It's all in a days work...

Yes, this is paradise, the weather perfect, although a bit dry with the current drought. I am fortunate to have "city water" at a very minimal cost, and use bottled drinking water, delivered to my door. The food is fresh, healthy, and inexpensive, if you buy what is grown or made locally. You want hot Italian sausage, salmon, non-dairy creamer and McDonalds, well, it will cost you. The air is clean, the breeze blows, the ocean rolls and sighs. And, yes there is work. Everyday, there is something to do, to fix, to clean, to cook, to sell. There is a battered old pickup truck that rides around town with a speaker blaring, begging to buy your old batteries, metals, appliances. He makes an almost daily trip up my road, despite the fact I am the only occupied house up here....but there are Haitians across the road in an abandoned bakery...and each trip the bakery loses an item. A heavy one too I am sure. My neighbors are happy people, there are children laughing, voices singsonging, and friendly smiles when we meet in the road. Road work has begun here in the tiny pueblo. They have a piece of heavy equipment to tear up the sidewalks, street and anything else that gets in the way. The day they showed up on my dirt road, they removed all the bougainvilleas and giant aloes from in front of the houses, and proceeded to cut both the power and water lines to all ....It only took 6 days to convince them to come back, and they sent a city worker who used a match to glue to water pipe and he found some spare wire to drape the lines artfully along the fence. Since that time, they have concentrated on other areas of town, leaving the road in just slightly less pitiful status, and have made the entire pueblo look as if a cement seeking missile came home to roost. There is not an even surface left anywhere. But they work each day. Each morning there is a new stack of bags of cement at various locations and they are busy putting a driveway in(although only 4% of the inhabitants have vehicles) or hand smoothing a section of new sidewalk around a smal park that has no green left, just pebbles and stick, and giant chunks of cement. And the dairy industry continues, cows are marched, herded, or left to find their way along the road(well, really in the roads) to be milked and milk is carted, by moto, burro and truck to various cheese making stations, and on to other far away locations...There are always a group of men walking to and from fields with sacks and machetes. And, yes, there is often a table of dominoes going, a group of plastic chairs surrounding a colmado doorway, or the area where there is work commencing. But that is work too, the observation, running commentaries, and a plethora of suggestions and advise are an integral part of the workforce here. And me, what do I do? All actions here become work, or a days time to accomplish. Yesterday my car went to the Spa in a town an hour and a half away. It took a guagua(bus, with air conditioning!!) to Imbert , then a taxi(which is a Camry, four in the back seat, two in the front bucket seat, plus the driver, and the gear shift, which I was precariously placed against) to Luperon, then a motoconcho(motorcycle taxi) for the final leg back to my house....So yesterday the car went in the shop. Thats all.And when she is finished at the Spa, I will have the reverse journey to pick her up. Another days work with no pay. Harrumph. And I would not have it any other way. Everyone is cheerful, no one is in a hurry, and the weather is gorgeous.