Extra Postal Charges

Saturday, July 22, 2006
For sure there is a Dominican postal system though be it quite low profile run by the Instituto Postal Dominicano – presenting itself with the not so abbreviated abbreviation of ‘INPOSDOM’. It is a national public organization with a very large office in the center of Santo Domingo. Boca Chica has its own office though understandably far smaller and appears to employ one counter assistant, one post mistress and one or two delivery men. It is not entirely clear what the post office’s range of services is because, in the Boca Chica office at the least, there are absolutely no leaflets or signs indicating what services they might offer. However you would be right in assuming they sell stamps for parcels and letters and their postmen do deliver mail. Perhaps that is indeed the full range of services, who knows?
Our own experiences regarding the receipt of standard mail from Europe, for example, are extremely varied. The letter can take any number of weeks from a very reasonable one to a very unreasonable twenty… or simply never turn up at all. Outgoing mail can suffer the same degree of irregularity, by the way, and it seems to make no difference if you opt for the express service – a little more expensive – over the regular service.
Here we would merely like to pass on some information regarding the delivery of packets that caused a little confusion and surprise in our midst recently.
One of the postmen from the Boca Chica office turned up the other day with an A4 sheet of paper indicating that a package was available for delivery to Playa Vista, but that the package itself was in Santo Domingo at the aforementioned large central offices. He said we could go and pick the package up ourselves and it would cost us 100 pesos to retrieve it… or he himself could go and fetch it and boldly “suggested” a pick up charge, significantly higher, of 1000 pesos. Presented with these two, to us, non-regular options for a package already fully paid for at the other end by the dispatcher for complete delivery, we went along to the local post office to ask for clarification and for your information here it is:
If the package is ‘large’ – not clear what constitutes large but seemed to approximate to the outstretched arms of the postmistress – the local post office receives written notification which is presented by the postman at the receiving address… and as the postman correctly stated you can take this presented paper to Santo Domingo along with 100 pesos and a copy of your identification in exchange for your package OR, not quite so correctly stated by the postman, you can request the postman to act on your behalf… but he has got to get permission from the postmistress to go to the pick-up place in Santo Domingo and he should also inform you that the obligatory cost is 100 pesos plus the transport costs which the post mistress specifically spelled out to be 120 pesos!
We are not entirely sure of the relevance, but it was a bit strange that the day after asking for this clarification by the postmistress, the previously very conversational postman frantically did his best to ignore us as we passed within a hair’s breadth of him the following morning… Strange, eh?

Dominican Legal Practice

Tuesday, December 7, 2004
“The law is the law” is a common catchphrase in the well known Hollywood formula of Wild West movies when, for instance, the Sheriff and his helpers try to clean up a booming frontier town.
In theory the claim is hard to dispute, but we were reminded abruptly this week – when a customer on the beach appeared dramatically on the Playa Vista terraza in handcuffs under police escort for allegedly having committed a crime some three days earlier – that the practice of the law can end up quite some distance from the letter of the law. Our usually amiable customer was certainly not cited his rights, no written order for his arrest was ever produced and the explanation as to what was going on was very minimal at best and highly confusing at worst.
The difference between practice and theory here in the Dominican Republic generates the worrying impression that you are guilty until proven innocent when, for example, you are suddenly handcuffed like the mentioned customer or thrown in a prison with multitudes of others, with little or no explanation (see blog story Nov. 24, 2003 in archive).
When you look into the seemingly topsy-turvy situation though, apparently the prescribed law does presume innocence, and the Dominican Constitution does establish that no person may be jailed without a motivated order from a competent judicial authority unless the person is caught red-handed in an act of violating the law.
Further examination reveals that the authorities here are aware of the great gap between theory and practice and that a clarification and tightening up of existing law is necessary which is why a new code of criminal procedure is due to be implemented in the new year with certain principles coming into immediate effect.
This all bodes well for the future, but meanwhile all this was of little help to our handcuffed friend who, as time went by that certain afternoon, became increasingly aware that he was dealing with something other than simple neglect of his rights, because – surprise surprise – there was increasing talk of a substantial sum of money changing hands in exchange for his immediate release. His dawning realization of what was actually going on was confirmed when he found it impossible to access the required funds from a number of tried sources including his bank and the “police” contingent finally, suddenly and disappointedly, left taking their empty handcuffs with them while wistfully mumbling amongst themselves something about coming back the next day… which, for what it’s worth, they didn’t.
We wish the authorities well in trying to bring about a narrowing of the gap between theory and practice with their new criminal code and with the loudly extolled anti-corruption project espoused at the end of last weekend by President Fernández who is claiming the project would be a model for countries in the region.
Our recently beleaguered customer will no doubt sleep easier, wiser from his real learning experience and knowing that the 7th Cavalry are massing over the hill in the form of serious new governmental initiatives.

The Good Old Trujillo Days – Honestly!

Friday, October 8, 2004
We are pleased to report that from time to time we get some very interesting responses to our little internet pieces regarding life here at Playa Vista Boca Chica and the Dominican Republic in general, and we thought that our readers out there in the big world should be let in on this one from Sarah Daily Frey:

Hi,
I was looking up information on the D.R. the internet, clicked onto your Blog and started reading. Came across your description of the little islands and it brought back memories.
I feel like I’m a Dominican at heart although I only lived there from the time I was 7( 1955) until Jan. 1, 1962 when my parents sent me to the U.S. for high school. I attended Carol Morgan school and spent wonderful days at Boca Chica. The Island you wrote about that had a zoo was in operation during that time, although it had suffered the loss of some of the animals during a previous hurricane and had been quite battered. It was a great place for adventurous, imaginative kids like me, with all kinds of animals for those brave enough to venture close.
My memories of Boca Chica, Juan Dolio, Santo Domingo and the rest of the island are wonderful. Although my parents were missionaries, I felt like we lived in a resort paradise (except for the fear of the Trujillo dictatorship), with electricity available all the time, clean water and all the comforts anyone could dream of. I even remember when the first supermarket (with air conditioning and freezers) opened in Santo Domingo, started by a retired U.S. air force pilot. We thought we really lived in heaven!
Never thought I’d be old enough to play “I remember when,” especially to someone I don’t even know, but they were good times for me and I thank you for helping to jog my memories.
Sarah Daily Frey

Meanwhile seven years later:
What an incredibly ironic salutary lesson. Electricity, water and all commodities available. The only little fly in the heavenly ointment was El Jefe – Mr Trullijo!

Dog Loyalty Has Its Limits

Thursday, April 8, 2004
Dogs are great… they are after all man’s best friend! Unfortunately at the same time it has to be recognized they, just like their human friends, can be noisy, dirty and even malicious. In many countries dogs are kept as household pets, because the friendship offered clearly outweighs any of those negatives. Many Boca Chica residents have their pets too, but for those of you who live here or who have visited, you will know there are at times hordes of the non-domestic type in town also. It is difficult to know where they come from… almost like asking whence came original man. Anyway they roam freely around, scavenge for food often easily obtained from sympathetic visitors or restaurants, sleep an unbelievable amount of time in the comfortable shade under sun-beds or parasols and generally hang out untroubled by anyone or anything. We have rarely seen any maliciousness from them, in fact their somnolent, humble subservience allows them to live largely in harmony with their human neighbors. A medium-sized black and white mongrel going by the name of “Bandida” had for several years adopted one of our good customers as patron. It was astonishing to see her loyally turn up day after day in October last year in search of her patron completely oblivious of the fact that he had flown up to Canada for the summer. Since his return Bandida and her patron have whiled away the winter quite happily until last week when the local health authorities decided that something should be done about the number of those free-wheeling stray dogs. The action must have been carried out swiftly, without fuss and even under the cover of darkness because we have yet to hear a single report as to how almost the entire feral dog population disappeared from one day to the next.
It has had a direct affect on us at Playa Vista: our sleeping time is far less interrupted by what had become increasingly noisier night-time bark-ins. However – Bandida’s patron is visibly unnerved by the loss as is Bandida’s summer stand-in patron… because of course she was playing the field!

Meanwhile seven years later:
Over the intervening years dogs have continued to come and go but the relative plague at that time has never been repeated. Unfortunately it would seem that even the dogs are saying something about the lack of authority care and attention given to the town by voting with their paws.

Honesty is an Individual Choice

Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Here is a little sunshine story about honesty in the Dominican Republic. Little Reyito (or Riquitin to others) is a schoolboy who often picks up empty soda bottles from the beach at the weekend and sells them to us at one peso per bottle. We were reminded of an incident demonstrating his honesty quite some time ago by another of equal charm recently.
The first endearing story involved him trying to pass three bottles to us in one go… unfortunately one slipped from his hand, fell to the ground and smashed. He apologized clarifying that it was his own fault this had happened and backed that statement up claiming he only wanted two pesos as a result. Thinking that he should be rewarded for his honesty we didn’t hesitate in fetching three pesos but he insisted and refused to accept any more than two – impressive, eh?
The latest “honesty” story is that he brought several bottles and in the growing gloom of the early evening we didn’t notice that we accidentally gave him a five peso coin amongst the several single peso coins in the handful offered up. Some ten minutes later he returned to exchange the “wrongly” received five peso coin for a single peso. What a pleasure to deal with such an honest gentlemanly thing especially at the end of a busy Sunday.

Meanwhile seven years later:
It would seem to stand as a testament that honesty is an individual choice. Reyito was very young, certainly poor and had plenty of contrary examples to lead him astray. We presumed that his family was probably very influential in his inspiring attitude.