The black cloud of doom hanging over our heads started on Saturday morning. As everyone knows by now, I broke my right leg and have been unable to drive the car. My husband has been dutifully driving me everywhere and so it was off to the bank at 9 am Saturday morning.
I hobble to the bank to take care of business. I came out of the bank to see my husband and several Dominicans standing around the car with the hood up. Ross is holding a small, plastic cup and at 9 am, they are't having a friendly Cuba Libre. We drive a piece of shit car so I know that they aren't admiring the horsepower of our fine racing machine. Our car had been on fire! Holy shit is all I can think. Ok, I will admit my response was a little stronger than that.
This is what an alternator looks like after having caught on fire:
Ross drives the car home with a friend driving along with us in his car to ensure we make it home.
We get home at about 9:30 to discover that we had been robbed. Some enterprising thief decided that it would be a good idea to pry the iron bars off our spare bedroom window and relieve us of some of our earthly possessions. We discovered a missing television, hammer drill, Ross's Kindle, Wii, mini laptop computer, and Ipod. It should be noted that the laptop, Wii, and Ipod were all broken so we kind of got a good laugh about that.
Through process of elimination, and a huge bump on the nose, we know which dog finally got the thieves out of the house. Gaby saved the day! We are pretty sure that they must have tried to fight her off by hitting her with a golf club. She's absolutely fine but insists on checking the bedrooms everyday to make sure all is well.
The damage to the window was just about the most irritating part. Now we have major repairs to make and with the help of recommendations and talking to people, we have workers!
Prior to having the welder arrive, Ross had to take a hammer and chisel and finish knocking off all the window frame. Damn thieves couldn't even do that right!!
First we have to hire a welder to reinforce the two other vulnerable windows as well as put the iron bars back in the damaged window. These men were amazing on how well they did the work and how quickly. We were most suitably impressed.
Now for the cement repairs. I must admit this was a bit of an entertaining show but the guys that did the work were very, very good too. I have a cement frame around the window again and it just needs to be painted in a few days after the cement cures and dries.
I started this event feeling absolutely violated (they even went through my underwear drawer!) and incredibly angry. This didn't help change what happened so an attitude adjustment was required. When anything crappy happens in my life, I always try to find a lesson to learn or something positive/humorous.
This is what I learned: We have great friends that offered emotional support. We have great friends that went out of their way to help us find the proper people to do the work that was required to fix our house at a very reasonable price. Everyone who helped us in anyway (large or small) knows who they are and we can't say thank you enough times. That's what good friends do, they help each other in times of need. Not all Dominicans are nasty thieves and that there are those that genuinely want to help you without looking at you as a wealthy gringo/gringa. (We have met many lovely Dominicans and my statement is a general one that is in no way intended to insult the great, good people that live here.)
This is just another huge pothole in the day to day challenges of living here. I guess the most important thing is that we are unharmed (maybe a little emotionally scared) and our dogs are all doing just fine.
The car will be dealt with in due course.
Onward......and upward......
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