Ginnie was eccentric, energetic, and enthusiastic about her life abroad in the Dominican Republic (DR). She first contacted me several years ago because she had written an article about how to survive and thrive in DR.

This was typical of Ginnie – always wanting to help people.  You can read more about her on her own website.

Ginnie went on to write a book: Quisqueya: Mad Dogs and English Couple about her and Grahame’s life in DR.  I had an email from her just a couple of weeks ago telling me that she’d written another book which is due to be published in September this year.  She said she hoped we were still at the same address because that’s where she’d told the publisher to send us a copy.  It’s not arrived yet but I know I’ll feel sad when it does.  I always like to receive books to review, but reading this new one will be clouded by knowing that Ginnie is no longer with us.

In typical Ginnie style she was always encouraging me, whether it was to write a book myself or concern for us when we were caught up in some political turbulence, and she was one of the very first people to write and say how much she liked our new-look website.  She spent much of her time showing great care and concern for the people she met, although she despised corruption and fought hard against it.  I’m sure she made a much better friend than an enemy.

Sadly, I never met Ginnie in the real world but through the Internet she became a good friend and I deeply regret her passing.  I wish now that I had spent more time getting to know her better, but I always seem to have thousands of emails to deal with and I never really took the time to correspond more regularly with her.  I guess I just thought she’d always be around.  A missed opportunity and my loss.

Ginnie knew that we had a forum for the DR and introduced us to Grahame, who quickly became the moderator of that forum and single-handedly fields all the questions we receive about DR.

She also introduced us to Razvan Petrescu, a Romanian and global nomad.  Razvan wrote loads of articles for us including a guide to his native land. We subsequently met Razvan in Bangkok and are still in touch but our paths rarely seem to cross and our plans to meet up again keep being thwarted for one reason or another.

Ginnie’s memorial service (wake) will be held next week in DR.  We won’t be able to attend but I will certainly be thinking of her and will raise a glass in her memory. In his email telling us of Ginnie’s passing, Grahame referred to “The Old Girl” as being “bloody obstinate” – yes, she was my kind of person.  And Grahame will carry on where Ginnie left off with her many campaigns and projects.  It will be a tough act to follow.

I’ll just end this tribute now by sending Grahame my condolences and best wishes for the future.  Somehow words such as “with deepest sympathy” and “sincere condolences” seem totally inadequate.  But I know Ginnie wouldn’t want us all to mope around so instead let’s end on a more upbeat note.  Ginnie was one of those people who make the world a better place and it was a privilege and a pleasure to have known her.

Author: Kay McMahon

Kay has been an expat for over 20 years. She set up the British Expat website more than 10 years ago, whilst living in London and missing the expat life. These days she spends much of her time lugging computers and cameras around the world. (Dave gets to deal with all the really heavy stuff.)

by Ginnie Bedggood

It’s perhaps inevitable that when you think about books by Britons about their own experiences in settling abroad, they tend to be about Europe – books like A Year In Provence or Driving Over Lemons, or even It’s All Greek To Me. Excellent though these books are, it makes a refreshing change when you get the chance to read a book penned by someone who’s decided to be a little more intrepid.

Ginnie Bedggood and her lively, forthright style are no strangers to this website; she’s singlehandedly responsible for our Dominican Republic section. She brings the same style to Quisqueya, the story of how she and her partner Grahame decided to settle in Puerto Plata on the DR’s northern coast in 1992, and the following eight years living in rented accommodation until they built and moved into their own home in December 2000. (The word Quisqueya itself is the original Taino Indian name – literally, “Mother of the Earth” – given to the land now known as the Dominican Republic.)

It would be very easy to write the book from the narrow point of view of a Briton abroad and to dismiss the differences of life in the DR as shortcomings or oddities on the part of the Dominicans. Ginnie steers well clear of this trap and, indeed, gently chides the naivety of some of the many foreigners who’ve visited Puerto Plata with a view to settling.

This is not to say that she glosses over the hard facts of DR life; anything but that. Indeed, she relates the many ups and downs of her eight years with relish and with a great deal of humorous self-deprecation. The book’s rich in anecdotes about the ins and outs of daily domestic life – by no means a straightforward routine – as well as the efforts of Ginnie and Grahame to find jobs and keep them. In the process Ginnie comes up with several shrewd observations about what makes DR society tick – the government, the economy, utilities, shopping, work – and how the Dominicans deal with the influx of foreigners, both tourists and more permanent settlers. Anyone who’s lived in a developing country for any length of time will, I think, see a lot of parallels with their own situation. And to add a bit of light relief, there’s the continuous presence in the background of Ginnie and Grahame’s beloved dogs.

The point Ginnie makes time and again is that neither culture is necessarily “wrong”; they’re just different, and the sooner the would-be immigrant grasps that fact and accepts it, the sooner he or she is likely to truly settle in. Anyone dreaming of moving to a developing country on the basis of a couple of weeks’ holiday in the sun would be well-advised to read this book, then take a good hard look at their own plans and check whether they really hold water.

Quisqueya: Mad dogs and English couple

Ginnie Bedggood
Paperback, 270 pages
2007, Mediaworld/Best Books
ISBN 978-1-904502-52-4
RRP: £9.99

Author: Dave McMahon

Dave left school at the age of 30 with the odd O-level (like Ancient Icelandic) and a doctorate in something so obscure even he can't remember what it's about. He then joined the FCO. Dave has travelled to most European countries (including several that don't exist any more, though he denies responsibility), as well as Bangladesh, Barbados, Thailand, St Vincent, UAE, Laos, and many more. Having managed to escape from London in 2001, Dave's now resorted to taking unpaid leave to stave off the evil day of his return.

The previous article examines the lead-up to these elections. Election Day, 16 May, came and went pretty peaceably as it so happened. The electorate were given a very large voting paper to decide on Senators, Deputies, Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors. Photos of the worthy aspirants were included because not everyone in the DR can read. Even then not all could see: one elderly lady who could not see the photos clearly duly marked one of them. Then she held her voting paper up close to her eyes and remonstrated with her daughter, “Hey! You didn’t tell me I voted for Baldy.” That was a reference to the political party of the ex-President, Hipolito Mejia.

In order to have a ballot paper issued voters must produce their cedula or ID card. The practice of buying cedulas is well established in the DR; in a survival society the offer of 1500 pesos (just under US$50) to buy a vote can be very tempting. At one polling station the buyers arrived late. Several of the early bird electorate were most annoyed! They had already voted and their fingers were marked by the tell-tale dye signifying this. El Nacional newspaper reported that one voter tried everything to get rid of the dye on his finger so as to be able to pass for not having voted and thus claim his 1500 pesos. He tried Brillo pads, lime, even acid. But he didn’t go quite so far as the voter who cut his finger and swore blind that his blood was a different colour to everyone else’s…

Tallying of these votes has been slow. That is British understatement! Counting is carried out in the municipalities, which each have a Junta Municipal Electoral; the results are passed to the Junta Central Electoral, which publishes bulletins as results come in. The JCE is run by judges and these happen to have been appointed by the previous Government. The first few bulletins had the President’s party and the main opposition alliance running neck and neck, even though all the indicators were that the country had swung massively in favour of the President’s party. It was the opposition PRD Government, after all, which had plunged the country into crippling debt necessitating IMF involvement. So the opposition-appointed JCE was issuing selective bulletins.

Even the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the DR, Cardinal Nicolas, was heard to remark: “Some people cannot bear to lose.” The delays gave rise to all sorts of speculations; it began to look as if the Government was under pressure to negotiate a “deal” in order to get any results at all published. Number massaging is not new here; at the last Presidential election in 2004 armed thugs turned up at a number of the polling stations to “encourage” people to vote a certain way. Fortunately this was spotted by civic observer groups and exposed.

Aggrieved “losers” who claim fraud have irresponsibly suggested their supporters take to the streets. In the first week after the polls closed there were 11 election-related killings, not including the young man in Villa Isabela who said he would kill himself if his party didn’t win. He took Tres Pasitos (rat poison) before the final tally was known although his party had been defeated in the local area. Politicians encouraging insurrection is not just about causing chaos; it is aimed at forcing the Government to take repressive measures for which they can then be castigated.

In Puerto Plata, where I live, on the day after the election word was out that the existing Mayor’s party was losing. So the Town Hall staff downed tools, walked out and locked the doors to the Town Hall. They all went and gathered opposite the Town Hall in Parque Central. The El Nacional reporter asked what it was all about; one staff member bemoaned how ungrateful the residents of Puerto Plata were and how much the Mayor’s party had done for them. “Faced with this ingratitude none of us have the heart to work,” he said. And not just the Town Hall; everyone in the Tax Office downed tools also.

Three days after the election there were still no definitive results. In Puerto Plata I noticed a large gathering of people near the blocked off JME building. As I own a house in the street where the gathering was, I went to see if the tenant was OK. No problem. When I got home I read El Nacional to discover that this was a “protest”. It was very quiet and peaceful when I drove through the gathering, so the protest didn’t amount to much. Or maybe it was lunchtime? The local JME officials clearly felt threatened, however. The local paper El Faro carried a piece from the head of the local Junta saying, “If anything happens to us or our families, you’ll know who did it.”

The following day, at the national level, there was a rumour that vote counting had stopped. The Organisation of American States observers, including the British, French, Italian and EU Ambassadors plus some high-ranking Catholic Church dignitaries, descended on the JCE in Santo Domingo to investigate. They were told that it hadn’t stopped; apparently one JCE staff member had phoned the municipalities to tell them to stop but this wasn’t “official JCE policy”.

I can imagine Andy Ashcroft’s face (the UK Ambassador) on being told that one unauthorised maverick employee had the power to paralyse the entire count and to make the inhabitants think some sort of a coup was in place. The Ambassadors gave a press conference to inform the populace since no-one else was. Next day another JCE judge denied there had been a maverick employee: voting had never stopped, whoever started that rumour must have had evil intent and their own agenda. So the Ambassadors fabricated that one out of thin air? More than their jobs were worth, indubitably!

Rumour abounds in situations like these and of course rumour and myth are the stuff of life in the Dominican Republic. Not so long ago a security guard and his friend robbed the bank which employed the guard. The friend took off for Haiti. The guard stayed in the DR and succumbed to pressure from his girlfriend to have a lavish wedding. He bought a spell from a witch which would make him invisible to the authorities, and thus a man who earned 4,000 pesos a month threw a huge reception costing 300,000 pesos. Unfortunately the witch must have been having an off day. The robber got arrested at his own wedding.

By day six the final bulletin had not been issued. The country was becoming restless. Some three million people had voted. How long can it possibly take for that number to be counted? Well, if you’re Florida, several weeks, of course. Many of the local counting centres had been “militarised”. This meant that they were under the control of the electoral police, a group made up of ordinary police and soldiers. In one area eight boxes of ballot papers were discovered being driven to the JME; the contents of the boxes would have altered the existing outcome. The electricity utility, in a stunning act of thoughtlessness, decided to give one area an 18-hour blackout. With temperatures in the low 90s [mid-30s] this did nothing to calm passions. In one area the rumour of “curfew” circulated; transport shut down and students at evening classes were sent home. Cardinal Nicolas went on record as saying that the JCE needed judges who could count…

Eight days after the election the final bulletin, Bulletin No. 18 was issued. This was not exactly “final”. The country then went into the impugnaciones phase. According to DR law the aggrieved can then dispute the results on the grounds of fraud, error, prevarication, the acceptance of illegal votes, the rejection of legal ones or obstruction caused by violence, force, threat or bribery. Or any other serious irregularity. Might as well start all over again!

Initially 170 disputed results were registered. This grew to 289 before the time deadline prevented any more. For the next four weeks the Junta Central Electoral judges heard the disputed cases. Eventually, at the end of June they made their pronouncement. Whilst they did indeed subtract votes from some candidates and add them to others, none of this affected the actual allocation of seats. Bulletin 18 and its results stood! There had indeed been a massive swing to the President’s PLD party in the Senate, Chamber of Deputies and in the municipalities.

Lest the impugnacionces be viewed as a waste of time it should be remembered that they have an inbuilt functionality. Time spent hearing disputes gives the aggrieved a chance not to “lose face” in front of their supporters. They can be as indignant as they wish over being “robbed” of their expected result. It also allows for a collective mourning process by the losers; a licking of wounds before moving on. And I write the day after the World Cup Final!

So now it really is all over. The winners have been given their certificates. Ironically the ceremony where this was done was graced by yet another power outage. Possibly a portent of things to come, but we hope not. The new Congress takes up office in mid-August. Currently the existing Congress is busy voting pensions to those who lost their seats! Ah well! At least we don’t have hanging chads!

Author: Ginnie Bedggood

Ginnie Bedggood moved to the Dominican Republic as a resident in 1992 when she was 49 years of age. Prior to that she had spent most of her life in the UK but had also lived in the US, France, the Sahara Desert and Mali. She has travelled extensively in Africa and Europe as well as visiting Russia, Mongolia and China. In UK she worked as a probation officer and University teacher. The jobs she has had in DR are too numerous to mention (!) but she is now "retired", which means she works voluntarily rather than for money.

As many English councils have just had their local elections and as the Dominican Republic’s local and congressional elections take place on 16 May 2006, I thought it might be apposite to share a few thoughts about the similarities (few!) and the differences (many!) between the UK and the DR.

The first thing which will strike the visitor is the noise level associated with electioneering in the DR. One method of hyping the candidate is to use vans and lorries loaded up with ghetto-blasters which pump out catchy jingles at strength 95. Well, they would be catchy jingles if you could understand them. It isn’t a question of language, but of distortion. The volume is so loud that there is distortion through the mammoth-sized speakers, making it hard to hear the “message”. Of course this lack of clarity of message is frequently paralleled in the candidates’ political platform, and compensated for by posters and photos of the candidate plastered all over the vehicle. Should you ever meet the candidate you may be in for a surprise. Many of the photos have been subjected to cosmetic airbrush surgery, or are 15 years old – a bit like being in a time warp.

Noise level generally in the Caribbean is far higher than in the UK so these election vans have to make sure that they overcome all other sounds. Imagine being stuck in a traffic jam and one of these sneaks up behind you. Not only is it deafening but the vibrations of the music actually reverberate through your gut – literally! And yes, there are traffic jams, because a favourite pre-election “persuader” in the DR is to embark on a programme of public works in the three or four months before the election. In Puerto Plata, for example, the main road to Santiago is being repaired and new water pipes are being laid. So lots of digging, lots of dust and lots of traffic hold-ups. And no alternative route to take. I always carry wax earplugs at election time. Doesn’t stop the gut reverberations but it does help the eardrums. It means, of course, you cannot hear any unusual sounds emanating from your car engine, but with a mobile ghetto-blaster up your rear end you wouldn’t anyway.

There are three main political parties and a host of smaller ones. The smaller ones often form alliances with the larger ones as a trade-off for positions in the event of success. This year, by way of a change, two of the larger ones have formed an alliance with each other against the third. The President’s party, the PLD (Dominican Liberation Party) has mauve symbols; the PRD (Dominican Revolutionary Party) has white symbols; and the PRSC (Social Christian Reform Party) has red symbols. This year the PRD and the PRSC have formed an alliance and in a stunning display of originality they are now known as the “pink alliance”. The idea is that they would support each other’s candidates and not field separate candidates to split the vote.

But. . .this alliance is fairly recent and some party faithful have been working on becoming the candidate for either Senate, Chamber of Deputies, Mayor, Aldermen or Councillors for the last three years. Naturally they are loath to sacrifice their chance of running as candidate, so in some areas the “pink alliance” is fielding one candidate and in others the PRD and the PRSC are fielding separate candidates. To say this has led to confusion would be an understatement. It has also led to fisticuffs and the occasional display of machismo using a gun. These are usually fired into the air for effect, rather than fired at anyone, but. . . what goes up must come down, sometimes fatally.

Mostly this has caused injury, not death. Where death has been caused has been in the entirely peaceful endeavour of party faithful fixing posters and stickers advertising their candidate. Unfortunately, ladders sometimes connect with high tension cables and the results can be a fatal electrocution. To date this has happened to three supporters so far this year (and we have eight more days to go). This certainly ain’t Kansas (or even Chalfont St. Peter), Dorothy.

Candidates and their supporters do not canvass door to door here in the DR as they do in the UK. Instead they have “caravans” – motorcades with the candidate sitting on the roof of an SUV via the sun roof, surrounded by supporters in a procession of vehicles. Some vehicles will be trucks with 20 or 30 enthusiastic supporters waving and yelling at the crowds. Plus the ubiquitous mobile ghetto-blaster, of course. These caravans generate much excitement; everyone comes out waving the appropriate coloured flag. Today it will be mauve for the PLD caravan, tomorrow red for the PRSC caravan.

Yes, people come out more than once because often freebies are distributed during caravans. Bear in mind that 40% of the population live below the poverty line, so this isn’t as mercenary as it sounds. Sometimes it is necessary for survival. Of course it costs money to put on a caravan, so a week or so before the event party faithful will be out collecting from businesses in the area through which the caravan will pass. So businesses donate, the caravan is mounted and freebies get distributed. At the risk of sounding a killjoy, I think eardrums might be saved if businesses did their own freebie distribution and cut out the middleman.

Sometimes the planning of these caravans isn’t all it could be. Two separate party caravans may “organise” (I use the term loosely) for the same town or village, on the same day, at the same time. Which means they will meet on the main road through town. . .

Remember the Monty Python sketch when two funeral cortèges turned up at the gates of the cemetery at the same time? What ensued in the sketch was a hilarious battle of wits to gain the upper hand. Sometimes here in the DR the wits measure 9mm. In Nagua, for example, on Sunday 9 April. Two separate caravans were vying for the high street. The result was three people shot, two quite seriously. Fortunately, they all recovered.

However, I wouldn’t want you thinking that political antics in the DR are reminiscent of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party which entertained UK voters in the 1980s and beyond. Politics here is a serious business and as a result passions become inflamed. . . occasionally assisted by rum. I will never forget watching the lower house of Congress on TV a few years back – there was a power cut (yes, they affect Congress too!) so the only lights were from the TV teams filming the event, predominantly Cadena de Noticias. Suddenly in the darkness shots were fired and the leader of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfredo Pacheco, could be seen in a somewhat undignified dive for cover under his desk. It looked like an excerpt from Monty Python but it was real life. Although he did have a funny walk when he stood up. . . Subsequently someone had the bright idea that guns should be banned from the Chamber! Now, why didn’t I think of that? The side of Dominican politics which does have resonance with the Official Monster Raving Loony Party is the immortal quote from the biography of Screaming Lord Sutch describing the party in 2005 as “wannabees, never would bees and some bloody well shouldn’t bees!” Touché.

Lest it be thought that politics in the DR is subsumed in an aura of the Wild West, this year the seven Mayoral candidates for the capital city, Santo Domingo, signed a “pact of mutual respect” to guarantee harmony and no violence. Be honest, can you see Ken Livingstone doing this? Or needing to? Two days later all the major political parties signed a similar pact; so things were really looking up. A scant six hours after signing at the University in Santiago, with much pomp and circumstance, the PRSC withdrew from the accord. The mayoral PRSC candidate for Bani had apparently been offended by the PLD President of the country. As the national paper Diario Libre put it: “Well, that lasted less time than a cockroach in a henhouse”. They have a way with words here. And it has everyone’s attention – Diario Libre online is displaying 86 readers’ letters so far on this one item. Most items get two or three responses, if they get any at all.

We have eight more days of ear-splitting ghetto blasters. The ballot papers are now printed and are being distributed throughout the country to polling stations. Schools are used and will be closed for three days, so children always look forward to elections! The disputes about who is running for which party appear to have been settled. More or less. Give or take one or two. The election observers from the Organisation of American States have arrived. Observers from civic society groups have been having dry runs to practise detecting any fraud. Of course, still to be fixed is the fact that not everyone knows where they will vote – it is supposed to be in the area where you are registered, but some voters’ data are not showing up in the appropriate location. . . The newspapers here started out calling this “dislocation”. Now they are calling it “manipulation”.

Eight more days, then it will be all over – bar the disputes about the tally. That is why the OAS observers are here. If that gets too heated they could borrow an example from Big Brother to the north and consult the Supreme Court. And then turn it into a movie starring John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. Readers are invited to speculate on the casting of which Python character for which Supreme Court judge – remembering that Eric Idle usually gets cast as a woman!

Eight more days. . .

. . .and in a year’s time we start all over again in preparation for the 2008 Presidential election.

Author: Ginnie Bedggood

Ginnie Bedggood moved to the Dominican Republic as a resident in 1992 when she was 49 years of age. Prior to that she had spent most of her life in the UK but had also lived in the US, France, the Sahara Desert and Mali. She has travelled extensively in Africa and Europe as well as visiting Russia, Mongolia and China. In UK she worked as a probation officer and University teacher. The jobs she has had in DR are too numerous to mention (!) but she is now "retired", which means she works voluntarily rather than for money.

Another good reason to get some Spanish before you arrive, is to be able to choose who your new friends will be rather than have to rely on those who speak your language. You may, for example, have reservations about the sort of people who would offload a property in a suspect area to tourists who are caught up in the dream of living in the Caribbean.

Likewise, you may have reservations about the British woman who lives in Sosua who tells tourists that she is going to be the next British Honorary Consul (the post is not even vacant, trust me!). This is done to give her sales of property and her relocation “advice” some veneer of respectability which self-presentation alone would not warrant. These and other examples may well be the personality types which you would not dream of being close friends with in UK, so why lower your standards when you become an expat?

Of course, there are plenty of genuine, helpful, sensible English speaking expats living on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The problem for the new or aspiring expat is: how do you tell the genuine from the “next British Hon. Consul”? Well, one way is not to happen upon them, by “chance”, in a bar. Most decent expats are far too busy working, doing voluntary work or having a normal family life to spend hours daily propping up an expat watering hole. So if you “accidentally” come across bar-room wisdom from someone who seems to have all the answers, contacts, friends in high places etc. to make your transition to your new life really easy… find out from the bar staff how often they frequent the place and then ask yourself why they do not appear to do anything else. As a general rule, you have to hunt out the decent expats – the other sort will find you, and it won’t be accidental.

Arriving with enough Spanish to get by means you can look for a location to live which is away from the price inflated tourist areas and you can add non-English speaking Dominicans to your group of potential friends. After all, if you had really wanted to live amongst Americans or Brits you would either have gone to the US or never left the UK, wouldn’t you?

Dominicans are very warm, friendly, helpful people – the further you get away from the tourist areas the more genuine, family-oriented and spiritual they are. The poorest will share his food with you; he regards it as an honour to do so, even if it leaves him without for tomorrow. An unfortunate by-product of tourism is that the more “streetwise” Dominicans tend to be in the tourist areas.

Female tourists may well have come across the “sankie” syndrome, short for “sanky panky”, a breed of young man who is a predator on foreign females; this has nothing to do with how attractive the female is and a lot more to do with her capacity to fall in love (the quicker the better!) and eventually provide him with a visa to travel abroad where he will expect the rich gringa to take care of him in perpetuity. We could ponder the chicken-and-egg sequencing of this (in other words, did tourism and tourists introduce this syndrome?) but it must always be remembered that the DR is a developing country, there is both poverty and hunger here, more than a third of the population live on less than £1 a day and people do what they have to do in order to survive and feed their children (and yes, many of the sankies have wives and children).

The fourth piece of advice is: if you do not think you can adjust to the laid-back lifestyle, please do not move here. Things do not happen on time here in the Dominican Republic. Nor does mañana necessarily mean “tomorrow”. Sometimes it means “never”, but no Dominican would ever want to upset you by telling you “never” so the word mañana is used. Over time, you will become more experienced in working out whether the mañana you heard really means tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, maybe next week, some nebulous time in the future or not at all. If this sort of vagueness gives you high blood pressure, then you are better off heading for a different location. It has been this way in the DR for hundreds of years and is thus unlikely to change mañana.

Fifthly, believe only a sixth of what you hear and check all of it out, even that sixth. There is a bit of a game which experienced expats sometimes play called “How to shock the newbie”. Just because the experienced expat will smile whilst recounting the tale about the property lawyer who got the expat clients to sign on the wrong dotted line, so that the home they purchased became the lawyers (and their signature the witness to this!) does not mean it did not happen. This example did happen along with other similar examples.

The ability to speak English does not necessarily make a lawyer a good lawyer or one who will work in his clients’ best interests – it simply means he speaks English. Frequently it can also mean he overcharges for his services – of course, if you have some Spanish, this will not be an issue for you.

Finally, prices for just about everything in DR, other than marked items in supermarkets, are negotiable. Please do not size up the price of a house, car or anything else by UK standards. It is simply not relevant. For the record, cars are expensive by UK standards and houses are not, but what is important is that you get to know the pricing structure in the country for yourself. Then you can determine whether whatever is being offered is indeed a bargain.

Estate agents, both Dominican and expat, will tell you a house is a bargain, but then they would in France or Italy too. If you decide to move to the DR, rent a property first before you buy, and take your time. Wise decisions can only be based on knowledge and in order to get that knowledge you need to be here, listening, asking questions and above all checking out what you are told.

Ginnie can be contacted with any queries readers might have, but only after they have checked out the content of this article…!

Author: Ginnie Bedggood

Ginnie Bedggood moved to the Dominican Republic as a resident in 1992 when she was 49 years of age. Prior to that she had spent most of her life in the UK but had also lived in the US, France, the Sahara Desert and Mali. She has travelled extensively in Africa and Europe as well as visiting Russia, Mongolia and China. In UK she worked as a probation officer and University teacher. The jobs she has had in DR are too numerous to mention (!) but she is now "retired", which means she works voluntarily rather than for money.