To enter this story at the beginning we have to go back to February 2006. The Dominican Republic is in full pre-election frenzy. May 2006 was to see municipal and congressional elections. In fact elections in the DR seem to be a fact of life – every four years we have municipal and congressional elections and every four years Presidential elections. But not the same four years. So there are major elections every two years and since the run-up period is some 18 months elections are an ongoing fact of life.
Politicians here promise all sorts of things to get elected and many Dominicans, incurable optimists that they are, believe them. So, ahead of the May 2006 elections Puerto Plata was promised road works. It is one of the promises which actually came good but………….careful what you wish for! We still have road works some 16 months later………..
The roads of Puerto Plata had suffered some minor interference in the preceding 20 years. Nothing that made any long term difference of course. Cosmetic, surface and cyclical in nature the pattern goes something like: heavy rains → potholes → brouhaha at City Hall over what to do → surface flattening → occasional filling in of deeper chasms. Then two months later heavy rains → more potholes → more brouhaha → filling in parts which were washed away last time…….. You get the picture I’m sure.
Imagine then the delight of the good citizens of Puerto Plata when in February 2006 heavy machinery and an array of workers appeared and started digging up the main road which links Puerto Plata with Santiago on one side and Sosua on the other. The election promises were being fulfilled! In May 2006 the President’s PLD party won a resounding victory in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies as well as in the municipal elections. Puerto Plata’s city hall divested itself of the previous PRD leadership and a new day had dawned.
Meanwhile the road works continued but everyone beamed. Sure there were ‘inconveniences’ as they are referred to here, but everyone knew that the end result would be magnificent. So traffic jams were cheerfully endured. Indeed they became the social event at which you met people you hadn’t seen in ages. Car engines were switched off, drivers got out, stretched their legs, chatted with old friends and made some new ones. Inevitably entrepreneurs appeared selling to a highly captive audience anything from phone cards to jack plugs for cars to newspapers. Exceptionally long delays merited the arrival of the cold drinks seller.
By June 2006 it looked as if the top surface was finally being laid. However, in July a sudden torrential rainstorm highlighted one rather glaring (or gurgling) omission. No drainage pipes had been installed on the north side of the road. So these were ordered, two months later they were paid for and delivered and in September the road was once more dug up in order for them to be installed. More traffic jams, chatting with old friends (the new ones made last time could now be considered old), phone card vendors, cold drinks salespersons (September is very hot and humid). Once again vehicles arrived to lay the top surface. We’re there!
Not quite. In October the south side of the road was dug up. Why, you ask? So did we! This was the telephone company, it appeared, who at this point decided to lay underground fibre-optic cables. More traffic jams, more resigned (albeit slightly less patient) drivers, more socialising with people you hadn’t seen since you met them in the last traffic delays…………..
November came and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. At last! A splendid new road, no potholes, easy driving.
In December the Mayor and Town Council decided that the citizens of Puerto Plata should have an early Christmas present: a central reservation low wall to divide one side of the road from the other. Such divisions do not feature significantly in the lives of Dominican drivers particularly motoconcho drivers who will dart from one side of the road to the other with gay abandon and not a lot of forethought.
Shop proprietors on the main road were not convinced as to the necessity of a wall either. They could see business disappearing as drivers would be unwilling to park on one side and walk across to the other. Very wise really since most drivers know what other drivers are like. An entrepreneurial Delegation Of Complaint went to city hall. Local newspapers followed the progress of the negotiations as if it was a boxing match. Which indeed at times graphically captured the spirit of said discussions. Eventually a compromise was reached and work began on ‘the wall’. Pink Floyd eat your heart out. More delays, more socialising but now a low rumble of discontent could be heard.
A slightly louder rumble of discontent emanated from the UTESA university students. The wall as ‘planned’ (I use the term loosely) had no break in it outside the University which would have meant that mobile students could only enter from the south side of the road. Those on the north side had to drive past and onwards for another 400 yards to the next break in the wall. But turning there would be difficult, hindered by tourist busses bound for the Cable car and thus causing…………..more traffic jams, socialising or by this time some possible militancy. We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control……………
The students mounted a protest completely sealing off BOTH sides of the road. More traffic jams, more…………… But they made their point. An entry space was made in the wall. Students 5 Wall 0.
Two months later Puerto Plata was to experience its worst rain and floods for 20 years. I have written about this in a separate article. Water, mud, rocks and trees tumbled down the mountainside from Mount Isabel de Torres. The trickle became a river became a torrent sweeping all in its path until it came to……………..the wall. So most of the detritus got dumped on the main road which became a river. With hazards. Unfortunately the detritus hidden beneath the surface of the ‘river’ was not the only danger lurking. Drivers could not see some rather large holes on the one hand nor the elevated manhole covers standing proud of the surface on the other. A few of these became the last resting place of broken differentials. And another Delegation Of Complaint visited City hall. This time it was more vociferous.
City hall, ever inventive, decided to install new digital traffic lights in the centre of town. Whether as a diversionary tactic or an aid to numeracy we shall probably never know but the children loved them. They all joined noisily in the digital clock countdown from 30 to 0 before the traffic lights changed colour……….diecisiete, dieciseis, quince…………… For drivers the precise point at which to apply foot to pedal appeared to be moot. Most were revving at 10 and moving by 3 while, of course, the lights were still red. Drivers on the intersecting roads also pushed their luck a bit in the nanosecond it took to go from 1 green to 30 red. After a few encounters the lights were reset to allow a 3 second amber flash.
As in all things the novelty wore off. By June 2007 the children are no longer counting out loud and mostly ignore the device which provided so much excitement three months earlier. As indeed do the drivers. But the side of the main road which leads to Santiago is virtually finished, the wall has been built and there are far fewer traffic delays. We’re there! Until the next time.
I think I must have internalised Dominican optimism. I wrote the above yesterday. This morning I went to travel on that road and found half of it blocked off! Both lanes of traffic are now moving on the same side of the road while, on the other side of the wall, more resurfacing takes place. Meanwhile an 8 foot election poster flaps in a gentle breeze under a startlingly blue sky (we’ve just had the PLD primaries). The face of our current President beams down from the poster and the message reads ‘Your Government! Working For You!’ Underneath someone has written ‘Yes, but very very slowly’.
I will not be so rash as to say ‘We’re there!’ again. Ask me in two years time. Meanwhile, let’s call it a work in progress.
To buy Ginnie’s ebook Quisqueya: Mad Dogs and English Couple Click Here
Ginnie Bedggood’s story of relocating to the Dominican Republic in 1992 Quisqueya: Mad Dogs and English Couple is published as an ebook on Offshore Wave. For more information visit her website at www.ginniebedggood.com
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