Dominican Republic – Day 7 – Jimani Border
Another 40 pesos spent for the publico to the border 2.5 km away. We imagined “funny” things, and sadly we did. Before we even got to the border gate, we had to walk through a construction site with earth movers adding more sand to the road. Beyond this area was a sizable mud pool almost knee-high blocking the gate. On the other side of this gate was the “duty-free zone” / open market that we read about online. It was more or less a no-man land Haitian and Dominicans could cross freely to do business. After this market was the Haitian border. Unfortunately, due to the rain and flood, the market was closed with empty wooden stalls.On the Dominican side, many Haitian men a few Dominicans sitting by the bricked wall and doing the usually thing which was nothing. We felt all eyes focused on us. One predator singled us out from the moment we got off the publico; first he asked basic questions and then after voluntarily walked with us for sometime, tried to convince us to cross the border. Wanted to get rid of him, we said that we would have a beer in that bar across the street. Still, he followed us to the bar and ordered for us a beer plus one for him. We didn’t know until we were charged for two beers. Then he tailed us to the border gate and carried on with his promotion in Spanish, something like “You go with me over there for 100 pesos, otherwise you will pay these guys (border control) $10.” Partly he was right. To leave the DR, you have to pay departure tax, to get back you pay another $10 for tourist card. By then, we had given up our desire to cross into Haiti just so that we could say to people that we were there. Every single person we talked to Dominican or Haitian warned us that it was not okay to travel to Haiti just by ourselves unless we had a Dominican or Haitian friend with us. Plus the market was flooded everywhere, no point to cross.
I really wanted to stay longer, to soak in what I see, to remember what I could because I could not blatantly take out my DLR camera and started shooting (I lost my pocket camera), but Honza and I became increasingly uneasy by this guy and his friends around. Plus Honza already recorded a few minutes of the border, so we decided to walk away. Then this guy got really pissed off and demanded money for walking with us the entire time “caminar contigo paralla aqui…” “10 dollares,” he said. “Porque, no necesito ti, compre ti un cerveza…” (I didn´t need you, I bought you a beer) I shot back. He liked the beer part but still wanted money. We walked away from the open center, heading to the road for cars and motorcycles and still not able to get rid of him. Without a second thought, I waved a motorconcho (100 pesos), and we rode away . It was funny how we had been hesitating to ride motorconcho because we didn´t think it was safe let alone riding two on one, but when the time pressed, we did it without a blink of an eye. The Haitian tail was cut though he managed to shout out to the driver “200 pesos” (charge them more), and we enjoyed the windy blowing into our face on the short ride back from the border
We returned to the city and accidentally walked into a “baseball” game at a street corner. The young Dominican players played an impressive game with only bamboo bats and tennis ball. You would think that you would see a bunch of nuts running around hitting on the tennis ball and missed, but oh boy were they good. More than half of the hits resulted in home-runs. If only they got a chance to grow up in the US and got mommy daddy drove to baseball practice to maybe later got a scholarship to the university.
We dined at a small cafeteria nearby, having grill-cheese, chicken sandwich and blended papayas drink. The papaya drink was heavenly refreshing, as the rest of Dominican cold fresh juice you can buy everywhere on the street. I also had half an hour conversation with the lady in funny Spanish about Haitian immigrants in the country; how they rented house here for maximum 1000 pesos/month; that there were many jobs for them here in Jimani, mostly in agriculture, construction and helper. Business is not busy here in Dominican Republic, but I notice many Dominicans have helpers, mostly Haitians. Probably paying them is very cheap.
After the cafeteria, we walked down the street to another corner and saw a Haitian woman and a little Haitian boy selling sausages and ordered three more for 10 pesos each. Heh, we seem to eat all day don´t we? We didn´t care about food, we only wanted to sit at the corner like the rest of the local and just watching the street and listening to loud music from the bar beyond. For some reason, they turn music very loud in this country
It was a typical Caribbean evening indeed.
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