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.”