The Capital

A couple of weekends ago we all went to Santo Domingo. Most people don’t actually refer to it as Santo Domingo however, preferring to call it 'The Capital' which does somewhat make you feel like an extra in the Hunger Games. On Friday afternoon we embarked on the three hour bus journey to 'The Capital'. 

The hotel that we stayed in is located right in the centre of the colonial district which has a slightly strange atmosphere: it feels very European, with big grand buildings, cafes dotted around tree-lined plazas and winding cobbled streets. 

However you soon realise that this isn’t Paris or Barcelona when you look along the street and see hundreds of electrical wires strung haphazardly on spindly wooden poles, or when you are almost run over by a motorbike which is carrying about 5 people plus a few crates of bananas. We did a lot of exploring in the colonial district, drank coffee opposite the oldest church in the Americas, wandered down winding streets, stumbled across the odd 15th century monastery and watched  life in the city.

 

On Saturday night we went to a shopping centre to watch a film. I found this a very strange experience, after living in a rural Dominican village for just over a month it was bizarre to wander into a place that was so incredibly Western. The centre was very plush: white shiny floors, expensive bakeries, air conditioning and potted palm trees. However, as soon as you step outside you are back to sticky reality where there are people selling goods on the side of the road, children sleeping under bridges between carriageways, people pushing shopping trolleys or tattered prams piled with cardboard boxes. You are back in the real Dominican Republic. On one side of the wall there are people following the path that capitalism has laid out for us: buying fast food, shopping for nothing in particular, killing people on bleeping screens. On the other side of the glass there are people on the opposite end of the scale, who can’t afford to buy their next meal let alone go to the cinema or buy new clothes. Opposite lives, side by side, separated by the smooth, impenetrable glass wall of a shopping centre.  

By the end of the trip it really did feel like an extract from The Hunger Games. Leaving behind the wealth of the capital, we traveled home through slums (‘bateys’), sun-baked dusty villages and sprawling towns. We passed lorries piled high with green bananas, sacks of sugar cane and buses full of people. We arrived in Barahona district in the late afternoon and wandered home through the village, past brightly painted houses with skinny dogs basking outside them in the dust and along the path by the drainage ditch where children splashed in the afternoon heat.