Admittedly it is drawn from a non-developed area (for the time being at least) before the point in the village where the locals bathe and wash their motor scooters. I speak of this issue with everyone I encounter. How can we repair the pump and get water to the village? Why are the people not lined up outside the Mayor’s office banging pots and pans? Well, I was told by one Dominican, the Mayor would simply answer that he had no running water either. They have not been raised with high expectations in this country

I spent the last few weeks looking for other housing, as I am in the tourist area, next to the road by the beach, constantly assaulted by the noise and fumes of the passing motor scooters, roaring pass all day like a fleet of giant, killer mosquitoes. Not to mention the little water problem. For the first few months, I was so enchanted by the view that I did not even hear the noise. Now I often retreat to the back bedroom, cotton stuffed in each ear, to read in relative quiet. It is difficult here to find housing to rent even for $500 a month, a sum that I assumed would provide me with a fine little house. My former neighbor here, a French woman is on a comparable search. She has been here for three years and is enraged that the prices have tripled during that time. Where, she says, are the European showgirls, who only make 8,000 pesos a month (under $300) supposed to find housing? They are not, I said, they are to give their jobs to Dominicans and return to their home countries. You must bring to this country your own resources and add something here for they have nothing extra to share with foreigners.

Since I started writing articles for this website I have received numerous e-mails from people wishing to know more about relocating here. Could they survive, they wondered? How much money would they need? I know foreigners here who arrived with little and are surviving well. For them, a monthly wage of $600 is sufficient. They earn it by working for other foreigners, managing hotels and businesses, installing solar panels, running the paper, and teaching languages. All of them speak at least two languages - their native one and Spanish. Many speak three or four, an absolute requirement to work in any of the hotels. Most have college degrees. They also have no difficulty living among the Dominicans, who have a fondness for gathering at small local bars, playing their lovely bachata music at high volume from 11 PM to 4 AM.

The most adaptable Europeans live deep in the countryside, cold water only, low cell phone service, no Internet or cable, riding to and from town on motor bikes. Other foreigners, often on retirement income, pay from $500 to $900 a month for the small apartments in the tourist hotels, complete with night security, maids, electricity, cable and internet. Living rooms are small and the furnishings, while delightful to the eye, are often uncomfortable. All the furnished apartments are overcrowded with beds.

Some foreigners are living in the furnished apartments while constructing their own homes, dealing with land prices starting at $2000 an acre, the maze of local building restrictions, the horror of the delays and incompetence involved. Some are buying homes already built, going from one real estate agent to another (as there is no multiple listing service), hoping that the agent, the seller, and the lawyer are honest. Few realize what a long shot it is to find honest brokers among all three.

“ In a few years, this road will be paved and you will be right down from the new supermarket, the golf course, and the marina.” Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it will be a supermarket or maybe it will stay just a drawing on the architect’s board or a half-finished project, abandoned when the money ran out. And you will be living on a dirt road, far from town, alone and vulnerable.

Nor do most envision what their lives will be like living in their own homes. The juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, cheek by jowl, always produces crime. Most windows will have to be barred or the entire property enclosed in a wall, behind a sturdy, iron gate. A night watchman, armed with a pump shotgun, or a large, intimidating dog, will insure a good night’s sleep. While I have not heard of any crimes against persons, there is a steady report of stolen gas tanks from houses, missing equipment when left outside. There are more than a few crack sales places in town. Some say that it is the foreigners, with their taste for cocaine and marijuana, who have brought this problem to town, to the entire Island. But the Dominicans themselves, as well as the rest of Latin America, have long been involved in drug trafficking. It simply follows the money. (Lest you should start to feel superior, remember that 60% of all US Federal prisoners are there on drug charges. And that we now have the highest rate of imprisonment in the industrialized world, higher even than in the Soviet Union under Stalin. This is not a problem confined to one nation. It is global.)

It takes a long time to really appreciate what “poverty” means here in the Third World (or perhaps this country is really now the Second World, considering Haiti to the west).

I thought I had solved the problem of the absence of books in the little free school where I am a volunteer English teacher. I made a CD of a few of my favorite folk songs, typed out the lyric sheets and brought it, along with my portable sound system (a Sony walkman with exterior Bose speakers, my long-ago selection for the best sound reproduction in the most portable device). We had a wonderful time listening and dancing, the kids rapidly learning the steps to the waltz. They interrupted the kindergarten class next door to seize a little dance partner who could stand on the tops of their feet as they moved around the room. I had thought how delighted they would be when I gave them each (14 of them) a copy of the CD, made on my laptop, with a copy of the lyrics, along with a Spanish-English dictionary next week, at the end of the school year. All hope was shattered when I asked who had a CD player at home. No hands went up.

What on earth was I thinking? Many of these kids don’t get enough to eat. But they are so bright, and so proudly clean and well dressed, I just forgot. CD players here cost about $40 – and then the electricity or batteries to run them. I had budgeted enough for the dictionaries but I certainly didn’t have enough for the CD players. Nor did the families have enough money to pay for the electricity to run them. I was ashamed of my own ignorance.

Many ex-pats from all countries have achieved here their little pieces of Eden, growing their own fruits and vegetables in this fertile climate, making friends with their neighbors. My American-Dominican friends have their own chickens and goats, producing fresh milk, an absolute luxury here in this land of boxed milk. Their garden, only two years old, provides them with almost all their vegetables and some of their fruit. Further down the coast, in Puerto Plata and Sosua, there are full communities of foreigners, secure in their own compounds or condos, supplied with their own power plants. But we are on the frontier of development here, living on the edge. There is a new road in construction that will allow us access to the Capital of Santo Domingo in two hours. Within a year, the government says. Give it ten, my French friends counter. The beaches here, with the mountain range right behind town, make this little remote corner one of the most beautiful places on earth.

The Europeans got here first, twenty years ago when it took 9 hours to cross the mountains by horse or mule team. They built the hotels, developed the infrastructure (such as it is), and bought up most of the available land. Now they wait for the Americans to arrive and buy it from them. The Dominicans, who are exceedingly sharp people, have learned from this and are selling the remaining property at comparable prices. Yes, perhaps some Americans will arrive to purchase second homes but few that I know could tolerate either the inconveniences or the up close and personal view of poverty. Europeans are now busy developing Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They still have the pioneering spirit that built the United States while most Americans have grown used to their comforts and the easy satisfaction of our every consumer desire.

So my rather blanket advice to anyone who is thinking of retiring or moving off-shore is to go there now and buy a piece of land. Visit all the countries on your short list, find the best community and simply buy a small piece of land and put a fence around it (otherwise you may return to find concrete block houses, filled with Dominican - or Guatemalan, Nicaraguan or Mexican - families, on it upon your return). The prices all around this country are only going to go up as more and more of the baby-boomers from the industrialized world retire. Worse comes to worse, you can always build a house Dominican-style, one concrete block at a time. Investigate carefully as some countries, such as Mexico, will not allow you to actually hold title to land near the sea, only allowing you to lease it for your lifetime.

If you are a developer, really understand and know construction, are fluent in Spanish (or have a trusted colleague who is), and have working capital, there is a fortune to be made in constructing middle-class, middle income apartments or houses here. We are in great need of them. If you have enough to offer your own financing, you will quickly sell the project, once it is finished. There are some mortgages available here but only to the highly qualified, and now offered at 16%, half of last year’s rate. Do not fall into the trap of trying to sell (or buy) a project before construction, with only subdivision plans and permits. The walls of the fourteen real estate offices in this town are papered with such projects. Lawsuits abound. Most of the unwary buyers will never recover their downpayments.

As for how much life here will cost, I would recommend that you assume at least $2000 a month to maintain a shadow of your current lifestyle, with a visit home every year. Even with twice that amount, you will not find the amenities to which you are accustomed. There is no air-conditioned movie theater for an afternoon’s retreat. (We would love one, but how would one even decide what language to run on the subtitles? English would be the last choice here.) If you do not have a secure source of income, via an Internet run business, retirement or other investments, or a job with an international corporation, you are taking a great risk, one that could go either way. The bank CDs, which pay in pesos, are now paying 17% interest, down from 24% last year. But with a 100k investment in those, you would at least have a secure income for a trial period. I would certainly hesitate to make this investment if that was all the capital I had. There is a reason that they pay such high interest rates.

Please do not come down here with plans to open another bar or discotheque. We are really trying to head in the opposite direction. Perhaps there is another part of the world that would welcome another bar.

The Dominican Republic is striving to eliminate its reputation for sex tourism. We already have more than enough bars and discos along with one of the highest Aids rates in the region and a horrible problem with child prostitution. Come and open a school. You may not make as much money but you will be infinitely more welcomed. Teachers ride for free on the local motoconchos.

Assume that your children will have to have at least three hours a day of home tutoring to keep them at their current educational level. We are now discussing establishing an English school, based on the distance learning courses offered by Canada and Great Britain, but at this stage, you would have to serve as tutors, as well as pay for the space. We have a schoolhouse for the free school but it was given by a foundation, for the education of the local poor. So we would charge you in order to subsidize our adult literacy classes. Fair enough, I think.

While some families thrive on this type of adventure, many disintegrate under the pressure. If your marriage is in difficulty now, the odds are that it will fail once exposed to the tropical sunshine and the free-wheeling lifestyle of a tourist town. Your husband (or wife) will be offered temptations of the flesh that are certainly not present in any little suburban community in the States.

Yet, if you long for a life outside of the consumer culture, one with the possibilities of really feeling needed, of being of use, by all means “come on down.” This entire country, as well as all of Latin America, has a huge need for English teachers. When you volunteer at the local hospital, you may well be the only one doing it. And if you are an engineer, especially one who understands water systems, you can stay in one of the extra beds at my place.

I am off to the laundromat now with my big roller suitcase full of bedlinens.

If you are interested in a Spanish school in Las Terrenas

The following are the previous articles Elizabeth wrote for the magazine:

• Life In A Dominican Beach Town - An American In The Dominican Republic
• Preparing For Expatriotism - More From An American In The Dominican Republic.