Tackling Gimie

"Kitkat, what are you doing Sunday?" asked Lenn, as I was putting the last few ingredients for taco salad on the table. A few of us had gathered for dinner and a movie at my place, Last of the Mohicans, a classic tragedy that only served to remind me of how much I miss the mountains of the Carolinas.

"I don't know," I said, "I don't have any plans."

"Well you do now; we're doing Gimie."

A wave of excitement and dread passed over me. For those of you who don't know, Mt. Gimie is the tallest mountain in St. Lucia. In the beginning I was gung ho about tackling Gimie and the Pitons, but it had been ages since I hiked and let's just say I wasn't in the fittest of forms… Gimie is known to be a tough, long, grueling hike. Other Peace Corps Volunteers had told tales of getting stuck out in the dark and stumbling through the blackness for hours, even past midnight, before they reached "civilization" again. But I LOVE adventure and challenge. I couldn't pass this up.

****

Sunday morning at 6:00am my alarm startled me out of a slumber I DID NOT want to end. I rolled out of bed, crammed some cereal in my mouth, gathered my "gear," and headed out. My "gear" was not much to speak of… I didn't bring that much with me in my 2 bags for 2 years. I was wearing a tank top, moisture wick shirt, hiking pants, and an old pair of tennis shoes. When I say old, I mean ancient. These guys had been with me since high school. I also had a small lumbar daypack… crammed full with water, food, first aid kit, and rain coat.

I was the last to arrive at the square in town, which is unusual. Typically Lucians, especially these guys, are way late. So we hopped in the vehicles and began the 1-hour drive down to Soufriere where we would turn inland to get to the trailhead. Now, Lenn had originally told me that the group would be 10 strong at most, but by the time the cars were parked and everyone was out we were a healthy 29…. 29?… 29 people! Have any of you ever tried to hike with 29 people!? Give it a try some day and let me know how it goes. A few guys took charge and decided it would be smart to divide the group into 4 subgroups so as to keep track of everybody, but the moment we started up the trail, the groups became futile. We started moving at around 10:00am. Gimie is estimated to take about 8 hours to hike. Two hours to the base, two hours up the mountain, and then reverse it to get down. Do the math in your head. The Caribbean goes dark at around 6:00pm… so from the very beginning we were pushing the limits.

The old dirt road quickly turned into a skinny, bush entangled, MUDDY trail. Our shoes were sinking into the mud and making a nice "sshhhhloock!" as we attempted to move forward. I quickly realized that a number of folks in the group were NOT hikers. Just ten minutes in, one of the girls, in what I dubbed the "sissy" group, had given her pack to one of the guys. This was a GREAT sign. The trail took us around steep hills. So, often the ground dropped away from us on one side and rose up to meet us on the other. We had about a foot wide path to work with. This girl was so afraid of falling down a hill that she plastered herself to the upper hillside and was trying to walk at the same time. She and her other sissy friends also began to complain, "this is not what I signed up for; I just didn't think this is how it would be." I have a pretty good sense of humor, even when things go all wrong, but not with complainers and sissies… this was gonna be a long day…

The trail to the base of the mountain was no easy breeze. We climbed up and down, slid all over the place, got rained on, and crossed several little creeks before we got to "the base". This took us about 3 hours. Keep this in mind because we have to come back to this trail later. The first part of the ascent was pretty steep; I'll describe it as a muddy stair climb. We moved at the pace of the sissy girls. I'll be honest; at that point, I was getting tired and was thankful for an excuse to go at a slower pace.

Along the way Lenn found a tarantula and stayed by the trail to "pet" it. From this point onward I suffered from the creepy crawlies…

About halfway up, we reached a ridge that took us to the last leg of the climb. Here, the sissy girls gave up and sat down to wait for us to summit. The last section I will describe as straight up. Oh, and don't forget it was MUDDY. Before long I was literally crawling on my hands and knees, utterly exhausted. My arms were covered in mud; my pants were covered in mud; my hands were covered in mud. I even had mud on my face. Twenty minutes from the summit, my left shoe made a funny noise. I looked down to see the sole separating from my shoe. When I say sole, I'm not talking about that little rubber flap with tread on it; I'm talking about the whole thick piece of rubber that SHOULD stay glued to the bottom of what is nothing more than a nylon bootie… At that point, however, there was nothing much I could do about it, so I just kept going.

As I was crawling up the last section with my shoe in pieces, the MAN in front of me (a grown MAN!) turned around and said in all seriousness, "We need to call St. Lucia helicopters to come get us. We're not gonna make it outta here." I clarified that this was a stupid thought and that no one was going to come rescue an uninjured MAN with food and water supplies who was simply dreading the fact that it was going to take us forever and a day to get out of there. He and the PCV behind me were pretty dehydrated at this point so I gave them both some electrolyte tablets that I had just happened to throw in my first aid kit. Oh, and speaking of dehydration, did I mention that one of the sissy girls abandoned two FULL water bottles earlier on the side of the trail because they got tired of carrying them?? I discussed this with Lenn and informed him that there should be a screening process for these things…

Finally we reached the top completely beat. Everyone just hit the ground with barely a word. Our view?? Nothing but a white cloud. We sat on a small grassy knoll looking into a white abyss. I hardly cared. I just reached in my pack for whatever nourishment I could find. It felt good to not move… but it was short-lived. It was about 3:00ish in the afternoon and Lenn started encouraging us to move back down. We really needed to get going if we were gonna beat sundown, but I somehow knew that beating sundown was just plain wishful thinking. As everyone was moving toward the trail, I sat down and attempted to tie the sole of my shoe on with my shoelace. It wasn't pretty, but I hoped it would help.

I was 2 from the back as I started the return journey. I made it about 10 feet before my right shoe sole ripped almost entirely off. It was dangling by the toe and looked more like a flip-flop needing repair than anything resembling a shoe. Exhaustion turned into hysteria, and I just started laughing. The guys behind me took pictures. I sat down and attempted to tie the right sole on with my shoelace, but looking at it I knew this was gonna be an interesting journey. Soon a layer of mud had formed between the detached sole and nylon slipper so that each time I took a step, my foot would slide out of the sole. It wasn't long before the entire sole was hanging only by the shoelace.

At this point I gave up on the idea of walking down the mountain, sat down, and started to slide like a small child. Surprisingly, the mud made for some GREAT slides. I was having so much fun sliding that I was giggling in fits. All the while I was cutting up with the 2 guys behind me, joking and laughing. We sang She'll be sliding around the mountain when she comes, made up rhymes about my dirty pants, and even coined the phrase, "save a shoe, ride a cheek." Our delirious state may have been equivalent to that of slight drunkenness.

The sliding continued all the way down the mountain. During this time, my right "nylon slipper" completely wore out on the bottom. I had the frame of a shoe around my foot and nothing but an increasingly holey sock between me and the great outdoors… lovely. I suppose I can be thankful that it was my shoe and not my pants! By the time we reached the creak at the base, I was caked in mud. Without hesitation I said, "Excuse me, I need to take a bath," and completely submerged my mud covered body in the water to scrub down.

We only made it a short distance beyond the base before darkness fell. The next 4 or 5 hours were spent slowly and meticulously stumbling our way through blackness with shared flashlights. The sissy girls seemed to freak out at the slightest challenges. Every time someone asked what time it was, I screamed, "I don't wanna know!! It doesn't matter!!" All we could do was put one foot in front of the other. It seemed as if we would never see the end of that trail.

On the way down the group naturally split into three sub-groups. The first group fled the scene and made it out before dark. My group, the second group, emerged at about 10:00pm-ish (this included a 1 hour wait for the last group just to make sure they were safe before continuing). The final group stumbled out of the wilderness no earlier that 11:00pm. That is over 12 hours of hiking!!! I couldn't even feel my feet anymore. Everything ached.

By the time our bus finally dropped me at my home, it was about 1:30. I threw everything on the porch, stripped down, and headed straight for the shower. I was SO thankful that the water was actually on!! I had to scrub several times and still couldn't get some of the dirt off. When I finally lay down to sleep, my bed felt amazing for all of 2 seconds and then every muscle touching anything began to hurt. Fortunately exhaustion brought quick, long slumber…

The Scuba Family Bowyer

Scuba

After years of being afraid of scuba diving, I finally decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. Dad, Tom, and Tim have all been certified for a while. Mom and I always find other things to do when they go. They have been begging us to get certified. My excuses? I like being ABOVE the water; not under it. I like being able to surface whenever necessary. I am afraid my ears won't equalize. I'm afraid I'll forget to breath right and get whatever they call it "the bends" or worse some serious lung problem. And a long line of "what ifs" that probably only happen in super freak accidents… But with the family coming to visit, dad really wanted all of us to be able to go together. Even Mom got certified.

So… I did it! And… I loved it!!! Through a friend I found a great deal at the Sandals resorts down here. (I know, Sandals, keep your comments…) I took the class with a fellow volunteer. Our instructors were amazing and very thorough. I made it through all the pool skills, surprisingly. Then we had our open water dives. I was nervous, but before I knew it we were at 35 feet and my ears were fine and I was fine… and it was soooo cool!

On our first dive we went to a reef just below Anse La Raye called Anse Kochon (bay of pigs, I believe). I have snorkeled there before, but I quickly learned that snorkeling and scuba are so different. Instead of looking down from above, I found myself swimming IN the schools of fish and looking at coral and creatures from all angles! Towards the end of our first dive we rode a little current out around the tip of the little reef. Suddenly, I couldn't find my Peace Corps scuba buddy! I looked around, even swam around a big rock, and he was nowhere! I looked at our guide and shrugged with my hands up like "I don't know where he went!" I was just thinking, "what a terrible scuba buddy I am! I lost my buddy!" when a sea turtle swam right beneath us! He was so cute! The guide tapped his tank for the other groups to come over so we could all admire… never mind my lost buddy. Then he looked at me and pointed up. I looked and sure enough there was my buddy, at the surface! I forgot about looking up!! That's a new dimension when looking for people… oops! We surfaced and it turns out my buddy had buoyancy issues. His empty tank gave him more buoyancy toward the end of the dive and he couldn't help but float up! Too bad for him, because he missed the sea turtle!

On our second dive we got to see a puffer fish puff up for us! And for our 3^rd dive we got to go down 60ft to a shipwreck! It was covered in coral and there were fish all around. We even swam inside! I was so excited and happy on each dive. I'm certain that if I could have talked underwater, the fish would have been annoyed, because I was just so amazed and so excited about EVERYTHING! I am so glad I did it and now feel as though I've been missing out for years! And how cool that I got to do this in St. Lucia, with Sandals nonetheless… they provided free snacks by the way! Peace Corps Volunteers LOVE free snacks!

Family

My scuba certification was just in time for the arrival of my family less than a week later. In the last days before their arrival I could hardly contain my excitement. On Saturday I rode down to the airport with the car rental pick up. We arrived about an hour early, but I was too antsy to sit in the taxi. Sometimes flights come in early so I crossed my fingers… and I stood… for an hour… and a half! Waiting! I kept asking people which flights they came from. The anticipation was brutal! Finally I saw Mom, Dad, and Tim come through the doors. I ran to them and got a great big hug from Tim, and Mom, and then Dad! I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Mom had us all line up for a picture. Just as she was snapping the photo, I felt a brotherly tap on my head. I turned around and there were Tom and his fiancé Brynn!!! They surprised me! Not 2 days before Tom had been telling me how busy he and Brynn were and how much he wished he could go scuba diving. The rascal! I was so excited to have them and so excited to finally meet Brynn!

We had a great week together jam packed full with activity. It was a balance of "let-me-show-you-where-I-live-and-what-I-do" and "enjoy-family-and-have-crazy-fun" time. We got to go zip lining in the rain forest, drive around the island, get pictures with the famous Pitons, eat tons of delicious local dishes, bread and seafood, explore several different beaches, snorkel, sail, hang out with all the Peace Corps staff and volunteers for the 4^th of July, visit my schools, deliver some chess sets, meet my local hiking friends, go cliff jumping, shop in the market, drink all the different fruit juices, and go scuba diving!! It was amazing. I was overjoyed to have them be a part of my experience here and overwhelmed to be with such an incredible family. I feel proud of how strong we are and how much we grow and change as time flies by. It was a whirlwind week and I think we exhausted ourselves (so much for vacation!). It was tough to see everyone off, but what a great time we had.

In just 1.5 months I'll be in Texas with the WHOLE family for Tom and Brynn's wedding. Three months later I'll be home for Christmas. And then 4 months later I'll be home for good. I can hardly believe I've been here almost a year and a half. It is all flying by so fast.

Blessings to you all. Would love to hear from you,

Books and the Classroom

The library space at the new school where I work is nice compared to most I've seen here. The fact that the school has a "library" is nice… period. The kids are used to using the space, so having a white lady there just draws even more of them in. I even had to keep them away from the books for a while in order to get the catalogue system going. I have finished most of the books now, though, and they are shelved and ready for use.

Last week during lunch I could tell there were a lot of kids waiting to use the books. So I gobbled down my food and returned to the library to keep it open for them. Most of them came rushing in and then just stood around looking at me as I sorted through books. So I asked them, "Would you like to read a book?" They shyly nodded their heads. I showed them where they could pick out a book and where they should put it when they were done. About 8 kids gathered around a table looking through and reading books. I pretended to "work" but I was having so much fun watching them, and I was keeping my eye out to make sure they were keeping things in order. One little one was picking out books left and right. He finally found one about Jesus and promptly looked at me and shouted, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!!" running to the table to open his book. He returned to the same spot 2 more times to pick out more stories about Jesus. I chuckled to myself thinking, "whatever gets you excited about reading, buddy…" When the bell rang for class to resume the disappointment was clearly written on their faces, but they dutifully put their books on the "to be shelved" pile and ran off to class. I watched them go and then turned to the heap of books that had gathered over lunch period, but I was happy to shelve them.

Seeing excitement about books and reading here is so thrilling. This is just the beginning of my library and reading club adventures at this new school. I really hope that I can give them a permanent hunger for books in my time here… that would be my idea of sustainability…

***

This week I start Kweyol classes again. Kweyol or Creole or Patois is the local language. Everyone speaks English, but they also speak Patois (Patwah) and I hear it all the time. We learned a little bit over a year ago in training, but it was really the least of my concerns then. The Ministry of Education is offering the class and we have Peace Corps Volunteers, Japanese Volunteers, and Locals participating. I'm hoping to learn enough to be able to understand the basics of what I hear around me… and honestly, I am really enjoying being in a classroom again! It's surprising, but I am enjoying engaging my mind in learning new things and having homework assignments! The class is being held at a primary school in town, so we sit in these tiny handmade wooden desks, look on as our teacher scribbles all over a chalkboard, and try our best to ignore the loud noises carrying in through the vented walls. It's interesting to experience this Lucian classroom… I don't know how the kids focus here!

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Only 17 days until Mom, Dad, and Tim arrive!! I already have a schedule written out and have been making preparations! I can't wait!

Sunset Cruise on the Unicorn

Mid-Service Training

The Cashew and the Calabash Bowls

Hiking and Camping

Canaries Waterfall

Nana and Papa Visit St. Lucia

Celebrating 1 Year!

Painting a Giant Chess Board

Visiting a US Navy Ship

EC 81 swears in!

My first passover by myself!

The Highlights of My LONG Break in Updates!

It has been so long since my last update that I have to look through my pictures to see what I have not told you!! I'll try to hit the high points; there have been a lot of high points in the last few months!

The number one high point is a change in work site! After one year at the Red Cross, things were just not as successful as one would hope. So Peace Corps transferred me to two primary schools: my first school attachment and a new school attachment. This change was so exciting and I love it so much. I work primarily on their libraries. I am helping to create a catalog and check-out system to encourage the use of the books and reading among the kids. I will also be helping out with the chess programs at both schools when I can. Life skills lessons continue at my first school. At my new school we hope to start a reading club soon. It is so enjoyable and I feel more in my element, which is a huge relief. It gives me a lot to look forward to in this second year.

Another great highlight is my grandparents' visit! My Nana and Papa booked a cruise around the Eastern Caribbean islands and one stop was St. Lucia! We spent one whole day together and I got to show them around. First I took them to my primary school attachment. Earlier in the year my grandparents donated chess materials to the school and I wanted them to meet the chess club. The whole school came out to express thanks. They presented Nana and Papa with a wonderful photo of the kids playing on their new chess sets and they sang some songs. It was exciting and really fun for them to see the meaningfulness of their donation. Next I took them to my apartment to show them where I live. Then we went to a resort, The Windjammer, for lunch on the beachfront. Another volunteer joined us and we spent the afternoon catching up and playing games. After that they were pretty tired so I took them back to the cruise ship and waved goodbye. It was so good to see them and so great to be able to show them a bit of my life here. It is special to share this experience with the ones I love so much!

Now that I have free weekends I have been more active with the hiking group. In one of our recent trips we went to the Canaries Waterfall, which was a gorgeous and wonderfully cool place to swim… and feed fish. I got to climb around and be outdoorsy river girl for a day! J After the waterfall we went down to a beach called Anse Koshon. We snorkeled and played games in the water. My face was sore from laughing and smiling, which is always a good sign! The weekend after that I went camping with the group. We stayed near that same beach, Anse Koshon. We hiked to a "cave" that was actually just a big hole under a rock. We did some more snorkeling and hung out by the beach a lot. We also introduced the Lucians to s'mores! We were missing graham crackers so we used ordinary crackers, but they were delicious and the Lucians loved it. I think that is the first time I've been camping in over a year and a half. It was nice… and buggy. We were all sleeping around mango trees so we kept periodically hearing mangos fall and roll down the hill. Some hit our tarp. When I packed up my stuff at the end of the camp I realized I'd been sleeping on a squished mango. They were everywhere. The other volunteers and I also got to experience making Calabash bowls. Calabash is the national fruit (though you can't eat it). It has a hard shell and you can clean it out to make bowls and carve designs in the outside. We did this while snacking on coconut. J

Last week was MST (Mid-Service Training). The other volunteers from Granada and Dominica got to fly in and we all stayed in a hotel for 4 days (3 nights). We THOROUGHLY enjoyed the air conditioning and comfy beds… and the pool. During the training sessions we reflected on the past year and realized how far we have come. It's so easy to feel like we aren't getting anywhere, but when we look back and think about the little things we really have done so much. We also got to hear what other volunteers are doing and pull ideas from each other, which will be really useful in our future projects. There were a few other business sessions, but most of all we came away feeling heard, encouraged, and re-energized. It was good to see everyone, have some time to hang out, and take a break from our routines.

After MST, a few of us took a ride on the Unicorn, a ship that was used in the filming of the Pirates of the Caribbean. We scored a good deal for a 2-hour sunset cruise so we splurged and went. It included drinks and snacks and you can bet us PCVs devoured those snacks. It was cloudy so the sunset wasn't brilliant orange, but it was beautiful nonetheless. The cruise itself was relaxing and fun.

And now it's back to real life again! I'm back at work. We have just over a month left in the school year. My parents and brother are coming in just about 30 days! I need to get scuba certified! I'm having fun and loving life, which is a lot to say and a relief to feel. I have so much to look forward to. And I hope I can do a better job of keeping you all posted!

Much love! As always, I love to hear from you!