For some of us--like our Florida volunteers, the weather patterns and warmer climate this time of year are normal. Personally, I've been in warmer places, but I don't think I've ever gone a full year without seeing a 'northern' winter. A couple people back home tell me about how cold it is getting and snow will be right around the corner. I certainly won't get any of that down here. A bit strange, even surreal to the mind--wet and dry season only, when I'm used to 4 seasons back home. Speaking of wet--it's still raining plenty here. It's now been 7 days straight with breaks in-between the down pours; heard it is supposed to go through Saturday. No worries for me though, just makes transportation a bit more difficult (they don't like driving in the rain and don't drive as late in the evenings) and tends to keep people from attending meetings in the village.
Spring Village is a more rural village, mostly farmers here. Even many of the people who don't farm as a livelihood still maintain some sort of agriculture to supplement themselves. One of the major things they farm here is banana. There is even an organization called Fair Trade that correlates the farming efforts and production. I got all excited to hear that there were so many banana farmers here and figured that it would be raining bananas. I really like them--they taste great and are extremely good for you. Funny thing--I can't really find any for sale. I'm surrounded by banana farmers and don't see any on the street corners here. Sure, I can find them in town--but I want to try and buy more of my local foods in the village if I can.
I see plenty of plantain, but no banana. haha, I learned by doing that ripe yellow plantain is still tricky to get out of it's skin and really doesn't taste good at all when raw. I managed to get another member of the banana family--called a fig (not to be confused with the date type of fig). It is smaller, chubby, and a bit sweeter--and they need longer to ripe. There is also another member of the banana family here called a grindy--also rather tasty. Grindy, fig, and banana are all ok to eat ripe--so those will be the ones I search for later. Plantain are nice, but I'd rather eat ripe than cooked fruit. Sunday, I am supposed to be getting up early (5am?) to meet up with some of the banana farmers and go work with them in the mountain. I've seen them coming in before, boxing up blue bags of banana that go onto large flat bed trucks to be exported later. They told me that if I really wanted banana, it's best to get some from them when they come back from the mountain. ^_^ The hunt will soon be over! lol, I've also learned from them that there are 2 sub-types of banana....but I can't recall their names. One is more like what we find back home and the other is a type that is preferred here. Perhaps I will find the difference. I joked with one of the locals that we should do a blind taste test and see if they can identify which of the banana types they are eating.
Banana, Fig, Plantain. I haven't seen red banana here, but the grindy looks more like the red ones--only yellow when ripe.
Yesterday I finally got to deliver a letter to the Ministry of Education officially requesting that I be allowed to use the school's computer lab to teach computer classes. The school principal says that it is ok, but I needed her to give me the letter--which I've been waiting for +/- 2 months now to receive from her. Finally, Tuesday I drafted the letter myself and brought to her for her edits and signature. Sometimes we just have to do things ourselves...now I wait for the red tape to clear and I will have some very happy locals. ^_^ The only thing I don't like about the computer lab is the operating systems on the computers. They used to have older desktops, kinda slow but usable for sure, that had Windows XP. Some time before I arrived, the ministry had them changed to these little box things (smaller than micro cases if you've seen one) that don't even have floppy or cd drives on them--just 2 usb in the front. I think they are flash memory based (didn't see a fan on it either) since I was told that we aren't really supposed to store things on them. Worst part about them--they are running Windows CE. It is windows, but doesn't run like the conventional windows system that I'm used to and I don't know much of anything about it. I believe that it is similar to what you might find on a PDA running a Windows environment, like 5.0. So there goes all the little training and educational software I was going to use--it's not compatible. Time to get creative again. ^_^ Good times, that's why I'm here.
Keeping on the nerd train...
I was playing around with the plug-ins available for Mozilla Firefox and came across yet another reason why Firefox RULES! They have a plug-in called WataCrackaz AutoSMS; crazy name huh? But this little toolbar (which I usually stay away from toolbars) allows you to select a global region, choose a cell carrier, enter a telephone #, and message to send (suggested under 100 characters) all for FREE!!! Since it sits in the toolbar, I just have to be online and use the toolbar--too simple! Not extra websites to visit or log into. Simply awesome. I've sent a couple texts out back home--but not sure yet if they actually got them. Sent one to my phone here and I got it within a matter of seconds. Sweet....
Getting my yellow fever vacination tomorrow. I don't need it to live here, but one of the other volunteers is taking a trip to South America soon and it is required for her to go there. They needed 3-4 people to get the vaccine in order for it to be feasible to sent the vial to St Vincent.....so I volunteered (yet again....that word is becoming common in my daily life huh?) to get stuck. Not sure if there will be any side effects, but at least I will have the vaccine in case I go on any interesting trips to the Central or Southern Americas.
The PCVs and our staff will be celebrating Thanksgiving this year Thursday the 27th. Our boss, Mr. Cool, has stated we will be joining celebrations with the Taiwanese volunteers and their staff on island. I didn't even know the Taiwanese celebrated Thanksgiving. If they don't, perhaps this is just a good time for cultural exchange. I've met one of them here already, very briefly, and I'm excited for the event. They are making some of their national dishes and we are going to be making some of ours. I am with 2 others on pie duty. I was intending to make 2 pumpkin pies, was even going to make everything from scratch. However--the cost was getting too steep for me, scratch or from canned. So looks like we are having a bunch of apple pies instead. Strange that the apples here are imported, but will be cheaper to create. I've never made apple pie from scratch before so this will be a learning experience. Pie day will be Wednesday. ^_^ Yum. I think we are baking a test pie to see how it goes first....double yum.
Stay safe and well.
ciao tutti
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn
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