When I arrived in the Dominican Republic in 1974 to teach, I was able to get around pretty well with public transportation. To get to school and back, the school provided a van that picked up the teachers each morning. However, after two years, the school decided to leave the transportation to and from school to the teachers. That was a bit of a hassle. A motorcycle seemed the answer.
I wished that I could afford to buy a car, but I knew that I couldn’t afford that. The government heavily taxed cars when they came into the country so they were quite expensive. The next best thing was a motorcycle, and I decided that I was going to get one. I finally bought a new one for about $845. It was a Kawasaki 100 Enduro which means it could also go in the dirt not just in the street. It was a deep maroon color.
The problem was I didn’t have a drivers license. The paperwork to get a drivers license in the Dominican Republic is ridiculous. Once I had the paperwork done, I took a written test. It was in Spanish, of course, and I did pass it the first time around, but it was hard. There was no actual driving test, but getting the actual license was extremely challenging. I went in on the day I was to get it to discover that they had a learners permit for me not a license. They told me I should have my license in a few weeks. Finally my pastor was able to help me get it after waiting about 6 weeks. The problem is that money helps move things along in the world of Dominican bureaucracy, and I refused to give bribes as I feel it’s unethical.
Once I had the freedom to ride around it felt really great. I was able to ride out to school and back in my own time frame. It was quite freeing.
In order to protect my bike, I had a little garage built for it. There was a garage for a car by my apartment, and I asked if I could have a lean-to type garage built on the side for my motorcycle. The school agreed so I was able to put it in there and lock it up each night. That was important.
One morning I woke up early to someone knocking on my door. It was the guard from the school. He told me that my motorcycle was down below at the lower gate of the school. Apparently someone had tried to steal my bike. They took it down to the gate, but it was locked, and he couldn’t get it out so he dumped it there. Then I remembered that I had planned to go out the previous evening so I had left my bike out front. I later changed my mind, but forgot to put my bike in the garage. Fortunately I was in a walled in school so my motorcycle was safe.
That wasn’t the only time someone tried to steal it. I remember that I rode it to church once, and when I went to leave, I saw that someone had tried to move it. Fortunately they were unable to move it very far.
During the previous summer I had developed a friendship with one of the seminary students who lived out in the country. With my motorcycle I was able to visit him. Visiting him was really a different experience. He lived with his family. Their home was not small, but it had limited conveniences. There was no electricity so oil lamps were used at night. They had an outhouse for which they would buy toilet paper for me when I visited. At night they had a chamber pot in the bedroom. To bathe we would go to a nearby stream. It was definitely a time of seeing what rural life was like. I enjoyed visiting him, however, and went back a number of times.
I mentioned in last week’s post that I was going down to help a pastor friend every few weeks with music. Having my motorcycle made it easy except when it didn’t. My bike had one major flaw. It didn’t like the rain. Somehow when it rained water would get in to somewhere it wasn’t supposed to go, and the bike would stutter to a stop and not always restart. Here is what I wrote to my parents on one memorable experience.
I was in Bonao last weekend…Sunday I planned to return early, but dark clouds made me stay. Finally I left only to run into heavy rain. I waited it out at a roadstop, and by the time it finally let up, it was too dark to go on so I went back. I had no clothes with me…so I had to borrow clothes for the evening service. The next morning I left a little after 5:00 to return. I did fine until about 20 km out of town when my motorcycle stopped. Nothing I did got it going so I had to leave it there and catch a “publico” into town. No one could go get it in the morning so I had to leave it until the afternoon when Juan, my mechanic, took me out and got it fixed.
What’s most remarkable about this story is that I just left the motorcycle with a family who lived on the side of the road. I didn’t know who they were. I just asked them to watch it for me. Considering others had tried to steal it, it is kind of amazing it was still there when I returned. That trip also encouraged me to ride my motorcycle less on that frequent trip to Bonao and take the bus instead, especially if rain threatened.
One other story I’ll share regarding my motorcycle was a very scary moment for me. One afternoon the parents of one of the boys in my class hadn’t picked him up from school. We tried to contact his family but without success. I volunteered to take him home on my bike. As we were getting into town, I turned a corner and nearly had a head on collision with a car. I managed to stop safely without us being hurt, but it scared me. The driver of the publico I almost ran into had been impatient. Although it was a two lane road, he decided to pass other cars to get to the corner ahead of the others. I was pretty upset with the driver, but mostly grateful that my student was fine, especially since I really didn’t have permission to be driving him around on my motorcycle.
When I left the Dominican Republic, I sold my motorcycle to my mechanic for $600 if I remember correctly. I really haven’t ridden a motorcycle since then, but it is a fond memory I have of my time in the Dominican Republic. It changed my experience by allowing me to go places I might not have gone otherwise.
I hope that you have enjoyed my tales of the four years I spent in the Dominican Republic. My goal was to share some of the challenges of working in a culture that is different than one’s own. Has anyone else lived for a period of time in another country? I’d love to hear about your experience. Feel free to comment below. Also I love to see your likes, and you can easily share this on your social media platforms. Just click the link below. Thanks for your continued support. Next week we return to the US. See you then.
Your motorcycle story reminds me of when I was on a work assignment in Dusseldorf, Germany, for 5 months. I told the company I was working for that it would be a lot cheaper to buy me a bicycle than to rent a car for me during that time. It worked out well, as Dusseldorf has lots of bicycle trails and it was very easy to get around and much more flexible than the local transit system. On weekends I would occasionally do long rides on bicycle trails out to the surrounding countryside and visit parks, lakes and medieval ruins. As with your motorcycle, it seemed very freeing. I was also fortunate that the hotel where I stayed during that time let me keep the bicycle in one of their storage rooms, so it was always secure.
Thanks for sharing your experience, bro. I have never been to Germany. Still need to get there.