8/21/02

I guess the news is out that I’m staying on St. Lucia. I’m pretty happy about that. As much as it would be neat to learn a new island, I feel like I bonded with my first host family and that I met some pretty cool people. The only thing that is a little sad is that most of my volunteer buddies went to other islands. I suppose that will give me a good excuse to go and visit them. We’ve now started to refer to St. Lucia as the Top 10 island, though. The Top 10 were a group of volunteers who stuck together because they are the oldest, ahem, I mean the wisest. They’ll tell you this too. Anyway, half of the 10 of us on St. Lucia are Top 10ers.   I have a feeling St. Vincent will become the party island.

But moving on….

We left our host families in Babonneau on Saturday to go to our new places. The St. Lucians all met at this convent to have a few days’ training before going to the new host families in our communities. The convent was beautiful. It’s set way up on a hill overlooking the city. There are ocean views on 2 sides. There were about 20 rooms that the nuns (Benedictine) rent out for US$50 a night, including 2 meals a day. There were a group of Italians staying there visiting one of the nuns, who was part of their family. The food was outstanding. One night was pizza, another was pesto pasta, and there was lots of fresh fish.

The people who are on St. Lucia are Deb, Margaret, Lauren, Alan, Tom & Mary, Doris, Kahani, Pat and I. On Sunday, Michael, our Associate Director, and Abu, our trainer, took us all down to the south of the island. We went to a waterfall and bathed in a hot spring. The way things work here is that if you buy land and there’s a waterfall on it, you get the waterfall, and you can charge admission if you want. It was really nice though because the spring was hot, and the river itself was cold. And it wasn’t as stinky as the sulphur spring. We ate lunch there, then went to the Balembouche Estate. It’s a former sugar plantation that’s now a family home and tourist site. The daughter of the family gave us a tour of the ruins of the mill. She said most of it was destroyed in the hurricane of 1980. It was still pretty amazing to see. They also rent out rooms/cottages for US$45/90 a night. There are also facilities there to hold parties and weddings.

Monday and Tuesday we spent in training sessions. We had speakers from the National Emergency Management Organization, Royal St. Lucia Police Force, National Youth Organization and the 1999 Calypso King (as a side note, our Associate Director, Michael Aubertin, was the 1978 Calypso King). It was nice to have small sessions with just 10 people. It was easier to stay focused and find the relevance of the presentation. We also started learning Kweyol, the un-official language. All official things are conducted in English, and everyone can speak it. Kweyol is spoken in some homes, depending on the age and education level of the people. Also some jokes are told in English, with the punchline in Kweyol. They say it’s funnier that way. People just seem to pick it up at home. Several people have told me that their parents spoke it at home when they were kids, but the kids aren’t allowed to speak it until a certain age. It has been forbidden in schools until recently. And the written language is pretty new. A lot of the vocabulary is like French, only spelled phonetically. The structure and syntax are like many African languages. Here’s a sentence:

Non mwen sé _______.

My name is _______. (Name my is _______).

We have to memorize several lines in order to present ourselves at the swearing-in ceremony.

Here is some more information about my first host family before I tell you about my new one: It was a while before I found out what everyone did for a living. Theresa, my host mom, worked with blind kids at school (Here that’s considered special ed). The teaching program is such that qualified kids begin teaching younger grades as soon as they are out of secondary school (at about 18). They call this the pupil-teacher program. The pupil-teachers also take night classes.   Shanet was working in this program too but was working in a regular primary school, though. She had taken some college classes, but stopped when Chelsea was born. Shanet is planning to start at a culinary school in the US and live in New Jersey with her brother. My host dad, IO, worked under the Ministry of Communication, Transportation and Works. The Minister for that is Felix Finistere, the representative of Babonneau. He spoke at our training. Anyway, IO works under Felix Finistere coordinating road maintenance projects. It sounded to me like he gathers up teams of unemployed people to work clearing brush from the sides of the roads. Krishna is in her last year of Secondary school and is interested in taking culinary classes too.

Yesterday I began a 7 week stay with a new host family. They live in Castries, but other PC people are elsewhere on the island, near where their work sites will be (mine’s just up the road from my house). The family’s name is President, and I’m living with the parents, Monique and Ben. Their daughters, Malaika and Mansa both live in New Jersey and go to school. One is at Rutgers University, and one is at Middlesex College. The house is just outside Castries. I could take the same bus to my new house as I did to Babonneau. Our street is right off the main highway that runs along the ocean in the north part of the island. We’re right near the beach. The parents are both retired, but own a gym that’s right outside the house. There’s one part of the building that has weights and equipment, and another where they teach aerobics classes. Every morning they go for a swim in the ocean. The house itself is really big. You enter on a porch, right off the main sitting room/kitchen. There’s a little hallway with a bedroom and a sewing room. Up a couple stairs is a music/sitting room. Near there is a patio with a laundry room. Up a flight of stairs from the music room is my bedroom, Monique and Ben’s bedroom, and a spare. I have my own bathroom with a WORKING shower and HOT WATER! Today was the first hot shower I’ve had in a month. The yard is not big, but there are probably 10 kinds of animals. There are coops with 3 kinds of doves, a parrot, little turkeys, a goose, 3 rabbits, 2 dogs and 3 fish tanks. There’s also a little bird that flies around inside the house. Outside are more lizards than I’ve ever seen. You’ll look outside and think there are no lizards, then they’ll move and you’ll see like 10. AND the mosquitoes are as numerous as the stars. I think each one has bitten me. I don’t think there is as much of a garden here as at my other house, but there are trees with limes and mangos.

Yesterday I went for a little walk with Monique. There were some sketchy folks up the road hanging around. I saw a big fat rasta guy taking a bath outside. It was pretty unpleasant. Hopefully I can kind of make friends with the sketchy folk because the area here is really nice and very convenient for my job, the beach, and going to town. I saw a little neighborhood just up the road with houses that might be in my price range. We are also right near the airport.

We are with the families until Tuesday, when we go and meet up again at the convent. Before then, we have to complete several assignments. Today I did one, which was to go to the market. We have to find fruits and vegetables there and learn their names in English and Kweyol, and how to cook them. Also I’ll have to go to a bank, interview people about the school system, and do a "needs analysis" for the area. The field trips I don’t mind, but some of the stuff is kind of boring.