Getting aquainted

Yesterday Sam took us to meet the other Cuso Volunteers at their work place - the Ministry of Youth in the Ministerial complex. My Ottawa friends would get a kick out of the fact that you walk in the Ministry and the Minister’s office is the first door on the right and wide open, then you walk a bit to find the receptionist! Talk about open government.

Having said that they have way more security to get into the complex than our base. We had to sign in, show ID, our bags were checked and we had a metal detector scan! I have never seen a metal scan in any building at CFB Trenton.

We took a walk to the downtown from there with the two other Cuso volunteers Linda and Merriam. Linda has been to Grenada before so she knew where lots of useful things were. The museum has cultural events all the time. Tonight is a jazz concert and next week a book publishing party for a new book about Grenada. She also showed me a community library that was being set up which is currently open Mon, Wed & Friday and Saturday morning. It was down an alleyway into a courtyard and then on a second story of a building you would never think was a library. I have a few librarians following this blog and I will get more details to see if they needs books.

Linda and Meriam also showed us where they shop for local produce the NMIB, it is a national regulating board for locally grown produce and they sell only local produce at good rates. I bought 4 bananas and a cucumber for $4 ECD. We don’t yet have a bank card and needed more cash (most places don’t accept credit cards) so he had to stand in line for about 40 minutes while we headed to the restaurant.

Over lunch we were able to discuss some of the challenges like high and low technology- everyone has a cell and you need one to be connected, but the offices often have slow computers and slower internet. I was really happy to have them show us things that I truly would not have found on my own.

By the time we finished lunch I had pulled my belt off the dress I was wearing because all around the belt line my dress was soaked in sweat! Not an attractive look. I had been trying to find cotton dresses and this was the only one I had found. The other dresses however will hide the fact that I am dripping wet all the time! That dress will now be for special occasions. But Merriam and Linda both confirmed that sleeveless is unacceptable attire for a woman in a workplace, so I am glad I got that right. Who knows maybe I will learn to love dresses… it could happen.

Brent finished up some business at Flow to get internet installed and I was able to post a bunch of blog posts. I will go back and add in some more pictures when we have access.

We walked back toward the harbour and Brent stopped at a street side vendor to buy some split-ups and some Chinese plums. A split up is a small green fruit, smaller than a lime, that you crack the

View from Carnage looking back to our place in Belmont

thin outer layer with your teeth. You then split the outer skin off and a pinkish/peach fuzzy fruit is revealed. There is a large pit inside and not much fruit. But the fruit is sweet and high in water and hard to get off the pit. Aiden took in his lunch today and I had one to keep up my blood sugar. 

At the harbour we opted to take a bus part way for $2.50 ECD it saved about 20 minutes of walking and we still needed school supplies for Aiden. There is a store near our house so we stopped and got books for him there. The walk up our hill with packages is killer. My calves are already burning and we’ve only been here 5 days! four You need to cheer yourself up the hill “I think I can, I think I can”. If that doesn’t work I get a friendly pat on the bottom from Brent to keep going, mainly because if I stop he’ll never get restarted!

I also met our neighbours yesterday. Meena lives two doors down but also can be found across the street at one of the bars on our street! Dee who seems to own the bar and Janice who has the apartment underneath ours. All really nice.

Brent picked up the boys and the principal stopped him to let us know that she has never seen 

Beacon School

children adapt so quickly to a new environment. I am trying to have the boys write about the school. Owen doesn’t want to because he is afraid either children here or back home would be hurt. I reminded him that describing something and judging something was different and that by letting Canadian kids know what a Grenadian school was like could be helpful. We’ll see. If they don’t, I eventually will.

We opted to stay in after the boys got home and get things a bit more settled. We made spaghetti with sauce. The largest pasta sauce container would be half the size of our smallest container! So sauce was rationed and we shared two white buns between the three of us. Yum!