Signing The Lease

The first dribbles of Tropical Storm Irene splatter from the sky as Pablo and I roll up to an office building in downtown Moca. Pablo's attorney, Rosa, has a small air-conditioned office at the end of a second-floor corridor lined with doors labeled with names of different licensiados and doctorados. As she labors over the changing of names and details on a boilerplate lease agreement, I wonder vaguely how hard it could be to get lawyer's credentials in this country and what lifestyle it would afford me.

Scouts learn to type with hand-covers made from latex glove boxes gathered at the hospital

The lease is remarkably similar to the other three I've signed in my lifetime. There is a clause against subletting, a clause against pets. A modest penalty is imposed if I am late paying rent. Pablo says he'll give me five days grace before he enforces it. Fortunately, the payment falls two days after my paycheck always arrives.

Completed surveys from my community diagnostic

The rest of the day, Pablo runs me around Moca for free. While the rain becomes progressively harder, I buy some essentials for my new apartment, window curtains, shower curtain, pillow. When we eat at a local comedor, I insist on picking up the check. Pablo, it turns out, has more than one iron in the fire. In the mornings he works as a motoconchista. At night he cleans at Megatone, a local shopping center I go to for wifi and beer from time to time. In addition, he manages eight apartments and four pensiones (rooms without kitchens) in the building where he and I live. The landlady is a school teacher who lives in Miami. I wonder how much she knows of what goes on here.

Henriquez kitten nurses

The building where I live housed an escuela de primer nivel, an elementary school called CEPBIEN before it was moved across the street. I mentioned to Pablo my interest in farming the empty lot adjacent to it and the very next day he told he'd gotten us permission to plant there! I wonder what it will be like to be a sharecropper in the DR. Only time will tell.