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Aly, mosquitos, ratones and ventanas Jul 22, 2009

Wednesday. July 22, 2009 So I wrote a really good update on this date, typing on the web site instead of on word like I usually do because we have “high speed” internet at the house and I thought it would be easier. Now I look back at the entry and “THERE’S NOTHING THERE!” Well, I will have to try and remember what I said based on the title of the text entry. Our neighbors, Jan and Dave are back. They are in the picture I’ve attached that we had taken with Aly right before he left for Haiti- more on that to follow. (Dave and I look like giants in the picture but we just figure it’s the slope of the land!). They’ve been gone for a year and 3 months and we are glad to have them back. They may not be too happy to see what we’ve built, which partially obstructs their ocean view, but they say they are only building a tree house for now. (See we are not the only strange Americans here. We are thinking of calling our area of land “loco mundo” because our world’s a little crazy and they fit right in). I’ve also attached a photo of our neighbor Dave on top of his quartito (storage house) as he pedals the bicycle to power the pump that is supposed to pump water from his cistern up to his roof. Neither he nor Jan could bicycle fast enough to bring the water to the roof so the pump and bicycle are back on the drawing board. About Aly, our first employee and acting watchyman while we were gone. He was really skinny when we got back and not looking or acting like he felt very healthy. He’d gone to a local Haitian witch doctor for some herbal drink (it looked like used motor oil- but Aly said it was helping?!?!) to help with his stomach and other gastrointestinal problems he’d been having. He’d been working for our architect friend Chuck on our neighbor’s house on the property below us however Chuck wasn’t letting him work the week we got back because it was too hot and he was afraid he was going to die. As he said to us, “He’s not dying on my watch.” With the help of our neighbors Jan and Dave and our Dominican neighbor Neilsa and her husband we convinced Aly that he needed to go to Puerto Plata and see a real doctor. We loaned Aly money so he could rent a car and pay for the doctor and Neilsa and her husband, who happens to speak Creole, drove Aly and his wife. There is a strong distrust by many of the Haitians about getting good medical care from a Dominican doctor. Many Haitians don’t feel like they will get good care and honestly, the Haitians are often treated as second or third rate citizens, so their distrust of the Dominican medical system is understandable at times. Aly returned with a sonogram and medicine to cure the fungus he had growing in his stomach. All the while, he’d been in touch with his family as he’d been feeling poorly and partly due to the fact that both his mother and father are dead, they wanted him to come back home so they could keep an eye on him. So Aly decided he was moving back to Haiti. We can’t judge because family does come first however Haiti is struggling greatly and we fear that his medical care will lapse and witch doctor medicine will take over. He’s now been back in Haiti for 3 weeks now however he said he would be back around the first of the year to visit. We just hope he’s doing ok. We came back to find not only Aly and our neighbors, but a new resident or two downstairs. We didn’t see these visitors (okay they were field mice or ratones as they call them here) for a while but the little turd droppings were indications that they had made themselves at home. After hearing one at night downstairs as we were sleeping upstairs, we decided the war was on! Dave bought an industrial size rat trap in town and after a little of Bear’s dogfood placed on the spikes we had caught our rat! The next day I found more droppings and realized we had only caught one of how many??? Within 2 days we had our second rat and Dave is convinced it was the daddy. We are now approaching a week or so with no rat droppings, so we are cautiously optimistic that we have won the battle, if not the war. Our first night sleeping at the house was less than successful. We did not have the upper windows/screens in place, nor did we have mosquito netting over the bed. Around 2am, after we had sprayed ourselves with mosquito repellant, Dave sits up and says, “I’m going back to the boat, you can stay if you want.” I think Bear and I beat him out the door. Since then, we have all the windows installed as well as mosquito netting over the bed and the last night we slept up here was quite calm and peaceful with no mosquitoes. As for the windows, they are all completed. I’ve attached a photo showing the completed windows over the doors. Each window consists a pair of large glass triangles with louvered glass windows and screens below. They are amazing at helping prevent mosquito and moths, geckos etc. Rene, one of the local welders in town put in our sliding glass doors/window and also did the windows up above. It took a few weeks, but they are done. Now we are cleaning up glass, caulking and stray metal parts/pieces all over the property. (In the DR, it seems that when someone is working on your house, to clean up they simply throw the trash over your fence. I believe it’s the “what is behind me does not matter” theory. We’ve seen it over and over and explain where we want the trash, but it ends up on the other side of the fence. And then I go pick it all up later.)

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