Biography:The conventional side: born in UK during WWII, grammar school, university and post grad studies followed by a career as a probation officer, social work tutor with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and University social work teacher for 17 years.
The less conventional side: as a schoolgirl vacation work started when I was 14 in 1957 as a clerical assistant in a company whose boss, I later discovered, had a penchant for 14 year old girls! My next vacation job was with a wrestling promoter. Seriously. As an undergrad vacation jobs ranged from life saver in swimming pools, custodial staff in a girls’ remand home to a go-go dancer in a US singles bar. The more conventional jobs itemised above were interspersed with periods of travel across the Sahara, in North Africa and later in Russia, China and Mongolia.
Before my marriage to an airline pilot I obtained a pilot’s licence in the UK. Legally. When that marriage became time expired I sewed wild oats for 8 years before meeting my current partner. He and I moved to the Dominican Republic in 1992. Tales from our early years in the DR are described in Quisqueya: Mad Dogs and English Couple published in June 2007. In the DR I have worked as an English teacher, tour guide and freelance journalist. During the last couple of years I started writing articles about the DR for a variety of websites. These are all listed on my website:
http://www.ginniebedggood.com/
Technically, I am now ‘retired’. One day I might even find out what that means………!
The Accident
I don’t know how long I had lain in the road when I came round. Probably a couple of seconds. What jerked me into consciousness was Merengue’s high pitched screeching – no barking, just screeching. I started crawling towards him and that is when I saw the prone body of Grahame, white faced and bloodied head. People came running to help.
Someone stopped an empty tour bus and loaded us, the smashed scooter and Merengue on board. ‘Adolpho’ I gasped. Our Austrian friend Adi had a corner store and bar not far from the scene of the scooter accident. ‘Centro Medico’ the people lifting us into the bus said. ‘No! Adolpho’s’ with as much volume as I could muster, realising that I was now beginning to faint and then come round.
And then I knew Grahame would be OK. ‘Adolpho’s’. The low echo seemingly coming from another planet.
In situations like these survival kicks in. We had heard all the horror stories about the local hospitals in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. We still did not know if they used clean needles for each patient. But here we both were………….stricken. We needed one whole trustworthy human to make decisions. Adolpho.
Adolpho knew what to do straight away. He took us to the Emergency section of Centro Medico. The doctor saw Grahame and his head injury first. There was some superficial cleaning of wounds using a yellow wash, probably iodine. Then I heard the dreaded word ‘injection’. I forced myself off my bed to stagger to the next cubicle. The doctor was not best pleased. I couldn’t say I wanted to witness the injection to make sure a clean needle was used so I mumbled something about having more Spanish than Grahame and being there to do the translation. Some translation! Our Spanish was still stumbling at the best of times. And these were not the best of times!
Grahame’s X-ray showed a fractured collar bone, an open head wound which needed stitches and cuts and scrapes all over. The doctor assured us that there was nothing more seriously amiss with Grahame’s head. How he could tell without a brain scan I do not know, but we wanted to believe him, so we did. They cleaned and stitched us both and they set Grahame’s arm and shoulder and applied a tight sling. We asked if that was it. Not quite. We needed to pay. The Clinic was used to people skipping out on bills. They wanted to detain one of us while the other went for the money……………...
Grahame told the doctor that we were good for the money. Sylvester was very reasonable and instructed the staff to ‘release’ us. We got a taxi back to Adi’s to collect a forlorn looking Merengue. He brightened up considerably when he saw us, despite our odd appearance. Poor Merengue. First the accident, then he was abandoned. Even Blackie, Adi and Ann’s street dog couldn’t cheer him up. But Merengue had fared better than us, just some cuts on his forelegs.
Back home we collapsed each on a separate bed. And slept. A couple of hours later Grahame appeared at the door of my room. ‘I’m so sorry, kitten’ he said. But, it wasn’t his fault. We both cried in each others’ arms, probably more from shock than anything else. And relief. It could have been so much worse. To recover Grahame felt in his pocket for his pipe. But……..no cochimbo. The pipe had obviously gone in the accident. He made do with my cigarettes.
The next day the numbing effect of shock had worn off and we knew exactly each and every bit of us that hurt. There were quite a few. Grahame returned to work at Puerto Plata Village Hotel the following day. His arm in a sling, his bald head obviously stitched up, aching but willing to work.
They sent him home! The Deputy Manager tried putting it as tactfully as she could: Grahame’s appearance resembled a war hero rather than a Guest Service Manager. She didn’t think it gave the right message to the guests. So we went to the bank and settled up with the hospital. On our way home we got off the bus before Urbanizacion Atlantica and walked to the scene of the ‘crime’.
I’m not sure if we needed to lay ghosts or we convinced ourselves that Merengue did. As we neared the actual spot, two wounded soldiers and a relatively unscathed dog we heard ‘Merengue! Merengue!’ The guy who sold paintings to tourists was jumping up and down excitedly and running towards us. ‘Tengo el cochimbo’ he cried.
WHAT? He has the pipe? Yes indeed. He had been one of the helpers who rushed forward to scoop us off the road and bundle us into the tour bus. After we had gone he noticed Grahame’s pipe lying in the road. So he had carefully rescued it and taken it home. A man who had nothing. Who probably lived in a shack in a barrio as most of the painting sellers did. He could have sold it. But he didn’t.
Later that evening Roberto came to our home with the pipe, carefully wrapped in paper. We gave him a reward and paid his concho fare. And thereinafter whenever a tourist at the Puerto Plata Beach Resort asked me about buying paintings, I would personally escort them to our new found friend, just minutes along the road. His business took off! A lot of tourists buy paintings but they are available everywhere. However, with my endorsement and a personal translation service to negotiate the deal they were happy to buy from Roberto the pipe man. Every two weeks when the new tourists arrived I would retell the story of how he rescued Grahame’s pipe. How could you not buy from an honest entrepreneur like that? Soon Roberto no longer had to put his paintings on the grass under the palm trees at the mercy of rain, wind and dust. Soon he had sufficient money to rent a little ‘locale’ where his wares were under cover.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad accident after all?
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