Now our “real” work begins… no more scoping and wandering about!
Excited and all prepared we went down to Sandy Ground Bay to find our first victims, ehm, interviewees… we should call them ;\… This first Monday morning we found 3 fishermen, sitting outside a bar – perfect. We started the interview with one of them… but half way through he got called away… will have to complete this interview another day. The other two were a bit frightened off by that time (but we will interview them ;-))
The trials of a social researcher… what to do when you go to one of your random households to do an interview, and suddenly a pack of dogs comes charging towards you? You stay in the car!!! But, as we needed to get to the door, or somewhere closer, I ventured out- and I DO love dogs- and they seemed all right at first, but then they were all around me- there were 5 of them, plus, at least, six puppies (could have been more), so when the big chief dog decided to growl at me, they all started charging towards me!!! So I jumped into the car, we closed the windows, and Sarah took us out of there with screeching tires. This house is off the list!!! Even now I hear them barking, as the house is quite close to ours… wonder which poor person they are chasing now!!! We need doggie Biscuits!!!!!
So we then decided to do essential shopping and preparations for community meeting and other vital things, and in the evening decided to check out our random household locations to make “appointments” for the next day. After being chased by dogs out of one house, we will go back there, we finally found two households for household interviews for the next day, two resource users and one KI (key informant) interview.
Tuesday!!
BIG interview day! Our first interview was a KI interview with the superintendent of Ports… we got through his security, handed in our driving licences, we then realized we had forgotten the folder with the questionnaires in our kitchen!!! So he, nicely, printed out his own interview questionnaire 
The next interview was a bit of a not-very informative meeting, but at least at 12pm we were ready for lunch at the beach, get changes and off to our next interview (the one we, or at least I, had been looking forward to –or actually not really the interview itself…). We met Paul and his cute dog Camber (a Portuguese Waterdog- apparently the same as President Obama has, though he called it something else because he supports Romney!!! Damn Republicans!), who is the manager and single employee of the Anguillian Youth Sailing Club, operating out of Sandy Ground. So, after the interview they (him and Camber) took us out for a cruise around the harbour on a little Hobie-Cat (a little fun catamaran) – fantastic fun (so that’s why I was so excited about the interview ). Eventually he got us capsized and all floating in the sea! I was going after some water bottle and Kemba wanted to be rescues by me and tried to climb on my shoulders!!! I AM a lifeguard, but have you ever had to do with a big “drowning” dog?? And hey, once she realized I would not carry her, she could swim faster than me after the drifting off boat! In the whole chaos Sarah lost her sunglasses as well!-Later we heard from his boss that this seems a common thing for him with girls… he only had to get rescued the other week.
Great fun and sooo exciting!
Just my kind of interview!
The next interview (and our first random household interview) was with Ann, a retired teacher who also runs a small lodge/hotel on Sandy Ground. She had a lot of knowledge on the history of Anguilla, and told us some fantastic stories about an animal with tentacles that got washed into salt pond. Anguilla has a number of massive salt ponds which were used over many years to harvest salts. It would be pumped off and processed and shipped to many places in the world. Nowadays the salt pumps have stopped working as there are cheaper ways to get to salt, and the ponds provide a unique habitat for many seabirds. One of those salt ponds just harbours onto Sandy Ground, the sea is on one side, then the beach, some houses, a road and the salt pond. At some times of the year there is access from the sea to the salt ponds. This was how this animal got from the sea into the salt pond where it bit her grandson and seems to be killing birds.
When the boy came past later he said he said that the mystery creature was actually a stingray!!
Ann had a huge knowledge about how people used to live in Anguilla with the hurricanes over the years. Now, all the wooden houses that used to line sandy ground are replaced by cement based houses to make them less susceptible to hurricanes.
The last interview of this really long day, which we decided to turn from a household interview to a KI interview (after recommendation), we had in a pub in the evening. The pub is the Pumphouse and is actually the place where the salt was pumped out of the pond… there are still the actual machines inside! I should take a picture, this is so cool.
And, after a long and fun interview, we indulged in some drinks (dark and stormy for me, rum and coke for Sarah) we had time to enjoy some fantastic life reggae music!
Such a fantastic and long day, and we learned so much! One of the facts, for example, that the reef outside Sandy Ground was formed by boulders that Portuguese sailors brought in the 18th century as counterweight for when they picked up the salt from the salt ponds. Another interesting fact is that turtle meat is apparently very tasty and that the turtle fishing ban is apparently one of the best working marine regulations out here.
After so much fun on Tuesday, we spent Wednesday mainly in our accommodation transcribing interviews, and now I am still sitting here at 9 PM writing…
For the first time we had Roti today, which is a Caribbean/local street food- and it surely was delicious (if we have this every day we will be able to roll everywhere instead of walk ;-))