Week 44

As the year comes to a close (I only have one more blog post before I head home for the holidays) I thought I would share with you what was hot and what was not in Dominica during 2011 (this is also fulfilling a long time fantasy of mine to write a hot/not list.)

I In Dat Fancy denim rompers	Doe Call My Name Wearing a wet bathing suit under your clothes
Facebook privacy by using names like “Erin ‘Yoboyfrindalwayswatchinaftermyboomboom’ Skis”	Ironic engagement photos where both people look like they may cry
	Not ironing
KES the band	The Band
Church	Being “spiritual, but not religious”
Waking at 5 am to cook and clean	Waiting until after 9 am to call people
Step-ups (Ginger Wine and Rum)	Considering beer a booze drink
Matching your shoes, earrings, bracelets and eye makeup	Lota (read more about lota)
DeMarco’s “I love my life” (the song)	Erin playing country music
KFC	Girls trying to lift things

More importantly the Hands Across the Sea shipment came in! It is incredible! We’re creating an art program using the supplies and have started categorizing the books so

they are all ready for the kids to check them out of the library next term. The most exciting part (from my perspective) is that we are doing a class book project- each class will be using the craft supplies to make their own book. I think Grade 5 is doing a “Magic School Bus” book!

Thanks to everyone who donated! You are making a wonderful impact on Salisbury children’s lives!

No dictionary entry this week. Tune back next week for body parts.

Gangsta Robba Week

Gangsta Robba on the bus with his Hennesey and champagne glass. Sorry its so blurry.

Saturday night at minutes to midnight I was riding in a coaster (a big bus) with Gangster Robber (my long time enemy turned acquaintance) and his friend/my ex- suitor Kwai Kwai as they drank Hennessey out of stolen champagne glasses and yelled out the windows at American Medical students asking if they were lesbians or if they understood the jibberish Chinese these men were screaming at them.

This was real life.

In April, just after moving into my own apartment, I was walking home one evening when a man yelled at me from in front of a snackette across from my home to come over and talk to him. I approached hesitantly as he seemed drunk. When I got there he started berating me about not treating him with enough respect and how I need to come when he calls me. I felt as though this was overstepping some boundaries so I bid him adieu. As I walked away he screamed after me “you need to respect me! I’m Gangsta Robba, watch out I’m Gansta Robba!”

I ran home, locked all of my doors and turned all of the lights on as I hid peering out the window to make sure he didn’t come to my house to attack me.

I went to help in the Reunion Bar that night and tried to find out if he was someone I should worry about. My description of a drunk man with big sunglasses and locks (dreads) did not serve well in identifying him as it could be a plethora of drunk men with locks and big sunglasses. One of my friends walked me home around 9 pm and again I double locked all my doors and prepared for bed. When I looked up at the snackette he was still sitting outside drinking. Alarmed, and afraid of dying, I called our Dominican director who was unfortunately out of town. After a long internal debate I decided to call the security officer in St. Lucia who I get along well with in hopes that she could shed some light on the situation. When I rang her phone our Country Director (who is in charge of the entire Eastern Caribbean) answered the phone as she too was out of state. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I just wanted someone to tell me that no one would kill me so I muttered something and hung up. (A month later I found out that earlier that same night the Country Director had told the older class at their mid-service training that people should not call him late at night to ask about non-essential questions, hopefully he thought it was a well timed joke.)

The next three nights I slept with all my lights on and tried to tactfully inquire about this man, fearing that he was someone’s son or brother.

Eventually I learned that he was my neighbor and while a little crazy quite harmless.

On Saturday night I couldn’t get over that 7 months later Gangsta Robba and I had sat together at a wedding and he was now offering me Hennesey out of stolen champagne glasses. Until Kwai Kwai decided that it was a fun game to throw everything glass out the window of the moving bus and then Gangsta Robba went to sleep. Integration.

Ma Clem dressed up for the wedding.

Dominican phrase book: “Don’t call my name” I broke the cardinal rule in this post by calling Gangsta Robba’s name in this blog. Hopefully he doesn’t spend a lot of time on the interwebs. Calling someone’s name means saying his/her name, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, whether the person is present or not. Calling someone’s name is always a bad thing.

Ex.

Vexed woman: “She called my name in the meeting saying that I organizing snacks. I’m not in it anymore. She’s always calling my name and we don’t even deal.”

Erin: “But vexed woman, I thought you were making snacks? I’m sure other lady whose name I won’t call didn’t mean anything by it. Everyone is happy you fixing snacks.”

Vexed woman: “But I’m not in it. She needs to know not to call my name. She always calling names. I’m not in it anymore.”

Jungle Week

This is where I spent the week.

Dominica has made me certain that I have a fairy godmother.

I’m spending the week at the Waitukubuli Entrepreneurs Leve (WEL) Emerging Entrepreneur Retreat at Jungle Bay Resort and Spa. I got pulled into working with WEL by one of the older PCVs as the program is national and not directly affiliated with Salisbury. The program was the brainchild of the owner of Jungle Bay, Sam Raphael and a previous PCV who was assigned to the community Jungle Bay is in. The organization works to encourage entrepreneurship in Dominica by training young entrepreneurs in both hard skills (cash flow, sales and marketing, cost calculation, etc.) and soft skills (personal motivation, efficiency of time, leadership, etc.) during a one-week retreat and quarterly “re-connects” focused on participant requests. All of the presenters and speakers donate their time to the retreat. Sam spends all day with the participants teaching and coaching them.

It is an absolutely incredible project. Today is the last full day of the week long retreat; tomorrow we have an incredible speaker coming from St. Lucia to address this year’s graduates. The participants are incredibly diverse ranging from a grandmother to 18 year olds, participants who have studied business administration overseas or only have a primary school education, entrepreneurs who want to screw and nail manufacturing companies and those who want to develop their custom cake decorating businesses. Each and every one of them have blossomed during the retreat. They talk about their businesses during breakfast, while relaxing at night and on the daily morning hikes we take. They explain business concepts to each other and discuss collaborations. They love the human knot game.

The retreat has been a week of seeing the absolute best side of Dominica. Jungle Bay is the most beautiful place I have ever stayed. It is located right on the Atlantic coast in a jungle. The entire resort was built using local, natural resources. I’m staying in a cottage with an outdoor shower in the jungle and a porch with a hammock overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Beyond the physical beauty of the resort its existence is inspiring to the entrepreneurs. Jungle Bay is built on what was considered unusable land. The idea of an upscale eco-tourism resort was unheard of. Jungle Bay is now easily one of the most successful businesses on island.

It seems that Jungle Bay inspires everyone to be at his or her best. The participants have told me repeatedly that one of the best aspects is having incredibly successful and busy entrepreneurs and business people come and spend time talking to them. Reversely the people coming to speak love working with the entrepreneurs. There have been a number of speakers who hung around the rest of the day hoping to have a chance to answer more questions and spend more time with the emerging entrepreneurs.

Dominican Phrase Book: “If I plant you, will you grow?” When Nicole and Aaron were here we taught my friend “nose goes”, the “game” in which after someone says something that needs to be done, ex. going to Ma Clem’s shop to buy ice, everyone touches his/her nose and the last person to touch his/her nose must go to buy the ice. “If I plant you, will you grow?” is the Dominican version.

Erin is relaxing on the couch. From the kitchen:

Erin’s man friend: “If I plant you, will you grow?”

Erin: “Sure babes. The soil in Dominica is quite fertile.”

Erin’s man friend: “Watch in my wallet for coins for soap.”

Erin: “What?”

Erin’s man friend: “You said you’d grow babes. That means I need you to do a message for me.”

**A “message” is any kind of errand. Buying rum can be a message.

Erin: “That doesn’t even make sense. Is this payback for nose goes.”

Erin’s man friend: “Yes babes.”

“If I plant you, will you grow?” I really want someone to mail me a new pair of sandals. I’ve burst three pairs of sandals in the past two weeks.

My Plenty Long Post

Dominica doesn’t have daylight savings time. From April until October we’re in the same time zone as the East Coast and the rest of the year we’re an hour ahead. This morning I was calling the States and I realized “fall back” happened. It explains a lot of confusion in my life this past week but more importantly made me realize that I still thought it was September. The past two months disappeared.

Highlights:

· The Bills are a real team this year!

· The Sanquezes (Nicole and Aaron) came for an incredible visit to Dominica! We hiked to boiling lake, which is the hardest hike in the Caribbean (I’m not sure how much that is saying though as one generally does not think of the Caribbean as a hiking destination), swam under beautiful waterfalls, snorkeled amongst volcanic underwater geysers, almost died when I led us down a mud covered cliff into a ravine with only hand ropes to climb on (at about an 80 degree incline), ran a Creole game show, went to a Caribbean music fest and ate a ton of delicious food. Ma Clem was so upset when she found out I had not cooked them any real “food” that she prepared a meal for their final night that was easily 50,000 calories. We ate sancoche (a spicy fish stew with coconut milk), breadfruit, yams, green fig, fried fish, steamed vegetables and avocado salad.

I didn’t want to believe that I am a stereotypical PCV who would fall apart when visitors left but I absolutely am. Having them visit was so amazing and I forgot how easy it is to hang out with them in complete comfort. When they left I spent at least three days crying about everything. I cried one night when someone didn’t laugh at my joke.

· While the Sanquezes were visiting I ran a Creole Day celebration at my school. My school hasn’t done a celebration for the past few years so I channeled my Cradle Beach Camp energy and planned a Creole game show. The show, “Sa ou sav, sa ou pa konnet” (What you know, what you don’t know) was incredibly fun and incredibly long. There was a question and answer section, a flag drawing competition, a Creole poetry competition and a singing competition. I had invited Grades 4- 6 to perform as “special guest performers” but I was not prepared for the outcome. Every grade wanted to perform and each class wanted to perform all 3 of the traditional dances and sometimes a song as well. The 1 hour activity I’d prepared quickly became a 3.5 hour recital.

Miss Jno Baptiste and I hosting Sa ou sav, sa ou pa konnet. I'm the white person.

My favorite part was the band. Three boys played music for all the classes to dance to. The band sounded awesome and comprised kids playing a metal cylinder, a chair (which was later replaced by a bucket) and a PVC pipe.

The Grade K girls dancing to the band on Creole Day.

· The following week was Independence Week. On November 3^rd Dominica celebrated its 33^rd year of Independence. I joined the primary school at the National Youth Rally. I was incredibly proud watching the students march across the field in traditional march. Every school across the island sends a group of 10 – 30 students to march across the stadium and salute the Prime Minister.

Salisbury students marching.

The day after was National Day of Community Service. About 50 children and adults came out to help clean up the community.

· Sunday was Eat Fish Day in a neighboring village. I had been asked to organize a Peace Corps booth to sell fish cooked in an American way. We decided on grilled mahi mahi tacos. Mahi mahi is called dolphin in Dominica. I love telling people that we were serving dolphin tacos. Using the interwebs and George (thanks!) as resources we prepared about 150 tacos made entirely from scratch!

They delivered 40 pounds of dolphin on Saturday afternoon and thank goodness Ma Clem’s grandson saw us staring at the huge garbage bag of frozen fish (heads, skin and cavier included) and offered assistance. We went to the back of Ma Clem’s house and cleaned the fish like Dominicans- right on the concrete ground. We were short on cutting boards so Ma Clem’s daughter found a piece of wood, complete with rusty nails, washed it off and bam! a cutting board. The whole fish got used- we used all the meaty parts to grill, the skin and fat got soaked in rat poison to kill the rats in the garden and Ma Clem made a yummy dish with the fish heads.

Tortillas are stupidly expensive here so we made our own. It took around four hours for the four of us to make 200 tortillas but they were delicious. We topped the tacos with a yummy chipotle lime coleslaw, guacamole and pico de gallo. The festival was a perfect Peace Corps experience- explaining fish tacos was an adventure but totally worth the 20 hours of prep time when people came back for seconds.

Our net profit was $4 EC.

I’m back to weekly posts! Check back next week for Erin’s adventures at a fancy resort.

Dominican Phrase Book: “Check your scene” in honor of Nicole who took this phrase home with her. “Check your scene” means do what you want and don’t worry with me.

Proper usage:

Erin: “Babes, do you want to go to Mero this afternoon with the Peace Corps?”

Erin’s man friend: “Check your scene babes.” (meaning “I’m not going”)

Erin: “I’ll check you when I get back.”

Week 40

I owe the interwebs a plenty long blog entry but until then (hopefully I'll write it on Friday) I'd like to share some great things I heard this week:

I'm working with a Peace Corps Volunteer from the 1960's who lives in Dominica and served in Liberia on a project. We had lunch the other day and he began a story, "The man was absolutely objectionable- to any culture at any time." The story was about a man in Africa with 3 wives who was terrible. He was so awful that his wives would beat him up monthly. They would get tired of his ways and beat him up as the village gathered around to cheer them on. He would spend the next few weeks quietly nursing his wounds and then begin to bother everyone again. After a week of being terrible his wives would get vexed and beat him and the cycle would begin again.

I had a 3 hour bus ride home (it should take 40 minutes) due to construction on Tuesday. The woman sitting behind me was making plenty of noise. The two best lines were, "I was well far when God was sharing patience" and in response to someone telling her to plan for having children (she has one son and said she wants more), "I have it well planned. One to clean the house, one to move America and send my boxes, one to drive a bus so I don't have to wait on Sam (the bus driver who could hear all of this) to learn to drive."

I'll share more soon- when God shares some motivation to write!