Its been awhile since I've last posted, so there is a lot to inform people of. Some ridiculously fun, some frustrating, and other really rewarding.
As some of you know there has been a teachers and civil servant strike in St. Lucia, it ended friday but lasted two weeks. There is about a month left of school with only about a week and a half till exams start. There were really mixed feelings about the strike from St. Lucians including the teachers because the kids have national exams and they are missing critical preparation time, but there was also the principal of workers right and getting what people felt they deserved. For me personally it was frustrating because I was just getting started on some projects at the school and this slowed things considerably for me. Hopefully in the next month I can get to a point with my counterparts that things will be in place enough for me to do a few things over the summer and have things running by the beginning of next school year.
The plus side of the strike is that I had more time to catch up on things that were being neglected and to spend with neighborhood kids. I made cookies with about 7 kids in my community ranging in ages from 5-12, and it was really a great experience. We all just got to be silly, and I think it was a new experience for most of the kids. Of course they asked if we could do it every week, and other kids heard about it and wanted to be invited next time.
A few days later I went for a walk in the community with five 12 year old girls, it was sort of a safe time for the girls to talk about anything both with themselves and with me, which makes me so happy that they are comfortable enough to open up to me. I'm think of starting a girls group to talk about important issues and give them something fun to do.
The kids really make my life so much more enjoyable, there are a lot of frustrations of working with grown ups here, and sometimes I come home completely defeated and drained, but then one of my kids comes over to say hi and say the sweetest thing and life is good. For example when I was reading to a five year old, she turns to me and asks if I'm going to come back after I go back to where I came from. After I explain that I won't come back to live here again she says Miss when you leave all the children in the Valley, no all of St. Lucia will be very sad and miss you. Another child told me that my pastel belonged in a museum, and a child I work on learning to read asked me if I could work with him everyday. I already feel like I'm making a big difference for the kids that I get to work with, its incredible to think about.
I also have now been to all 3 fish frys on the island, really they are just big street parties by the beach, if you go earlier in the night they are more food focused, but by the later hours when all the locals go its just a party. There are a lot of fun, some more so than others because they are more dancing orientated, the music and dancing is different from home, but I think I'm learning.
This past weekend I decided to go turtle watching with some of the Japanese volunteers and other peace corps. Of course I decided to go about 45 mins before we needed to meet the group, it just wouldn't be any fun if there was planning involved. The beach that we went to is really isolated and completely off road, I think we even drove through a creek. First a little background on the leatherback turtles, they average about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide with flippers span about 6 feet, they have been around since the Cretaceous period about 110 million years ago, are the fastest reptiles (in water not on land), and can dive to greater depths than other reptiles. Sadly they are a critically endangered species, which means the are close to extinction in the wild, part of this is due to predators that eat baby turtles, and part of it is that people steal the eggs for different reasons throughout the world, and that they eat trash in the ocean because they think its food, this causes them to choke and die. The leather back turtles come onto the beach in the middle of the night to lay their eggs, so you just have to walk to beach back and forth until you see one. Fortunate for us a turtle came on the beach before 11 so we didn't have to wait all night. The turtle then uses its back flippers to dig a hole about 2-3 feet deep to lay the eggs in. The eggs are about the size of billiard balls and she lays close to 100 of them. After the eggs are laid she tries to cover them and begins her slow journey back to the ocean. Its really an incredible thing to see, especially when you think about how long the animal has been around and that it may be something in 50 years nobody will be able to see anymore.
The pictures are of the leatherback and honey harvesting.
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