One of the benefits of living in this particular community is that the owner of the local electricity company (and owner of much else besides) has a weekend home close by. This means that in order to keep the neighbours happy, he ensures that we have a good electricity supply. Until recently, this meant the flow starting at 1PM prompt, and ends around 1AM, yet in recent weeks starting and ending times have been much more capricious, coming and going several times a day, never at the same time. This prompts the two Dominican catch-phrases “se fue la luz” and “se llega la luz” – “the power has gone”, and “the power has arrived”. This is present in every area of the Dominican Republic, except the apartment complexes of the rich and the all-inclusive tourist resorts, which can afford enough inverters and portable generators to get them through any blackout. It is much more severe in rural areas, perhaps because the deadly riots in protest against poor supply that have plagued the DR have all occurred in the large cities, rather than the remote campo. The peasants never seem to be revolting.

Electricity supply is a major political issue here, and the candidates for the presidential elections are slinging promises to the electorate and insults at each other with all the force and none of the accuracy of a baseball pitcher, even though the elections are fourteen months away. Each is promising to end power outages whilst criticising the vacuity of the plans of the other, as they know it is the key to electoral success. The politician who can ensure power to the people will be in turn given power by the people.

Apart from the catch-phrases, a far more audible sign that power has arrived in the village is that all the tape decks and CD players are cranked up, and the valley suddenly fills with music. This is mainly bachata, Dominican country music, which is quite pleasant, except when it is the same five-song CD repeated on an endless loop. Even though it disturbs the tranquil peace of the village, the songs seems totally at place, as they are about campo life, about working the fields, drinking rum, and having woman troubles, which accounts for pretty much all of the daily life here.

More alarmingly, less appropriate and much less welcome music has made its way up the mountains. Just yesterday, I was brutally attacked by the strains of the Crazy Frog. No place is safe now, and it is somehow even more irritating to think that I crossed the Atlantic partly to escape it, only for it to bite me in the arse when I am least expecting it. More surreally, the arrival of electricity today was accompanied by the strains of the MC Hammer classic, You Can’t Touch This. And indeed, you can’t.