9/16/02

I forgot a few things.

Saturday was our first volunteer meeting. We went to Renee’s house in Laborie, in the south of the island. It was a challenge squeezing 16 people into her living room. She has a kitty (Judah) that is reportedly the fattest cat on St. Lucia. Renee says people want to eat it. This cat was nothing in comparison to my elephants back home.

Clint, our Lead Volunteer, also lives in Laborie. We went to his house for lunch. He lives more downtown, right across from the fishing beach. He was able to get some fresh lobsters and sea eggs (sea urchins) from his fishing buddies for our lunch. I tried them just to say I had. I don’t remember if I put it in here or not, but I decided to officially stop eating fish again because it was making me sick every time. Anyway, the lobster and sea eggs were pretty good. The lobster was made into a sort of salad, and the sea eggs were just plain. Sea eggs are something you find on the bottom of the ocean, in the shallow parts. They kind of look like porcupines. They are black with white spines all over. You can pick them up carefully, but if you step on one it will shoot spines into your foot. They say this is very painful. The folk cure for this is to have someone pee on your foot. Honestly. They say that the ammonia in urine makes the spines pop out. So we were told to know who we were with whenever we go to the beach. Luckily, the water here is usually clear enough that you can see them on the bottom.

They prepare the sea eggs by catching them in the regular lobster traps. Out of the water, the sea eggs kind of writhe and their spines move around. The fishermen crack open the shell of the body (the spiny part) and these guts spill out. They catch all the guts in a bowl. They take the guts of several sea eggs and put it back into the shell of one (kind of like a twice baked potato or deviled egg) and they roast it. I just had a little taste. It was very sweet. Mmm, guts. The lobster was prepared in the normal way.

We had planned to go swimming (a sea bath, as they say here) but it rained on us.

And the fish did make me sick later.

At Renee’s and at Clint’s I was looking at some pictures they had from when they first got here. They had their pictures from swearing-in and submitted pictures that were in a book containing their whole class. It was really something to see how most of their group (at least the ones I know) had lost noticeable amounts of weight. No one was overly heavy, but you could see it in their faces. It’s not like people often starve or are badly malnourished here. Diabetes (type II) and hypertension are big problems here; I guess we’re just not used to eating so much fresh food, especially fruits and vegetables. I know I’ve lost some weight so far--my pants want to fall down.

Here is some more information about my neighborhood. My house is right close to the road, so usually I don’t have to walk in the neighborhood. I think the house where I am now is nicer than the average house in the neighborhood (or the whole island for that matter). For work, I have to walk up my street, more into the neighborhood. There are two spots, kind of clearings, where bunches of guys hang out. Even at 8:30 a.m., you can see the blue clouds of marijuana smoke. You can smell it all the way down the street. These guys were a little intimidating at first. The best way to handle them, for me, is to meet them head on. It’s a given that they’re going to hoot and hiss at me, so my tactic is to just say "GOOD MORNING" to them loud and before they can say anything to me. Also it’s a custom to greet people like that (just not always loud). It’s always the same guys, so one day I stopped and talked to them for a bit. Now usually they’ll say hello to me, that I look nice today, how was my weekend, can they join me? When I say no, I’m going to work, they say can I work on them. I think not. But it’s a start. Even if they’re kind of piggish and vulgar, I know they’d never mess with me more than that. Also, at the times when I pass, there are a lot of other people around. A lot of school kids are on their way to school, and a lot of people are coming to the center where I work.

One of the funniest things about the guys who hiss and yell is who actually does the hissing and yelling. I was expecting the young guys to be most full of themselves and do the most yelling. But actually the older guys (like 40+) yell more and more inappropriate types of things. They do more of the "hey beautiful, I like to see you" kind of thing. The young guys just hiss and wave.

Late-Breaking News

Wow, you’ll never believe what just happened to me. I was walking home for lunch, down the same sketchy stretch of road where I always walk. There’s a fair amount of traffic there, and even some bigger trucks. Just as I got to the spot where all the guys sit, a big Toyota truck and a police vehicle peeled up and stopped, blocking the road. About 15 guys in fatigues and with automatic weapons jumped out and ran in one house/store. I tried to kind of sneak around the trucks. They were having a drug bust. I saw them patting down all the guys, while a couple others of the police just stood there with their guns. I’ll have to see what happened. I know all of those guys smoke. Maybe no one will hiss at me on the way home. We can only hope.