Editor’s note:I’m not a complainer. Really, I’m not. But having lived my first 68 years in the USA, I find that things being different take me some getting used to. Understand, please, I’m not asserting that “different†is wrong. It’s probably right for here; only I’m unused to it.
So, I’m sucking it up and learning to accept those different things. Still, I think it may amuse Dominicans reading this and help inform and prepare Americans, and Europeans and other “1st-worlders†wishing to settle here as well.
I’ll write about those differences – big and small – from time to time, and will preface it with this paragraph so that you know I’m not complaining.
The Dominican Difference #9: Signs
There’s a sign in Calibishie on a building that used to house Domcan’s. The place of business closed and moved to Castle Bruce about a decade ago, but the sign still proclaims the place is open for business. There’s a doctor whose new office is across form the Police Station on the Bay Street in Portsmouth, but a sign on a pharmacy on the next street still proclaims that the doctor’s office is there, and gives an old and wrong phone number.
I suppose that in Dominica everyone knows who’s who and where things are anyhow, because it’s all a rather small, tight-knot community. And that’s good – as far as it goes. But it sure can mislead and confuse us newcomers!
All I ask is that old and misleading signs either be torn down or painted over. Is that too much to ask?
For what it’s worth, this is not something that’s unique to Dominica. There’s a sign for a business at a strip mall near me that’s still up even though the business moved two years ago, and that’s in the States.
I”m writing about general practices. There are exceptions, of course. I recall a newspaper expose in Philadelphia about 35 yers ago that showed a man going down a set of stairs to the subway. The sign above the stairs read “Exit, Closed”. One simply had to know the sign was wrong.