It is raining and dark outside Colmado Chiquito in Ciudad Nueva but I
am under cover and my bicycle is too, leaning against the lottery kiosk. I have
a neck brace on and am nursing a beer while waiting for the downpour to let up.
There is a 2 pound plastic grocery bag of yucca weighed out on the counter for
me. This colmado always has good yucca. I know because I used to live just two
blocks from here when I was with Perla.
To carve the bark off the yucca tubers I
have to kneel at the kitchen counter and work at eye level to keep my neck from
cramping up. The yucca boils tender in about 30 minutes and I eat half of it
along with some black bean and pork-bone stew that I had saved in the fridge.
Last year I became addicted to bicycling
and, by chance, joined the Logia Ciclista
Internacional de Santo Domingo, a bicycle club of artists, renegades,
neer-do-wells, communists and ex-pats that tours the barrios and colmados and
bicycle workshops of the city sometimes with picaresque results. There are
about 25 members of the Logia all
told, but active members number around 7 and we are all famous and it is Sunday
mornings when we are most active. We have a private Facebook page but I cannot
imagine that Carlos Mario, El Jefe,
would refuse access to any curious pilgrim. We typically meet around 9:30 in
the morning at Hugo's Colmado on the corner of Meriño and Portes in the Zona
Colonial and you are welcome. We bicycle about 3 miles between colmado stops
and, while much of the conversation is about bicycles, food and women; it
ranges as far as Blake, Bukowsky and Buddy Holly. Donald Trump is never
mentioned. I will tell you how I came to have this neck brace on.
Bayahibe
Last December just around this time Kike
(not Kiki from Villa Mella), Chiñou the Gallego, and I made the hungover
decision to bike to Bayahibe, a small fishing resort town in the eastern
portion of the island. In the morning we rode from our neighborhood up to Duarte and its dusty crazy complex of
bus and guagua stops and stowed our
bikes in the hold of a giant bus that would take us as far as La Romana. From
there we struck off on our bikes through the city to the highway through swarms of Honda 90 motorcycles, fruit carts,
coconut venders, wheel chairs and goats. We turned off on the old abandoned
highway and found ourselves pedalling alone for the next 50 kilometers. The few
people we saw on this biway asked us if we were afraid of robbers. We had one
flat tire.
In Bayahibe we rented a cheap room with
two beds, locked the bikes up in it and strolled off through the town. Two
girls followed us through some of our wanderings and we shared street
sandwiches and a glass of beer with them. I remembered the way one of the girls
held her head while she listened and the curve of her posture which was somehow
both lazy and athletic at the same time. She held her sandwich with two
fingers.
Back at the room we decided that since I
was the oldest I would get the single bed and Kike and Chiñou would share the
double. Sometime during the night Chiñou, apparently acting on some drunken
hallucinogenic dream groped Kike who responded with a sharp elbow in Chiñou's
ribs.
In the morning I was ready to continue
our bike tour on to Boca de Yuma right off but was voted down and so we went to
the beach and drank beer. After the beach the town again but now it was
Saturday night and the rum flowed more freely. Chiñou, the youngest of the
three, struck off for decadent discoteques with our two followers of the night
before while Kike and I cruised free rum sampling booths on the sidewalks and
danced with the dancing girls in local colmados.
We tweaked the sleeping arrangements for
this second night in Bayahibe by renting a second room for Chiñou, who had
aspirations for liasons, with Kike and I now to share a bed in a separate room
for economy's sake. At 3 in the morning Kike, being gunshy from his experience
with Chiñou the night before rolled up all the towels from our bathroom to use
as a berm between us. Lights off. We hit the hay, berm in place. One hour later
lights on and Chiñou is at the door with the girl with the curvy posture saying
she refused to be in the same room with him and could she sleep with us since
she had nowhere else to go. We said yes. She slipped in between us and thus her
nickname La Frontera; the Border. We passed the night as tired innocents.
Nothing happened as the kids say.
I awoke first and went for coffee and
rolls. Sustenance. Hangover. Walked La Frontera to a house a km away where some
kind of aunt or cousin lived , gave her bus fare to get home, and we talked on
the way. Her name is Xiomara. Single mother. 1 year old daughter. We exchanged
contact info. I said I liked her forma de
ser and she said she liked mine.
Chiñou, destroyed from drug and drink
from the night before, stayed in Bayahibe. Kike and I mounted our bikes and
pedalled bravely, massively hungover and sleep deprived, out of town. We
stopped at a gomero and begged a dreg
of contact cement enveloped in a scrap of plastic grocery bag in case we had a
flat tire and then bicycled on to Boca
de Yuma on a secondary road through miles of sugar cane fields and little else.
We stopped for water at a colmado run by a 102 year old woman. In the first
town we sat on the curb and shared a beer.
Boca de Yuma, a seaside town popular
during the Easter season, was nearly abandoned, it being out of season. We
found a clean room with two beds and two fans and slept for 12 hours. In the
morning we pedalled languidly around the still sleeping town waiting for a
colmado to open to buy a cup of coffee, an empanada and some blood pressure
medicine. Once fueled we headed north toward Higuey and an ATM. Narrow
harrowing highway with broken borders and pot holes, tractor trailers screaming
close by our elbows made the trek harrowing. Motorcycles swarmed through
intersections in every direction in Higuey. We got cash and got out.
Outside of Higuey we saw a small colmado with
a sign-- Museo de Ron and stopped. Kike
was aghast, “there´re brands of rum here I never heard of”. We bought some chatas for the Logia and kept biking till we got home.
 |
| Museo de Ron. Kike. |
I contacted La Frontera and we exchanged
messages for a few weeks. She was living in Guyacanes, so when my friend Mike
had a music gig near there I caught a ride from the Capital where I live. When
we entered Guayacanes that night there were firetrucks and ambulances blocking
the eastbound lanes tending a motorcycle wreck. I called La Frontera from
Mike's gig and it turned out that she knew the folks in the accident and one
had died. They had been at her house just before to see the baby. She had no
baby sitter but I could come visit anyway. Mike finished playing at midnight
and dropped me off. Xiomara and I spent the night together sad and confused and
happy. It was December 20, 2015.
The
Holidays
Xiomara mentioned during the week that
she had nowhere to spend Christmas. I had been invited to visit friends in Las
Terrenas so I brought Xiomara and her baby, Luz. This was, effectively, our
second date. We stayed in the little guest house where the workers stay when
Mike has employees working on his compost business. The baby babbled happily in
the bed with us for hours while we stared at our cell phones waiting for her to
go to sleep so we could make love.
On New Year's Eve Xiomara came to Santo
Domingo from Guyacanes to her brother's house on the upper part of Ave.
Venezuela. We drank beer and the cheap red muscatel La Fuerza and bought roast pork sandwiches on the corner. Along
with some cousins we walked Venezuela, famous for its discos, picked one and
went in. When I figured out that I would be the only one who could chip in for
the second bottle of rum Xio and I left and found a cab and went to my
apartment. Our first night together without the baby in the bed.
I learned was that, although she was born in the Dominican Republic in
Jimaní, near the Haitian border, she had no birth certificate and thus no cedula, or government ID so she could
not work or finish high school. I met her mother, Carmen, a thin, mousey, drawn
woman that night at Tito's and also learned that Carmen did not keep Xio but
that she was raised by her Father's sister, Aquilina, in Tierra Nueva, a hamlet
more rural than even Jimaní and located closer still to the Haitian border
nestled between the two great salt lakes of Hispaniola, one in each country. A
year later I would bicycle to Tierra Nueva to meet her adoptive family and
celebrate the issuance of Xio´s cedula,
after a long expensive hassle with a shyster lawyer.
Tierra
Nueva
Mike and I took the bikes off the front
seat of the guagua in San Juan de la
Maguana, remounted the front wheels and saddle bags and pedalled south toward
Neyba 80 km away. Gently uphill for the first
hour but downhill or level most
of the rest of the way. Wide highway in good condition almost no traffic and
few houses. Occasional livestock in the road and men riding small horses using woven
straw saddles. We arrive in Neyba in darkness.
 |
| Downhill to Neyba. Mike. |
Next morning breakfast of coffee, boiled
green bananas, dominican salami and deep fried eggs and we pedal away. The
region is arid with cactus and rocky outcrops of rusty limestone but there are
spring fed concrete lined ponds, or balnearios,
along the route and we cooled off three times (to take a dip here is to echar un chapuzón) as we headed west to
Tierra Nueva with the great salt lake, Lago Enriquillo and its caiman, giant
iguanas and flamingos always to our left.
 |
| Balneario Las Marias, Neyba |
We ate lunch in La Descubierta at a small
comedor in a cool humid grove near a rill and another freshwater balneario. We took a short detour to see
Nueva Boca de Cachón which is the town that was hurriedly constructed to house
the people who were flooded out of old Boca de Cachón when the water level of Lago
Enriquillo mysteriously and suddenly rose 20 feet a few years ago. Nueva Boca
is built in a perfect grid and every house and building is in the same style
and there was almost no one on the street. With its bright clear desert light
it could be the setting for an old Twilight Zone episode
A green highway sign points to the turn
for Tierra Nueva and the road surface changes from smooth asphalt to rough
pebbles in tar. To our right sere pastureland leads to a mountain range a
kilometer away and to our left is scrubby brush. No cars pass and there are no
houses. Goats everywhere. A lone motorcycle approaches in the distance and it
is Xio and her sister coming to cheer us on. They are laughing and waving and escort
us the 7 km to the town. Xio's long microbraided hair extensions blow behind
her on the back of the motorcycle.
The family compound consists of three
small, cement block/tin roofed buildings connected in the shape of a U. The
floor is concrete in places and dirt in places. Chickens and pigs wander in and
out of the little courtyard. We met Xiomara's adoptive mother, Aquilina and a
smattering of sisters and cousins. When her father, Tilson, showed up, Mike and
I both stood up to meet him and Tilson looked at each of us and asked, “which
one of you is Xiomara's husband?” I answered, “guilty, Sir.” and we shook
hands.
The next day was Thanksgiving Day. I
watched and we talked while Tilson slaughtered and butchered a goat. The
intestines, feet and hide were all he threw out. A small boy toyed with the
amputated goat's testes, squeezing them in and out of the scrotum. Luz, a
little more than 2 years old now, toddled up from the house and cried when she
saw what he was doing. We put the meat in a plastic grocery bag and brought it
down to Xiomara and she made goat stew.
 |
| Note goat hanging to right of bicycle. |
After lunch Tilson said to me, “Vamos andar”, or
let's go for a ride. We took off on his motorcycle toward Jimaní but turned off
on a discrete, rutted dirt track and bounced along over rocks and tree roots
until we reached Poplume, Haiti a cluster of mud plastered huts on the edge of
Étan Saumatre, the great salt lake of Haiti. No customs no border check. As we
pulled into town people greeted Tilson with respect. Tilson is a carbonero, or charcoal maker and employs
the people of the village to cut wood for charcoal and to carry the 100 pound sacks
of charcoal off the mountain where it is
Poplume, Haiti
made. We sat on plastic chairs and
drank Prestige beer while Tilson talked business with clusters of thin men
asking about the next day's work. When he was handed an unopened bottle he
pried the cap off with his teeth. No twist off bottle caps here. (Xiomara, by
the way, has the same gift which is apparently learned and not inherited since
he is her adoptive father.) After several hours we got back on the motorcycle
and bounced back toward the highway. At a small bend in the trail, still deep
in the brush, we were stopped by two Dominican soldiers with machine guns. They
greeted Tilson by name, we all shook hands, Tilson gave them 200 pesos (5
dollars) and we moved on.
As we speeded back toward Tierra Nueva on the
highway Tilson shouted back to me, “¿A la casa?” and I shouted back into the
wind, “¡Sí!” But when he asked a second time I said wherever he wanted to go
was okay. We motored into Tierra Nueva and, stopping once to buy beer, drove right
through town and on toward can't remember
the name of the town another Haitian village near the northern end of the
lake. We dumped the bike once on a slippery bend in the rocky ledgy four-wheel
drive track. It was dark and moonless when we got to the village and I could
only see occasional flickers of candles through open doors of huts. No music
played. We used our cell phones to light the way as
Sacks of charcoal
someone led us to a hut
with a couple of chairs and a half dozen people hunkered on the floor and on
empty beer crates. Someone handed me a Prestige and a girl maybe 16 years old
held my arm for a while. Folks chuckled when I spoke the little French I know.
Tilson disappeared but returned after a few minutes. We walked out to the beach
where he showed me pallets of sacks of charcoal that were to be put on wooden
boats and rowed across the lake tomorrow and eventually transported to Port a
Prince to be sold.
Somehow we made it back intact to Tierra Nueva on
the motorcycle although we had to get off and push it the last kilometer into
town due to lack of balance. Aquilina and Xiomara came out and helped us park
it, fed us leftover goat in the kitchen and put us to bed.
Logia
There were just three of us for Logia Ciclista that Sunday so we chose a
different route through unfamiliar territory. After a quick jaunt into Chinatown
for dumplings, which are only available on Sunday by the way and are excellent,
we pedalled east over the Puente Flotante
over the Ozama River and up past the enormous Faro de Colón and turned left up Venezuela and turned right onto Club de Leones, toward Santana Bicycle
Shop. Which was closed it being Sunday. We stopped at several colmados on our
slow return home and at the third, Colmado
Repecho in the nadir of a short steep valley in the outer reaches of Ensanche Ozama, I needed to use the
bathroom. The first visit to any bathroom in any colmado in the Dominican
Republic can be an adventure. You often have to pass behind the counter and
wend your way through precarious towers of stacked boxes of toilet paper,
crackers, returnable soda bottles, broom handles and mop buckets. Sometimes you
go through small dormitories where the employees sleep and it is often dark and
the walls might be so grimy that you don't pass your hand over them to feel
your way along. However, this bathroom was out back. I made the first turn and
all was dark. I paused a moment to let my eyes adjust and could barely discern
the dim form of a toilet in the back of the room-- my goal! I stepped over the
cement block threshold into the darkness, feeling for a light switch with my
left hand but my foot landed on a greasy slick floor that sloped sharply downhill
and went out from under me. I lurched forward, sliding and somehow hit my head
both front and back on my way down-- once on a pile of cement bricks and the
second time on a pile of scrapped porcelain toilet tanks in the corner. Shit
and urine. I used my handkerchief to clean myself off, urinated and left, blood
dripping from my forehead. Left the handkerchief behind. We left on our
bicycles.
The next morning I managed to move from my
bed to the floor but an hour later the pain in my neck was so great that I
could not move. I had my cell phone but could not reach my glasses so called
friends not really knowing who I called. I called out for a neighbor who
arrived about the same time as Kike. Neck brace, strapped to a board, ambulance
and carted down the stairs and off, with Kike, to Dario Contreras, the public trauma hospital. Short lines, short
forms, X-rays, no fracture, another short line to get prescription. Guy in the
line in front of me was handcuffed to his wheelchair. Bought a soft neck collar
for about 4 dollars. There was no other fee and I have no health insurance
here.
Two and a half weeks later I can take
short bike rides and remove the neck collar often. During the first week I
bought syringes of Dexa-Neurotropas and walked into the nearby hospital (Padre
Billini where I spent a week a few years ago with amoebic dysentery Visit to the Ward Healers) and looked
for a nurse to inject me. Other pain medications included Bergeron, Dolo
Ultrafen and Dolometaplex. Some prescibed by doctors and some recomended by
friends.
