Aftershocks

by Brian Howard

When we arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, two Fridays ago, weary from iteration six or seven of Philly Winter Flu/Cold 2010, we were expecting a lively Latino getaway that was part salsa-fied bombast in the ebullient capital, part deep-chillax in the sleepy little beach town of Las Terrenas on the Samaná peninsula (where, in the 1800s, many blacks from Philadelphia settled).

We booked our midwinter shot of Vitamin D a few days before the earthquake devastated Port au Prince in neighboring Haiti. (We looked into volunteering, but lacked the requisite experience.)

On its face, life in Santo Domingo, some 150 miles from the flattened Haitian capital, goes on unencumbered. I speak embarrassingly rudimentary Spanish and understand nothing spoken by an actual speaker of Español, so it's possible every single person in the capital was speaking only about the recovery efforts to the west, but that seemed unlikely. There were reminders, however. The maid at our hotel, the charming Casa Doña Elvira, was a young Haitian with whom we could communicate only in French. The hotel was giving part of its proceeds to Haiti relief and accepting donations.

And I suspect they were discounting or offering gratis the rooms of the myriad Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) workers who were using Santo Domingo as either a point of embarkation or a weekend respite and were milling about the hotel's small patio pool our entire stay.

Though Haiti and the Dominican Republic are, to borrow a George Bernard Shaw-ism, two countries separated by a common island, there are Haitians everywhere you look in the DR: selling art, working in restaurants, manning hotels. When I asked Michel, the effusive concierge at our Samaná hotel, where he hailed from, his smiling eyes turned pained as he said "Haiti." (My response — "oh, things are ... tough there" — was, yes, a gigantic understatement.)

Though the DR fought a war with Haiti for its independence — the 166th anniversary of which was celebrated on Feb. 27, the last night of our stay — and the country is genuinely proud of its status as an economically stable Caribbean nation and a baseball powerhouse, the continued plight of its neighbor lingers, albeit tacitly, in the air.

On Saturday, Feb. 27, that last day in Santo Domingo, a new crew of MSF workers had arrived and were sipping drinks at the pool, preparing for a stint in Haiti. They talked about three months of paid vacation (likely a necessity if you spend nine working in disaster conditions), the inevitable illnesses they succumb to after the adrenaline fades, and a new disaster that had struck. Tsunami warnings in Japan, New Zealand and Hawaii went out as news of the Chilean earthquake spread.

"Guess we know where we'll be spending the next six months," said a German MSF vet sort of nonchalantly, but sort of not.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

Please donate to Médicins Sans Frontières at doctorswithoutborders.org.