As for the rest of the island its a different story, we haven't had more than a two minute sprinkle in at least 3 weeks, the banana trees are starting to yellow, the tops of the coconuts trees are falling off, its due to a disease thats worse without water, a places that are notoriously muddy have been dry for weeks. Depending on where you live it also means you do not have water in your pipes. In my community we haven't had water in our homes for over two weeks and since christmas we haven't had water for more than 24 hours at a time. Thankfully there is a stand pipe up the road that we can get water at. A stand pipe is a pipe that is about 2-3 feet tall and is on the side of the road. Basically imagine if at the end of your street there was a skinny pipe with a facet that everyone in the general area goes to get water. At certain times of day people bring their soap and just bath on the side of the street, usually its just men and children, I have never seen a grown woman bath at the stand pipe. On a Saturday if you go to collect water at the standpipe you will see a collection of women doing their laundry. The lucky people that have 1,000 liter water tanks get those filled by a water truck, so they don't have to go to the stand pipe to collect water,most of my friends have these, but I am not so lucky. Every morning or evening I gather my jugs and buckets and carry my water from the stand pipe. I definitely think my arms are getting stronger, water is heavy.
The really cool part is that I now realize just how much water I need to live. It takes about 3 gallons to flush the toilet, I can bath in 1.5 liters if I don't wash my hair, if I wash my hair its more like 4 liters or about a gallon. To do laundry by hand, its about 10 gallons for a little bit of clothes, I would never do it in the machine cause it would take way too much water like maybe 50 gallons. Each gallon of water weighs 8 lbs, so that water quickly adds up to a lot of weight. Maybe I should make all my female pole vaulters carry water so they can get stronger.
Pole Vault St. Lucia continues to grow as a program, this Independence weekend we set another national women's record, and our ladies finally broke that 2 meter mark that they had been threatening to break for a while now. We also had one of our newest male vaulters surprise us by jumping 2.7 meters after only being with the program for about a month and a half, which is huge cause thats about 6 training sessions. As a program we have gained a few athletes which is always good to see, but can make training a little more hectic, it'll be interesting to see what happens when we loose our head coach in april when his service as a Peace Corps volunteer ends. If our local coaches show up to training I shouldn't feel too overwhelmed by trying to give enough attention to our 10-20 athletes depending on the week, but when its just me it gets harder to see all those little things at one time.
The rest of life and work continues to chug along with some more successful days then others, my two little boys continue to get smart and smarter, but sometime revert to old negative attitudes, and the sports program continues to progress ever slowly forward.
I did get to take a vacation, which due to friends in different places landed me in London. It was nice to have the things a big city offers again; museums, shopping, restaurants, pretty buildings, subway systems, and the list goes on, but I will say everyone was in too much of a hurry and seemed rather rude to me. It definitely made me think about what kind of life I really want to live and the odd priorities and sense of living people in the western world have. But boy are bagels, sushi, real coffee, strawberries, raspberries, fancy cheese, and museums nice to have.
I guess I have the next year and two months to figure which life I prefer, as for now I have wash to do, water to carry and maybe so homemade pizza to make.
