I am 100% a beach bum when it comes to tropical island trips. One of my absolute favorite places to take a vacation to is the Dominican Republic. It shares it’s landmass in part with Haiti and the terrain of the land is as different as day and night depending on where you stay. I’ve always stayed near the sea, but I hear from the locals that the mountains are just as breathtaking.
The thing that I enjoy most while vacationing in the DR (other than the insane, natural beauty) is the people. For people that have such little, they are arguably the happiest, most grateful people that I have ever met. And they typically always have a smile on their face or are trying to put one on yours.
Just about every summer I return back to the DR. I’ve stayed at multiple resorts and I’ve found one thing to be true, the hotel workers (Animation team) are what really make the experience so special.
They are basically the entertainment staff for the hotel and their job is to get the guests involved in various activities throughout the day (7 AM-1AM). It’s really a blast and great because you come away with feeling a personal connection to those people that you’ve spend the past 2 weeks with.
Any woman that has ever traveled to the DR and stayed at a resort has encountered what they call a “Sankie”. Sankies are those sweet, charming entertainment workers (or any Dominican man for that matter) that swoon you while you're checking out of reality for the two weeks.
Sankies look for tourists, often women, to form connections/relationships with in hopes of extracting money or finding a way out of the DR down the road. It’s sneaky and comes off as very harmless flirting at first. Dominican men, especially sankies will want to shower you with compliments and profess their love to you within a matter of hours to just a couple of days. At that point, an alarm should be ringing in your head that something is a little fishy when you encounter that behavior. “I can’t be THAT desirable here in this new country? Hmm, maybe I can? It’s nice to hear these never ending compliments…I don’t get this at home…It feels nice to be wanted.” Some women are hooked right there and they have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into. Others, are smart enough to realize that it’s a trap.
There are plenty of blogs and websites devoted to discussions of Sankies and horror stories from women that were too naive. If you’re curious, I’ll leave some links below and you can check them out for yourself:
Fortunately, I never had a serious, bad experience with a Sankie. I had just felt that I formed a close, personal bond and was very sad when traveling back home, knowing that I would never see these friends again that I had made while on my vacation. It left me wondering if I was the only woman that felt that way before.
I was so curious about the behavior from the Dominican men the first time that I took a vacation to the DR that when I returned home, I searched the internet to see how big of a deal it really was. To my surprise, Sankies were a huge part of tourism in the DR. I think that it’s very important that tourists have a good amount of knowledge about a place before they visit. And not just the typical things, dig a little deeper because it will pay off in the end.
Since my first travels to the DR, I’ve returned 5 more times. However, with my new found information of the Sankies, it made it a lot of fun to call them out or play along with their charades! Every year I learn something new about the mystifying place and for some reason it keeps me coming back for more.
Now that I know that I’m not alone, if you have a Sankie story, please share it in the comments below!
some very important information, and very well said Allie. you have educated, and possibly saved some tourists from falling into that trap! xo
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I've never heard of this term before.
ReplyDeleteI am being sankied right now, I keep calling him out but I also keep messaging him. Its kind of addictive. When I found out how old (young) he was I was kind of horrified cause he is almost half my age. He 'loved' me within about two days, and sent me sexy (read xxx) photos within days. He made me get Whats App and then LiNe - and professed his love saying I was the only one. I kept going back and forth between telling him I knew he was playing me and getting kind of sucked in. I realized that I am big-hearted enough to be exploited but part of me felt like a dirty sex-tourist, even though I did not encourage the nude pics or anything else (he got me on the video calls about 5 days after I got home and was in his bathroom with the purpose of giving me some kind of show, if you know what I mean). This was after I expressed some shock at his age and he seemed to be getting desperate to please me. I put an end to that call. He called me princess, his queen, even wife (but he has really bad English so I don't know if that was intentional). On some points he seemed honest. He told me he has 2 kids, where he came from (Santo Domingo) and some other stuff. His messages were over and over about how much he loved me but he never asked me one single question about me. He seemed so innocent when he was pursuing me at the resort, kind of soft spoken and I never saw him flirting with anyone else. I have been on dating sites and I do get messages from guys his age so it seemed not totally out of the question, especially as I find out that many men would like an older foreign girlfriend seriously. I guess I wanted to believe that for a while. At first I was just having fun with it, I actually had an idea of what was going on before he even got my number, as I had called his friend who speaks English his 'pimp' (not to him but to my friend). As I decided just to have fun with it because I had never had anybody talk to me like that before (sad but true)I went along with the texting back and forth, at times playing and at times being truthful - I noticed how I was getting emotionally caught up in it...it was an interesting and revealing experiment you could say. I am an older women, not lonely, not looking, so I can imagine how hard it would be for someone who IS lonely to stop such affectionate and intense attention when it is being offered by someone - and in my case anyway, soooooo attractive!! Ugh!! I cut it off three times already, AND know what is going on, AND am pretty sure I will text him again...in fact I keep on looking to see if he left a message or read mine. It IS addictive....ON THE BRIGHT SIDE - This young man has awoken something in me that had been sleeping, in the past two days I have been on some dating sites and feel like getting some sincere (or at least non-exploitative)company - something that would actually add some balance to my life. I actually don't judge him, it seems like one easy way to wealth for a Dominican and his family.
ReplyDelete