Words from across the sea.

Cocos

Yesterday, I felt an urge. It was to drink coconut milk.

In the El Arca workshop, we have been working with the shells of coconuts, for the past weeks. Chipping away the rough brown hair from the exterior and then sanding them down, to create vast reserves to later make jewelery and other delights from.

A short while ago, it also became a goal of mine for this year, that I should purge, and drain at least 150 coconuts of their juicy flesh and milk in the time that I am here. I feel this is not an unrealistic goal, but does require me to pull my metaphorical socks up on the consumption part. The cocos themselves cost about 50p each, a not-insubstantial amount when you consider the quantity Im gunning for, and in fact this could prove to be a considerable investment in the Dominican economy. I should say the Haitian economy really, because the coconut-selling market, along with that of sugar cane, is mainly run by Haitians (the government reckons there´s some 50,000 Haitians living illegally in the DR.) They sell from the back of pick up trucks, and can usually be found on most major-ish streets in the capital.

At 4 pm on this Tuesday afternoon, I had already worked for nearly 10 hours, and was pretty resolute by now that nothing short of quadriplegia was going to stop me.

So, belligerently determined I set off from El Arca, and walked up Las Carreras, through the Herrera neighbourhood and along our cracked and dirty street. Past heaps of rubbish which sit and build steadily until eventually some thankless person either cleans them up, or shifts the stinking collection to another street.

Along past still ever curious eyes of school children and neighbours and up the hill over the speed bumps which are mounted so high that cars have to crawl and still scrape over them. Broken and bumpy tarmac, until the peculiar, impotent looking police station, with an ever-present couple of policemen carrying shotguns carelessly slung over one shoulder, who stand guard outside. I am convinced it is because they can´t all fit inside.

Pushing past the eager advances of a waiting line of moto-taxi drivers fixing their bikes, on the corner of Avenida Mexico, I turn left onto the Avenida itself and stroll up against the traffic. The traffic is a veritable jamboree of battered and broken ´caros´ – semi taxis which drive up and down the same road; seatbelt-less, windows down, music blaring and unacquainted with interior furnishings, they are rammed with usually 7 or so passengers who hold breath and clench all cheeks having paid only 15 pesos (30p) for the journey. Most caros have huge cracks in the front windscreen but the driver usually only half pays attention to the road, more often he is scouring the pavements for passengers. To see them, they bare a comic resemblance to one of those long-suffering cartoon characters, encased in a tomb of bandages and plaster up to the eyebrows after some Acme weight run-in or a cliff related fall, although I have, so far, never seen them actually hit anything.

Alongside the caros there are the moto-taxis, bicycles (who are perhaps the most improbable lunatics on the roads) and of course there are pedestrians. All compete for space in the three lanes on the two lane road. I put my hand out to cross in front of one of the slow-moving caros and step out – the pedestrian is king of these roads until he gets hit. I make it over with the confident swagger of the local who is to all other locals a tourist, and walk up the other side, with the flowing traffic. The pavement is perhaps the more perilous option, and I skip over pot-holes and craters, and stretch around parked cars or bins and delivery crates.

The road curves upwards, and with a backward glance I can see over La Mexico and the Eastern outskirts of the city to the distant green hills, which I had failed to notice before. At 4.30pm they look almost dusty with the sun, which is beginning to contemplate setting, and it glares like an angry eye on those who admire the view too long. The dust is not only apparent. As cars pass they whip up dusty smokey clouds and I emerge like a pantomime villain. The smell of petrol is thick and omnipresent. The road stretches on past the Adventist church on the left and the school where yet more school children cast their glances on this strange white man, in his mis-matched shorts, t-shirt and sandles combination.

Then past the bakery, of which I only become aware when the hot, yeasty, salty smell of bread rises over the hot dust and choking carbon, and fills the unexpectant passer-by with such an olfactory orgy that I stop for a moment and bathe in it. When I pull myself away and onwards, it lingers and teases me up the street until it is washed away again and I am left with the heat and the smell of putrid puddles and the decaying plastic and oil.

I turn right at the top of the hill and reach my target, the pick up and the black Haitian with his skin black like the personification of the night and his smile that is like pearly teeth hanging in a shadow.

The cocos cost 20 pesos, and I buy two.

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment