Hello blog readers!

Sorry we haven’t posted anything in over a week! It’s been very busy with our first community meeting, a visit from the Boss lady (Clare) and attending a national fisheries meeting today. I think Pia has also developed a fear of the blog…I’m hoping a few rums later in the week might help her over it! There is no weekend fun to report about as we’ve been constantly working… (sad face and small violin).

The community meeting was great – we got about 17 people talking about fishing, tourism and the community, creating these huge wall maps and timelines of different marine activities in Sandy Ground. I think everyone who attended had a really good time and we certainly learnt a lot! We introduced the ipads for mapping and it was just lovely to see our strapping, young Anguillan helpers putting dots on the maps where the older ladies used to swim and take their ‘seabaths’.

As I said we have been fortunate to have Clare with us all week. It meant I got to shoot off round the island in the car showing her the sights, all the beautiful beaches, the desalinization plant, the power station the pilot agriculture project etc. etc. all the sites environmental scientists get excited about. Much to Clare’s disappointment I couldn’t quite locate the entrance to the landfill site so we settled by taking pictures of the erosion at Gwen’s Reggae bar while eating a fish sandwich.

We also got Clare doing some interviews. At the moment we are working in a small village called North Hill. I dropped Clare and Pia off outside one of our randomly selected addresses and as they both walked towards the house we became aware of the most enormous black bloke, standing in his underwear holding a large knife. I started to worry that I maybe this wasn’t a good idea, and I kept the engine running just in case they needed a quick escape… but it turned out they were a very friendly couple. The guy was chopping up a lion fish (hence the knife) and his wife was the lead singer in a band… so on Sunday we went down to the beach to watch her perform… most excellent.

I’ve put some photos up but I am hoping Pia will write about what she remembers most from the last week. I want to shout out to my mum whose birthday it is on Saturday – Happy birthday mum – I’m so sorry I am missing it again ;( x x