More News from Lake Wobegon

Really good day yesterday!  It was my first tri-lingual temple day, performing ordinances in all three of my languages:  New Name in English, led a session in Spanish without a mentor, including leading the prayer circle with no notes, then received at the veil in French.   Also, observed a session of the La Vega stake, famous throughout the Caribbean for never missing a Wednesday at the temple, despite a two-hour drive to get here, every week since the temple opened six years ago.  They provide all their own ordinance workers, including the officiator and sigadora, and have their own workers’ prayer meetings before the session.  They just take over the temple during the two hours it is normally closed in the middle of the day.  Wow!

Spent some time with Barbara, getting lost in the temple’s “gua-gua”, Dominican for any sort of van or bus.  In this case, it’s a small, 14-passenger van owned by the church, for the use of the temple.  We can use it when it’s not scheduled for something else. 

President Melendez, the second counselor in the temple presidency, says he’s heard I drive like a Dominican.  High praise around here!  He won’t tell me who told him.  They have interesting rules for driving:

1.  Go with the flow.  If the traffic is cutting corners on the sidewalk, follow the flow.  The only “normal” traffic rule universally enforced is to NEVER stop  with the front of your vehicle beyond the limit line at an intersection.  You’ll get an expensive ticket.  The traffic police are all on foot, and intersections are about the only place they can catch you.  All other signs and painted markings are just decorations, and are universally ignored.

2.  Right of way goes to:
    1)  Bigger and/or uglier than you.
        2)  Whoever can “pick” a spot by inserting any part of their vehicle in front of another vehicle.
    3)  Whoever can convince the other driver that he does not see him.
        4)  All moto’s (motorcycles and mortorbikes) get the right of way, because killing a moto driver is universally frowned upon.  For Americans, it results in immediate expulsion from the country.   For Domincans, it means jail.  Dominican jails are notorious.

3.  Unlike Peru, drivers here reserve their use of the horn for occaisional courtesy “beeps” to let another driver know he’s won the contest and has the right of way, and for LOUD honking the moment the light turns green, if the traffic happens to be stopped at a traffic light.  Most Dominicans WILL stop for a red light, but may not STAY stopped. Loud honking as in Lima or New York is frowned upon, probably because you can’t convince the other driver you don’t see him if you’re honking at him.

It’s a GAME, much like chicken.  I’ve even seen cars driving up the wrong way on a one-way street full of traffic.  And the moto drivers flit in and out of traffic like flies, doing just whatever they like, convinced of their own inviolability.  The game is spiced up by occaisional pot-holes and missing manhole covers.  The locals steal them and then try to sell them back to the government.  They’re always right in the wheel track of the painted lanes.  Drop a wheel into one at 35 mph and it could ruin your whole day.  Sometimes, some kind soul will stick a board into an open manhole to warn the drivers, but usually not.  It’s a poor country, and some manholes have been open for YEARS!  Drivers will also park wherever they please, even in a traffic lane (I’ve done it, briefly).  Yesterday, I avoided hitting a huge bunch of construction equipment that someone was storing in the left lane of a busy, downtown street.

Parking is also interesting, especially if you’re driving a van.  Best way is to get someone to stop the traffic for you, while someone else guides you into a spot.  They expect to be paid, of course.  Stopping presents difficulties, chief among them the itinerant windshield washers.  If you look at them, they’ll wash your windshield, then ask for money.  Often, they are elderly, or crippled.  I usually give them $5 or $10 (that’s Domincan PESOS, not dollars!)  Exchange rate last time I checked was 35 to the dollar, so it works out to fifteen or thirty cents American.  Not much for us, but worth more in a country where the average worker puts in fourteen-hour workdays, six or seven days a week, for $1200 (pesos) per month (about $40 US). 

Yeah, that’s right.  You could sponsor an entire Dominican family of six for less than fifty bucks a year!  Maybe not a bad idea.  Many families cannot afford for their kids to go to school, even thought the schools are free, because you have to have shoes to go to school, and school uniforms, and pencils and a notebook.  You can buy really cheap kids shoes for $300, but they won’t last long, and for most families, outfitting a couple of kids for school costs more than they make in a month.

Our friends, the Hansens, are on a Humanitarian mission here.  They addressed our FHE last Monday, and mentioned a village they know where only ONE ward member has a job (but she’s moving!)  The rest just eat what they can find, and live in cane huts that blow down with every storm.  And look down on the Haitians, who are REALLY poor!

Makes you realize how blessed we are.  By Dominican standards, there are NO poor people in the United States.  The poorest homeless American has resources the average Dominican can’t even dream of:  Social Security, homeless shelters, medical clinics, public libraries, etc.  Next time you see a bum pushing around a shopping cart, think of this:  many Dominicans work fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, with no days off, until they drop dead, and don’t own enough stuff to need a shopping cart!  Truly, we all live like kings.