So last week we continued the interviews in Island Harbour meeting a variety of fabulous characters!  There is a definite reluctance to do interviews with us and I recently discovered there were marine biologists who came in a couple of years ago doing interviews and suggesting a 6 month closed season for fishing and all kinds of other regulations!  No wonder everyone is a bit nervous.

We held the first community meeting at the primary school.  The whole night was quite manic with just Pia and I to control the rabble but I think everyone enjoyed themselves and a lot of the important events that came up in the historical timeline validated what we heard at the National and Sandy Ground meetings.  We are booked in to do some fun marine stuff with the children at the school and also during the huge Festival Del Mar at the end of the month.  We might possibly be giving out free tasters of lion fish.

Saturday was my birthday!  I have managed to survive until the grand old age of 32 😉  As a mini-break I went to Saba – the most beautiful volcanic island two short boat trips away from Anguilla.  I spent the day climbing the mountain, diving the gorgeous coral reefs, eating tuna steaks and watching the sun set over the windward islands.  The diving there really is spectacular – sea mounts and pinnacles surrounded by sharks, turtles and black coral… coral gardens full of invertebrates and colourful hard corals….I saw a lovely seahorse, some great nudibranchs lots of huge black Jacks.  I would definitely recommend it as a destination for coral reef fans.  It is such a shame Anguilla’s reefs aren’t in half as good condition.

Some photos to follow.

This week we are scoping West End and will be continuing with the interviews.

Hey,

We have been working in Island Harbour this week.  It’s got a different kind of vibe to it.. the place is on the far east end of the island, kind of separated and proudly, traditional fishing.  Interview appointments are flowing well at the moment but I think we might hit a high refusal wall soon…. it’s going to take a lot of charm to win over these boys!

Having said that the interviews we have conducted have been fascinating!  The fishermen mostly spear fish and fish with pots for crayfish and lobster.  They use smelly old cow hides as bait for the lobster.  One fisherman showed me where an octopus had sucked the body right out of his crayfish while it was caught in the trap leaving him an empty shell. The older guys talk about how they used to sail all over the Caribbean delivering goods and how virile and lush the inshore coral reefs used to be.  The younger guys get excited by the offshore fishing.

I was extremely lucky on our second day in Island Harbour to jump on one of the traditional racing boats while they were doing their practise run for a big race later that afternoon.  The boats are wide, open hull, with huge triangular sails –quite distinctive-looking, more like the dhows from the Persian sea.  I sat in the bottom of the baot basically acting as a sand bag (providing weight) whilst all the boys jumped from one side to the other trying to balance out the power of the wind tipping us over.  It was VERY exciting!  We watched then later from the safety of the beach during the race.

That night I also tried my first ‘pigs foot’.  It’s like a white, fatty, lump held together by a couple of bones, boiled forever in salt water until it turns into a gluey mess.  I just can’t understand why people love it so much…it’s more of a cankle than a foot and more like boiled tripe than pork ;/  In another unsatisfactory food first I also ate my first parrot fish.  After spending days learning all the species of parrot fish I now see them as my friends and (thanks to some training from Clare) I ate eat the eyeball first so it wouldn’t keep giving me the puppy dog eyes.

Sarah x

A busy week lies behind us, and we are having our deserved rest. Since Selina came last Sunday, there were just hundreds of things to do, in particular, we had to National meeting on Wednesday. We spent Tuesday calling again on all our invitees and doing last preparations and practising. And then it was a big day. We went early to the library, where the meeting was to be held, and set up the auditorium, to food, tables and chairs. We were hoping that some people would turn up, but then, even before 10 AM, they started piling in. We had a total of 38 guests, from different government organisations, representatives of the National trust, individual Fisher men, a number of knowledgeable, concerned citizens, and representatives of environmental youth organisations. It was a fantastic spread of backgrounds and ages.

After Karim, the director of the environment Department, gave a welcome speech. We started with a presentation of our project, and then went into the exercises. In the morning, we did a historic timeline. People were divided into three groups, one looking on major changes in the fisheries since 1960s, one looking into major changes in tourism and international and regional development, and the final group looking into changes in the general environment and community. This was very interactive, and a lot of fun. Many people were surprised and excited about the final timeline.

After an hour’s lunch break, with lovely sandwiches and cakes, we came back to do a second exercise, called the policy cycle. So this was slightly more difficult, it turned out to be a great success. People started to think and after the discussion of the policy cycle everybody was eagerly awaiting the final discussion.

I believe this was a very successful day, and even though it was hard work, everybody seemed to have really enjoyed themselves, and taken something back.

Let’s hope the next national meetings in Turks and Caicos and the Caymans will be as successful.

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

It’s Sunday and the internet is working surprisingly well for the first time in 3 weeks 😉  Look out for those catch-up e-mails!  I also fixed the gallery below so you should actually be able to see the pictures now.

We had a terrible steak on Thursday night.  So tough we have put it in a plastic bag in the fridge ready to be used to distract those packs of dogs we keep encountering.  I figure we can throw them the steak and will then have at least 5 minutes while they break their teeth on it before they attack again.

Yesterday was a lovely day.  We did some more household interviews in Sandy Ground and North Hill.  Pia hit upon 3 deaf ladies and a woman with some form of dementia…. I talked to Mr Cat, an older gentleman with 20 ginger cats.

In the evening we went to the 30th Annual International food night at the beautiful Catholic church.  All the society people were there dressed up in their finest.  Live music from a steal drum band.  Pia had a rather large gin – 70% gin, 20% ice, 10% tonic.  Apparently the tonic is cheaper than the gin. I ran around collecting tasters from all the tables and hiding then in the car and we did a ‘meals of wheels’ service and dropped it off for the cat man on our way home. Now the pimp car smells of west african goat curry. There was some great food from the Phillippines, Trinidad, Anguilla, Italy, St. Kitts and Dominica… we came home stuffed and had a rather esoteric conversation on the nature of objectivity.

Tonight we are hosting a small dinner party for our new friends.  Pia is cooking Thai green curry and  I am trying my hand at spring rolls and peanut noodles.  I figure serve enough rum and everything will go swimmingly!

Pictures to follow.  The latest pictures are from my shopping trip to the Jamaican organic farm (yes those are tomatoes!).  He uses large white rabbit poo as fertilizer.

Sarah