My Humble Abode

The Peace Corps tries to put us in a secure and comfortable, but not luxurious, house. Let me take you on a tour of my little cottage, which was built next door to my landlord's house. I took some pictures using a “fisheye” lens, which provides a wider angle, allowing you to see more of a room in the picture. I was so eager to use this lens that I didn't stop to clean house before snapping pictures—so please overlook my “less than pristine” housekeeping. First, before we go in the front door, I will share a picture showing my view of the Atlantic Ocean from my front porch.

The next picture shows the main room. You can see the camping hammock I purchased from Sears about 25 years ago which I brought with me. I don't have a couch or an armchair, but I get to hang out in a hammock on a tropical island. My hammock is connected diagonally to the built-in “burglar bars” on the windows. It isn't that we have much crime in my village—it is just that these protective bars are common in the Caribbean (and required by the Peace Corps).

The chair in the left corner holds the Internet router I got back in November. The other corner has a small two-shelf table. The round table in the center is where I work and eat (unless I'm sitting outside on my porch). My daughter sent me the Mountaineer flag, which provides a nice backdrop for videoconferencing. You can also see a small, green Dominican flag between the two doors leading to the bedrooms on the right side.

The picture below shows the spare bedroom, which I treat as a walk-in closet. There were a few hooks on the left side wall, but I tied a rope between the burglar bars in this room to let me hang up more clothes. The bed itself provides lots of storage room.

The next picture shows my room, with the mosquito net over the bed and a nice rug the landlord provided. I have a small dresser with a wooden cabinet placed on top of it on the right side. There are a few hooks on the left side wall, where I hang some jeans and the light windbreaker that I have never had to wear yet. If you look close below the hanging clothes, you can see the large fan at the foot of the bed which made summer nights bearable (because I tilted the camera to match the bed, the fan is actually at the bottom edge of this picture). I'm lucky that my landlord got me a fan with a remote control, so that as summer turned into winter, I could turn off the fan in the middle of the night without getting out of bed. It is very convenient.

The picture below shows my little bathroom. Look close and you can see the electric wiring that leads to the showerhead water heater. Also note that I strung a rope across the curved shower curtain rod so that I could hang stuff to dry (like the washcloth shown). The small window has horizontal louvers (which are closed) and vertical burglar bars on the inside.

The next picture shows my little kitchen. On the left side is the refrigerator, with a WVU basketball magnetic schedule on the freezer door and a loaf of bread on the top. When I moved in, there was a black trashbag over the stove top, so I have continued covering it when I'm not using it. If you look close, you might be able to see the blue gas bottle to the right of the stove (it has an empty pizza box on top of it, from the only pizza I have had down here—you must retain such “trash” because you never know when you might need a cardboard box for something). When your gas runs out (which can happen at any time without notice), you must detach the tank and carry it down to the store at the main road to get another one (assuming it is open so you can quickly resume cooking).

Also note that lower left quarter of the window above the sink is covered with black plastic. The tall, round, white tank in front of that plastic is my Peace Corps water filter apparatus. I fill the top part with water from our spring, and it drips through ceramic/charcoal filter into the lower chamber. There is a black spigot near the bottom (towards the sink) where I get my filtered water. I put up the black plastic on the window to block the direct sunlight, which was causing algae growth in my upper tank.

My cottage is not a large place, and the furnishings are rather spartan, but it works well for me. I especially enjoy my front porch, where I can see the ocean. To finish this story, here is a panoramic view from my front porch. I feel blessed to live here.

Bucket Laundry

Saturday morning is often laundry day for me. I start early in the morning so that the clothes have plenty of time to dry on the clotheslines of my front porch. This provides protections from any sudden tropical rains, but it also means that my clothes don't get the extra drying power from direct sunlight.

After moving into my cottage last September, I purchased two plastic buckets so I could do my own laundry. I didn't buy them at a store in the capital, which would have required transporting the bulky items on the long bus ride home. Instead, on Friday nights, there is a guy who drives up main street through our village selling various plastic items and other stuff from his van. This “department store on wheels” has a limited selection, but works out nice for purchases such as laundry buckets. I bought an orange one and a yellow one.

Part of our pre-service training on St. Lucia last summer was for our host families to teach us skills such as hand washing our clothes. My host mom there showed me how she does it. Everyone realizes the importance of scrubbing under the arms, but she encouraged me to also scrub the collar area and the inside seams. You don't just rub the soap against the fabric—you must grab different portions of the fabric and vigorously scrub them against each other.

I use this blue laundry soap that is popular down here. This picture shows a partial used bar sitting on top of its wrapper, with an unopened bar just below it.

After working in the first bucket (the soapy one), you wring out the water and then dip the clothing into the rinse bucket, going up and down several times. If necessary, the rinse water can be replaced with clean water depending on how soapy it gets. When thoroughly rinsed, the water is wrung out of the clothing so that it falls back into the washing bucket. Then, I lean over the edge of my porch and—as in the '80s Devo song—I “whip it, whip it good.”

Finally, I hang the item with clothes pins on the two clothes lines my landlord installed on my porch for drying my laundry. One lesson I learned “the hard way” was that it is important to take a rag and clean the dust off the lines prior to hanging up clean laundry.

Fortunately, my host family here has a washing machine at their house, so once a month I take my clothes down the road to their house for a “real washing.” My local host family takes good care of me, even after I moved into my own place.

I hope those of you back in the USA appreciate your automatic laundry machines after reading this story!

Zika!

Yes, there are mosquitoes here in Dominica—just as there are at home in West Virginia during the summer months. I don't think that there are more of them here, but for various reasons (nice weather, no television, etc.) I am outside a lot more down here, and thus I do get bit from time to time. So far they have not been that much of a bother to me, but there is a new concern that I'm sure has some of you worried about me—a rapidly spreading virus called “Zika.” Fortunately, it has not been detected on our island yet, but with many other Caribbean islands infected, it is probably just a matter of time before it shows up here, too.

The biggest problem with this virus is its links to brain deformities in babies whose mothers were infected during pregnancy. I will not be impacted by this, but I certainly hope nothing unfortunate happens to anyone in our village.

So none of you should worry yourself about my chances of getting Zika. From what I've learned, to most people its symptoms are not as bad as the Dengue and Chikungunya viruses spread by the same species of mosquito. Hopefully I will not get any of these three maladies.

The Peace Corps does try to keep us safe. We had training about this topic before arriving here. They also provide us with free access to insect repellants (some of mine are shown below). I don't always spray myself when going out, because I just don't like having the stuff on me. However, I have been trying to be more conscious about this problem, and have been at least taking the little bottle with me.

I am burning more mosquito coils when sitting on my ocean-view front porch. I realize that the smoke may be just as bad for me as spraying the chemicals on my skin, but there is just something more appealing to me about the mosquito coils—maybe it is because the pyromaniac inside me gets to play with matches.

Recently, an informational session was held down at the main road by the Ministry of Health. They came in a van with a bullhorn speaker in the back (shown above), gave a presentation, and took questions from the crowd. Below are the signs that were posted in the bus stop announcing this special meeting. The Ministry of Health is also running lots of announcements on the local radio stations about Zika.

Another way the Peace Corps tries to keep us safe is by providing us with mosquito nets. Below is a picture of my bed that I crawl into each night. [Yes, Mom, I realize that I didn't make my bed before taking this picture, but there is rarely a night down here when it is cold enough to even pull a sheet over top of me—plus it is more difficult to make your bed when you are dealing with a mosquito net.]

Finally, after letting you get a glimpse of my mosquito net, I thought it was worth sharing this special Valentine greeting on this holiday. Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Community Carnival

I feel so fortunate to have been assigned by the Peace Corps to this particular village on the beautiful island of Dominica! This is Carnival season, which is a big deal in the Caribbean. Carnival is similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans—a big celebration prior to Lent (although some islands have chosen to move the date of their Carnival celebrations to garner more tourists—see my story about Carnival on St. Lucia, which occurred while I was on that island during my Pre-Service Training).

Events kicked off a couple of weeks ago with a big parade in the capital, which I enjoyed attending (see my story here). Since then, there have been musical competitions, beauty pageants, and other festivities, all leading up to the big celebrations on Monday and Tuesday. There was no school on the first two days this week, plus Friday was a “fun day” rather than an academic day (see my story about Freaky Friday).

The biggest Carnival celebration was held Monday in the capital city. I've heard stories of the terrible traffic jams getting into Roseau, the difficulty in getting bus rides home afterward, and the recent news about some crime problems there (honestly, crime is not a big problem here on Dominica, especially when compared to other islands or the U.S.—I feel especially safe in my village). Plus, we are hoping that the influx of visitors from other infected islands does not result in the introduction of the Zika virus to our island, because so far we have avoided this new and growing problem.

I'm glad that I didn't have to make the long trip to Roseau to enjoy Carnival, thanks to the fact that some other Dominican cities also hold their own celebrations—including my own little village. It is an example of the strong community spirit that we are fortunate to have here in my village.

Our local Carnival celebrations started on Sunday afternoon with a rounders game with a visiting team from Guadeloupe (rounders is a bit like baseball, but played by women with a ball similar to a tennis ball and an over-sized ping pong paddle). The home team got beat by this traveling team, but it was still fun time down at the playing field, with the ocean and palm trees in the background. [The British tourists who I mentioned in the Freaky Friday story (linked above) happened to come back to swim at our beach, so I had a good time visiting with them again and showing them some more sights.]

I am not an expert on all the intricacies of the culture and traditions of Carnival, but I will try to describe what the past two days have been like for me. Sometimes it is easier not to question why things happen, but to just go along with the flow. It is just a given that Carnival is a big party time, and folks here celebrate it with reckless abandon.

I had been warned that Monday would start very early—at 4:00 AM. It is called J'ouvert (a contraction of the French term "jour ouvert," or dawn/day break.), and involves dancing in a street parade, often with some sort of costume. I had little to work with as far as costumes go, but I dressed in black and wore a long sleeve shirt tied around my head (peeking through the neck hole), with sunglasses (even though it was still a few hours before dawn). Despite my efforts, everyone knew who I was.

A short-sided dumptruck had been outfitted with a generator and music equipment (and a roof to protect it all from any rain). The speakers (on both ends) were huge! From about 4:00 AM to about 10:00 AM, this truck moved at a snail's pace up and down Main Street, turning around at the Church Street bridge on one end, and out on the main road at the other end. Behind and in front of it, the villagers walked, danced, jumped, bounced, twerked, or whatever, and sometimes they would take a break to just sit and watch others. There were a few times when some of them would run short sprints back and forth as a group. The loud calypso music was constant, with a relentless bass beat. Some were singing, some were laughing, but nearly everyone was smiling and having a good time together.

At the end of the parade time, a water hose was connected to one of the outdoor pipes, so that we could have ourselves a “wet fete.” This is a Caribbean tradition that in bigger locations might include fancy stuff like foam bubbles, a variety of different sprinklers, etc. However, a simple rubber garden hose created a lot of fun for our villagers.

Then, nearly everyone went back home to take a nap and whatever else, before the same street parade started again just before dusk on Monday. The unhurried parading up and down Main Street continued until 10:00 PM, but the partying continued well into the night. On Tuesday afternoon, it all started up again for one final time. It seemed that Tuesday there were more folks from neighboring villages who came to Thibaud for our parade (they had likely gone to Roseau or Portsmouth the day before).

I am not much of a dancer, but I had fun carrying young children on my shoulders, bouncing to the incessant beat of the music as we slowly made our way behind the truck that was creeping along the parade route. It felt good to be with a hundred or so of my neighbors and friends. Although I haven't memorized every name with every face so far, I think they all know who I am, and everyone seems to have accepted me.

Yes, our parade was perhaps a bit amateurish compared to what could be seen in Roseau. It didn't have a lot of glitz and glamour like I saw in St. Lucia or at the parade in Roseau a few weeks ago. However, had I gone to Roseau (or even Portsmouth), as a white person I would have been automatically assumed to be a tourist (and would always have been watching out of the corner of my eye for pick-pockets or any other problems). Here, I was one of them—simply another member of our village. Everyone was having a good time and festive attitudes were pervasive. It is this feeling of community spirit and acceptance that makes me so grateful to have been assigned here. I'm looking forward to next year! In the meantime, it is back to work tomorrow.

Here are a few Carnival pictures, all taken at J'ouvert yesterday.

Later in the morning with some of my friends (including the red-shirted Things 1, 2, and 3).

Here is what it looked like in the pre-dawn hours.

That's me in my “costume” with one of my kindergarten dance partners.

This is where our Main Street joins the main road. The sound truck is trying to loop around to start back up the hill. Notice that we even had a police motorcycle escort.

This remarkable woman is on the village council, is active with church and the choir, is a caring parent to a couple of our students, and has a great time celebrating Carnival.

With my phone out of commission, I only took a few pictures with my iPad. This was an attempt to show one of the times when groups of folks were simply running back and forth as a group, first one direction and then the other (most of them had already passed).

One dog was even dressed up in a costume for the event. This family takes great care of their dog.

Because of not wanting to get my iPad ruined, I stayed a safe distance away from the wet fete, but I think you can tell that the water is spraying up from the right side of the picture.

Freaky Friday

It is Carnival season here on Dominica—there is no school on Monday and Tuesday, and today was a non-academic day referred to as Freaky Friday. I was told that the idea was to come up with some sort of outlandish costume to wear to school today. Some choose to cross-dress, or wear Halloween costumes, or just come up with some sort of mismatched craziness.

Given my limited wardrobe here, the best idea I could come up with was to wear my swim trunks, a sport coat, my snorkle and mask, and a dress shoe on one foot and a sandal on the other. I felt like a fool walking down Main Street on my way to school today, but thankfully not too many villagers saw me in this crazy get-up.

The students had a great time with this “play day” as school. We only have five girls (out of 31 total students), and all but the two kindergarten girls dressed up as boys (in the picture above, my arms are around the two fifth grade girls who tried to dress as if they were boys today). We had half-a-dozen or so boys dress up as girls—some of them, as shown below, rather convincingly!

The teachers and the PTA cooked a great meal for lunch (chicken, rice, lentils, macaroni and cheese, and slaw), plus they offered my favorite dessert down here called coconut tablet. There was also potato pudding for dessert, too.

I brought my two kites and let the kids take turns flying them (they only got caught on the utility lines less than half-a-dozen times). I also played some “football” with them and had a lot of fun, until a ball kicked hard in my proximity hit me in the face, causing the nose pad of my glasses to draw blood from the side of my nose. Oh well, that is just part of football down here!

After school, there were a couple of white tourists that stopped along the road. As usual, my students urged me to talk to them “in case they might be relatives.” It turns out that this couple was from Great Britain, and she had even done a stint working as a teacher in a British school in Kenya. They were familiar with the Peace Corps, and given her background of serving in Africa, were very interested in my assignment here. I ended up taking them for a walk (along with several students) through the village, all the way up to “the spring.” They enjoyed seeing this beautiful place, and the students even climbed one of the cacao trees to let them taste the seeds from which chocolate is eventually made.

I also showed them my quaint little cottage before walking them back down to the beach area. About that time, our local fisherman arrived in his boat, and I helped to haul it ashore as the British tourists headed back to their hotel in Calabishie. As I left the beach area, I purchased some barbecued chicken that was being cooked there as a fundraiser for our local preschool. It had been an enjoyable day!

Eventually, I made it back to my home, only to discover the freakiest part of my Friday. There was a dead snake on my sidewalk—the first snake I've seen since leaving West Virginia. It was probably a little less than a foot-and-a-half long, and wasn't anything to be scared about. The scientific name for this non-venomous grass snake is Liophis Juliae, locally known as “Kou wes.” I'm guessing that one of the neighborhood cats killed it this afternoon and left it on the sidewalk—thankfully waiting until after my British guests had left. By the way, there are no poisonous snakes at all on this island, which makes hiking even more enjoyable than back home. [This picture below includes my flip-flop as a size reference.]

Soccer in Paradise

Today was the final day of the primary school regional soccer—or football as it is known here—tournament. Last Thursday as well as today, we only had a half day of academics, because our school was chosen as the host site for six schools to gather to see who would be advancing to the next round of the playoffs in the capital city of Roseau in March.

After losing the first game (0-5) and winning our second game (4-2) last week, our team had to play three games today. They lost the first game (0-5) today, but won the second game (2-0). Whether they advanced depended on the outcome of the last game this afternoon. Fortunately, they won (4-2) and will continue to practice after school until the next round in March.

Football is a popular sport here, and nearly every evening there is a crowd of boys (and young men) playing on our beautiful field near the ocean. It really is an incredible setting, with palm trees lazily swaying in the sea breeze as the Atlantic crashes to shore on the other side of the road. I'm not surprised that the Ministry of Sports (yes, it is an official bureacracy in the Dominican government) chose our scenic location to host the tournament.

Sports officials came to our field before last Thursday, to cut the grass, lay out the boundaries, and paint the white lines. They also brought their own official goals to use. There was an elaborate opening ceremonies, featuring comments from our village council president, as well as recognition of the officials attending from the National Bank of Dominica, the primary sponsor for this tournament. Here is a picture of all six teams lined up during those opening ceremonies—our team is nearest to the camera in the red and yellow jerseys (notice the ocean breaking against the rocks in the distance—that is the tidal pool area that I described in my previous blog story).

Our boys are relatively small (some of them very small), and our tiny school has no sixth graders (indeed, we are playing with a couple of second graders). They worked hard to get their victories in this tournament and extend their season. I'm not sure how well they will do at the next level, but it is nice that they made it this far. However, on the bright side, the fact that we have no sixth graders means that we will return our whole team intact for next year's competition.

Below is a sampling of some of the pictures I snapped during the tournament. If you want to see more, I put together an album that you can peruse at this link. I hope these pictures convey the natural beauty of my village, with our school and its playing field located so close to the beachfront. I am truly blessed to have been assigned here!

Note the size difference in the photo above between our second grader
with the ball and the defender in the red shirt behind him.

One of our best players is one of our smallest
(although he is a fourth grader)--note the size difference above.

On the horizon in both the picture above and the two pictures below, if you look closely you can make out the nearby island called Marie-Galante, which is part of Guadeloupe. The picture directly below is from a corner kick (see the ball floating above the horizon), while the one above shows one of our goals today being scored.

Notice the political billboard for the current Prime Minister in the background.

GGGGOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!
The photo above shows another of our goals today.

Tidal Fool

The house where I grew up had a farm pond just down the hill. Some of my fondest childhood memories stem from the many days I spent exploring the pond (and the spring that fed it). There were several times when I kept Mason jars of “pond critters” in my bedroom. When I was contemplating a major for college, Marine Biology was near the top of my list. Aquatic life has always been one of my interests.

On Friday afternoon, I decided to explore some of the tidal pools on the rocky ledges that are only exposed at low tide. I had first glimpsed these hard-to-reach tidal pools during my trip to the bat cave, but didn't have time to explore them—as I explained in the article I wrote about that adventure.

It requires some effort to reach this area—either by climbing down a steep hillside or wading through the surf from the beach to the rocks. Since my bat cave guide had taken me down the hillside on my previous trip, I decided to hike through the shallow, low tide water this time. Soon I was up on this pock-marked expanse between our beach area and the bat cave.

Because I was going to wade through the water, I brought with me the waterproof pouch that I had used back in West Virginia when kayaking. I don't really have a digital camera—I brought my old iPhone 4S on my Peace Corps journey that I use as a camera, phone, and web browsing device (when wifi is available).

However, in order to take pictures, you must remove the smartphone from the little dry bag hanging around my neck. After reaching the rocky flats and its tidal pools, I soon had out my smartphone, snapping pictures of the little fish, snails, crabs, etc. I was having a blast!

There is something about being next to the wild ocean—the surging surf, the salt spray in the air, the sound as the waves crash against the rocks. I'm glad I ended up on the Atlantic side rather than on the placid Caribbean side of the island. The magnetic appeal of the "motion of the ocean" is innate in most all of us. No wonder beach vacations are so popular!

I was being very protective of my camera at first, not wanting anything to happen to it. However, as the afternoon went on, I let my guard down. Just like the Sirens of Greek mythology luring sailors to their deaths, the tidal pools beckoned me closer to the edge of the ocean.

After taking a picture of the first sea urchin I had encountered in a tidal pool, I noticed there was a whole colony of these black, spiny creatures in a bigger pool nearer the edge. I knew it would make an excellent photograph for my blog, so I walked over to get a good shot.

Normally, the ocean runs in rhythm—most waves come in that are regular sized, but every so often a few larger waves roll in, before resuming normal size again until the next sequence. On rare occasions, a real outlier appears from nowhere—a bigger wave than the typical bigger waves. It was about the time that I bent over to snap my picture that a much larger wave than usual thunderclapped against the edge of the rocks.

I stood up quickly and turned my back to the sea, with my phone in front of my chest. Some of the water surged around my ankles, but I was in no danger of being swept off the rocks. However, the splash that had arched up into the air seemed to fall down on top of me a split second later. Unfortunately, a little bit of this “rain” got my smartphone, too.

My iPhone was in a protective cover of red soft plastic, hiding nearly everything but the front screen. I quickly wiped off the drops of seawater from the front and everywhere else. Then I noticed that the earphone jack seemed to have had a large drop hit directly into the hole. I immediately pursed my lips and sucked hard to draw out the water. I could taste the saltiness of the seawater that had lodged in the hole. Of all places for the few drops of water to hit this phone, this was probably the worst. The odds of such a lucky hit were probably the equivalent of Luke Skywalker bombing the Death Star.

What happened next is the point where I probably made a fatal mistake. I should have just called it quits, hiked back to the beach, gone straight home, and put the phone in a bag of rice. However, I thought I might have gotten lucky—maybe it didn't get that wet and was undamaged. I wouldn't know for sure until I tried it—right?

So I hit the power button and it came on—Hooray! I went ahead with my explorations and even took a couple more pictures. I thought I had dodged a bullet and that my many good fortunes were continuing. Why had I been so worried at first? However, at one point later, I tried to turn it on to take another picture and it didn't come on. Uh oh!

I have since learned from researching the internet at home that I should have left the power button alone and tried to immediately dry it out. Turning on the phone meant that power was going through the complicated circuitry, and any water—especially saltwater that is more conductive—can result in damage from short circuits. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I wish now that I hadn't continued to take pictures.

Once I made it home, I immediately put the phone in a bag of rice and left it overnight (some sites also recommend dropping the battery and removing the SIM card, but I didn't have the specialized tools for me to unscrew the nearly microscopic Phillips-head screws holding on the back cover). I even rotated it to different positions (as recommended by some websites) until I finally went to bed. On Saturday morning (after trying the power button again but to no avail), I took it with me to the larger town of Portsmouth to a phone repair shop. They were pessimistic about the possibilities of fixing it.

So for now, I am without a phone. I am evaluating my options at this point, but I survived seven weeks of training in St. Lucia without a phone, so I should be able to survive for awhile here until I decide what to do. Part of me is still hoping for a miracle, and that at some point I might try to turn it on again and it will actually come to life—but that hope is fading quickly.

In the meantime, try to imagine the pictures I would have had of the black crabs covered in white spots, the fish with horizontal stripes running from nose to tail, the fish with the yellow and black vertical stripes running down their sides, and of course, that colony of sea urchins that I just could not resist. It was beautiful!

Here is an older photograph that shows the water I had to wade through to get to the rocky shelf that is exposed at low tide. There is a rock wall in the shadowy area that prevents one from easily getting out to the tidal pools--you must get wet if you go this route.