have never seen this before, but I guess a computer is a computer and as long as you can download the software it should work fine. Still I have never seen it before and have not seen it since.
For how laid back the Bahamian lifestyle was, the Dominican lifestyle was even more laid back. It was beautiful to see business owners not even go to work for a day just because they did not feel like it, knowing that their community will not let the business fail. It is the ease of life of many people not working, but having no worry of losing housing or going hungry because their neighbor just would not let that happen. That made me smile on a daily basis. I believe I came to a realization that although it is a capitalist structure in DR, the people there have very socialist values when it comes to their community. Even if they are laid back or cut throat in business in life they have taken the laid back approach, collectively. Everyone is very forgiving and calm, but very loud. Which is a trait that I will see is common all over Latin America.
Now, back to the boxing card that I was invited to. The Saturday after I sparred at the gym there was a show in town and a couple of the guys were going to fight in it. People from the U.S. and Mexico came out to participate on the card. When I arrived, on time, the fights were nowhere near starting (this is the common denominator for any fight card, if it be boxing, muay thai or MMA). It seems promoters everywhere can never be on time. I got to see one of the guys I sparred with, tie for his match and another guy from the gym win his match. Nothing was out of the ordinary with these two matches, but the card was a complete fix for the most part. A referee giving victories to obvious losers and not refereeing fair. Fighters putting on absolute pageantry and theatrics, to the point a fighter rolled out of the ring and left in the middle of his fight. Something that I don’t think anyone in attendance has ever seen before. At first me and the crowd were alarmed by what was going on, but after a couple of fights we pretty much accepted and laughed at what was happening in front of us, because of how blatant it was.
Making Friends Along the Way
My neighbor while I was staying in DR, Elieser, had an uncle that wanted me to teach his son English. To my amazement, the kid ,Angel, who was actually not a kid, was 19 and spoke a little bit of English . Angel and I spoke often and we helped each other learn each other's languages. To this day we are still friends. He educated me on the history of the Dominican Republic and informed me about the corruption of the government. We talked about him being in the job market and how he was a self taught computer programmer. We spoke of philosophy, not of the hyper-male Eurocentric philosophy most people associate the word with, but more in the modern social political sense.
I remember a few months after I left, Angel gave me a call to let me know he had gotten the job he wanted due to the help that I gave him learning english. It felt good to know I helped someone with something and it meant something.
Racism, Colorism & The European Hold
You probably heard the common trope that a Dominican will argue with you for hours to not be addressed as black. The phrase “I no black, I Dominican” comes to mind. It stands true in DR just as it does with many Dominican Americans. Trying to convince many Dominicans they have African ancestry is impossible and honestly to many it can come across as insulting. Even the darkest of Dominicans will have issues with you calling them black.
The racism goes a bit deeper though in DR. With Haiti being the one and only bordering nation with DR, it comes with many social issues amongst the two nationalities. There is a superiority complex much like in The Bahamas with Haitians in DR because of how dangerous and dirty Haiti is portrayed in the media. It is not uncommon for a Haitian to be killed by a Dominican in DR simply for existing across the border. Which many do cross because of the wealth inequality. For a Haitian, working in the Dominican Republic is a great financial opportunity to help them and their family.
Finding out that out of all the countries in the western hemisphere that DR was the only country that wanted to stay a colony was no surprise. There is something valuable to many in the Caribbean about Europe. For some it is the “dream” same as the American one, but for many it’s the whiteness. There is a purity to it in many of their eyes. A pinnacle of greatness to adhere to. This leads to the common pipe line that from what I have seen traveling, but also from what I have seen while in the states of an immigrant coming to America and disassociating themselves with the country that they have come from.
The pipeline I am referring to above leads to many immigrants adopting a very conservative ideology, because there is something very American about the conservative mind set, the typical bootstrap narrative, etc. This leads to a whole realm of messed up thinking, “black people are bad, cops are good”. “I came here the right way. Why can’t they”? Most of the time it starts as ignorance to the truth or simply a way to lay low from white aggression, but staying in that mindset will almost always end with it becoming who you truly are. Pretending to be something for the rest of your life and actually being it are the same thing. Many immigrants of color have pretended to be white for so long they simply become it in terms of the construct, not physically of course. Now this is not only a dilemma for people from the Dominican Republic. This is a common story amongst many immigrant families.
There is a deep self hatred, especially amongst many elders in DR. Around the same time I was in DR there was a video that had gone viral of a grandmother refusing to let her grandchild play with a black doll. She wanted the child to play with a white doll and saw the black doll to be unfit for the child to play with.
All cops are Bastards, internationally
There was this police officer who was an alright guy, or so I thought. He was not very trustworthy, but the woman who owned the place I was staying, told me I can use him for transportation because he also did uber as well. Throughout the entire stay he would always try to con me out of money.
It ultimately ended with him stealing some documents of mine from the car while he was taking me to the bus station to cross the border into Haiti. You guessed it, all cops are bastards TO THE MAX.
The cop’s friend who I also got to know as well tried to sell his friend ,a woman, to me for the night without even telling her. Me and the girl were very confused by the whole thing. We sort of waved it off because he was drunk and I too have done stupid stuff while drunk, but nothing along the lines of that.
Overview
DR was extremely fun. It was exciting to ride motorcycles everyday and hang out in the calles. I figured out the traveler I wanted to be while in DR. I still am becoming that traveler, but around my time there is when I started to put respect for the land before having a good time. I have to appreciate that what I'm doing is not the norm and I can’t maneuver like a drunk frat boy on spring break.
