“Se ba Ales

Se ba Meno

Y se ba Corina

Y todos mis amigos

Y Manolo se queda muy triste

Porque se keda sin patrones y sin amigos

Yo no boy a encontrar

Que hacer

Kisiera irme tambien a Olanda” (Manolo on the blackboard of the school)

It is hard to say goodbye. Today I said goodbye to the site and the villagers and the village. I pulled out the metal pins and filled in the excavated holes and tried to take a hard look at the site to fix its impressions on my mind to summon up at later stages of inspirationless-office-drudge. I want to remember the relentless sound of the sea, the blues and greens all around, the palmchats chatter (if this is what makes that cheery chirrup), the pelicans flying by, the vultures sometimes hovering, the lizards on the paths, the feeling of what it’s like to be in the flat bitten out segment of the cliffs between two headlands to north and south, the feeling of sitting on a rock and knowing you are not even the 1000nth person to have done this here (I always remember the comment of someone at TAG in Glasgow, not an archaeologist, who said that archaeology was a way of dealing with collective loss – this is sometimes how I feel about the people in the past who we try to know, but will never know).

I went to say goodbye to Margot (Belto’s wife) and Juana (the mayor’s wife) and their families (these are the people of El Cabo we do know). This year we are not only leaving them, but they are also leaving us. If we come back next year, most of them will not be here. They will be in Beron or Higuey, seeking another life, dispersed and no longer los caberos. I saw Monolo on his donkey on the way to work, with his son propped on the back, on the way to build a house for someone now that we can no longer offer him work. I saw Kelby and Ramona on their motorbike, off to pick up the mayor from hospital in Higuey, I sat on Juana’s bed and hugged her and all her children, and then off to do the rounds at Margot’s house, and hugged her in her hammock and Kelin, and walked out of the village and drove fast away.

One joke of which the locals never, ever tired of in the field was making a comparison between someone and the face on a ceramic adorno. It didn’t matter what the adorno looked like (bat, frog, monkey), or how many we found in a day (could be up to 20 or 30), they would still rush up to someone, student, local, whoever, and hold it up against their face and break down with laughter. Somehow it was pretty funny each time.

“Till then they had been crowing and flapping their wings threateningly. But now, craning forward and moving their heads up and down, or gyrating them with their beaks still touching, they fell silent: stream-lined instruments of destruction on stilts, glaring at each other through wary, bloodshot and ferocious eyes. Their remaining neck feathers stiffened into ruffs, and then, slowly turning inside out as their anger rose, surrounded the purposeful heads in bristling funnels of plumage.” (Patrick Leigh Fermor 1950)

Cock fights are probably illegal in Europe (are they?). This strikes me as enormous hypocrisy given the institutionalised inhumanity of industrialised farming practices compared to the various pastimes which involve moments of cruelty in otherwise relatively free and unfettered lives of Dominican animals. I say ban battery farms and let a few cocks fight. But let’s leave this debate for another time as it was far from my mind when visiting the cock-pit, or club gallistico in Haitian dominated Fiusi, just down the road from Bavaro. It was one of the most entertaining experiences of my time in the DR this year. Sorry grandma, but it’s true, and for your sake I will spare you the details, although the details are fascinating.

Anyway, one Monday, Manolo, Manolo’s mother Ana, Belto and his son and daughter Yahaira and Kelin persuaded Menno to leave work early to go to the club (pronounced “clu”) with Juan and his cockerel. Juan is one of the El Cabo seguridad, who sits in a hut all day outside the village, always with a red cockerel under his arm. So off we went, the 7 of us, in a state of high excitement to the clu! The clu was a round auditorium with ranked plastic seats, a sandpit in the middle and chicken wire round the outside and a thatched roof. We arrived at 2.30, which Juan said was late. This surprised me as I have never heard a Dominican refer to lateness before. Nevertheless we sat for a good hour or two in the colmado bar opposite and drank beer and then wandered over to the ring. So I am not sure what we were late for.

Peripheral to the cock pit were all kinds of gambling tables – dice games on painted boards, and small huts with more dice games going on inside. Manolo and Kelin disappeared into the fray. Miraculously enough however, the ambiance was very relaxed and I joined in a few rounds of doubles (and won DR$20 – about 50 eurocents –it would have been bad form for a foreigner to clear the table). This was the first occasion to throw away your money.

The second opportunity came after the cock weighing. This seemed like a tense business – you have to make sure your cock is pitted against another of similar weight. It doesn’t matter how fat your cock is, as long as it is fighting against equal fatness. This was also where the betting was done and to be honest I have no idea how it all worked. We just handed cash over to Manolo, a frugal amount compared to the weeks and weeks worth of wages Manolo, Belto and Kelin were forking out. Ana petitioned Menno for cash – “a loan” – a loan with no chance of repayment. Naturally out of loyalty we put all money on the Cabo cock.

At about 6 we entered the cockpit (and we were late arriving at 2.30!?), women allowed in for free – obviously the opposite rule applies than on ships. We got seats halfway up. Many others were craning their heads to look through the chicken wire from outside. I wondered whether it was going to be a bloody affair and whether I would be disgusted like Patrick Leigh Fermor who needed a stiff whisky and soda after his Haitian experience in 1950. Again the cocks were weighed in scales in the centre of the ring by two handlers. The judge then sprayed each cock with a substance that Belto said neutralised any poison saboteurs may have put on the birds to gain an advantage. He then produced a very angry cock from a bag he kept under his chair, and waved it threateningly in the beaks of the combatants to get them riled. I asked whether the cocks had names so that their supporters could call them. Juan looked at me like I was an idiot (I would have thought that walking around for months with a cockerel under your arm, stroking and massaging its fighting legs and tending to it 24 hours a day would at least merit giving it a name!). Apparently the are just called “rojo” (red) and “blanco” (white), depending on what leg band they are assigned in the ring (which was actually blue –another of those things which escaped me that day). When the fighting started, and I think we witnessed about 7 bouts from different couples, most of them followed the same pattern – the cocks, who are clearly very bellicose beasts by nature, fluffed up their neck feathers and executed strange leaps at each other’s heads and tried to peck each others eyes and necks. Mostly the fight ended when one just got tired and gave up. Tiredness, not lethal blows seems to stop the fighting. Yes, there was a bit of blood, but you could only really see this on the white cocks, and not on the red ones. When the cocks were released to fight, the third lot of betting took place – this was more ad hoc betting with spectators sitting around you. More than once I saw Belto yelling “blanco” and fix someone else yelling “rojo” and arranging a private bet.

The Cabo cock lost. This was obvious from the moment it strutted into the ring. It was not an entirely disgraceful fight, but blanco was just better. I was worried about this from the start. I thought about how upset people get when their football team loses, how the lost millions distress people and dampen the whole experience, how little the locals earn and how much they bet. I thought it could only end badly and I wished stupid rojo had won. No one seemed to care however, not Juan, not Manolo, not Kelin nor Ana, Belto, nor Yahaira. They just disappeared into the dice games again and bought more rounds of beer. When I asked them how they felt they jovially said that some you win and some you lose and then next time their cock would do better. In fact Manolo and Belto said rojo was going to lose before they even placed money on it – and still they placed money on it – not I think because cock-fighting is a very unpredictable sport – but just because they like betting – this was obvious from the fact that they really did spend all their wages on all sorts of games that afternoon, and lost it all, and seemed not in the slightest bothered about it.

The defeated cocks were sold cheaply outside to people for soup (more out of disgust of their owners than necessity I suspect), the winners taken home to train up for another day. Poor old rojo. Then we all climbed back in the truck and went to Beron for some more beers and dancing!

Very irresponsible of me to get lazy with the blog just as Hurricane Dean swept by. No one seemed duly concerned however, and yes, we survived with no more than a few miserable gusts and rain bursts Punta Cana direction. We had plenty of tins in the cupboard and a concrete building to shelter in the advent of a worse landfall, and had fantasies about being caught out by the cyclone whilst in the field and having to shelter in a cave with the El Cabo inhabitants, their generator and plenty of rum. Naturally, in horrible reality, this would have been no Taino-style party (the early Spanish chronicles mention caves used as refuges in Hispaniola) and hurricanes produce the most catastrophic disasters nowadays, especially for those dwelling in flimsy constructions in coastal cities of the Caribbean (as I learnt from Lisa, my paleotempestologist friend from Virginia Tech and also from the stories from the people in El Cabo about what happened in 1998 when a hurricane ripped through the east of the country), but it did produce several interesting discussions and musings on the way knowledge and strategies about what to do and how to explain hurricanes and other violent weather events were passed on in precolonial times – we have clues of this from rock art and Taino myths relating to rain and storms and also from the places chosen to settle and the way houses were built. In El Cabo for example, I have an idea that in the advent of a cyclone, which people would have seen coming out to sea, the house could have been laid flat by taking the largest posts out of their sockets, and then evacuating everyone to the caves in the cliffs behind. Storm over (could be a matter of days, and judging from the pottery remains in some of the caves, they were equipped), you could come back, and slot the posts back into the holes – this is one of the advantages of houses on the rock over houses on the sand (what was that parable again?!).

I'd be the first to admit that some things archaeologists are interested in are not very tangible or relevant or juicy to the majority of people. I, for example, am interested predominantly in postholes - negative features, filled with only earth, sand and gravel; others get passionate about a nice soil stratigraphy - ultimately very tedious. However, some things archaeologists find are of immediate interest to a wider audience - and we are currently making such discoveries in El Cabo.
The indigenous population of the eastern Dominican Republic were slain and enslaved and perished from disease within about 50 years of European contact. Though many agricultural practices, recipes and elements of their language persist, and some of their genes are mingled with those of the current Dominican population, culturally and socially and physically they were pretty much destroyed by the Spanish.
Until this week, we believed that the site of El Cabo was abandoned before Columbus set foot in the Americas. However, one small blue glass bead and a handful of green glazed ceramics throws a whole new light on the Taino settlement of El Cabo. These few artefacts, recovered by students from the sieves, indicate that the indigenous population was still very much at large when the Spaniards came with their guns, germs and steel. They also indicate that the Taino in El Cabo exchanged goods, probably gold, pearls and other goodies coveted by the Europeans, for pottery, glass, bells, pins and copper buckles and other goodies which they themselves coveted. We are still assessing the implications of these new finds, but what we may be witnessing in the iste are some of the first encounters between Europeans and inhabitants of the Americas!

There is nothing finer than driving a big truck along Dominican roads, through resort terrain, with a good salsa blasting from the radio, the sun shining and the windows open! All my painful months of driving lessons on miserable Dutch, every-movement-controlled-roads, have paid off (well, actually i will probbaly never be able to pay it off) because of this.
And to top it all, yesterday I received a consignment of licorice (drop) and a BBQ set from the Netherlands - Laura - THANK YOU! I now understand a blog can be more than just virtual rambling if as a result you get a stainless steel spatula, fork, and tongs for the next Cabo inferno! Thank you so much!
Well, I know it has been a while since I last updated this, and a new group of students has arrived, so it might be a while more, but I will have lots to tell when i manage to write it all down - about jamaica, skeletons and other things...