Dominican Weekends

Weekends here are kind of like any other weekends in any other country: after a week of hard work, you want to relax, hang out and have a beer with your friends.  But let me tell you about a Dominican weekend, one you’ll never live as a tourist.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday are three days that the Dominicans enjoy to the fullest, raining or not.  People get ready or start to drink since 2 o’clock in the afternoon.  They have what they call a “colmado” in almost every corner in every neighborhood.  A colmado is a popular place for lots of Dominicans of the middle class during weekends where they dedicate to drink rum or beer and play domino.  It’s also very common to see them seated watching a baseball game of the Major Leagues with their drinks, whether it’s a bottle of beer or a cup of rum.

To spend a nice time, you don’t need to have a pocket full of money, get all dressed up and go to a bar or disco.  Those places work normally during the week but on weekends it’s a different thing: they put some music loud or they rent a DJ and a  truck with lot of speakers.  Some of the colmados put lot of chairs and others only have a few; so depending in which one you are, you may end up spending a lot of time on your feet as they are most of the time packed with people.

It doesn’t matter how old you are (that’s up to you), everybody get in the mix, you just have to look for the group (called your “coro”) in which you fit; it can be your friends or people you know in the neighborhood.  Doesn’t matter if you have sandals, tennis, flat shoes or high heels, pants (long or short), mini-skirt on as almost everybody wear jeans.  People always buy big bottle of beer (called “jumbo”) or rum so they can share with others; you may not have 1 peso in your pocket but you’ll never leave without drinking 2 or 3 cups or even a bottle of beer.  You can dance the same music as the youngest as long as you feel the music and you can do the moves.  Anybody can ask you to dance; you decide with who you want to dance and what kind of music; same for the drinks.

One of the bad thing about those nights out is sometimes you can see young children also with their moms or older sisters in the streets up to 1 a.m.  Once I even saw a woman with a baby that was more or less 2 months or so.  I asked myself if she knew what she was doing and how that loud music can damage the baby’s eardrums.  I heard a 19 years-old said that now there is no more youth because they have been damaged by the new music genre (or Dominican reggeaton).  Their rhythms are most of the time quite interesting but when you listen to the lyrics, the majority are an affront for the women and some even encourage drugs and violence.  And about the way they dance it, it will appears vulgar to anyone coming from another country, because it’s almost like having sex but with the clothes on.  Some of the movements makes me laugh but others leave something to be desired.

The other bad thing is, if you´re living above or next to a colmado and you´re not into that kind of things, you´ll spend some real bad times.