“The earthly paradise glimpsed by Columbus was to be perpetuated, and at the same time debased, in a gracious life-style reserved solely for the rich.” Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

Santo Domingo is a city full of painful contrasts: our hotel, it’s colonial period courtyard with its swimming pool overhung with small, ripening mangoes, the miserable sight as you cross the Duarte bridge on the way in or out of the city and look down over the shacks, cheek to jowl, practically sliding into the river Ozama. Millions of people have moved to the cities from the countryside in the last decades, looking for more opportunity (why don’t politicians improve the slums rather than toy with ridiculous ideas like building a Manhattan-style island offshore Santo Domingo for the rich? Yes, it’s easy to criticize in what a recent Listin Diario editorial would call una mentalidad colonialista, but a country in which the processes of the rich / poor breach are so visible is sometimes hard to stomach). People moved from their gardens planted with yucca, bananas, guavas, melons and papaya, their farms with goats, chickens and guinea fowl, their charcoal burning and fishing livelihoods to the temptations of a cash in hand service economy of the cities where their children could become baseball stars and hotel workers. Not that the former is by any means an earthly paradise, but whilst being here I have thought a lot about whether it would be better to live in a village like El Cabo (which is by no means unique) or a city like Higuey or Santo Domingo. I always plump for the former. But probably if I had children, and if I had enough foresight to send them to school to teach them to read and write, and if I knew that I would be forcibly bought off (with a measly sum) my land within a few years, I too would probably move to the city.

Enough of this digression. As usual, when I come to Santo Domingo, I have a list of things to do, and what I think of as plenty of time to do it. As usual I am completely wrong. My mission this time was to collect a box at one place, deliver it at another, buy a few books, sit in a colmado with a cold beer and check out the bachata they are playing in the capital. I should have picked one of these things and been happy about it. I did however make it to the Museo del Hombre. The best bit about the Museo is going behind the scenes at the museum; i.e. Glenis’ office. Glenis is the head of the anthropology department, which also handles most of the archaeology. She is the righthand woman of the director, and her office is a delight. Crammed with boxes from floor to ceiling, mannequins, books, always the odd skeleton laid out on the table and fan blowing (I worry about the smaller bones).

Behind the scenes at the Museum
In the evening, after waving the Slovenians back off to Punta Cana, I went to Jorge’s house. Jorge is my Cuban colleague and friend, doing a PhD in Leiden and lecturing at the INTEC in Santo Domingo. We ate fantastic traditional food in a restaurant joined by his wife Jixsis. We had mafongo (African influenced dish of mashed fried banana and pork crackling), sancocho (poss aboriginal influenced dish of root veg soup and different types of meat), and strips of fried beef. We then procured some cold beer and sat on the edge of Jorge’s pool and talked till midnight. Then it poured with tropical rain, so we sat under the gazebo and talked for several more hours. The hot, smelly 4 hour bus ride back to PC the next day was not helped by this pleasant episode.