11/04/02

Here are a few things that have happened lately. There’s been some good news and some bad news.

The good news first. Last week Selma and I went down south to check on the Choiseul guys at their job attachments.  About half of the group was placed in jobs.  This group is getting additional funding from the Basic Needs Trust Fund.  The skills in this group are auto mechanics, auto body repair, outboard engine repair, fish processing and heavy equipment.  The rest of the group will be placed in a couple weeks. Anyway, we stopped at two auto mechanical places in Vieux Fort.  The second one has about six of the trainees.  We weren’t entirely sure how things would go with them.  Some of the guys are a little goofy, and they were going to have to report to their job attachment at 7am.  But when we talked to the owner, he said that they guys were doing great.  In fact, he said they were so excited about their project (taking a car apart down to the nuts and bolts and putting it all back together again) that they wanted to come in extra days. Selma wasn’t about to say no!

That countered the bad news.  A couple weeks ago, a guy was murdered on the beach in Laborie.  The paper said he was stabbed and beaten by a group of guys.  Then last week it came out in the paper that they had arrested the guys involved.  There were five, and three were in the training class in Choiseul. Needless to say, they were kicked out of the program.  I don’t think they’ll be able to make it to their job attachments since they’re in JAIL!  Everyone was pretty surprised and bummed about that.

There was some other Peace Corps related bad news.  Renee told us on Thursday that she’ll be leaving tomorrow.  We had kind of known she’d be leaving soon, but just not this soon.  She’s starting a graduate program in public health in January.  Several things got messed up with her application process, so she has to go home to straighten it out.  Since she’d be leaving anyway in about a month, she just decided to go now.  She was sad about it, and so were the rest of us.  Renee’s been super helpful to all of us just starting out.  She knows a lot of people around the island and has good insider tips on PC stuff.  Judah, her cat, is upset about it too.  He’s emigrating with her, but was a little "vexed" (as they say here).  Deb, her friend Stephanie who’s visiting, and I went down to Laborie on Friday night to have a little send-off dinner.  Clint and Lauren came over too.  We made some kind of fishy stir-fry, noodley stuff, salad, bread and wine. Those of us from out of town had a little slumber party.  The only good part about Renee's leaving is that she left us some of her reject clothes and household stuff.  I gained a couple pairs of shorts, t-shirts and tank tops.  Lauren got a bunch of art supplies for her neighborhood kids.  Deb got a tent that has been passed along for years.

Now for something completely different: cars.

I don’t think I ever mentioned it explicitly, but they drive on the left here.  That means that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.  It was really weird at first.  Aside from trying to get in the wrong side of the car, for a while it seemed that if I was sitting in the passenger seat, I should be able to see out of all the rearview mirrors.  Now I’m doing ok with it.  It seems more normal.  What throws me is to see a left-hand drive car like at home.  There are a few around.

There are many kinds of cars here—but not quite as many as at home.  Locals classify them into two basic types: cars or vans.  Cars are cars.  Vans can be SUVs, pickup trucks, big trucks or vans.  SUVs are also called Jeeps no matter what kind of SUV they are.  Medium-sized trucks can also be lorries.  Vans (in the traditional sense) are also mini-busses or transports.

There are a few prominent brands.  There are a lot of Japanese cars.  Most of the smaller cars are the style of a late 80’s Toyota Corolla.  Pickups are almost always Mitsubishis.  I’ve seen like one each of Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge.  They’re usually left-hand drive.  Bigger trucks are usually Mitsubishis too.  SUVs are the smaller kind.  I see a lot of Suzuki Vitaras (which I think they have in the US…. they had them in Ecuador), Honda CRVs, and the little Land Rovers.  Peace Corps has a bigger SUV, a Mitsubishi one.  There is the occasional Volvo, Volkswagen, Mercedes or BMW.

It’s unbelievably expensive to drive here. Yet it’s really insane that PC forbids it. If the big-wigs can drive, why cant we???

I’ll work on getting some pictures of cars up on the site.