So we are becoming famous in the BVI! We have been on T.V, the front of the Newspaper, and on the radio. Ma Julie and Lennox seem impressed anyway.

Phoebe and I spoke to the Rotary Club on Tuesday morning – it was all very formal, we got to sit at the head table and eat fancy breakfast before giving our presentation (perhaps prepared a little last minute but luckily went smoothly). A Jeep/any kind of vehicle is still non-existent but team spirits are up as we all troop round East End together. We have finally got in with the fishermen, all that time spent hanging out at the gas station has paid off! Beth was horrified at the sight of a baby nurse shark on top of a fisher’s catch with a spear mark through its head but played it cool to make sure we got that interview. We now have a new record of 12 interviews in one day – go team!

The other day Niall and I interviewed the yachter who had been robbed at gun point a couple of days before – he showed us the bullet hole in the roof. It had been big news here and we had no idea it was him until we got to the question ‘do you think people in the community are honest and can be trusted?’ and he just laughed (in quite a scary way) for ages.

We certainly had our share of fun. Last weekend it was Beth’s birthday, we had a night a Scrub Island where a steel band was playing and we may or may not have got tempted by the trampoline on the sea and the huge pool with water slide. On the day itself we got a free trip to Cooper Island from the wonderful Sail Caribbean Divers. They took us across on the boat (wettest ride of our lives) and then left us with snorkels, kayaks and paddle boards – so much fun! And let’s not forget Beth’s favourite thing of all, food! there was a very delicious restaurant on the beach where we had an amazing lunch and happy hour cocktails.

Only two weeks to go, 62 interviews left – the pressure is on!

We’re coming up to the end of our second week in the British Virgin Islands and have finished our entire primary scoping so now its time to begin interviews. Having spent many days walking up the steep hills and driving along the unpaved roads of our chosen communities we have completed bounding, counting and numbering houses. Chatting to people along the way, we have discovered the best bakery in the East End, where to paddleboard in Cane Garden Bay and how to get between the two in the shortest time possible.

We got to know the Islanders at the legendary full moon party at Trellis Bay, tested out the rum punch and (some of us in particular) enjoyed the Caribbean dancing style.

Today we had our second meeting with officials in the government, freezing our butts off from the extreme air-con. We have spent particular time with the Department of Conservation and Fisheries and appreciate how welcoming they have been to our work.

In the coming weeks we are going to start our household interviews, continue to find resource users and identify key stakeholders. Our first community meetings are coming up fast, Wednesday 22^nd in East End and Monday 27^th in Cane Garden Bay. It’s a very exciting time for our project in BVI and we’ll keep you up to date with everything going on.

We are back!  This time in the British Virgin Islands with a whole new team.  Please Welcome Alex Scott, Beth Taylor, Niall McLoughlin and Phoebe Mottram… photos to follow.  We are staying in a villa set for a Saudi Arabian King thanks to some very generous property owners who wanted to support the conservation work.  BVI is simply gorgeous, lush volcanic mountains and picture postcard turquoise seas and so far people have been extremely welcoming.

We are already in our third week and so far everything and anything seems to be going wrong – we’ve had a repeated dead battery on the jeep, the boat cutting out on us, clouds of mosquitos every where, a variety of injuries and illnesses as well as other logical nightmares and a cake full of maggots.  This morning I watched in horror as a hand sized scorpion scuttled out from under the data entry table… but that is field work for you!

We’ll have to catch up with the blog and I’ll get some pictures on here quickly!

Good to be back – Sarah

Having been here for two weeks now, I am falling more and more in love with this beautiful place! People are so lovely and friendly, there are amazing views over the ocean with all its colours, and you see all the donkeys and ponies running around on the streets… life seems to stand still (even though we have got hardly any time, being as busy as ever).

Last night we spend at Mitch Rollings (he is a “want to be rock star, apparently you can buy his music on Itunes”) amazing private bar… it is in his garden, just next to the beach. Had a fantastic time with lovely people.

Then there are our “permanent” guests – who we sadly have seen very little of the last few days- Smitty and his sidekick Jason (just like Batman and Robin), who come round to our house to cook for us and entertain us!

On my bike everybody is waving and saying hello to me! Now I remember why I love those little islands! Find me here, if I might just “accidentally” miss my flight back to the UK!

Last week we had our first community meeting on Grand Turk. Having got to know only few people before the meeting, we tried to invite as many people as we could, spreading the word in the community, talking to people and handing out flyers/ posting posters. While we had only a select few number of people (10), everybody enjoyed themselves! We had some great enthusiastic discussion in our first exercise, creating a historical timeline, and found out a number of interesting facts about West Road community and Grand Turk in general.

Afterwards we did some verification of the maps that we had previously established, and again had a great discussion on how different areas are being used.

All in all everybody seems really excited about the project and cannot wait to get on with all the interviews!

On Monday we moved on from Provo to Grand Turk. Grand Turk is the island on which the capital of the Turks and Caicos, Cockburn Town, is situated.

We have got a lovely apartment in an old house, it has got a hammock outside, a veranda and a lot of sea-life inspired art-work.

Grand Turk is lovely. It is very small and there are a lot of old houses, and has a colonial feel about it. There are “wild” donkeys, and some really cute donkey foals, and people are very friendly.

The only downturn is the heat, as it seems to be even hotter here than on Provo.

The last few days we have spent scoping, arranging the next community meeting and the national meeting… all new and exciting!

We found a nice venue in a church hall for both meetings and are busy inviting people and making contacts.

Looking forward to a last lovely few weeks in the Caribbean!

Oh, it surely has been busy those last few weeks (whenever is it not here)- and we are supposed to be in the laid back Caribbean! In the last two weeks we had two community meetings, one in Five Cays, our fishing based community, and one in the Bight/ Turtle Cove area, our tourism based community. It was great to meet people that we had met in interviews or generally around before, and to say good bye and thank you. Especially the Five Cays community meeting had a great attendance, and we had great help from our local translators Chaly and Joseph!

Goergie and Katharine went on the Haitian radio, and TV teams came to both community meetings!

On Saturday, June 22nd (I know, it is quite a few days ago now) we went out for a fantastic evening to see the TCI Battle of the Bands. Great music, great people, dancing and fun!

Then we had to say goodbye to Georgie, and there were only three of us left, “mopping” up the last interviews, doing another radio interview with DJ Viper, the Five Cays community meeting and the sad part, saying good bye to all the lovely people we had met over the past two months!

It were a busy two weeks, but at the same time very successful!

On our final day Sarah and I managed to go on a snorkeling trip, and it was definitely the best snorkeling experience I ever had: I saw 2 sharks (one nurseshark and one reefshark), reef-squid, a big lobster (and he was really big!!) and loads of other fish and creatures! We went diving for conch in the shallow and had fresh conch salad on Iguana island! What a great finish to our time in Providenciales (as we did not even manage to go diving even once!)

I went on a little adventure to Grand Turk last week to sort out the logistics for our move there in July and to draw some maps that the divers could use to select sites.  Grand Turk is just gorgeous!  Old school Caribbean, with colourful houses, flowers everywhere, huge salt ponds they call Salinas (which is going to get confusing when Selina arrives!).  Flamingos stop by to feed up, as do thousands of tourists from the huge cruise ship dock.  The island is almost bi-polar, asleep one day and bustling with activity as soon as a boat docks.  After browning my trousers on the tiny 8 seater, rust bucket of a plane over, I hired a car and drove around the island a couple of times taking photographs. The reef that runs along the west side of the island is all national park.  You can snorkel out from shore to the 7000 foot drop off, one of the largest marine trenches in the world.  I stayed at a lovely place called Bohio and set up my office every day at a table on the beach.  The crazy south african head chef there kept me fed and entertained… She has a gloriously filthy mouth and I found myself imitated her ‘bloody’ this and ‘bloody’ that 😉  The wild donkeys wake you up in the morning with their constant braying… and at five o’clock each day they came to the hotel to drink out of the water bucket and got into a street brawl with the wild dogs.  I sat next to the TCI chief vet that night as he patched up the broken dogs… never argue with a donkey. On the last day I hung out the the fishermen who were all wonderfully welcoming.  They taught me how to clean and prepare fresh conch… which is extremely difficult, not only because their little eyes are staring at you while you chop off their penises but they excrete a tremendous amount of slime which means you are in constant peril of chopping off a digit.  Fishermen are a dirty lot and I discovered some amazing facts about conch… did you know they have the longest penises in proportion to body length of any animal!  I can’t wait to go back there and start interviewing.

Over the next two weeks we have to finish the interviews here in Provo, conduct two community meetings to share our results and pack up.  It’s going to be full on.  I can’t wait! 😉