It has definitely been a while since the last post, but the daily life in Dominica continues to feel like paradise. I guess as the new becomes ordinary, blogging takes a backseat. The almost daily trip to the beach became a mandatory every day, if not more, trip. I also bought snorkel gear and have been exploring the nearby reefs. The walk to the ocean always involves a couple stops at the guava trees. I can’t put words to how much i love the diversity and quantity of available free fruit and edible plants. Today i got to enjoy my first sugar cane! took me back to how we did that in Zambia. As i was walking to Ulanda’s (a girl we work with) home, she taught me about the benefits of each plant we passed. it feels like every plant can be either eaten or made into some oil or tea.
Our group has become very efficient when it come to the projects. We quantify everything before any implementation or change. We spent a night at the kalinago territory. They start the process at 11 pm and we wanted to be there for a full set, so we were there and awake from 11 to 4. Now we have an idea of how exactly things work and there is so much that we work with and it will definitely be a project for future groups. Im including a picture of what my make shift lab looked like in its early stages with all kitchen appliances!
A point that I forgot to blog about: the bus system here is very similar to the Zambia bus system. A bunch of minivans, that drive up and down the 2 streets that go through the country. If you want to catch a bus, you walk down to the street and wait for one to pass. They fit as many people into it as they can, its cheap and very uncomfortable! Like mentioned before, it is a very small country, and there are very few drives, which means we are getting familiar with them, as well as the system itself.
Today i went to my first Net ball practice! For those who don’t know (and i didn’t until today) Net ball is a similar game to basketball, but you can’t dribble. There are other specific rules to it, look it up online, a lot of countries play it. The village next door has a team, and I was invited to come play. the court is on top of a hill, having an ocean view and some beautiful mountains on the other side. we play as the sun is setting, very hard to concentrate on the game when you have all that nature around you! At the end of the day it was a successful first practice! ill be back there on Wednesday! When i got back we extracted honey out of the hives! I should have enough to last me the summer!
Until next time!
Mariana
ETHOS Dominica 