Hello! My Name’s Georgie, I joined the FOR team in TCI last week. I’m an MSc student from Newcastle out here for two months to help with the social survey team and do research for my thesis project.

I don’t think I’ve seen a tropical island quite like Provo before, the first thing you notice when you fly in is the incredible bright turquoise sea and long white beaches, a proper postcard image. It’s a very interesting place, driving from the airport I could have been in America; wide roads, big air conditioned super markets and lots of luxurious resorts. We’re staying in Grace Bay, which has every convenience who’d need for a holiday without even leaving the resort village, but the communities outside the resorts are great. Although there are lots of people living in small, quite rundown houses and there is a lot of litter around, people are very welcoming and seem to have quite a strong sense of community.

We’ve spent the past few days mapping out the communities we would like to work with here, which meant a lot of cycling and driving around asking people to help us work out community boundaries, trying to count the number of houses in each and sweating a lot. Not an easy task, but everyone has been so helpful, going out their way to ask what we’re doing and if we need any help. I think we’ve got more smiles and waves in a week here than I have in the last year in the UK…no offense England but we’re generally less inclined to wave at random people nosing around our houses!

More news from Provo coming soon…