Eight months in St. Kitts and I finally feel adjusted

Picture descriptions (click on the picture to make them larger):
1. My friend Kysa and I baking vegan cookies
2. Grade 5: Team Extreme!
3. A centipede!!
4. Some of my students came over and helped me cook a happy anniversary dinner for my neighbors!
5. Nitin, my neighbor's son
6. RIcky and Venita, the beloved neighbors. presumably cooking dinner for me, which they regularly do
7. When the kids are bad i store them in my cabinets. i learned that from my dad. (just kidding) ((maybe))
8. Shaggy!
9. Shaggy and Alice, transporting him to my house
10. Me and Rya! she came for a short impromptu visit
11. Going for a hike. That's my friend Eddie running uphill. what an overachiever..
12. More cooking
13. I went to Nevis and met two amazing Nevitian men!


Time is flying!!!! I can't believe I've already been here for eight months. In one month I am visiting home and I am so excited. I've missed my friends and family so much, and I can't wait to see everyone for Jeremy's wedding. At this point, I'm so in limbo that I dont know where I will feel most at home: St. Kitts or New York? I know absence makes the heart fonder and I've spent a lot of time romanticizing New York. I miss the restaurants, population diversity, commodities, and passive consumerism that was so readily available in New York. I wish I had a CVS right in front of my house and a movie theater around the corner. I'd like to get on a bus and not receive whistles or stares. But how will i fare with the fast paced, crowded-isolation paradox that also comes with my favorite city? will I feel lonely without my neighbors and community that I see outside everyday?

One of the Peace Corps directors who served a while ago said that the second she walked into the grocery store she turned right around and walked out because she was so overwhelmed. Just thinking of getting gridlocked in the many aisles of the grocery stores in Dallas makes me break out into cold sweats. I havent even been able to afford cereal since I got here. A box of cereal costs around 22 EC$ which is roughly 8-9 US$. I can't wait for $4 felafel!!

Something very exciting has recently happened to me that's made my home-life much more enjoyable. I HAVE A DOG!!!! His name is Shaggy and he is actually my friend Alice's dog, but she's always at work and feels he doesnt get enough attention, and she also knows how lonely I get, so she's letting me have him while I'm in St. Kitts. His picture is above..the one with the dog in it. He is the most amazing dog (aside from the late, great Fuzzy). He keeps me active and slightly safer, even though he doesnt really bark when people walk up to my house. But he his bark scares off wild pigs and cows who occasionally loiter in front of my house and mess up my neighbor's garden. He's really docile and friendly and doesn't really ask much of me. A terrific, ideal roommate, really. It's going to be painful to leave him behind when I go home, but I'm grateful to have him while I'm here.

Lately I have been finding a lot more centipedes around the outside and sometimes inside of my house, and I live in constant, unrelenting fear of the venomous little monsters. The fear has even infiltrated my REM cycles and several times I have woken up from a nightmare, like being trapped in a dark closet with a giant centipede, and I'll get out of bed and shake out all my sheets, as well as Shaggy. He probably thinks I'm a crazy woman, but he has long fur and is the perfect vessel for harboring centipedes. You can really never be too careful. So far I found one large one on my living room floor and yesterday a baby was crawling on my couch. I get sick, sadistic pleasure out of giving them a slow and painful death. The local insecticide spray here is called Bop, which has evolved into a verb (bop that centipede!) I've put a picture of a centipede on the blog so that you all can complacently see from the comfort of your non-tropical locations what I live to avoid..

In terms of work, I am finally feeling satisfied. I've been stressing out since I got here because I am plagued with an American Protestant work ethic (idle hands make for the devil's work!) I don't want to live a forgettable existence here and just sit around all day being unproductive, however within the realm of development, it is imperative to understand the community, and most importantly, the needs of that community, before you try to create anything. I naively thought I could just come here, get to know everyone in about a month, start a project, and soon making some changes. Oh, the idealism of a post-college sociology major! I just now barely feel assimilated. I think I know what the community needs at this point? All I can say with absolute certainty is that i am making progress.

The after school program is going quite well. I have met every students' parents, however I dont know how to galvanize them into a sustainable body of adults that will work to keep this program going. I'm still not even sure what the focal point of the after-school program is. This week I'm giving each grade a presentation on the Holocaust. Not one student so far has ever heard of the Holocaust. My friend Alice (the one who is letting me have Shaggy) works at Ottley's Plantation which is a fancy hotel in my village and she put me in contact with the woman who owns the hotel with her husband. She has relatives who were survivors of the Holocaust and has agreed to let me bring each grade to the Plantation for a tour, snack, and discussion on the Holocaust as well as genocide itself. The date is set for May 5-6 and I am very excited. I will post pictures!

Because I am feeling lost and confused with the status and future of the After school program, I decided to search for a secondary project to ensure some sustainability with my service here. A few weeks ago I decided to branch out and investigate Project Viola, which is a program aimed at helping teenage mother supplement their high school education with mothering and child development education. I wanted to find out if there's something similar for teenage fathers, because I think only offering those classes to girls only perpetuates the almost forced matriarchal family structure that often leads to young single mothers with a brood of children and absent fathers who consider child support checks to be competent parenting.

I soon found out that no, there is no Project Viola equivalent for teenage fathers.

At the Gender Affairs office I met a man named Charles Thomas who works as a sort of truency officer (that title sounds very authoritatian and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", but he's really very nice and caring about his students) for the high school, Cayon High, that is one village over from mine. Cayon High school take students from all over my side of the island. There are only about 5 high schools on the entire island. I suggested to him that we work together to establish a program for the at-risk students whom he works with, which could somehow incorporate a tangential program for teenage fathers. He is very enthusiastic about the project and we have been working on creating a community launch that will gain awareness amongst the communities. We are meeting with local corporations and businesses to ask for start-up funds, and I am going to begin writing a grant so we can have a substantial amount of money to work with. We are at the very beginning of a long and inevitably frustrating journey, but I'm glad I have enough time to help gain momentum for this worthy program so that when I leave I can rest assure that it is sustainable and successful in helping the youth of St. Kitts.

As far as the Man and the Biosphere goes, the process is going to be slow, painful, and lengthy, so they have hired an American ex-patriat who is living in Nevis to work on the project. I am still very interested in it's progress and have a meeting on Thursday to hear about updates for the past few weeks. I'll let you all know the developments when they happen!


Much love to everyone

In case you havent seen this precious little gem, enjoy..