For all of you who haven't been watching the news, Hurricane Earl has just finished ripping through the northern Leeward Islands, which, of course, includes St. Kitts. Due to this, we were not able to leave today as planned. Both my group and the Antigua group had to stay behind and see off the St. Vincent crew leave early this morning. It was definitely bittersweet to see off a group of people who I've spent hours and hours each day with since last Monday in Miami. I wish them well on their projects and can't wait to hear updates from them about how they're getting along in their communities.
After they all left, the 17 of us who couldn't fly out went on a little field trip to the south of the island to the community of LaBorie. It was great to see a more realistic-sized town that I will be living in. We met a current PCV who worked with an NGO, and one of her projects was developing some tourism activities in the area. They had a small community center with some native artifacts that I took great interest in. Then we had a walking tour guide given to us by local from the community. It was incredibly hot and sunny, but absolutely beautiful walking down small roads and along the beaches among the fishermen weaving their fishing traps out of bamboo strips. There was also a very quaint church built in the late 1700s that I really enjoyed walking through. There was also a very long beach with a man-made reef structure built just about 15 feet from the water's edge to protect a childrens' swimming area. It was just incredibly tempting to just take off my shirt and shorts and go for a swim, especially when the kids started asking us to. Another incredible sight was being able to see the island of St. Vincent from the beach, and I think it all made us think of our friends who were on the island getting settled in with their host families. We all waved, but I don't think they saw anything.
I was pretty speechless for the duration of the trip. My mind kept wandering. I was mostly anxious and have felt ready to move on for the next step in this process. I have to keep telling myself that I've waited over a year for this moment, so what's another day? I also kept telling myself how lucky I am to be in this part of the world by myself with no worries except, of course, the ones that will greet me at my job. But at least I will finally feel like I'll be making some kind of difference again, no matter how minute that might turn out to be in the beginning.
Also, my camera battery died, and without a charger there won't be too many pictures posted here for a little bit. That is definitely priority #1 over the next several weeks.
Awesome Art, I think you will do great, and that's neat you got to see the small villages as a preview. Interesting PCV enhances tourism, of course that helps the economy, we saw that sort of situation in the small villages of Peru.
ReplyDeleteAnd let us know if you do end up going skinny-dipping and that would be your first adventure! :)