What reads here. This is a vent so be prepared to read for a bit and please comment any opinions you might have about this. Yesterday I went out for a walk at the malecon in Santo Domingo. My mom needed to run, so I went out with with her. I needed a device to track the time, which resulted in me taking my phone out. Long story short, not ever 15 minutes after I'm at the malecon someone pulls up beside me with a gun saying that they need my phone and that I should stay quiet. Luckily for some reason all my reactions to all things are delayed, so I didn't scream and acted normal and luckily I quickly did what they said and didn't fight or anything because I would be hurt or dead.

This is such a common occurrence here that culturally we have people that condemn certain behaviors (taking your phone out outside, taking your phone with you when you go to places) and victim blame. These demons have been known to kill people, either because they showed resistance, just because, or because you're at the wrong place at the wrong time and end up dead for no reason. Life ends up being cheaper than getting a phone, since in most cases they can't sell the phone unless it's by pieces which is cheaper.

This is a country where it's extremely hard to get by no matter how hard you work and to make it even worse, given that you get something that's a reward for your hard work you can't enjoy it either because some violent people will want to take it from you and are willing to also take your life.

This is a country where you pay a long list of taxes but it doesn't go out to anything other than keeping a bunch of old fat guys that take everyone's money and eat everyone's food and leave the scraps to the rest of us. Shamelessly so.

This is a country where people don't think like a community and everyone has an extremely individualist mentality that implies that if they're ok the world can go to hell, they're able to kill people, to steal, to see their fellow Dominicans eat shit as long as they're ok, it doesn't directly affect them or they get a benefit out of doing these things.

There are so many wrong things and life is so unsafe and uncertain here that I wouldn't be able to express the sheer unsafety you feel about every aspect of your life here, from putting a foot out of your doorstep all the way to working and dating.

I'm not saying I hate the geographical position or that I hate a lot of good people that we have. I hate the institution that this country is, say, the system and I hate every selfish demon like the one who assaulted me that has ever been born and I wish nothing but ill upon them. Why? There's nothing like your blood going cold from seeing a firearm at the hands of a person when you were doing absolutely nothing to hurt them and you were just peacefully living, working and studying your ass off, taking a breather from the stress of all the covid situation plus life itself. Someone sees you and they don't see another fellow human, they see prey. They are demons no matter what anyone says I hate them with every cell of my being. And I also hate it here.