This weeks entertainment included an intense couple of days training our new surveyors – Immario and Chavez. Immario is our body-builder-brown-belt-large-car-driving-studly and Chavez is his tall-polished-nail-steamed-fish-romantic-natured-7-day-aventist counterpart. We went through the theory – how you are supposed to interview in an ideal world… and then threw them into some very ‘theory testing’ interviews. Immario and Pia went to see a rich American ex-pat with a botox filled face, and poor old Chavez and I ended up at this house with a lovely old man with one leg, who knew nothing about coral reefs and kept telling me to ‘speak English woman, I can’t understand you’. Chavex and I then went on to interview Captain Butty (picture to follow) who had already been interviewed by Clare and Pia but enjoyed it so much he didn’t mention that he had already answered all the questions! Pia and Chavez were stuck with a very high rasta.
The next day Immario and I had a spare 40 minutes before interviewing the barman from North Hill so we went to the edge of the Point (a rocky outcrop at the bottom of a cliff) to check out the wildlife. Getting back into his 2 tonne ford explorer we realized we were stuck… the wheels kept spinning but we couldn’t get any traction on the bare rock and loose sand. We slipped closer and closer to the edge…. With half the car stuck down a limestone gully. We tried putting cardboard and twigs under the wheels, reversing slowly and then fast but nothing would budge. Immario started to sweat – it is his mum’s car (he’s only 19 bless) and he had to pick her up from work in a couple of hours. I phoned everyone we knew to try to get someone to pull us out. Eventually, after 2 hours in the hot sun the barman Keith sent some friends to our rescue. They made us sit in the back to add weight while he gunned the throttle….. and we slipped even further down the cliff. I have never sweated as much – NERVOUS PASSENGER at the best of times. Through a combination of us pushing and a lot of luck we finally made it up the hill covered head to toe in dust.
Scared the poor lad off – we haven’t seen him since!
Thursday was also a catalogue of errors… visa renewal, lost phones, broken internet, a wonderful but long and unfocused interview with the ex-prime minister of the Island Sir Emile Gumbs, horrible news about a close friend of mine, moved villa (a whole other story) and eventually ended up at a massive birthday party on the beach. I fondled Bankie Banx’s (famous Reggae artist) necklace which he didn’t seem too pleased about, and we danced the night away.
It’s been a long week! Tomorrow we are strategizing (if that is even a word) and have three interviews including one on Sandy Island where I plan to snorkel for turtles, and then Sunday is our day off. Yeah! Day off… to do dissertation ;(
Warm wishes from the islands x Sarah x