Coconuts and Bargaining

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Before starting with this post, I must clear something up for my handful of readers (thanks to 10 people, but yes I look at my stats! The stats say more but if I aim low I can always exceed my expectations. First person I thought was Sarah Palin, but you know that every day when McCain wakes up, he just hells at himself in the mirror, and says, I could have screwed up the economy even worse than that Osama character. By the way, I was really was torn on who to vote for in the last election and really was leaning towards McCain, but I cared so much that I never even voted, which reminds me, I need to get cracking on the absentee ballot thing.) the post about my semi-naked adventures, had nothing to do with Maria. What I mean is that Maria did not see me naked in anyway, and that please, any negative views of Mother Teresa incarnate (Maria) should go to me (cough…cough..older readers). We only hold hands and frolic through meadows.

I think this one needs to be a review since I lost my writing verve. Oh so in my previous blog entry I posted a picture of a guy climbing a coconut tree, and well, I might as well explain how that ensued. So last Monday, I think I finished having lunch and was just relaxing, when Joel, brother of Rudy, pulled up with his old truck full of coconuts in front of my house. We exchange greetings, but then he says he wants my company, so of course I just hop into his truck cause I was thinking since we was going to the beginning of the community that I would just hop out of his truck and then just wander back home after talking with more people as I try to meet more people, this is actually really exhausting. As we pass the last house in my community, but before we cross the river into the next community, he tells me that we are going to go into the province of La Vega to sell coconuts. While that sounded like a great idea, I needed to just talk with more people so I told him that I could join him tomorrow. Fast forward to the next day, just after eating my breakfast and reading a book, Joel pulls up to my house at like 9:30 and says, “Let’s go!” A quick 5 minute scramble and I am in his car, along with my host brother, Mendy. I learned that we would only be back at like 5pm, but I couldn’t back out cause I thought he was picking me up after lunch, but oh well! We eventually drive out of the campo, through Cotui, and into the La Vega province (We eventually drove 25km north of Bonao). However along the way, when we would see people with coconut trees, whether they just had 2 of them or the time we saw a rich owner just outside of Cotui have 30 coconut trees, we would stop and ask to take their coconuts (on the 2^nd read-though I just realized this was funny. Joel paid 3 pesos to take each one and then he sold them for 10 pesos). The following would ensue: Joel would stop the car, get out and talk to the owner. After some charm (mi amor…my love! You can call any woman this. This is a form of sweet talk or bargaining…another story I can tell!), the owner would agree and then it was Mendy’s turn to perform why he was in the car. Of course without any safety harness, Mendy would tie a a 150ft rope onto himself and tie his machete 5 feet below himself, and then, he would start climbing. Some of the coconut trees are like 100ft off the ground at least, and he climbs them with ease. Once he gets to the top, he unravels the machete, and with some deft cuts and some more rope, he would tie the rope to the branches, with each branch having 5 to 15 cocounts. After we got a sufficient amount of coconuts, Joel would go to certain vendors that he knew would need them. One of the stops was at this small outdoor market, where we got some fresh fruit juice. Forgive me, but shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! Don’t get me wrong the juice is always mixed with sugar, but you can always taste the freshness. You can’t get that anywhere in the US. I know that the pineapple was just picked maybe the day before. I have eaten pineapple here that when I ate it, it tasted like perfect sweetness, straight sugar. Like when I go bathing with the kids (muchachos…..this word refers to anyone between the age 10 to 25 here), we walk though pineapple fields, so we just grab pineapples that look perfectly ripe. And if we cut it open and yelp it’s, “Agria!” (Sour), we toss it away and grab another one! One more thing, my community also grows mangos, but because something weird happened early in the year, there are no mangos this season (it is mango season by the way!) but normally, I am supposed to be eating 5 mangos a day right now! What in the hell! So if you are counting, usually I have an endless supply of passion fruit, pineapples, and mangos. Booyah! Oh and the other stops we visited was we went to the interstate and we would stop at the vendors along the interstate to sell our products. What this means is that there are coconut juice sellers all along the interstate, and this is where Joel sells most of his coconuts. If you are wondering who makes most of the money, Joel or Mendy, lets serve up some facts. Truck..Joel, Getting Clientele…Joel, Risking his life to get the product…Mendy. So who gets the majority of the dough, why of course Joel. And really he should cause he could get 20 other people in my community to do this, and well it’s Joel who sweet talks everyone (haha).

Oh and how does one use, Mi amor, in the proper context? Quick story time. This is the day of the party to celebrate us becoming new volunteers, and I had just bought my bright, neon-yellow, extremely tight (I needed the help of another person in getting the shirt off of me), v-neck shirt in Alcarrizos. By the way, Alcarrizos reminds me a lot of Baltimore, which is not a good thing. Basically if you want to experience any 3^rd world urban city in the world, just visit Baltimore before and you have an EXACT replica of all of them. Some parts of Baltimore are just gorgeous (inner harbor, overall city architecture, distinct neighborhoods, interesting people), others are straight shit (real ghettos only 2 blocks away from every place, scores of abandoned buildings, burned buildings, buildings that looks like they have been bombed). So Alcarrizos is the same thing, which means at night, you don’t walk alone or don’t walk at all (okay so I broke this rule all the time, but I am better about it now). So after getting my ridiculous shirt, I met up with Dan at km9 on Autopista Duarte. This is the highway the goes right through Santo Domingo, and Km 9 is a huge bus depot and because of that there are many make-shift shops. I quickly bought some sun glasses, and then I was helping Dan try to buy a ridiculous shirt. He found one after an hour, and after he tried it on, the lady told us 350 pesos. Now I step in since Dan is too nice to do this, and I reply with “But mi amor, I saw these kinds of shirts being sold for 200 pesos in Alcarrizos this morning”. I just need to add some more hand gestures (more animation like I just found out you were cheating on me, and more touching and then I will have Dominican bargaining to the tee! Really they were being sold for 250 so I knew I couldn’t really apply the rule of half without scaring her off. Right away she lowers it to 275, and after not budging any more, even when I keep saying this to her, she says she doesn’t want to lower the price. Then I switch to English and say to Dan, “Walk the fuck away so that we can get other 25 pesos off the price. Trust me, she is going to give it to us”. What does Dan do? He says that he just wants to give her the money cause 275 is less than he was expecting to pay. And 5 seconds later, he gives her the money even when I was trying to drag him out. I should have just taken 25 pesos for myself and given her the 250 like she should have received. Messing up my fun, sheesh! Goal #5001 for my 2 years here, try to give Dan some of my charming, but asshole qualities. Any truly nice guy will tell you, if he can add just a little more asshole to his game (Not too much, but just a little to confuse) more cheekiness/confidence, than straight up mean comments, then it will only accentuate your qualities. It’s not like I actually believe this, well maybe I do, well maybe, just maybe…

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