Finally....

I've been in the Peace Corps since August 24 and am finally writing my first blog.  It would seem that I have become a real procrastinator.  So, a quick review to catch up is in order, and I will try to be more prolific in the months ahead. 

The two day overview training held in Miami accomplished it's goal; a resting place with familiar surroundings to calm the anxiety and give us all a chance to become acquainted. It also left two volunteers behind as we headed to the Eastern Caribbean program headquarters in St. Lucia for a scheduled 5 day training. 

From there we were to separate and go to our assigned islands, 10 to St. Vincent, 6 to Antigua, and 10 to St. Kitts and Nevis.  Hurricane Earl had other plans, however.  While the group bound for St. Vincent did leave, the rest of us were delayed, which for the first day was no hardship considering we were staying in the beautiful Bel Jou hotel in Castries.  Besides, it offered an element of unexpected adventure to our beginning and promised a break from the already tedious training.  


Not so fast.  The delay was extended for more than one night and our stay at the Bel Jou was not - they were sold out.  We were moved to the Pastoral Center for the remainder of our time on St. Lucia, where training resumed, and the reality was much more what you would expect of the Peace Corps experience - no air conditioning, no hot water, minimal food and plenty of mosquitoes.  After two more days of trying to navigate through our no longer neatly packed suitcases, piles of dirty clothes, growling stomachs and sagging spirits we were ready to go.  And finally, on Thursday Earl had moved on and so did we. 


We arrived in St. Kitts and were welcomed at the airport by a smiling group of current PCV's.  There were vans waiting to take us into Basseterre where we would meet our host families and get settled in our new homes, but first we had to claim our luggage. A slight glitch - most of the luggage wasn't there.  Eight of the 10 of us did not receive our luggage. After what seemed an eternity of filling out forms and trying to understand how to translate "just now" into real time, we finished the bureaucratic business and piled into the vans for the drive to Basseterre.  It was on this ride that I realized that 95 degrees, 100% humidity, and clothes worn too many times by people without the benefit of a washing machine were not the best combination for the olfactory glands while crammed into a car with 10 people. The ride turned out to be mercifully short, but the wait for luggage did not.  "Just now" was 36 hours.  


For most of us, during the next 6 weeks, integration into the Kittitian culture was made easier by living with host families; and the Peace Corps staff and trainers did an excellent job of preparing us for service, but everyone was glad when the day finally arrived to move into our own homes.  Personal space is definitely a priority for me, and I was grateful to have it back.  

The Peace Corps swearing in ceremony culminated the first year of official service training for the 10 of us, and though we will be back together as a group for mid service training in November of 2011, we will pretty much be going our separate ways until then.

                                                                               

My "home" for the next two years will be in Cayon, a village on the Atlantic side of the island and about a 15 minute bus ride to town.  It's a comfortable house in a quiet neighborhood, friendly neighbors who watch out for me, friendly chlorophyll colored lizards who think that when I open my front door it's an invitation for them to come in, and friendly goats grazing the many open grassy areas on the hillside.  I can set my watch by their passing - both in the morning and the afternoon.  Most days, walking up the hill on my way home from work, I come across a stray kid bleating like a lost child and nudge it to follow me while I take it back to the herd.


My school attachment is with the Maurice Hillier Memorial School where I have been assigned to a 3rd grade class.  After meeting with the principal of the school, I learned that diabetes and childhood obesity are major issues for the people of St. Kitts.  The Ministry of Health is encouraging schools to take the lead in teaching children how to make healthy choices. The Ministry of Youth Empowerment would like to prepare primary school students toward leadership with entrepreneurial efforts.  Thus the "Healthy Breakfast Cereal Entrepreneurial Project" was born.  The students were eager and responsive as each child created, packaged, made, marketed and sold their own healthy breakfast cereal. I also produced a television commercial/PSA which the children starred in.  My friend Chris, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, filmed and edited the piece and a man from the Ministry of Culture set the jingle I wrote to music. The children were excited and felt like celebrities when the piece aired on ZIZ, the local television station. The business part of the project was successful too, with the 200 portions students made almost selling out in pre-sales alone.  In an effort to make the project sustainable, proceeds from the sale were given to the school as seed money for future projects.  I am currently working on a creative writing project with the same class.  More on that later. 


My work assignment is with the Ministry of Youth Empowerment My counterpart, Geoffrey Hanley, is the Director of Youth. The people in the office, Diane, Chereca and Rudell are great to work with and very supportive.  I just "moved in" last week and am looking forward to tackling a number of projects during my time here.  In the meantime, November is National Youth Month and I've been busy helping the office implement the projects they planned for this month.  In fact, yesterday was the annual high school "Chef's Competition."  5 of the 7 high schools participated in the event. Each school was represented by 2 cooks who had an hour and a half to create two dishes using only ingredients from a box of food they were given.  Contents of the box were the same for each team and only the staff from the office of Youth Empowerment knew what the boxes contained.  3 judges, one a local chef, rated the teams in areas of organization, taste, creativity, and cleanliness.  Students were intense, focused and professional.  It was a lot of fun to watch. Last week was also Youth Agricultural Day and I joined everyone on a tour of the farms located in surrounding villages.  The day covered the 26 mile perimeter of the island and was not only interesting, but also productive for me.  By the end of the day, when I was dropped off at my house in Cayon, I had collected a bag of fresh vegetables and herbs which I used to make a stir fry for dinner.  To culminate the month of activities, there will be a 3-day long Youth Habitat project next weekend with youth and adult volunteers joining to build a house for an elderly man who has been displaced.  A very impressive undertaking.

Next installment will cover heat/humidity, tropical storms/hurricanes, dialect as in "everyone speaks English why can't I understand," bus rides/bus drivers, collapsing sidewalks, Peace Corps training modules/flip charts/group exercises, clothes lines where it would be lovely to watch your sheets flap in the ocean breeze if they weren't flapping into the cement wall, food, flip flops, integration, and a sense of humor.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving.