First off....I have been advised to let all know about a mailing address change. Well, the address hasn't actually changed, but things being what they are...some mail ends up in Jamaica and not usually heard from in a long time--if ever. So, I've corrected my address listed on the side of this blog. If you wrote it down before--just erase the city name of Kingstown. Jamaica has a city called Kingston and it has caused shipping problems. Mur.
For any of the weather channel junkies....the past few days, there has been a massive storm cycling itself over the entire West Indies. The tons of rain we've received have caused local rivers to flood and in some cases knock out part of roadways. Several landslides have been reported, spilling onto the main roadway. I've heard from my homestay (not officially confirmed) that a landslide even covered a bus/van and it wasn't found until they unearthed it. Not sure of any casualty counts. I posted a pic of the waterfall in our 'backyard' garden. The water from that fall has turned into a full gushing falls and it totally carved out the lil river it made. The muddy banks collapsed and I lost some of the dasheen I got to plant alongside the bank. >.< I did spend some time with my host dad moving unearthed rocks from the riverbed to try and support the new dirt banks. I'll post some pics at the end of the blog--but be sure to compare the water flow with the same falls in the pic from the other blog post.
Today was the international coastal clean-up, sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy. All over St Vincent, different organizations had agreed to go to respective ocean/river shores and clean up the trash--and there is LOTS of it. Data cards are to be filled out for stats collection. There were some sort of communication issues and with the rain still going.....my clean up turned into a lonely event. I was the only one on my beach front (the same beach I posted on flickr--see the link in a previous blog post). Either way I still managed to pick up around 20-25 pounds of garbage before walking with the garbage bag 20ish minutes to deposit it in a proper location.
Funny things to note--coming from Vincy's:
"A Vincentian will take on someone pointing a gun at them. A Vincentian will not have any problems taking on someone with a cutlass [machete]. But a Vincentian will run away as soon as dah rain ah come."
Another volunteer and I were waiting in the rain (of course) last night for a bus. An older local guy approached us and asked for money. We gave him our truthful reply, sorry-but we're poor. He replied, "We are not poor. Only the rain pours. We are but strugglers." He had a big smile and wished us well. Wise words. ^_^
Not sure if I've mentioned this yet....but of the few radio stations, most of them play a regular song list that I swear have a revolving set of the same 5-10 songs. They are replayed more often than any songs on major commerical radio stations back home in Chicago. On top of it, when I go to larger social gatherings, there are djs with large speaker stacks and they CRANK really loud music. Yeah, the same few songs that are constantly on the radio! I am enjoying the style of music here....nearly all reggae (95%), soca and calypso. But if I keep hearing the same songs--it will really kill my radio interests, not that I can get away from it. >.<
Very happy having CNN and MSNBC here. That mean I will get to watch the Presidential and VP debates! YEAH! Not sure when I turned into such a politically interested dork, but I'm liking it now.
ciao tutti,
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn
1 comment:
Wow, looks like you guys have a lot of hard work to do after all those rain storms.
Its a good thing that you're there to help out your host dad! Plus, out here in the states you rarely get to get down in the water and mud like that! ^_^
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