Hola! Hasta Luego! (An Appeal to Bush)

Spain is a funny country. Every interaction I had there started with “hola!” and ended with “hasta luego!” And they would just say it so cheerfully. Even I got into the game, being overjoyed to say “hasta luego!” It reminded me of the way Brazilians put both thumbs up to say thanks or yes or I’m fine. I really liked Spain, the food, the diversity, the street life, the history, the nightlife, the general vibe. I would have stayed longer but them damn euros hurt. Bush you’re killing me. When are you going to prop up the dollar homey? When its 2 dollars to a euro and Europeans done bought up the whole country?

Dominican or Brazilian?

That’s what a group of women yelled to me on our last walk around Sevilla. They were a group of Dominican women working as contracted maids in Spain. The Dominican and Spainish government have had this deal going for years where both governments in the spirit of international cooperation facilitate the exploitation of female Dominican labor by middle-class Spainish families. As immigration schemes go, this one is not that bad. As they explained after two years of near slavery they get that much-coveted visa and are “free” to work elsewhere for shit wages. Talking to them, even if ever so briefly was a nice trip back down to Earth. After being a white man in Senegal for four months and spending a week in Spain, doing the hostel circuit hanging with other privileged young people from North America, Australia and Western Europe I had forgotten that I am Dominican and we have it rough in this world.

The irony of all of this is that not until too long ago, Spain was a net exporter of people. And now they are all pissed about immigration with right-wing idiots holding protests claiming that Spain is Catholic, not Muslim (never mind that the Muslims in Spain achieved heights of civilization never matched by the Catholics, and that they built most of the impressive shit which drives Spain’s tourism industry). In 1933, political upheaval brought a new government to Cuba which rescinded the imperialist Platt Amendment and also passed a new law restricting how many foreign workers could be employed by Cuban companies. The law targeted the numerous Spainish who had immigrated to Cuba, and now just a lifetime later Cubans pray, beg and hustle to make it to Spain. Spain is actually one of the few countries that has become a First World, certified-developed country under neoliberal hegemony (mostly through tons of EU development aid, none of that free trade and foreign development non-sense they preach to non-white countries, and it’s still not as rich as the EU15 average). It’s prize? It now has its own seat in the global exploitation game.

American Pie

Our hostel in Sevilla was filled with a bunch of American (mostly UC) study abroad students from Granada who were in Sevilla for the weekend. They were annoying. None of them spoke half-decent Spanish and I can tell that they had only been chilling with other Americans since arriving in Spain. Still we went out for beers and then to a sheesha bar and had a good time. Better than being kept up by rude Portuguese chicks.

Saturday night I felt like doing something touristy and we went out looking for a cheap tablao or flamenco show. Those windy streets got the better of us again and we got lost. Instead we went out to some bars and had some cheap beers, for 2 or 3€. It was great. In NYC they are going to make you pay at least $6 for a cup of beer at even the shittiest bar on a Friday night. Then we ran into a group of six really attractive high school exchange students from all over the world, who were all made up with no where to go sitting on a bench in a plaza. It was like something straight from a dumb teen movie. They were talking to some sketchy-looking older Spainish dudes and Tracey insisted that I rescue them. When I went up there though they seemed like they had to be more rescued from boredom than harassment.

DC, Don’t Count

Europe is so small, it’s unfair. If you are European you can get to another country in a couple of hours. In fact if you live in some countries, and want to go anywhere you have no choice but to leave the country. I live in NYC. That means I am 2 hours from Philly, 4 to 5 hours from DC and Boston, and at least ten hours from the closest cool foreign city, Toronto. In Cambridge, we were six hours from Montreal. Meanwhile the annoying Portuguese girls who were doing their hair at 2 AM at our hostel in Sevilla keeping poor Tracey up only had to come 3 and a half hours from Lisbon. It ain’t right. Furthermore, even if I could find cheap transport to Toronto and Montreal, there are no cheap hostels to stay in. And traveling around the US? Forget about it. You can drive forever and get nowhere, and although it hurt to pay 20€ for a dorm bed, the Youth Hostel in NYC is way more than $30. Americans simply don’t have the small distances, cheap airlines and budget accommodations to make travel easy and affordable. Which is a damn shame since as the world’s hegemon Americans more than anyone else need to get out there and travel. It might help us get rid of some of our gringo ignorance. I am jealous of the Europeans who can go spend a weekend in Paris or Barcelona, when the most I can do is DC.

The Rat Tail

White folks with dreadlocks are one of my pet-peeves. Hence Spain drove me crazy, especially since they take the lock to the next level with the rattail. The rattail is what you do when you have already been through the lock stage, so you cut all of your hair short except for a long lock or two at the back of your head. It is hideous. I found the other similar Spainish hairstyles funny, like the broom, where you cut your hair short and then have a short bob puffing out from the back of your head, or the euro-mullet, part-Mohawk, part-mullet, all gel. Or the thick straight-cut bangs. The funniest shit is that regular non-bohemian folks, like the lady at the airport counter wore these ridiculous hair-styles. Again I was loving it except for the damn rat tail. I also really loved the street art and graffiti everywhere and the highly-visible radical political slogans.

Those Windy Streets

Our next stop was my favorite city in Spain, Granada. We got off to an inauspicious start, as we were staying at a hostel in Albaycin the old Muslim Medina and after taking the bus to the center still couldn’t find it. We ended up taking a taxi only to find it that it’s faster to walk and that we had originally been only a few minutes away. One of the most annoying aspects of moving so quickly is that by the time we learned our way around a city we were already on our way to the next city.

We had bought tickets to Alhambra for that day (there I learned my lesson and booked ahead, some folks we met had forgotten to buy their tickets online and had to do some crazy long line to get tickets, if they were even able to buy them.) and I had to run cause my slot at the Palacio Nazaries was from 4 to 4:30 pm. On the way up the hill I asked three people for directions and they all pointed me in different directions. Consequently, I decided not to risk it and we took a taxi even though once again when we arrived we found out that we were only a couple of minutes away. Those damn windy streets. Again I barely made it, and again it rained. The palace was beautiful, but we got soaked.

The hostel in Granada had even more personality. When we arrived soaked, an Italian dude who I realized later was in charge at the reception desk, invited us to the kitchen where he and some other Italian dudes and assorted other foreigners were smoking big cone-shaped Euro-style spliffs. Then we took “soccer” pictures, the kind where the team huddles and the camera takes pictures of a circle of faces. This is also the same place where they had me sleep on a mattress set up on the loft. I had to climb a ladder to get to my bed and once in bed couldn’t stand-up, sit-up or even bend my knees. I paid money for this. Actually I liked sleeping up there, it was warmer and quieter, and I had a full-sized mattress.

The place was full of characters. Another employee was Esther or Pipi, a young Austrian flower child who biked from Austria to Portugal to meet a woman who claimed to be the inspiration for Pipi Longstockings. She said that she had always admired Pipi’s self-confidence and once she found out that Pipi existed she had to meet her. I honestly don’t remember anything about the book and think this lady was an impostor, still it makes for a great story. The next day it rained some more, ruining our plans to explore the city. That night, though, we went clubbing with Pipi. We decided to go to Afrodisiac, which advertised itself as a funk club. We showed up at midnight and that the spot was empty. So empty there wasn’t even someone at the door. We grabbed some beers (with complementary tapas) at a Moroccan bar and then went back to the club which by then was full of casually dressed white folks dancing funny, drinking cheep local brews and smoking way too much. Those fools were rolling hash spliffs freely on the streets. Marijuana is clearly decriminalized in Spain, how enlightened of them. The DJ was decent and every funk song was familiar as some hip hop hit from the last decade. I had to wonder if he only knows of funk through hip hop, or if there are just no good funk songs left unsampled.

Beautiful Old Buildings

The next day we went to Toledo, an old medieval town with some really beautiful old buildings. I wondered what it must be like to live among so much history, as there is nothing comparable in the USA. I started to see what people mean by “Old-World charm.” I really enjoyed walking through the old buildings, seeing all of the churches, plazas, and small, windy, medieval streets. It was quaint (not even sarcastically, it was). In front of the cathedral, I chatted up a random French couple. They told me that liked Spain because French people don’t curb their dogs. See the things you learn when you travel.

Development

I hate saying it, but it was just nice to be in a “developed” country. First of all, I regained my anonymity. I was no longer getting constantly approached by vendors and beggars (there were many fewer of those). I was just another face on the metro. And the metro, lord do I miss clean, efficient, reliable, modern, affordable public transportation. There was no need to negotiate the price of my metro ticket, no waxale (Wolof for bargaining), just buy it, wait a few minutes and get on the train. Tracey was saying that the metro system in Madrid was not as fast and clean as others in Europe, but it was the best subway system I have ever used in my life. She needs to come to NYC where every day you see rats the size of small children, can cut through the layers of grime on station walls and dig like an archeologist for clues of a previous civilization and where every New Yorker is a champion at the “hear the rumbling, leap to the edge and tilt your head to the point of losing balance to avoid all of the other heads doing the same thing, just to see if the train is coming game.” At least in Madrid (like in DC) they are nice enough to tell you the train is coming. Beyond the metro, there were some of the other advantages of overdevelopment like cultural diversity, and cleanliness. Then, of course, it was nice to be in a country where I could speak the language and where people knew where I was from, so that rather than getting the dumb stares I usually get when I say La Republique Dominicaine, I got affirming looks when saying La Republica Dominicana. Even if all they did know was the beaches, still it was nice.

Sharp

Unfortunately I wrote down the wrong contact information and I never saw my Dominican friends again, but they had told me about the Dominican neighborhood and I decided to check it out without them. They had both said that they avoid that area cause they knew everybody and all the Dominican girls would be gossiping and hating on them. The Dominican neighborhood in Madrid was interesting cause it was more Boston than NYC, i.e. a couple of thousand Dominican scattered in random neighborhood rather than agglomeration of Dominicanness that is Washington Heights, at least until the yuppies finish their Reconquista of Manhattan. But it did allow them to be as tacky European as they wanted to be, I have never seen more Armani Exchange t-shirts, tight jeans and pointy shoes in my life. Moreover I kept being thrown off by the number of white folks in the area, and had to keep reminding myself that I was in Madrid not Santo Domingo or NYC. Still there were Dominicans there. I asked the first black kid I saw for the barber shop. Regrettably I got a fucked up cut in Dakar from a Guinean dude who messed up the areas around my ears (I am still recovering, I should be fine) and should have waited until Madrid to get a sharp, NYC-style line-up, the kind so sharp you can use your sideburns to trace straight lines on paper. Instead, my new buddy Tracey got to feel what it’s like to be Dominican sharp. Afterward I asked them for a good restaurant and I bought some arroz blanco con gandules and pollo guisado. Again the price was ridiculous, but it was enough that we were able to eat for dinner the next day.

Bare Minimum

On Sunday I finally moved into the youth hostel I should have booked earlier. It was classic youth hostel, with bunk beds, shared rooms and facilities, kitchen, chill-out area and internet service, and the usual crowd of early twentysomethings backpacking through Europe. I am not a fan of hostels, mainly because I don’t like sleeping with several other random strangers. It’s not that I am prissy like that, I just feel like some people weren’t raised right and have no matters and other folks are just weird and I don’t feel like sleeping in the same room as them. Furthermore, it’s pure capitalism. They charge you the most money for the least possible. It’s like they ask themselves, how little can we give people while still follow the health and building codes (the only stopping them from giving you a mat on the floor in a tiny box and calling it a night, as I saw later on my trip) and then how much can we charge them so that it’s barely preferable to sleeping on a park bench. Shit, you pay 16€ and some places won’t even give you sheets. Don’t dream of a towel. Still, it’s the best way to meet people, and it’s at Los Amigos Backpackers’ Hostel in Madrid that I met Tracey over breakfast and convinced her to follow me to Morocco over lunch. Although I think it was the sharp cut that sealed the deal.

Self-Hating but I Love Them

As much as “The Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet Earth” annoy me, I love them. It’s one of those “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” type deals. They’re my people, what can I say? My only goal in Madrid was to find my tribe, get some food and chill with them. I quickly got my wish. After the rain let up, I went out for another calling card. I wanted to say hi to the nice lady from the day before since she had saved my life, but her kiosk was closed so I went down to the next one. After buying the card I was so busy lamenting the price, 10€, that I didn’t notice that the man who sold me the ticket was black. Was he one of mine? I asked him if he was Dominican, and he said yes so I chilled with him and his friend who was there to keep him company. After being flummoxed when I tried to explain what it was that I was doing in Senegal and why I would ever go to Africa (remember the title of the blog), they were even more shocked that I hadn’t had platanos in four months. How had a survived? I had often wondered the same thing. The friend pitied me that he invited me to his house for a home-cooked Dominican meal. We took the bus to the bodega, and I felt like hugging the platanos, and yuccas and Goya cans and never letting go. He made platanos sancochados and huevos revueltos with way too much oil, the way Dominicans do it; I bought us two forties to wash the food down. We sat on his plastic covered couches, and I heard his sister-in-law curse at her children in Spanish. It felt like home. Then he got up to get some more oil, his platanos needed more grease he explained.