5/6/1992 - Guaricano

As I said I would do in last month's mission retrospective post, I'm posting this month some photos of what Guaricano looked like twenty years ago. Within five years of these photos being taken, this rural-looking barrio had become much more urban. The "multis"--apartments built by the government for public housing--had turned into a dark, scary-looking slum: I drove through on the bus during a return visit. That was my first sign that Guaricano was not going to be what I remembered.

This is what Guaricano used to look like as you approached it from the capital. You can see the multis, still under construction, off to the right.

This is a view from the opposite edge of town, where the cane fields began. The beanpole with the white shirt and the bad posture is me.

The house my companion and I lived in. Relatively nice lodgings as our options went. A fancier house would have been two stories--as this one had become when I returned five years later. The little boy off to the side, with the white plastic jug, is on his way to the house behind ours, where he can buy water from their cistern. During rainstorms, he and other neighbor kids would catch the run-off from our flat roof in jugs.

This is the view looking across the street from our house, during an aguacero (rainstorm). Five years, later, the street was paved (and elevated several feet), the wood houses had become block houses, and the vegetation was gone. The transformation was stunning.

Electrical power was pirated--and therefore even more sporadic than usual for Santo Domingo at that time. You can see how all the surrounding houses have plugged themselves into this dangerously leaning power pole. When we moved in, we paid a neighbor to shimmy up the pole nearest to us and plug us in.

I have to keep reminding myself not to romanticize the simple conditions at my comfortable remove in time and space.