The little shack I live in is just behind a colmadon, the mixture of shop and drinking hole that is a major piece of rural Dominican life. This particularly one is known as La Cuarenta, in honour of a particular place in Santo Domingo that is notorious for its drunken punch-ups. Originally a nickname, it is now the accepted name of the place that even the owner uses.

The person who inspired this name is not, as might be expected, one of the heavy drinking blokes who frequent this place, who come every Saturday evening after being paid their week’s wages and drinking rum till either Monday comes, they run out of money, they collapse, or the police come to break up the fights and lock people up. The fights are frequent here, perhaps because the men resemble the fighting cocks they so like to talk about; small furious balls of aggression, that once fighting will not stop until the other is dead. One could make a comment about similar intelligence too, but it is certain that all the loud troublesome individuals for miles around come to drink here.

Rather, the person who inspired this name is my landlady, the owner. She is a small matriarchal monarch with a loud and piercing squeaky voice who inspires terror wherever she treads. She has always been very kind to me, but I am still scared to cross any line with her. She has the reputation for breaking up vicious fights, which would surprise anyone upon meeting this small middle aged lady for the first time. Other villagers take great delight in telling me stories of her dragging out trouble makers by their hair, or thumping some drunk of half her age and twice her size.

This place can get rather irritating to live next to, but perhaps not for the expected reasons. I have grown used to the noise emanating from a rabble of drunks, and most Saturday nights I am to be found playing billiards and dancing badly at another, quieter establishment up the road. Rather the irritation comes in the afternoons and evenings when I choose to work on my notes in the house, as she has a nasty habit of playing music rather loudly. Although I rather like Bachata, the twangy Dominican country music, the problem comes as she likes to put one particular CD on loop, and this disk consists of only five songs. I now have these five tunes branded into the grey matter of my head, and it has been a slow painful form of Chinese water torture to put up with this for the last five months.

I would say something to her about it, but I am too scared.