Lagos in Central America

The first time I had the sensation that I had just landed in Lagos in Central America was during a holiday in Costa Rica with fifteen friends from London in 2007. As the only Spanish speaker in the group I was tasked with asking directions as we drove around San Jose in our rental cars. I couldn’t help but draw the clear similarities between Costa Rica’s capital city and Lagos, Nigeria. The dark tanned complexion of the people. The humid stench of ‘fresh’ hot air and the sudden bouts of torrential rain. The sights of dilapidated cars, buses and motorcycles ferrying more people than they were ever made for. The third-world look of the roads, bridges and highways. The sound of hip-gyrating music blasting from every radio. I had truly landed in Lagos. Except that everything was in Spanish. Right down to the religious car bumper stickers – “Dios todo lo puede” (God can do all things). All music to one’s rhythm deprived ears, if one can understand the words, that is.

I experienced that same sensation this past week in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital city. For those who are unaware, DR is a country in the Caribbean that shares and island with Haiti, which is fascinating given the stark differences in culture, language and fortunes of the two countries. But that’s a story for another day. Last year I had visited Cabarete, a tourist resort in northern DR, with twenty of my newfound MBA friends. While that was a fun-filled trip packed with lots of activities and endless partying by the beach every single night, this trip turned out to be much different, not least for how I had planned it. This time, I’d be travelling alone for a week of Spanish and Salsa. Spanish classes in the mornings, Salsa classes in the afternoons. I’d be living with a real Dominican family, not at some swanky luxury resort with little or no contact to the real DR.

The plane ride from Miami to Santo Domingo was noisier than you could imagine a flight packed with disgruntled Nigerians on the way to Lagos. In fact, the hustle of Abuja’s domestic airport terminal comes to mind. Our rather bumpy landing was accompanied by the excitable screams of a 6-year old Dominican boy on my row; “El avion se ha estrellado! Vamos a morir! Vamos a morir!” – The plane has crashed! We’re going to die! We’re going to die! He was clearly having so much fun with what I was thankful was just his fantasy, he might as well have been at home playing with his toys. I was also thankful that the school had sent their driver to meet me at the airport, for I did not even have the address for my home for the week! A thirty minute drive later, I was greeted at the house by Dona Gloria, an accountant by profession, but a self-styled “Ama de casa” (housewife) who just seemed content on looking after the students the school sends her and enjoying the simpler things of Dominican life. She lives in Zona Colonial, which is a residential area that is up to 500 years old, dating back to when Christopher Columbus first discovered the Americas.

Gloria seems to have a large family, many of whom I saw around the house during the week without being formally introduced. Her husband Julio is a rather cool guy with a sharp dress sense – the other day he was sporting a navy blue double breasted blazer on white trousers to take her to a fiesta on a week night! On my arrival, I was also greeted by the ferocious barks of my two new best friends for the week, Azul and Poki. These two must be the reason that the phrase “bark worse than bite” was coined. If you heard these two from around the corner, you’d certainly be running for dear life. But as they ran towards you, you’d quickly realize that you were in more danger of stepping on them than anything else. All these little guys wanted was some playtime. Azul means blue, while Poki comes from the word poquito, which means little. Also, Poki has three legs. Gloria’s Dominican accent is so thick that I didn’t quite understand the reason for that when I asked. I’m still not sure whether he was born like that or if he had an accident. Okay, so I asked her mother later in the week and I think she said someone, maybe another student, dropped him when he was a baby. Think accent too.

The school was more modest than I had imagined, perhaps because of the relative standard of facilities at language schools in Europe that I had been to before. It had four rooms at the most, a garden at the back, a kitchen and one computer (which kept breaking down) in the reception from where the whole school was run. The premises were opposite the Faculty of Health Sciences on a busy road in the “Zona Universitaria”. Each day, I went to school with my housemates Frank (from Germany) and Chris (from Switzerland), who were also students at the school. We went by “carro publico”, a taxi ride that you share with up to five others, all of whom board and alight at different points – usually wherever they flag down the taxi or tell it to stop respectively. These carro publicos take up six people including the driver – four at the back and two at the front (not including the driver)! This is more or less how taxis are run in Lagos as well, and I found it quite amusing that I’d be using this type of taxi to get to school when I typically wouldn’t in all my recent trips to Nigeria (that is, as opposed to chartering the whole taxi). At other times, especially in the evenings, I used private taxis to get around. The similarities between Dominican and Nigerian modes of transport did not end there. Simply replace the Guaguas, Voladoras and Motoconchos with Molues, Danfos and Okadas and you might as well be in Lagos! The name Voladora comes from the word volar, which means to fly…enough said!

The similarities between Santo Domingo and Lagos end when you compare the nightlife. In Santo Domingo, going out is all about “el baile” (the dance). And it’s really not so much about winding and grinding as it is about Latin stepping and spinning, twisting and turning on the dance floor. I had chosen Santo Domingo to experience the vibrant culture of salsa dancing but I quickly found that Merengue and even Bachata were far more popular in the clubs. After a relatively modest night out on Wednesday having a drink around Zona Colonial with Frank and conversing with some waiters from Haiti, we hit the town big time on Thursday. Stefan, a French guy in our Spanish class had rented a car, so that made it much easier for us to move around. We started at a place called La Barrica on Avenida Venezuela, which seemed much like a much livelier area than Zona Colonial did the night before. We stayed for a while having a few drinks, enjoying the Latin music and dancing, and eventually talking to some Dominican girls. Did I mention that Dominican women are absolutely stunning (another similarity with Nigeria)? I have some pictures but will keep these so that y’all can go to DR to see for yourself! After a couple of hours at La Barrica we headed to a place called Platinum to meet other students for an outing arranged by the Spanish school. There we had to say goodbye to Chris who they would not let in with his trainers (you have to dress to impress in SD apparently), but the rest of still had a great time hanging out and showing off our Latin moves on the dance floor too. On my last night, after going to a salsa party organized by the dance school I had attended all week, we rounded off the night with another school arranged outing, this time in Zona Colonial, which seemed much rowdier on a Friday night than it did a couple of days before.

While I had a great time in Santo Domingo, it certainly isn’t the tourist’s dream Caribbean destination. Any excitement we might have had by learning that our house was walking distance from the Caribbean sea evaporated completely when we went to the beach on the first day. It was a brown, dirty beach devoid of the beautiful sand that one might imagine in any exotic location – the only people to be found there were local Dominican boys with makeshift swimming trunks burying each other in the ground for fun. And the schoolgirls who would meet them there after school was out (either Dominican boys don’t go to school, or the girls are not hanging out with the boys that do)? Nevertheless, I had a fulfilling time in Santo Domingo. I went to rediscover my writing touch after a two year hiatus, find some inspiration and do some self-reflection after a year that has gone by at breakneck speed at school and work. And sometimes when you’re on holiday, even when you’re not looking for romance, romance comes looking for you. Enough about that for now but I will be sure to tell you if anything develops on that front – watch this space for more… ;-) I’d highly recommend everyone I know to visit the Dominican Republic, but go to Puerto Plata (in the north) or Punta Cana (in the east) if you want a holiday or honeymoon. Go to Santo Domingo if you want to learn about the culture and history of DR (which I did very little of), or to do business, if you have any there. Or to learn how to Salsa! ;-)

Another similarity I almost forgot to mention – that between Dominican and African time. Seven minutes before the scheduled take off of my flight from Santo Domingo, I had to ask if there was any problem in case I didn’t exactly understand the announcements in Spanish as to why we had not started boarding yet. I was confidently assured that we would still leave on time!

These are the voyages...

Five years ago, I left the shores of the United Kingdom for an adventure like none other – a six month sojourn to Europe, where I left behind family and friends to pursue the lifelong dream of learning a second language. It was an amazing time of self discovery and exploration of the unknown. There were good times and bad. Happy times and lonely times. Joyful times and sad times. Three months in Valencia taught me that I wasn’t as hopeless at learning a new language as I had always thought, and that Nigerians will build churches absolutely anywhere. A month in Seville taught me how to deal with making new friends that I was destined to never see again, and never to visit a 40oC city “donde no hay playa” (where there is no beach) for more than two weeks. Two months in Nice taught me the beauty of French cuisine and how exciting life could be living in the French Riviera, and that it is no mean feat trying to learn two different languages in six months.

I met great friends along the way, not least three Nigerian guys who somehow found themselves studying at the University in Valencia. In Sevilla, I discovered the fascinating and controversial world of bullfighting, even witnessing one “Torrero” being badly gored by a bull and still getting up to continue the duel. While in Nice, I witnessed the joy of London winning the 2012 Olympics on television, and the horror of the July 7 bombings the very next day. In short, life happened then, and has happened since. After returning to the city of London to work for another three years, I took the big step of crossing over the pond to do an MBA in the US of A. As the time for my MBA begins to near its completion next summer, I’ve decided to hit the road again, and discover new worlds yet unknown to me. To boldly go where Bambinho has not gone before. These are the journals of my new travels.