My stint of work in the village has come to an end, and so I had to make arrangements to finally leave the place and head back to civilisation to try and make sense of the madness that is captured in my field notebooks. I have been deliberately vague about revealing my departure date because I wanted to avoid anyone creating a scene, and also because it was part of a strategy to have a strong negotiation hand when it came to selling my motorbike.

I succeeded on the first count, but not on the second.

No one was too bothered about me going, and no one wanted to give me very much money.

I have assured the villagers that I am not really finished here and that I will be back, so it is just a temporary departure. Researchers, once they have established the kind of relationship with a country and a region that is required for a PhD, continue to travel and work in the these places as the pressures of life and work do not afford us the luxury of time to really get to know a new area. There have been lots of sideline issues that have cropped up which merit a look, but which aren’t relevant enough to my current research to warrant inclusion. It will be far easier to explore these than to start afresh in some other place, although as I am a bit worn out from this batch of research then this won’t be for some time yet.

After the irritation and disappointment of present giving (see below), there were a few more bits of business that I had to sort before I could flee the region. My sturdy motorbike, which had become a good friend, had to be sold. There was much interest from quite a few people in buying it, mainly because it has become a bit of a running joke over the last five months. When I bought it, my friend who accompanied me in the buying decided that I should get some mirrors attached to it, which can be seen in the photo. This is a major social faux pas in the mountains, as Dominican peasants rush around without paying any regard to the traffic around them. Why anyone might want to know what was coming up behind them was a bit of a mystery for them, which partly explains why so many people have limps resulting from broken legs, and the high number of widows. This and the huge amount fo rum that people drink before they set out on these bikes.

The other major problem with these mirrors is that the road running through the village was unpaved and full of potholes. Driving across this uneven surface they became loose, and flapped up and down as I bounced up and down over bumps and potholes. This led one wag to liken these mirrors to a donkey's ears, and the way they flap up and down as the donkey walks. My motorbike became known as El Burro, or the donkey.

The large object strapped to the back is a large propane tank. I needed to get this filled up, so I had to partake in the traditional Dominican activity of driving along with a large cumbersome object strapped to the back. The straps are made from cut up innertubes, and although these have a reputation for being practical and safe, I was still uncomfortable with driving along with a heavy, cumbersome and extremely flammable object strapped to the back with strips of old rubber.

After successfully negotiating the bike for a price only significantly less that what I paid for it (rather than disastrously or staggeringly less), I had to go and deal with my chickens. My two egg laying chickens, Ginger and Sporty (I did also have Baby, but she died young, perhaps of bird flu), were not quite big enough to eat, though it goes without saying that Ginger was the larger one. And the first to have a solo career. They have now been given as presents to a friend. And so I was ready to leave the village.


I am not too sad to be leaving the village, as although I have had some unhappy moments there, there has also been many happy ones. More significantly, it is not the end of my relationship with the village, as I am most probably going to go back to the region to do more work. The crucial factor is that I have lots of other things in my life which I want to deal with, and I would rather be doing them than spending more of my life living in a small remote mountain village in the Caribbean.

I am now leaving the DR, after 6 months. On my way back to the UK I will be spending a week visiting a good friend in New York. I have always wanted to go to New York, simply because the whole place seems so bizarre and improbable that I want to see if it actually exists, rather than it being a momentous work of fiction.