Last Days

Today is my last day at work in Dominica. After a much unexpected final presentation of my work I will spend the next two days traveling from Roseau to Marigot in Dominica, then from Dominica to St. Lucia and then on to Little Rock. I passed out a few gifts in the office and am going to dinner tonight with some friends.

The number one question I’ve been asked is about what I want to eat when I get home. I think I crave good ole beef the most. I want a burger, a steak, and some spaghetti with meat sauce, but I am not really craving food as much as I just want to see my friends and family. This summer has been unbelievably hard, and I cannot imagine being away for so long without skype to see everyone’s faces and talk for free. What a blessing (although sometimes Jonathan may have thought of it as a curse!)

Anyway, what I really want is to go home to the farm, go fishing and just relax with family. I miss getting pedicures with my girlfriends and the freedom to go wherever or drive whenever. The week I get back will be busy catching up, helping Liz move, attending Junior League training, then off to Denver, San Diego, and New York within the next month!!! Oh, and I’ll be in school too!

I really will miss some Dominicans. Not many, but some. I think what’s so strange about saying goodbye is that I will never email, facebook, or plan to see them again in my life… it’s not like I’m going to be pen pals or promise to come back to visit. I like the people the most who didn’t have to be nice to me. They gained absolutely nothing from making me feel welcome and safe. These aren’t the people that were supposed to help me with my project or obligated in any way; they are just really sweet.

A few times I’ve mentioned the old Protex man. He works at the store on my street and we don’t really ever speak, but I see him every day. He tosses me a bottle of water and I toss him EC and a peace sign and go about my way. I really like how quiet he is, and it has been reassuring to know he works in the same store, 24/7, and not in a creepy way but I know he keeps his eye out for me. I don’t know his name but he has four gold teeth at the bottom of his mouth and a few times I’ve heard him say to thugs outside the store “leave that girl alone.” I think I’m going to be a little sad to say goodbye to him.

At first I didn’t want to have anything to do with this old veteran from Kentucky on assignment for business here… we ran into each other a few different ways (pool, shopping) and finally became “friends.” In casual conversation he screamed at me about Israel and Palestine; cried about the pledge of allegiance, HATES obamacare, and told me worse Vietnam stories worse than Apocalypse Now, and may possibly be in favor of sterilization of welfare recipients. Yikes. I’m not making excuses for his behavior, but he arranged for me to have a ride to the airport and said “Americans take care of each other.” And I know he is really homesick too.

Because there isn’t a mental hospital here, there are a lot of mentally handicapped people on the streets. Of course there are dirty, pervy, crackhead, homeless men that will steal your diet coke off your lunch table but I’m talking about innocent, happy people who are taken care of by their families- they just like to sit outside and watch the street. One guy in a red shirt sits on far side of my porch every single day and never says a word but we wave at each other. A few times I’ve seen him all the way out in town and he gets excited to wave at me. Isn’t it silly but I think I will miss him the most.

I am also going to miss the girls that work in the coffeeshop. They are so much fun and every day we chat and tease each other. (Last Sunday I walked in on a homeless man sitting on the pot in the restroom and screamed and jumped and turned and ran back into the store. You don’t expect someone to be in the bathroom with the stall door open, and I’m sure I scared him too because his eyes were as big as golf balls.) Anyway, that little bonding experience made us all friends, but as most people in the service industry here hate their jobs, maybe they are hyped up on espresso, but these girls have fun at their job.

I’ll try to put up one last post, but as I don’t see much else exciting happening within the next 48 hours, so this may be it! Potentially last blog post- that’s pretty exciting in itself!

Rainbow Watching

I went whale watching today. Unfortunately the only animals I saw were a bunch of flying fish and a sea turtle. Seeing a sea turtle for the first time in my life was pretty cool, I’m just not sure it was worth $75. Although I kinda want one in my bathtub now. The flying fish reminded me of horseflies. Anyway, I think the trip should have been called a “leisurely trip around the Dominica” rather than whale watching… therefore no one would have been disappointed because it really was cool and seeing a whale could have exceeded expectations. 95% chance of a sighting whatever.

Supposedly, there are tons of whales in the Caribbean Sea, as the posters photos below indicate. I was told there are these certain types of plankton for the vegetarian whales and certain types of calamari (although I’ve never seen fried calamari on a menu here) for the carnivore whales, with a mix of the caribbean calm waters, and the perfect depth of the sea that make it a perfect home for all these tropical whales. The place where we left from actually had the top 7 sighted whales and had named them all according to their tale variations; it was all really cute during the 45 minute lecture about all this before we left. I was so excited I didn’t pay perfect attention. However- some interesting whale factoids that I picked up are that sperm whales can live up to 90 years old, baby sperm whales weigh ONE TON at birth and drink 5 gallons of milk a day, and then they started actually talking about how they got their name and I got freaked me out and completely stopped paying attention.

Sorry if that all sounds negative because in fact I had a wonderful time, due to seeing the most amazing rainbow of my life the whole entire time we were out. 5 hours of what started kinda like the blur of a prism, rising from the tops of the mountains all the way into the clouds. Then as we went along it changed into a bold, sharp, vibrant rainbow- like the quality of a cartoon clip art from a box of Lucky Charms. Later in the day it turned into a double rainbow (have you seen the double rainbow YouTube? Hilarious!!!) Our boat went up the entire west/Caribbean side of Dominica and upon turning around to come home, we watched the rainbow coming out of the land exactly across from where the boat was. Imagine a crowd of people on a boat (most from England, a few from the Caribbean, and me from the US) all cheering and laughing when we would watch a car would drive through the bottom of the rainbow. It was really one of the funniest things I’ve even seen! Oh, wait, next to this…"Double Complete Rainbow" (Momma- Its so funny! Watch the entire thing!) I asked the British family if they had seen the YouTube clip and they looked at me as if I suggested they watch Jersey Shore. 5 days. 

For Jonathan- see, lots of whales!

Did not actually see any of these... should have noticed the poster was made in 1975. 

Can you see it here?  What a beautiful island!

Got it.. perfect!

Wrong natural disaster

Yesterday, as if through the game of 'telephone' I got word that Dominica was under an earthquake warning. Are you kidding me??? Immediately I started freaking out, texting Jonathan to do some research because I wasn’t near a computer. He reminded me about the highest concentration of active volcanoes in the world but didn’t see anything about an earthquake. Great. 

Still, Dominica is on the same fault line as Haiti and I started imagining the only one lane road through the jungle to the only one runway airport with no runway lights. (Don’t judge me for planning my escape.) I started thinking about all the devastation in Haiti from a documentary I recently watched right when Liz called. We talked about what’s the difference in an earthquake warning compared to an earthquake watch? I don’t know. When do you know where and how to take cover? I don’t know that either. Should I get under a mattress or under my desk? My friend said to stock up on water…Why? In case I’m stuck in my apartment for 3 days??? I’ve never actually taken a precaution for being in a natural disaster before! I was scared to death. 

Later that afternoon I turned on the weather channel, not really even sure if earthquake coverage would be considered weather. Nothing was on about any earthquakes, and even though there isn’t a real Caribbean news channel, much less Dominican, there is some collaboration with the weather channel to cover tropical storms and depressions at the top of every hour. And of course since there has been a tropical storm about every other week- currently they were covering a new tropical depression, #4 of the season (out of 9 weeks I have been here!), named “Colin” that could potentially turn into a hurricane. No big deal to me though- I have been through hurricane disaster training at work; I know all the buildings are hurricane resistant. After there being a new warning every week I am sadly getting accustomed to earth shattering thunder, lightning bolts, crazy blowing strong winds, and power outages turning my fan off in the middle of the night. (Remember the experience with mom and dad in the treehouse in the jungle? Turned out to be tropical depression #3.) 

 

That night, I laid awake listening to the thunder, my apartment lost power, and like with all heavy rains, I woke up to no running water this morning. (I still don’t understand what the problem is with this place, but something about heavy rain contaminates the city’s water supply so my apartment runs out of water approximately one day a week. Ugh.) Still not worried about a hurricane though, I was proud I remembered the place I’m supposed to hide is under a door frame in case I felt an earthquake tremor. I walked to work this morning with an umbrella serving no purpose whatsoever because it seemed like the rain was coming at me like a fire hydrant, and periodically checked to see if the rain would stop in time to go lay out this afternoon. Local stores were empty of water bottles since everyone was “stocking up” and our office bathroom sink and toilet weren’t working. My new commitment of drinking lots of water turned into a catch 22- good thing that my apartment fridge is stocked up of water bottles, however, it sucks to have to constantly pee when the facilities don’t work! 

 

Anyway, this evening Michael and I were chatting and he said, “So by the way, apparently there wasn’t ever an earthquake.” His weather soothsayer accidentally confused her natural disasters. Did you guess this all along? The post title probably gave it away. Never an EARTHQUAKE, always a HURRICANE warning. I don't really know how you can confuse the two... but as I write this, luckily, Colin has dissipated over the Atlantic in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately I still don’t have running water.