I should be writing field-notes...

Instead I'm going to procrastinate by sharing this mornings' breakfast surprise. I'll start by mentioning that there are only 2 poisonous creatures in St. Lucia that I know of- the deadly fer de lance snake and the centipede.  Neither live close to my little apartment, though I see a fair number of centipedes at my field sites.

The snake is very dangerous and a bite will kill you unless treated very quickly. The centipede much less so. Most people experience pain and swelling, sometimes accompanied by nausea and a small fever (though the very young, old or those who happen to be allergic can die in worst case scenarios). Still not something you want to be bitten by.

Most centipedes that I have seen are about 1-3 inches long and very narrow, so you can imagine when I saw this... (Alive!)
...crawl out from behind my stove and begin running across the kitchen tile this morning, I was more than a little freaked out! At first I tried ot calm down by thinking about the time one crawled up behind me and nearly bit me in the Bahamas with Lindsay and Adam, but no, this guy was waaaaay bigger.

Check him out next to Jul's size 8.5 shoe (postmortem):

SEE! I'm not exaggerating. I jumped up and put on shoes, then grabbed a camera and another shoe (I wanted to take photo in case it fought back, bit me and got away) and then I attacked! It took one thrown shoe to stun it and then 3 solid thwacks with J's shoe to kill it.

Here is an up close (postmortem):

Shiver... my sturdy dustpan and several moments of "eww!" later, I chucked it out the front door. So that's how my day started! Now back to those field-notes...

Guest post: Holy Crab.

Gentle readers of the guest blog post,

As you may recall, the last guest blog post concluded with a picture of some piping hot, potato tasting, boiled green bananas and a teaser about how the following guest blog post would likely discuss preparing them. Well, I'm sorry, but that's not what this post is about.

Look at this hole. My average-female-adult-sized hand is next to it for scale. Do you see how big it is?

Medium hand. Large hole.

And (you'll have to take my word since this picture is insufficient) they are really deep, too.

Depth.

See how prolific these holes are?

Holy neighborhood.

Guess what lives in them. Go on, guess. I'll wait.

I am startlingly large.

Crab thinking about heading over to his neighbor's giant hole-home.

Crabs! The large land crab! These things are huge, especially when magnified by the powerful lens of fear. Seriously though, I have seen smaller dogs. Seriously.

Look at how creepy this one looks with it's legs poking out? (Insert "the willies" here)

Who can think of green banana starchiness, no matter how delicious, at a time like this?

In each of the various sized holes, ranging from half-dollar sized, to large enough that I wouldn't say I'm fervently anti-dropping a grenade down it, lives a crab ranging from a fairly small half-dollar size, to a well-now-it's-getting-silly level of large. Like salad plate sized, I guess- and that just doesn't seem necessary.

Crabs, as you know, are supposed to live in/near the ocean. Sure, they come on the beaches and dig holes and it's fun to watch them skittle about while kids chase them at night with flashlights, but crabs aren't supposed to leave the sand. Apparently though, some crabs didn't like the hustle and bustle of a life that demanded a constant back and forth skittering from ocean to sand. They've decided to leave the noisiness behind and head on out to the suburbs. Maybe they wanted to find a place with a nice lawn and a fence. Well, now they've adapted to life on land. Do you know what this means? They've got the ocean and the land. That's where I spend most of my time! By some logic, one might conclude that crabs will next develop the ability to fly, or at least ungracefully hop a few feet at a time like a chicken. At some point it constitutes terrorism. That's how senselessly terrifying these things are.

Now, in order to prepare you on how to best handle an encounter with the land crab, here are some things to know:
- They are edible just like all the other crabs. It's a little gross actually seeing the trash they like to live around and consume and then think about folks eating them, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger- unless it pinches. Still, I wouldn't recommend eating one, mostly because they give me the willies.

- They are caught with traps. Fruit is commonly used as the bait (mangoes and green bananas were mentioned by the guy who stopped to ask me why I was taking pictures of an animal as commonplace to him as the squirrel is to us).

- Land crabs are just as afraid of people as their smaller and more endearing sand crab cousins are. They also tend to shy away from having their picture taken.

- Land crabs have no interest in chasing you and are unsatisfying to chase (unlike the sand crab, which is hilarious). You need really only take a step or make a noise, such as talking at a regular volume, to encourage them to evacuate back into the safety of their giant hole-home.

- They like shady, moist environments and can be most easily seen near dusk or on a cloudy, drizzly day.

To recap: There are large land crabs about. Even though they are somewhat illusive, their hole-homes are everywhere which cause me a fantastically confusing mixture of emotions including curiosity and terror. Though land crabs look terrifying and can get unnecessarily large, they are largely harmless. Their favorite pastime is running away and hiding. You can catch one with a trap using green bananas as bait.

See what I did there? Full circle. You're welcome. Assuming I don't discover another large crustacean living among us, the next guest blog post should be about preparing green bananas. Fingers crossed.

Adventures in Fishing and Larceny

While I'm off doing what anthropologists do best most days,  Jul is searching for things to do. This will probably soon include some public health related stuff, but this weekend the goal was to learn to fish.

We started out by heading to a big store almost "in town" (this is how locals refer to the capitol city, Castries) where I once noticed some fishing rods for sale. After a bit of shopping, a rod, reel and tackle were located and we headed to the checkout. As I got closer I could hear something muffled being announced over the PA system. The first time around I only caught the words "checkout" and "counter" and thought it must be the normal "lane 5 is free" type announcements, though in hindsight that would be a very efficient and out of place announcement for St. Lucia. The second time I heard the announcer I heard her say in a very unconcerned voice "there is a bomb scare please put your items down at the checkout counter and proceed to the exit".

First- there was no bomb, everyone is fine and this is not a common occurrence. Now that is out of the way, let me tell you that St. Lucians don't really panic. If this had been in the US, people would have been screaming, some folks would surely have run, and there would have been a lot of shopping carts being pushed right out the door. Here, there was a hurried shuffle at best (which is fast considering the usual strolling pace folks in Sent Lisi use, but still...) and then a lot of head shaking and laughter on the part of employees and patrons alike. 

There were also several young men with rather full backpacks who exited and then took off. My guess would be that they had a buddy call in the threat and then made off with the goods. Knowing how useless and slow the police are here, we decided the fishing rod could wait and drove home.

Theft in St. Lucia is either very creative, or like everywhere, based on opportunity. The creative stuff is worth mentioning though-  the most common way that people's homes are broken into is that a group of guys will paint the exterior, at least one whole wall, of someone's house a new color and then once neighbors all think that the guys are just hired painters, they will break in the back and take the persons belongings away in their truck or van. So the victim comes home to their house a new color and a burgled home. Another popular method follows the same pattern, but the perpetrators employ landscaping skills and the victim gets a partially manicured yard with some new shrubs or flowers, but an empty house.

Back to fishing- A return trip to the store in town yielded the fishing gear and late this afternoon we headed to Reduit Beach where I enjoyed the sunset and Jul got in some fishing practice (much to the amusement of the locals who were also out fishing).

First fishing spot on the rock jetty

We joined these guys, who were very friendly and made many fishing suggestions, including "sing your favorite song"

Sunset!

Second fishing spot in the surf along the beach

No fish were harmed during this fishing trip, and only one crab was startled. However, one very surprised jogger, who had cat-like agility and a generous sense of forgiveness, was momentarily apprehended when he alternated his sprinting/jogging pattern in a way that coincided with a cast and resulted in his leg getting tangled in the line, but not hooked! When he jogged by a second time, he joked that Jul must have been trying to catch him since she didn't have any luck with the fish. Turns out he really was quite a catch!

Guest post: Makabou chips with Julianna

I’ve got my rooster apron on because I’m going to make fried makabou (ma-ka-boo) chips. I have never eaten or cooked these before. How exciting!

Well, as you can see, they look like short, fat, green bananas or plantains. Most Caribbean folks eat bananas and their many look-alike friends (plantains, etc) when they are green. They (the bananas, not Caribbean folk) generally taste generically starchy and so I’ve found frying to be the easiest/most forgiving first attempt.

So, I’ve sliced off the ends of the makabou and cut a lengthwise sliver, making it easier to remove the peel. Once peeled, I chopped it up into slices about a quarter inch thick. This isn’t for any culinary reason, I’m simply not much good at slicing. Then I put them in a frying pan with about a pan-bottom-covering-amount of hot canola/vegetable oil.

If you’re like me, you don’t just cook when you cook. You also check email, sweep, wash a few dishes, or clean up after the mess you’ve made preparing to cook and occasionally check in on your culinary creation. We call that “Island Time”. Sometimes things might get “burned”. It’s usually mostly fine though. Frying happens to be a good method of cooking when operating on island time.

Anyway, you can see the slight difference in shades of white between the ones I’ve already flipped and the completely uncooked one. I have no idea if they are done enough. They probably cooked for about 3 minutes on one side before I flipped them. I don’t know exactly. Long enough for me to wash my hands and clean up the counter a little. Also, I tossed a little salt on them while they were frying. When frying things you think will taste generically starchy, you can’t go wrong with a pinch of salt!

Okay, so this is a plate of the ones that are done (I tasted them and they are cooked all the way through).

This is the final plate. The ones that are “well-done” taste just fine, by the way. I do enjoy cooking with forgiving food! Makabou chip success!

Here is a sneak peak at what is likely to be the topic of the next culinary blog post:

These are boiled green bananas. Known to St. Lucians as “green figs” (fig is the Kweyol word for banana)(Kweyol is the St. Lucian creole, which apparently just happens to be called Creole, but in creole). They are starchy and eaten with butter and salt- á la a potato. The bananas have to be very, very green for them to not taste like you’ve just boiled a banana. More on that another time!

Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin ag'in!

The title of this post is a little misleading because there is no "poor old Caela' point to this update, but it's the song I've had running around in my head all day, and here I am again in St. Lucia, "begin ag'in-ing" and so it feels apropos...

So yes, I'm writing a blog post after waaaaay too long and also back in Sent Lisi. After a whirlwind 4-week trip visiting friends and family that went like this- North Carolina, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina- and finished up with a wonderful conference in Guatemala, I'm rather looking forward to being in one place for a while. This is particularly convenient since the new grant that I am beginning requires that I don't leave St. Lucia for the next 10 months except in the case of a serious emergency.

After 19 hours of travel yesterday, I'm home and ready to tackle the rest of my dissertation research! I've worked out a new post-Tomas methodology with my committee and attending the IAF mid-year conference has really re-energized me for digging back in.

J arrives tomorrow,  joining me for the next 5 months! More stories to follow... in the meanwhile, here is a belated shot from my St. Lucian Christmas, brought about by lots of wonderful packages, cards and paper folding from family and friends :)

Joy!

I'm so lucky to have such great friends! Here is a funny story about how I was reminded of that this afternoon...

I generally alternate days doing fieldwork and days writing up notes, entering data and recording my thoughts (if I have any brain power left to have them!). Today is a writing day, and I usually have to move mid-way through the day. A walk to the post office, 3 miles round-trip, is great break. I was particularly happy to go today, because I've had a few questions about mail from J and friends, so I suspected there might be something there...

The walk was uneventful and arrived at the post-office sweaty but  excited. I waited inline and when my turn came, I gave the man behind the counter my name and asked if I had any mail. After I repeated my name for him twice, with clear enunciation so there could be no mistake, he looked in the M-O-P cubby, shuffled through the pile and shook his head no. I really wanted to climb over the counter and look in the random piles all over the post office certain that there must be some mail for me somewhere in the paper chaos (go here for my description of the Gros Islet PO in all its wonder), but I restrained myself. I was turning sadly to go,  when the door to my left opened very suddenly and a hand shot out, holding a bundle (yes a whole bundle!) of mail!!! This second man has apparently been stockpiling my mail in a secret location. He must have heard me repeating my name and decided it was time to reveal his secret...
I didn't care to stop and ask why my mail doesn't get to live in the alphabetized cubbies anymore. I just bounded out of the post office with enough mail that a rubber band was required :)
In my bundle were a note and photos from and adorable 3-month old girl (she is very advanced for her age!), Christmas cards from several friends, photos from my favorite Germs, the funniest Chrsitmas card I've ever seen, and get this- not one, but two sets of "Twelve Days of Christmas" themed mail (I've checked and they didn't conspire)...

One set is post cards, each with an adorable and humorous doodle that corresponds to each days theme (maids a milking etc)! So far cards 1, 3-6 and 8-10 have arrived- wonder what happened to #2 and #7?

The second set is Christmas cards, numbered with great messages and mailed 12 days in a row. In this case cards 3,4,5 and 6 have arrived... I can't wait for the others!

Thank you, thank you, thank you dear friends! I've just been grinning all afternoon :)

Quick update on life

One month and one week after Tomas, things continue to improve here at a "two steps forward, one step back" sort of pace. What does this look like on the ground, and oh yea... how has all this hurricane business impacted that dissertation research I'm supposed to be doing?

Schools reopened the last week of November on a limited teaching "rotating schedule" which means that students have 3-4 hours of school per day and they are only teaching reading/writing and math for the rest of the term. This is because a large majority of text books have been destroyed, and efforts to get schools clean enough to accommodate the students were combined, so in many areas only a single school is open. So the secondary students use it in the early morning, pre-school/kindergartners mid-day and primary students in the late afternoon. Even the schools in areas relatively unaffected are following this plan, to keep the students in the same place within the curriculum nationally, so when they take national exams in the spring, students will be on the same testing levels.

Water comes and goes for many areas, but generally is improving. In what I hope is just an overly cautious public health move, the government has issued a national cholera alert. Presently there are no reported cases and hopefully this will remain true! There are also still farmers living in areas of the country that cannot be reached by vehicle, though this continues to improve weekly.

My research: So far I've spent a lot less time talking about my research than I expected to in my time here on the island. It is probably not hard to decipher that hurricane Tomas will have a lasting impact on my fieldwork. For the short-run (aka the remaining 2 months of my current grant) I will be taking a pilot study approach to things, since my research objectives, methodology and general sense of things have all been turned on their head.

For now I'm trying to spend as much time in the farming communities that I am studying as possible. I'm also creating visual maps of the destruction on Fairtrade farmer's farms by taking gps points of their properties, the major fluvial and geomorphic disruptions (mainly impacts of flooding and landslides) and documenting everything with lots and lots of photos. This process is very interesting, basically, I am taken on a tour of the farm by the farmer, who narrates his/her "hurricane story" about where they were and what they were thinking during the storm and the immediate days following Tomas. As we walk their property, they describe were buildings used to be, how much further into the river their property used to extend and so on. My respect for the power of water as well as the resilience and attitudes of the people I'm talking with grows daily as I hear stories and see things with my own eyes. Later I hope to connect these gis maps, time elapsed photos (taken now, in 6 months and again before i leave), personal accounts of the hurricane and more formal interviews to broader conversations on land management, conservation, vulnerability and resilience and Fairtrade. That is much later though!

Here are some photos of things I see everyday:

Water line in banana shed 3'3", meaning that the river flooded over 25 feet above its normal level...

Banana farm that collapsed into river. The river bank is appx 18' high, and this river is a contributor to the flooding, b/c it is a govt. re-channeled this river with a straight cut stream-bed that increased velocity and turbulence and erosion

The rushing floods distributed huge piles of debris

3-6" of mud caked, shrinking and cracked on the packing table and floor of the banana shed...

This hand is pointing to the trash and debris deposited in the top of this coconut tree by the flood waters from the river below- waters had to be between 12-15' high here...

Measuring across the area washed out by the river 27' wide and 14' deep

This is a large (appx 50' wide) pile of uprooted banana plant debris carried into a pile be the flood waters. The young green shoots are growing out of the pile. Farmers tell me the only way to deal with this b/c it is in the middle of the farm will be to burn everything...

Banana and coconut debris

Parts of a pack-shed destroyed

The only thing left standing from this shed is the cinder block foundation, the washing tables (with a lone rotting banana on the end if you look closely) and

More parts of the same shed...

The sedimentation levels are extreme in some cases- I'm standing about 20 meters away from and about 10 feet above a stream- my feet are on the normal ground level. The sediment deposited next to me measured 3'8" deep and goes on for 100 yards or more....

What do you think? Is it giant acorn or a baby coconut? ;)

That's all for now- I'm off to a farmers meeting!