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