All Good Things Must Have an End

Mi nuh wan de maka dem fi juk mi. (I don't want the thorns to prick me.) The hardest part of picking up gyaabage (patois for garbage) was avoiding the thorny shrubs it collected under.

On Monday morning Peace Corps group 81 did our first service project!! It was great to finally be able to say thank you to the people of Hellshire after enjoying their beaches and eating their food for two weeks. We thought for a long time about what we should do and when we should do it. In the end we decided to do a neighborhood cleanup. Some volunteers were concerned that this would be like a house guest taking out the scrub brush and cleaning the toilet at the end of a dinner party. However, I think we avoided that faux pas.

Tina, Adam, and I decided that our garbage bags would fill up quickest at the football (soccer) fields. Several of the football players expressed their thanks for our efforts and two of them even postponed the game to help us pick up some of the trash. Even though there are many areas we couldn't get to, it was a successful operation in my opinion.


Later that evening, Sandy, Bev (a friend who occasionally works for Sandy helping with the cooking and cleaning, first on the left), and I visited Two Sister's Cave: Hellshire's main attraction after the beach. The caves are filled with bright blue freshwater which some of the trainees swam in. We arrived at the gate house three minutes before closing where we met Auntie Claire (a good friend of Sandy and tour guide at Two Sisters' Cave, second from the left). We quickly donned our construction hats and processed down the wooden steps towards the water. There was a carving on one of the walls believed to be chisled by the native Tainos: the oldest known human population on the island. On the way back to the car I saw a brown and white Patu (Patois for owl). Owls are very majestic creatures and this one seemed only slightly disturbed when the security guard pointed it out by hitting it with a stone.


On Tuesday night we roasted half a goat and half a pig. The town ate dinner together as a send-off social. Goodbyes were flung out of bus windows as we were shuttled up the mountais to Euarton.