Week 13

The Peace Corps’ three goals are: Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women, Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served*, Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

I have one additional, personal goal: fame. My aspiration is that any white person who enters my village will be asked if he/she knows me and then directed to my home. This week I surpassed my goal.

I was already well on my way; whenever Peace Corps volunteers come to visit people stop them and ask them if they are going to see Miss Air-een and a couple weeks ago I watched a group of Grade 6 boys stop a European couple hiking up the road to inquire if they knew Miss Air-een. The couple, obviously befuddled, tried to ask who Miss Air-een is which ended in complete confusion.

My omnipresence reached a high this week though. I ran into a 7-year-old boy, one of my closest friends here, with his grandmother one afternoon and she started telling me about how Shael is “not easy”**. When his grandmother took him to the capital city that morning, where all the cruise ships dock, Shael stopped white people at the bank, at the cell phone store, on the street and in the grocery store to ask people if they are friends with Miss Air-een. One of the people was in fact a Peace Corps. Hopefully this provided the right amount of positive feedback for Shael to approach every white person anywhere to ask if he/she is my friend.

On Wednesday I was asked to deliver the “thank you remarks” for our Media Launch and to be interviewed about my thoughts on Salisbury’s 2011 Reunion. Dominica is rather formal in regard to public speaking; every person of rank, title or distinction needs to be acknowledged at the beginning of each speech. My thank you remarks paled in comparison to the list of people I had to acknowledge for being present. Both segments were aired on the news stations here and all around the island people have stopped me to tell me they saw me on the news.

I’ve been helping at the “Jams” my organization puts on for the last two weekends. As the bar is much too scary for me, it involves a lot of marriage proposals, some screaming and an uncertainty for alcohol serving laws in Dominica, I tend to stay in the food area. I’ve taken to frying bakes, a small fried bread that is absolutely delicious. I have two mentors that have taught me well how to pull and fry a bake. This weekend my counterpart came to tell my mentors and me that while riding on the bus He overheard a long conversation about how the white girl can really fry a bake and then a discussion on my approach and form complete with miming how I pull a bake.

Hopefully when you come to visit you’ll be asked if you know Miss Air-een before you even land in Dominica.

For true,

Erin

*This blog is my goal two.

** I’m still not exactly sure what “not easy” means.