The Dominican Republic is the eastern 2/3 of the island of Hispaniola. The other 1/3 is Haiti. It is a lush, green tropical rainforest. The land is very fertile. Dad used to say if you stuck a stick in the ground it would grow. The people speak Spanish. They had never seen snow. I sent a picture of Cameron playing in the snow wearing a snowsuit, and the children asked Mom "What's that white stuff?"
What's That White Stuff"
It is a poor country, but Mom and Dad always said the people were very happy. The Dominican Republic has a troubled history of Dictators and corruption, but is much better off than Haiti, which Dad used to describe as “wall to wall starving people”.
Cabarete
They moved to a little town called Cabarete on the North Shore of the Island, near Puerto Plata. The first home in the Dominican Republic was The Little Round House. They rented it from Gwen and Tony. Gwen and Tony were a couple who ran a real estate business in Cabarete. They quickly made friends in Cabarete among both Gringos (fellow ex pats) and Dominicans. There was a large gringo community living in Cabarete and nearby Sosua; and the North coast of the island is a favourite holiday spot for Dominicans from Santo Domingo as well.
The Round House
They loved the Dominican people. Some of their fellow expats were a little surprised at them learning Spanish and finding friends among the Dominicans, but anyone who knew Mom and Dad would not have been surprised.
Dad found himself with the unusual task of leading funerals for people in the Gringo community who passed away down there. He was a little puzzled by this as he was never a particularly religious or even spiritual person, but people turned to him to lead the service when someone passed away. He said he used the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.
Life in the DR
Mom learned Spanish quickly, but also used her sense of fun to communicate. Once early on in their stay there they flew into a little airport. The soldiers there were asking them how they flew such a little plane over the ocean and what happened if they crashed. Mom crossed herself and put her hands together in front of her chest, miming “pray”. The soldiers cracked up laughing.
Dad kept busy doing a little doctoring, a little veterinary work, and soon began using his plane to fly private charters. He flew people all over the Caribbean, even into Haiti, which he hated. This was not quite legal as he did not have a license to fly charters, but the passengers all knew to say they were friends or relatives. Once he flew a couple of young German girls around and when asked by officials, they declared Dad was their Uncle. I don’t know if the officials wondered why the Uncle and his nieces spoke a different language.
Dad got into trouble one day. He got into a dispute with someone who said he had not paid for some part for the plane. After Dad left this person apparently went to the authorities and made a complaint. Dad was heading to the Bahamas. When he got there he was arrested and thrown into jail. He spent a very uncomfortable night in jail until the matter was sorted out. When he got home his friends brought him cakes with files in them and made great fun of him for being a jailbird.
Friends
Living in the Dominican Republic was an adventure, and they had to get used to living with a few less amenities than we are used to in Canada. The mail service was unreliable at best and non existent a lot of the time. Phone service was also difficult. The power supply was unreliable and Dad had a back up generator for the fridge and other necessities. They got used to spending a lot of their time without power, and became very good scrabble players as they played a lot of scrabble by candle light.
They were highly amused by the Dominican “ambulance”, which consisted of someone being carried on the back of a motorcycle. They told of seeing motorcycles being driven along with a passenger holding on to an IV pole.
After a few years in the Round House, they built Castillo De Las Flores. This was a large house, and quite a major project. Dad built two houses on the property, a small one for their Dominican staff, and the big one. They lived in the small one while their house was being finished, then their staff, Anna and her husband Victor and their two children Rafalito and his sister (shown in the picture of the Round House) moved in. Dad hired an architect and a crew of labourers; and learned about construction, Dominican style. He had to learn his way around the Dominican bureaucracy as well for all the necessary papers and permits. The Dominican system is quite corrupt, and he had to learn who and how to bribe to get what he needed. The house grew quickly, and they moved in.
Building the house
The house was large and quite luxurious. It also had a suite that they rented to tourists who came to stay. They met some very interesting people that way. They would take them around and show them the country.
Castillo De Las Flores
Mom with shell
The house was right on the beach. Every day Mom walked for miles along that beach. She bathed in the rock pools, and searched for shells. Dad swam in the ocean and scuba dived.
Dad took this picture story of Mom. There was a rock pool where she loved to relax. As you can see, one day her relaxation was rudely interrupted.
The architect was busy with other projects and Dad had to finish the house himself. Once the house was finished, Dad had a trained work crew and a workshop that he had built. He was asked to complete the cabinetry for a small hotel that was being built nearby. That project was completed, and soon led to more, and before he knew it he had a thriving business on his hands.Between the woodworking business and the charter flying, he said he made more money down there than he had doctoring. However, he was not allowed to keep the money and Tony kept it for him. Unfortunately Tony ran into difficulties, and Dad’s money disappeared. (Remember what Dad said about a good doctor and a poor businessman?)
They adopted a dog named Lobo.
Mom and Dad were happy in their community and felt totally safe among the Dominican people, many of whom they considered friends. They loved the simple lifestyle the people lived. Mom did say, though, that it was a rather sexist society. The men pretty much did what they wanted, and the women held the household together. Dad found his workforce would work very hard until payday, and then they would take their checks and drink and spend the money on themselves. They did not seem to see a need to provide for their families. For the most part, the land supplied their needs. They built their own homes out of whatever was available, and grew gardens, and their chief diet was rice and beans, so their needs were few.
A Dominican Wedding
Mom and Dad were rather disdainful of the all inclusive gated hotels down there. They felt that people who stayed in them were missing the opportunity to get to know the people and the country. They thought people’s fears were being whipped up by the hotel owners and people were encouraged to believe they should not venture out of these gated hotels alone. Once they learned some people they knew from Weyburn were staying in one of these hotels nearby. They went and “rescued” them, taking them home and showing them around so they could see the Dominican Republic Mom and Dad had come to know and love. The people were very grateful.
At first they stayed in the Dominican Republic year round. Then the rules for continuing their Saskatchewan health coverage changed and they would lose their health coverage if they did not spend some time in Saskatchewan every year. They began coming back to Canada for the summer months.
Dad did “locums”, meaning he would fill in for a doctor while the doctor was away on holiday. He did locums in Rock Glen, and Bengough for a few years. He was not really happy with the state medicine had reached in Saskatchewan by then, almost everything was referred to specialists, and to the hospitals in the larger centres. He found he did not do as much hands on doctoring. He was rather dismayed by the amount of drugs that were being prescribed particularly for older people. When the resident doctors returned, they often found that their patients prescriptions had been severely cut back, and the patients were feeling much better for it.
Dad was always a good diagnostician. Christopher had been suffering from a recurrent stomach ailment, and would have periods when he would suddenly throw up, and could not be moved. The doctor had not been able to figure out the problem. Dad was doing a locum in Rock Glen, and Susan described the condition over the phone. Dad immediately diagnosed juvenile migraines. He taught Christopher hypnosis to deal with it, and Christopher was able to manage the condition.
Susan and Al and the kids were happy to see them spend some time there, and the kids were able to get closer to their grandparents. Mom called Christopher Grandma’s “Tobelito” as she learned that Tobelito means Christopher in Spanish. Christopher thought that her name was Tobelito, and from that she became known as Grandma Tobelito. While Dad was working in Bengough he stayed in the doctor’s home, and the doctor had a private swimming pool. Susan and Al’s kids enjoyed going there to visit and swim.
When Mom and Dad first moved down to the Dominican Republic they loved the people, both the Dominicans and the visitors. But after about ten years, as the country became more popular as a holiday destination, they found it changed. The tourists were more rude and demanding, and the local people became less genuinely friendly and more grasping. They said the country was being ruined. Mom was no longer happy, and they began looking for other options.
Then Mom’s health failed. Her lung collapsed, and she wound up in hospital. This was a very scary experience for her, as when she woke up; she had forgotten all her Spanish and the nurses did not speak English. Dad was very worried about her.
After she recovered Mom quit smoking. And Dad said anything she could do he could do better and he quit too! Both of them had smoked since their student days. Before Dad could quit he had to use up every scrap of tobacco in the house, no matter how old and dried up it was. It was hard to get used to him without his trademark pipe that had been with him as long as any of us could remember.
They put the house on the market, and made the move to Weslaco Texas for the winter months.
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