Christmas in Dominica!

Where to begin... festivities began for me with an annual tradition of slaughtering a pig. My friends spent the Monday before Christmas searching the island for a pig for their tradition. (Not hunting but finding a place or person to buy it from). The following day at 5am I was awoken and pulled out of bed to join the event. There was a large fire blazing already. I went to the back yard to get the pig with a friend. The 200lb pig lay sleeping in the bushes. After awhile my friend got the pig up the hill and near the fire. The slaughtering itself was quick and quiet (a knife is stuck into the pig's heart)-it didn't squeal at all. From that they poured boiling water over the pig and shaved the black hair off entirely. Then it was cut open, cleaned and the meat was divided and given to friends and family members.

Christmas eve was a busy day in the city. The buses run non-stop, and for my village that is unheard of. It is an hour and a half drive and he usually makes one trip and stays for the day. The buses were consistently packed while people came down to finish their shopping. I went down to see the activity but was back home by the afternoon because it was just TOO TOO busy. The rest of the day was spent at my friend's house visiting with family that came in from neighboring islands. The night was full of eating and drinking. Carols are done... Caribbean style. Using a harmonica and a bamboo with ridges Dominicans sing their original Christmas carols.

Christmas day began with friends stopping by the house to exchange Christmas greetings. Gift exchanges is not common. Small gifts may be given between friends and some children get toys. I was able to ''Skype" home to see our traditional gift-opening morning but was beckoned back to my friend's house for lunch. The woman served a pumpkin, beef, potato and spices soup. It was fantastic, simple but able to to make in a big pot to feed the large numbers of visitors for the day! It is such a wonderful feeling of hospitality and enjoyment just relaxing and visiting. It was good to see because Dominicans work so hard all the time I think that is why I enjoyed the togetherness.

Christmas time is here...

My (Charlie Brown) Christmas tree. It is making a wonderful addition to my home. The kids think it is sooooo beautiful.

Note the Dominican fabric as the tree skirt!

Creole Music Festival

Every November around Independence time the island has Creole Music Festival. It is a weekend, 3 full nights of concerts. Bands and artists come in from all over the Caribbean and perform at the new Windsor Park stadium. The tickets were very expensive; you could by night by night or season tickets for all 3 nights. Outside the park is vendors of BBQ chicken, fries, cheeseburgers(!), bakes, juice, beer, and rum. The event started at 10pm each night and bands perform until the sun comes up. I attended Saturday night and left the park about 5am. Things seem to completely end at 7am. After Sunday nights concert folks left the stadium at 7am and headed straight to work. Tough people!

The week leading up to the event was 4 days (Mon-Thurs) of "Creole in the park". This was an afternoon/evening event in the Botanical Gardens. Vendors outlined the park and a stage made entertainment from local school dances to famous Caribbean bands.

Rosalie Hike

There is about a 2 mile trail just below my home leading to a beautiful beach and river. For the first time I made the hike! It took about 1hr and 15mins. The track was not bad just muddy from the rain, it is so wooded that apparently it is rarely a dry path.

BAMBOO!

This span will soon be a car-traveling road. The people have been asking for it for over 20 years now and finally it is in progress. It will be extremely beneficial and connect the village I live in to its neighboring village. As of right now if you want to drive to Rosalie you must drive about 1/2hour out of your way on the only road available. Here you can see the beginning of the project; it is estimated to take one year.

Independence celebration

The island of Dominica celebrates its Independence on November 3. The entire month consists of cultural events such as dancing, parades and music festivals. I was lucky enough to join my village during their weekend of semi finals in the dance competition. For three nights they traveled to different venues on the island to perform a variety of cultural dances. Each night was about 5 hours of dancing from high school age to adult age groups.

(Above) View from top of Cabrits national park (Below) Near entrance to dancing venue; This was the host of the third and final night of the semi final dance competition

Youth Beach CleanUp

The Found Bleau bay

Cleaning up branches, coconuts and trash to keep the bay nicer for swimming and liming

Burning our collected items.

Tropical storms are MESSY!

Where to start...
Yesterday I tried to go to town and waited at the bus stop for about an hour waiting for the weather to clear; heavy winds and rain. The bus driver called me to let me know he was not going, authorities advised to stay in and watch the weather. That night I experienced the worst storm ever. The sound of rain alone, woke me. A couple hours of lightning lighting up my house and thunder so loud it sounded like it was splitting my house in two. At some point I didn't know if it was the sound of thunder or lightning striking.


We attempted to go through but the water was rising quickly so we back tracked and parked in the ''junction'' of Castle Bruce with several other buses. After an hour or so of waiting we tried to go home, again. We got past one bridge and had one more to pass but it still was way to deep. (And now the rain started to fall again). Another half hour and we were all anxious to reach home. Two gentlemen, not from our bus, walked us through the river, basically. They walked just ahead of the bus to show how deep the water was. At one point it reached a man's waist. The bus driver continued slowly as a passenger got off terrified of driving through the deep waters. Slowly but surely we were driving through a ''river''. Water came in the bus a few inches, not reaching passengers because it is a large coaster bus so it stayed by the stairs of the door.


We made it! After 3 hours on the bus I had gone 6 miles from home and 6 miles back to reach home. There were other small landslides and a fallen tree taking down a power line.
I'll say it again... storms are messy!

Youth Day at Rosalie River

A fellow PCV and myself took a group of 15 youth to the Rosalie river to spend the day. We cooked a pot of lentils and dumplings as well as titiwi bakes. (Titiwi is a very tiny tiny fish which we put with flour and water, formed into patties and fried). While the food cooked we all swam in the river and at the end of the day a couple of us took a walk to the beach to see the sea.

First hand look at the factory

Here is my tour of the bay oil factory and the process of turning bay leaves into bay oil!

Tending to the fire... this sits below the factory where the bay leaves are placed. Inside the big "oven" is the fire at the bottom, then a basin of water topped with about 15-19 bundles of bay leaves. The oven is completely shut off creating pressure to extract the oil from the leaves. This evaporates into the top of the oven traveling through a pipe into the basin of water, pictured below.

Here is the water where coils are; here the evaporated oil comes down and passes through turning into oil upon hitting the water. The pipe on the left is cold water coming from a natural spring, it rests on the bamboo which keeps it from going into the basin. This is so there is no cold water in the basin, over time the water has been heated from the oil passing through the coils.

This tube comes from the water basin and is used to fill the oven of water every 2-3 hours. At the time it is filled the oil stops producing for a short while until the pressure inside the oven builds up again.

This pipe sits below the water basin (what you see behind it). Here both water and oil are coming out of the pipe. Once it hits this final stage the oil and water separate, the oil floats on the water and the water passes through the opening in the bottom of this canister leaving, in the end bay oil!

After the oil has been processed it is sold to an individual in the city who further exports it to places such as New York, England and other countries outside the Caribbean.

Arts and Crafts Day

Since no summer school happened for the kids this year I am taking some days in August to give them some fun activities as well as stimulate their young minds. Today was the first day and it was very successful, I had about 20 children from ages 3 - 10 show up. I also had aid from three youth girls. We spent the morning coloring, connect the dots, made tambourines, had snack and made crowns out of paper plates.

Final product of our crowns

Summer art camp 2009!

Summer '09 Activities

My current activities and on-going projects are:

1. Creation of Petite Soufriere Drama Club
It is in its it initial stages still. After a few meetings we have established our members and have selected a cast for our first skit. At the next meeting we will continue to collect money from members for our group fee as well as officially registering our group.
We are also planning a "Bel Marche" (Beautiful walk) which is a hike of some sort to a beach, waterfall or Dominican hot spot.

2. Children's Summer Day Camp
This is still in preparation stage and will take place the next three Tuesdays of August. I am opening up our village's primary school to host the camp. It is aimed at reading, arts and crafts for elementary children. We will spend the morning being creative with paper plates, coloring, puzzles and even clay (a homemade recipe) and having youth read to the younger children.

3. Leadership training: Empowering Women
This is on my own at the moment and I am finding and organizing resources to put on a training for the young women in my community. I wanted to have it before summer comes to an end however I feel that would be too rushed and effect the quality of the workshop. I hope to have it over Christmas break or after the new year. It focuses on a variety of topics such as self-esteem/body image, HIV awareness, violence against women, human rights and topics to give the women a full range of information to feel powerful.

A Tourist for the weekend

This weekend in Dominica had many people excited, it was another "holiday" coming up. Sunday was the first time an international team would come into Dominica's cricket stadium. The games were played on Sunday and Tuesday; West Indies vs. Bangladesh. The volunteers and I took the opportunity to learn more about the game of cricket and spend some time together to reconnect. Saturday most of us took the opportunity to go whale watching. Unfortunately we did not see any whales! However the number of dolphins we witnessed was amazing. It is like a playground for them out in the water and as soon as the boat was near them they swam right along with us. We turned around several times to "play" with them. The views of the island were spectacular and we got to see the entire west coast on our 3 hours on the water.

The Cricket match was a great experience, interacting with the locals and learning more about the game. We took the "grounds" tickets in which we were on the lawn giving us the chance to wander and mingle. There was a band made up of about 5 men playing the drums and 'trumpet' (a bike horn hooked to PVC piping). The volunteers took their turns blowing the horn, banging on the drums or just dancing.

See it Live

Rain storm at my home

Solid Day

Today has been quite a fun and successful day. I spent the morning cleaning my home preparing for an afternoon party for the young children in my village. Note: I bought a thermometer and the temperature at 8am was 94degrees. My landlord's niece visited me a few times to look at the decorations and check out what I was baking. Mid-morning I walked up the road with her to buy some chicken for her "auntie". It's always a good feeling when I make it out of my house and up the road (meaning, walking up at least half of the mountain-therefore seeing other community members).

Returning home I frosted and cut the cakes, made the FlavorAid punch and mini PB& J's. From there I was hanging balloons and setting up the craft table. Here I set coloring books, crayons, markers and paper, glitter pens, magazines, string, glue sticks, ruler, pens and pencils.
At 1/2 past 1pm I had my first party guest; my host brother. About the same time came a friend bringing along his 2 year old son. He got the music going and the majority of the children arrived at 1:45. They were such polite guests, they grabbed plates and cups and asked for snacks, cake and punch. After eating they were content coloring, playing dominoes and running around. At a few points of time I had atleast three children tapping me on different sides, "Julie, can I have some water?", "Miss, can I use the toilet", "Some cake please?"....
I had three helpers, a "DJ" and two high school girls tending to the craft table. At the end of the two hours there was very little to clean up, the girls took care of markers and things and all of the food was gone, not a single crumb left. I immediately mopped the floor because there were at least three spills to my memory. Besides the pile of dishes in the sink, which I will get to later my house is already back to it's tidiness.

A CRAB! Really?

I was in my bathroom yesterday and heard a clicking sound. First I ignored it assuming it was something outside the window. But once it continued I quickly noticed two little pinchers trying to claw their way up my shower drain! Ugh. My friend took off the drain to try and get it out but it went back down eventually. I think I am safe now.

Kindergarten Field trip

Scott's Head is at the southern point of the island where the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. This picture is showing the Caribbean Sea and it is very calm, as you can see.

Behind me is the Atlantic Ocean
The village of Scott's Head, from the division between the waters

View from the village of Gallion. A point of interest as a lookout. Some days you can see Martinique, but not at this particular time. It would be to the left as well (south)

Track practice

After doing a warm up and a few drills on the field Maria and I took the team to the beach to do sprints. The boys, as well as us coaches seemed to enjoy the practice much more. Practice on the beach is nice and cool, as cook as it can be here. Between drills the boys soaked their feet in the water and kicked around a football (aka soccer ball). They also took their turns trying to get the coaches into the sea, fortunate for us, they were unsuccessful.

During a break the boys had fun in doing flips with the lightest of the pack. However, as you can see, the flips did not happen... but they sure threw him high.