Turtle Watching

 

I went turtle watching two times, only a day apart, last month. This is a picture of me with a Leatherback Turtle. This particular turtle's shell measured about 5 feet 2 inches long! They were marvelous to see. I got to see 4 turtles over the course of two nights. The first night we saw only one turtle and that wasn't until about 4am. We walked up and down the longest Beach in St. Lucia for hours before stumbling upon the turtle in the middle of laying her eggs. The second night we saw 3 turtles, all between 9 and 10pm! You just never know when they will come up to lay. From March to the end of April, 100s of mama turtles come to lay their eggs in the sand. They dig a hole about 3 feet deep and lay approximately 100 eggs or so. Of those 100, anywhere from 1/4 - 3/4 will be fertile eggs. Another fun fact is that these turtles swim back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, but they always lay their eggs on the exact same beach from which they were born! I thought that was kinda cool. Anyway, you can check out more pictures in my slide show, but we slept on the beach and the next morning we made bakes. Bakes are these yummy fried biscuts that taste great with slat fish inside. Anyway, I plan to go back to Grand Anse Beach soon to see the turtles hatching. They hatch in the months of May and June.

Everytings Irie Mun

I just wanted to tell everyone I miss you and can't wait to see you when I visit in July!!!!

I cant wait to tell you all about the work I have been doing here, the beach, hiking, turtle watching, steel pan, and of course the guy I have been dating for the past 5 months. That is pretty much my life here in St. Lucia; Peace Corps work, beachin' it, hiking, Steel Pan lessons, boyfriend, and the general hangin' out!

Oh and by the way. I went with Lloyd the other day to visit his brother. He has this huge cashew nut tree by his house and they decided to roast some cashews. I had heard previous horror stories from volunteers already about eating cashews in st. lucia. The general consensus is "Don't eat the freshly roasted cashews, you will get a rash from the oils." Now not only is the cashew nut my favorite nut (next to the pistachio of course) but the boys also had their doubts about this 'mystery rash.' They were absolutely certain that you only get this rash if you eat the cashew if they are not roasted completely, because then all the oils dont come off the nut.

What do I have today... A cashew nut rash on my wrist. BOO!
However, I must say, the cashews were really yummy. It was definitely worth the mild irritation!

LOVE!

No Strike Will Put Me Out of Work!

From April 27th, 2009

This is a journal entry that I meant to include in my blog about a month ago.

Today the teachers Union has another meeting with the Ministry. We will know shortly if the strike will continue. If it continues all public school children will be out of school for an indefinite period of time (until the Ministry agrees to increase the teachers salary by 7.5%).

Luckily for me and our kids, my IPP at Compre is a Seventh Day Adventist Church member. SDA members are usually discouraged from participating in strikes or any other potentially volatile political action. This includes any political action that involves slander or smear tactics; that is not to say that this dispute involves any such misconduct. In fact, the only details I really know are: a. The Ministry promised to increase the teachers’ salary by 7.5% during the strike that occurred last year; and b. Teachers did not receive their increase, as promised. Nonetheless, my community partner, although she is permitted to be part of this particular union, will still be attending school. Thankfully, this allows us to still work on the many things we set out to complete this term.

At the beginning of the term, the counselor at Compre and I created a schedule for the final term through to September when school starts again. We plan to design and facilitate a Peer Mentoring Workshop in order to train and prepare the 20 new Castries Comprehensive Peer Mentors. Peer Mentors assist new students in their adjustment to the school, especially Form 1 students, educate their peers on healthy life style choices, and are expected to be role models that provide mentoring and counsel to fellow peers.
We are also organizing a workshop for the new Prefects. Prefects are well behaved students that are selected for the purpose of managing a classroom when a teacher is absent. The Ministry of Education does not have substitute teachers on staff in the same way we do in the States. Instead, a student Prefect takes charge of the class. Their workshop will focus on school rules, class room management and conflict resolution. Then, of course, we are continuing the “Why Try?” Program. Why Try is a program that works with at-risk students to help them attain unlearned social skills necessary for positive growth and achievement. It was developed by Social Workers in the States, WooHoo!

Currently, Castries Comprehensive and Sir Ira Simmons have a total of 27 ‘at-risk’ students that are regularly attending “Why Try?” groups every week. Securing funding for additional groups for the 2009 – 2010 school year has also been in the works. I completed a rough draft of a proposal in February, and the District II counselor is still preparing the final product, which will then be sent to two different funding sources. The hope is to run a ‘formal pilot’ of the program in each of the four District II schools. Positive results will then be used to secure funding for the implementation of “Why Try?” island-wide. Even though the program has been running in Vaux Fort, the success of the program has not been empirically measured. I measured the students’ base-line level at Compre and Sir Ira but the program has not been run in a methodical way, neither under optimal conditions; obtaining all the necessary materials has been a challenge.

We will be measuring the success by collecting and analyzing the following data:
- group member, parent, and teacher surveys will help us to establish a base
line and monitor changes of particular behaviors, characteristics and basic
social functioning.
- Changes in attendance, suspension, detention, and drop-out rates
- Grades and CXC pass rates
- Observed progress in group

Additionally, some people have been asking me “What makes at kid at-risk?” In general, many different factors can put a child ‘at-risk’ in life. However, the term always needs to be considered within the context of which you are working. For example, children born in poverty are considered at-risk because they are less likely to receive a quality education, they may get involved with drugs or crime due to the different stressors of poverty, and they are more likely to be malnourished and/or go untreated for different health problems. That is just listing a few. For the purposes of “Why Try?” at-risk school children are those children that are at-risk for not completing school successfully. Since we are wanting to make the pilot as empirical as possible we will need to be specific in defining how we intend to identify at-risk children. For our use, a child is considered to be at-risk if they meet 1 or more of the following criteria:
- Poor grades in over half of the students subjects
- Having ever been suspended from school
- Poor school attendance or truancy
- Low self-esteem, as determined by teacher and counselor
- Having more than 1 school detention
- More than 1 referral to the principal’s office
- Inability to concentrate or follow instruction in the classroom, as
determined by teacher
- Scores low on social-skills survey
- Cannot identify at-least 3 adults that are supportive of them

Update

Hey All!

I just wanted to pop in with a breif update. Things are going well in St. Lucia. I am in the middle of conducting an 8 week HIV/AIDS workshop for a mens youth group. It is going really well, and we have had a good turn out. In the last two weeks of the workshop I will be helping them to develop a community action plan for a project about health wellness and HIV/AIDS prevention.

I have also been facilitating moe Why Try groups - going well

Lastly, Jazz was all last week. I went to a couple of events, but my hope is to participate in the festivities more next year!

Anyway, back to school stuff.... more later
- oh yes and the strike is on hold until the end of the month

Teacher’s Union Strike

April 23rd, 2009

Term 3 of the 2008 – 2009 academic school year was due to start this past Monday. However, Monday morning I noticed an inordinate amount of un-uniformed kids running around in the ‘yard’. Usually by about 7:30 AM kids speckle the roadside in their various school uniforms. For a moment I was confused by the scene; it was the first day back from a two week break, and I was wondering why any matters were not dealt with during the scheduled break. My confusion faded as I began to find out what was going on. Parents in the community were mentioning something about the teachers union going on strike! I was told that school would resume Wednesday. I had no real way of confirming this information though, as I have no internet or TV and my phone was lost on the beach 2 weeks ago. When I arrived at school Wednesday I heard the details. Apparently the Teachers Union was given notice last Tuesday that they would not be receiving the 7.5% salary increase that was promised to them by the Ministry. They held a meeting on Monday and vowed to strike on Thursday for 3 working days if their adjusted salaries were not in the bank by Thursday morning. They did have school on Tuesday, though the attendance was low, as will be for the rest of the week. No student wants to pay bus fare for no reason.

Today the increase did not show up in the banks and no teachers went to school. I still went to the school, where I found out even more information. People were talking about the Prime Ministers announcement that the government does not have the funds for the raise. The Union plans to meet again with the ministry on Monday and continue the strike if no agreement is made. I heard that teachers went on strike for over a month once and they are prepared to strike again!

This is the second occurrence of teachers striking since I have been in St. Lucia. I have also witnessed a strike by the gasoline dealers. Everything slows down when this happens. I just feel bad for the students. Many students are in the middle of major examinations at this time and the strike risks appropriate preparation for them.

I am Nature

Friday April 14th, 2009

What is Paradise? For me and many others it seems that paradise is being in the authenticity of nature, experiencing nature in its most beautiful form; untouched, unmodified, land unturned by humans. This is why many people escape to the tropics; to experience the pureness of nature. Even the brutality between different species in paradise seems simply perfect. But didn’t man evolve from the earth? Evolve. The work implies that there are levels higher than the last. How are humans of a higher level when all that we create is seen as a destruction of nature? Of that which seems most pure? Of that which we want to escape to in order to experience a little bit of paradise.
Are we not of this earth as well? How is it that we continue to destroy what is most precious to us? We even do it without second thought most of the time. We do it almost compulsively. It’s in our nature to drive ourselves further and further from paradise. Ironic, isn’t it?

Another Day in Paradise

Monday March 30th

Yesterday Haley, Embert, Lloyd, Sam and I hiked through the bush from MOnchy to Labonn. We stopped at Lloyd’s grandfathers house. Lloyd lived there for about 9 years when he was growing up. His grandfather is about 72 and in excellent shape. He was a fisherman that retired only a couple of years ago. While we were stopped his cousin serves us some chilled rain water as a refreshment. From Labonn we hiked down to a beach called Dophin beach. The beach is on the east side of the island. From the beach not one person or house could be seen in all directions. We limed on the beach for some time and I learned how to skip rocks on the ocean waves. Embert and Lloyd went exploring and returned with a gigantic tortes shell! The shell was at least 2 feet in length! We took pictures with the shell and decided that the sound of a turtle is Mahhh… none of us had ever heard a turtle before…

After the crew convinced me that “NO” I would not succeed in getting the shell through customs we proceeded to hike on a small trial to the Sashe River. We stopped againby a small, but lovely, 7 ft. waterfall on the river. The waterfall poured into a 12 ft. deep swimming hole. The river was just as secluded and private as the beach. On our way to the bathing spot we had to follow the river up stream a bit. Lloyd had stories of how kids from the local village used to wash clothes and take bathes at the river. You could still see soap stains on the rocks, Lloyd said it was looking like somebody still comes to wash there.

At the swim hole we sand some songs, gave thanks for our blessings, and dove into the pool off the rocks. Just when dusk was arriving and the mosquitoes started biting, Embert made a small smoke fire out of coconut husk; he says it helps keep the mosquitoes away. Just before night fell upon us we hiked up to the road from the river; not an easy ascent. I can’t imagine climbing up just so with baskets of wet clothes! We passed a pig farm on the way home. It’s spring and all the piglets were funning about. We made our way into Monchy just as the sun disappeared over the horizon. It couldn’t have been a better day. The only thing… I fort my camera! Good thing Haley had hers!