- Thread starter arete92
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Treatment as foreigner
To me, this means your wife isn't doing a good job of protecting you. Dominicans here in our neighborhood wouldn't dare try to cheat me, because they don't want to get stung my wife's tongue, plus I have a good bullshit detector anyways. I will never lead tools or money. I will give money though. My wife lends money to teachers, but she takes the payments out of their wages, no interest. Even her brother gets the same treatment. If it involves money and a Dominican, other than the hardware store, gas station or supermarket, my wife's handles it. I do trust the gardener, as he has proven to be trustworthy, and his mother and my wife have been friends and classmates since they were little girls. It isn't easy adapting to another culture.This is a bit of a rant but it's a clean rant; more or less a cultural observation of extranjeros and how we're treated better or for worse
I have visited here for more than 10 years and have lived here for nearly a few now - have a Dominican family. I am young and have adapted to the language, customs, lack of punctuality and straight up lowered my expectations with services; I have seen the good and tried to adopt some of that friendliness into my own personality.
The first year was fun, puppy love, everything was new, the lack of rules was cool etc. The second year was more or less falling out of love with it because of the lack of any good services to be honest, taught myself to be really self-sufficient imported tools/products from my country; has helped so much and saved me headaches, but one thing that remains to frustrate me and that's community.
Dominicans treat each other horribly anyone who has spent time here knows how they treat a gringo vs their own ( stranger ) is very different, there is an immediate lack of trust, competition among other things - this is totally void if it is family as they are really warm with one another or close friends.
It didn't really bug me until last year when my son had his birthday party and I spent about 40,000 pesos on everything and had a bunch of kids and family come, out of the 25 kids that were there one brought him a present but wanted seconds to take home along with the cake. This really pissed me off, because I have attended other birthday parties here and the kids normally get presents, it's not the cost of the toy it's the thought for the kid.
There has been lots of things in between like people trying to help me i.e unloading my bike from my truck and flat out asking for money to the point I tell people " si queres ayudame bueno, pero es por gratis " 7/10 they stop helping.
There is fruit trees in the back of my pretty good neighborhood which are mine, there are other trees as well on other people's properties - they come over to me to ask if they can go up my house to pick the avocados they want and I know if I let them they would clean out the whole tree with a smile but they don't do this to the other Dominicans.
I get this subtle communist vibe here when people tell me or talk about others how they should openly share resources; like that one of the biggest economic handicaps here is Hermano works so he will give me some too and I won't work.
The maid comes to my house and tells me she makes 2,500 a day cleaning but she's doing it for 1,000 cause she's friends with X then goes on a low key 8 hour begging spree that she owes 24,000 peso and needs help bla bla I don't care. I know from being submerged in Dominican culture for 11 years that if she did this to a Dominican she would have received a horrible-normal response
these are weekly things and sometimes semi-daily. I am venting a bit here but my reasons are valid, lots of extranjeros who come here are retired and like the weather or love travel/ nature and want to try a business or something other come here for family or attempt to find greener pastures. I think as a demographic compared to some other countries we add a lot of value, education, businesses, and foreign income into the local economy, not every extranjero here is good of course but as a whole, we're not bad and the government tends to agree.
Do Dominicans honestly just think foreigners have enough that their plates are full so they should share obligated cause thats what a nice gringo does? I am always a bit stuck in between how to respond to these things cause they are generally nice people surface level but without sounding like a total A hole I feel it's very hard to have a real friendship with one unless they're on a similar economic level and have their own things - friends which I do have but, obviously, when you go out to the gym, supermarket you are not dealing with your circle you're dealing with the general population.
What I have done instead of just complaining about it is going back to my country for a month at a time and this helps and quite honestly have been more of a A-hole here which helps as well because people don't bug me but it comes with a side effect of becoming a bit dumb to others which I wasn't before.
Was a rant but a clean rant
But many, many Dominicans do not do any of those things. My father taught me many years ago that the best way to keep friends is not to lend them anything.
Toyota Land Cruiser Serie 70 Pick up are plentiful and popular here in Jarabacoa. There start at about 60,000 $US and go up from there.
I live here for 18 years know and when i arrived at SDQ in January 2006 i was picked up by my Boss that already did spend 30 years in this Country prior to my arrival. After welcoming me he made following Statement; "Dominicans will to to you what you allow them to do !" There is nothing to add.
There are a lot of gringos that come here, especially Americans, that just start throwing money at Dominicans. Word spreads fast and they think all gringos are loaded and are just a walking ATM machine. Then they expect all to be like that. The ones that aren't are tacaño.
I know one gringo that was throwing some ridiculous sums of money at the the locals here. For instance, he bought his regular taxi driver a $10K lot because he was such a nice guy and good friend. He had a lot of Dominican friends. One day he finally woke up and realized that they weren't his friends, they were friends of his money.
60K will get you a nice 2019 -2021 model. The new 2023-4's will be over 100K.
That there are lots of rich locals that don't need to suck up to us immigrants.
They are just monthly payments. A lot of Dominicans think different despite the interest rates here.
When I bought my Lexus, visitors, of course, (they love to know the price of everything you own from shoes to Watch) asked what I paid.
When they finally got to know it was “al cash” most said that with that money they would have paid it as a “inicial” and taken a 2023 with 60 months payments.
That part 👆!
The day...back in 2008 or so....when Miesposa ( then girlfriend) ....marched into a barbershop in SD to ask why they overcharged me for a haircut and made them give back the extra money.....was when I knew she was the one . It was a ridiculous "gringo price" amount ...looking back ...even now .
Fast forward almost twenty years and three kids later... It's my job and every instinct to protect her and the kids....but when it comes to Dominican issues and drama, she's the boss...she tells me to step aside ...and I just watch and learn like 😳😳...
I disagree with the OP. Everything he said is true, however it does not apply exclusively to gringos, it also applies to " well off " Dominicans.
I don´t see it as treatment specifically towards foreigners, but many people behave like this towards others who have more than them, or that they feel have been ¨lucky" in life. I deal with people trying to "help" me park for a fee or trying to overcharge me all the time. I also have negative stories with cleaning ladies and assistants. I don´t agree that that there are things that we "wouldn´t do to other Dominicans".People who do this, will do this to anyone if given the chance.
Many of those that I know here who have nice cars and apartments are cash poor.
People love to ask you what you pay, you're right. Someone asked me how much i paid for my jeep the other day then asked "is this your everyday car?" hahaha
If I had a dime for every time somebody working at their job said to me "I'm hungry" I'd be rich.
How many of you have seen children holding a plate of food with their hand out asking for money for food?
Same thing with the Haitians. I always hear "m grangou". From time to time I will help them, but not every time. Last month I took 3 of them to Burger King in Boca Chica. It was a big deal for them. They ate the fries and shared the whoppers with other Haitians. I just won't do it everytime see them.
I recall there was a thread about this a while ago, where basically some were bragging on how much do they pay for this and that or tip, as the "going rates" were not appropriate for them as that would be been disrespectful towards the workers. The problem is exactly the above, in my opinion. The market is what it is, one person, foreigner or not, cannot change it. If the going rate for a taxi ride is 150 pesos and you decide to "tip" 500 pesos, that does not exactly give a good impression of you and then the driver will be expecting that the same time as well...
I would say that only those people call others "tacano" who have no idea of working...