My street
Let me tell you a little about my street and my neigbours...
For those of you living here on the island... you know it all, but for someone not living here it might be interesting.
I live down town in Puerto Plata, very close to the Amber Museum, on a little street - my part goes between Ante Ramota and Beller. It is a quiet part, early morning we hear the birds, and now at shortly after 9 in the evening it is quiet apart from some people passing or a dog barking somewhere..
I have tried the countryside life and I have lived in Torre Alta, and finally desided after a few years the city is my melody...
Now we live in a nice cement house, with a big patio where we have all kinds of flowers, lemons, palms and relaxing areas..
The house beside mine is a green colored wooden house.
It is maintained "Dominican Style", meaning the front is lovely, and the backside have not been maintained for ages, maybe only with a quarter of paint or so..
It is clean, very local and owned by very,very typical Dominicans.
The mother, Sofia, is up early every morning, listening to the radio, humming along to a familiar song...
Her kids are grown more or less, but they all live at home. One son goes to school, a daughter is working for Orange.
Another son is around 25, not doing much... He makes the orange juice for their caf? they have in the front at nights.. I taught the mother, Sofia, the meaning of the word "orange" and told her now she has 2 children working for and with Orange...But he helps us around every now and then too, goes for gas or any other arrend..
When the lunch or dinner is cooking you smell the good spices around their house...and you get hungry at once! When they are out on money and gas, the coal and the tinbucket come to use and they cook outside.
The grandmother is also living there, she and her husband built the house when she was newly married. She is 86 or 88 now - she does not remember, and relaxes in her rocking chair all day long. She told me, at her stage in life a year more or less becomes not very important.
She is extremely small, always smiling when I meet her.
The son who does nothing, also have his 2 kids living with them, 3 and 5 years old.. I don?t know where the mother of the children is, have never seen her.
They have very few toys, almost only what we gave them.
But they do have imagination... like to play hide and seek and hide in a suitcase.. or to use mangos when playing baseball without a ball..
Across the street is a very teal colored house. Big, almost covered by an even bigger mango tree. Leo lives here. He is a little over 60 and lived for 20 years in New York. He speaks English, and is very lonely. His family lives in Santiago and his older brother in New York. Leo is the one who knows everything what is going on here, if someone is sick, if someone needs help or if someone has bought something new.. He has a small pension from US and he rents out the basement of his house to a man. The garage is also rented out to my other neigbours ( see below ). Leo shares his mangos with everyone and he loves what he calls "foreign music".. We copy alots of music to him. Most he likes James Brown and Celine Dion for now!
His house is newly pained... his brother came to visit the first time in 5 years recently, and Leo was busy months in advance.. He still have 1 of the 2 doors of the garage to paint.. the paint he bought was not enough, then he had no money and now he has forgotten about it!
Leo loves cookies, and lives on "plato del dia"... when he is broke, a week before the pension, he buys on credit in the colmado.
My other neigbour on my side is Eduardo. He is about 30 and the house is small, pink and in wood. His mother plants fruits somewhere outside town and leaves early, comes back late. Her truck is parked at night in Leos garage.
Their house has an outdoor bathroom in the back, and only 2 rooms.
But it is enough space for the scooter Eduardo drives, for an inversor and some furniture. Eduardo produces music, puts his money on music equipment, on music itself, on clothes and his looks. He is not a sankie, looks a little like one, and always busy.
Sometimes you think, if the wind is too hard, this house will fall.. but this little house is one of the best equiped on the street! No one has the music equipment Eduardo has, microwave, inversor, top fronted washing mashine etc etc..
The mother is old, have problems walking, one of her feet is totally black..
On Sundays she washes the sheets and hangs them to dry on the wall on the opposite side of the street!
Next house is a small cement house, a very young couple lives there.
They are expecting their first baby very soon, and the soon to be mother is very stressed how she will be able to afford everything.. she is cleaning most of the days, want everything to be beautiful for the baby.
The soon to be father, says almost nothing, he says I cannot stop her and she would only get upset... and he dont like to be around when she is upset!
Then we have the colmado... Another pink house in wood. Denny is working there with his son, every day from 8 to 2 and from 5-11.. The colmado is small, they have no meat etc exept ham and salami.. Otherwise you can buy everything here, from candies, to spices, oil, dypers, cans, vegetables, bred, juice, brugal....Fresh? Not very clean... most like colmados are.. The lightbulb in the front is covered by a plastic bottle from a water gallon cut in two pieces. And inside there is an emergency lamp hanging in the ceiling.
Everybody checks in here every day, to buy something you forgot, or to just say hello to Denny...
When Denny had problems with his back, everybody helped out and worked for an hour or so every day so the place could be open..
Denny is our hero, always there, xmas, the morning after the hurricane... " I figured you might need an open colmado today"... that?s the heart of Denny...
He is a little dissapointed though, that we aren?t from New York. When we first moved in and I said Sweden, he replied NO, I already told everybody you are from Nueva York.... Still he doesn?t know where Sweden is, and he frankly doesn?t care. If we are not from Nueva York he doesn?t want to discuss that topic anymore!
Next house is the "Torre Alta House". We call it that because it is always perfect. The man and the woman are perfect, with a perfect son and a perfect daughter.. They are very nice. The son goes to university and the girl goes to school as well, to Santa Rosa. Perfect in the meaning, they are always very clean, hair is perfect, car is perfect etc... They have a full time maid, and every Monday she changes curtains in the kitchen.
The ladies on our street are next. In one house we have La Dona Loca.
It is an old, yet nice lady.. I don?t know what is wrong with her, but she goes all days long back and forth on our street with a can of milk...
The other house has 2 widows, they are old and very beautiful.
Always well dressed, special dress on Sundays and they sit in their rocking chairs on the patio. They came here from Puerto Rico 60 years ago.
The last woman is a university teacher. She is busy in many cultural events, in teaching of course, and in politics. She is an excellent organizer and always have a nice word to each and everyone passing.
The street itself is calm, almost no cars. The children on the street and the crossing Duarte usually play basketball here after school. Now its mango season and Leo shares his mango and a talk with the children.
He loves to walk my dog, and he takes her when we go away sometimes for a day or two.
Tourists pass our street in the mornings with the "blue-shirt" ?guides. They usually stop by my patio and offer the tourists to take a picture of my dog!
In the afternoon we have the "chulo-lady" passing... someone don?t want to do cooking might buy a few from her. She has them with cheese and meat..
and there is no use to chose, she has them mixed and doesn?t know which one contains what..
10 pesos each and still a little hot. She carries them in a big Tropical-Paint bucket.
My dog knows her voice, and rushes out to greet her every day - rain or shine- She knows she always gets a chulo from the lady!
The "Chulo-lady" has glittering, beautiful eyes, and always a smile that comes from the heart.. some teeth missing...and her hair is silver gray... On a sunny day her hair shines more bright than any of those bling-blings you can buy in the fashion shops today...
In the middle of this, is me and my family, completely accepted by our neigbours from day 1.
All of them are always caring and supportive, and we all get along very well. Everybody has a minute and a word ( or a plate of food or a Brugal ) to share.
This is part of why I love this country, and why it feels like home.
The fascination is constant, that one small street in the Caribbean pearl of Puerto Plata only, contains so many different people, some with money, some with none, some with jobs and some with none.. some lives in nice houses, and some houses are in need of some assistance (lol)... so many faces and destinies of different shapes and forms..and yet we all live side by side, always willing to share whatever can be shared.
This to me, is the spirit and soul of the Domincian Republic!