Frame Work

CARE is an acronym for "Center for Adolescent Renewal and Education." The CARE School is a catchall for any students unable to continue attending regular secondary school for whatever reason (mental illness, developmental delays, behavioral problems, having a baby, etc.)

This is where, every Monday afternoon, I teach an art lesson to some or all of the 25 students at the Soufriere campus. The students’ motor skills cover a wide range of ability, so I always choose projects that anyone can do but that can also be improved upon and expanded.

I was lucky enough to have two extra helpers for this week’s craft, my mom and younger sister! Mom and Em were here this week for a quick Spring Break visit and made Monday’s craft session one of the best yet.

A few weeks ago I had the students join me on the beach to gather seaglass, pieces of broken bottles and dishes tumbled by the sand creating smooth and colorful little objects, perfect for art projects. With the glass the students collected we decorated photo frames to be sold at this year’s CARE School Nation Exhibition, a day for all the island’s five CARE Schools to display what they’ve been working on during the year. I have no doubt the frames will be a hit, especially due to expert instruction by Julia and Em! Thanks, ladies!

Bon Appetit

One great commonality among nearly every Peace Corps Volunteer’s experience is the daunting and often downright dangerous task of preparing three meals a day without the aid of microwaves, mothers or McDonald’s. For those of us fresh off cafeteria meal-plans and Wal-Mart brand frozen dinners, a diverse and healthy diet just isn’t in the cards.
In college my idea of a home-cooked meal was a frozen chicken breast turned from solid to succulent on a George Foreman Grill, a steam-in-the-microwave bag of broccoli and a Coors Light, chilled from scratch. These days I am lucky if my three daily meals turn out to be three different foods. I have little doubt that my efforts to teach myself to cook would be endearing and frankly adorable were anyone around to witness these daily debacles, help me laugh them off and promptly take me out to dinner. As it stands I frequently end up eating unrecognizable blobs of things which were supposed to have been quite different and very, well, recognizable blobs of things. And no one laughs.
I do continue to work on it and in that vein have just bought a big bag of fresh garlic cloves and stashed it in my refrigerator, the only place truly safe from ants. I hear garlic is good for the immune system, and I don’t want my ants to be any harder to kill. Now everything in my fridge, including cereal and peanut butter, tastes just a little bit like garlic. I don’t mind - just owning real garlic makes me feel like I can actually cook. I like this feeling because it helps to combat all the things that make me feel like I can’t cook, like when I try to cook.
The latest addition to my growing culinary repertoire is “Fancy Garlic Bread.” It is important to note that my dishes are always easier to name than to prepare and often easier to prepare than to eat. For this dish you just mash up some garlic, mash up some butter, mash the two together and mash it on some bread. As this recipe requires only three ingredients and a spoon, there is little room for error or injury, exactly the kind of recipe I prefer. Yesterday I had this dish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For dinner, to spice things up a bit, I dipped the bread in a can of spaghetti sauce. This is not a joke.
Other menu items include “Fancy Grapefruit Squares,” which is a grapefruit cut into square-shaped pieces (that is where things get “fancy”) and “Fancy Ketcharoni and Cheese,” which is regular macaroni and cheese plus ketchup (the ketchup, as you may have guessed, is what lends the dish its “fanciness.”) I had formerly been referring to these foods as “Special Garlic Bread,” “Special Grapefruit Squares” and “Special Ketcharoni and Cheese,” but due to strict Peace Corps anti-drug policies I decided to make a few modifications to avoid confusion and/or being sent back to the U.S.

Visitors Welcome

I live in one of two downstairs apartments in a lovely home near Soufriere's center, a short walk from my workplace, the grocery store, the gym and the post office (the four places I most frequently go.) Above and behind me lives the Gilbert family which includes a cute little girl whose favorite hobby is peeking into my windows every chance she gets. This is something every Peace Corps Volunteer on the planet is told to expect.
The senior Gilberts are my friendly landlords (their daughter's family being the younger branch of the family tree, living to the back of my part of the house.) They are wonderful - they sweep the water from my porch after a rain and take my garbage to the street on Mondays and Thursdays. Sometimes Mrs. Gilbert (the "Miss Lucy" mentioned in a previous post. I call her both.) brings me pumpkin bread. I have more than once been grateful to have my home's proprietors living just a few steps away (specifically when I flooded the kitchen, broke the bathroom light, messed up the cable wire and locked myself out. Twice. Clearly I have never lived alone before.)
I have one of the nicest bathrooms of all St. Lucia volunteers (and we compare, trust me) but I only shower directly after exercising so the freezing water is bearable. A day without a workout means a day without a shower, with offensively few exceptions.
My favorite part of my house is the brand new entertainment center I made myself with a little help from a random guy with a saw (to cut the wood) and a random guy with a wheelbarrow (to tote the blocks.) This area is called the "Media Center" because it houses my television, books and guitar.
The "Media Center" is not to be confused with the "Technology Station," which is an upside-down toaster-oven box where I keep my cell phone, ipod and camera battery chargers.

My favorite part of the day is sitting by my window in the morning, sipping coffee and writing in my journal or penning letters to you fine folks.

I love my little apartment and it is starting to feel much more homey (read: cluttered) and comfortable. Special special special thanks to the darling people who sent me knicks and knacks to make the place brighter. Visitors welcome!

A Little Light Reading

During my long, slow summer in Tennessee this year I spent lots of time reading books with cover art that usually involved high heels, bearing titles with cleverly altered classic rock lyrics, slightly nauseating puns or a combination of the two with a fashion designer’s name thrown in. Now I’m reading books with names like “Looking Inside the Classroom: Reflecting on the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’ in effective reading and instruction,” and “Text Talk: Capturing the benefits of read-aloud experiences for young children.” I am disappointed to find that shockingly few of these works have anything to do with a juicy romance, an inspiring adventure or a wardrobe make-over and none of their covers are pink.

I’m reading these ultra-boring things in an attempt to devise a plan to improve the Language Arts program at the Soufriere Primary School. This, in even fewer words, has been my only job description for the next two years of my life. So, because I grew up with Jim Dyer as a dad, I just grabbed every single book I could find about reading and grammar and teaching and am desperately devouring them as if they were SAT prep books a week before the test. I have abandoned my vision of me (looking fabulous but not so fabulous as to scare people – certainly not sweating) gliding into a classroom full of happy, quiet children, sitting in a circle of bright and interested faces and singing the “Getting to Know You” song from The King and I. Closer to reality were my pre-Peace Corps fears of me (looking thrown-together at best – certainly sweating) stumbling into a raucous mess of screeching kids, begging the attention of distracted, apathetic faces and humming a funeral dirge. Real life falls somewhere in the middle but leans toward the latter.

On a happier note - only yesterday I was established as the CARE School (mentioned in an earlier post) Arts and Crafts Program Senior Coordinator (a title I made up and will definitely not tell anyone at the school about.) Now every Monday afternoon I will have craft hour with the 25 students at the school, starting with simple projects then working up to something they can sell at the national CARE School Craft Exhibition. It would be difficult to over-estimate how excited I am about getting started and have been furiously researching kids’ craft projects that can be done with little resources and recycled found objects (my specialty.) Any and all project suggestions are welcome, and thanks already to Robley Hood for the “Single Page Book” instructions, which I plan on using for our first session!

The Ant Trap

One Sunday morning in October I sat writing letters in the kitchen of my host mother’s house. I was waiting for an important phone call from the Peace Corps office about my future housing, so decided not to accompany Margaret Rose (host-mom) to mass. She was standing just a few feet away from me when a car horn honked and suddenly she shouted “COME, HALLIE. COME!” with such stern command that I wondered if she’d gotten a puppy, named it Hallie and forgotten to tell me about it. In confusion I just stood up and looked at her, waiting for a little clarification. She didn’t move and neither did I until she said “COME, HALLIE. PUT THE CAKE HERE!” and pointed to a set of bowls on the counter, a small one filled with water inside a larger, shallow one also holding water. I looked all around me and didn’t know where to come and didn’t see a cake but it was clear we were having an emergency, so I just calmly said “I’m sorry, Margaret Rose. I don’t know what’s going on.” At that she gave an exasperated huff and bolted out the door to the waiting car. I ran after her and was handed the mystery cake. Margaret Rose looked me square in the eye like she was about to tell me some seriously serious bad news, paused and said “Ants,” got in the car and rode away.

So here’s how the ant trap works – as with every morsel of unsecured food, the cake attracts the attention of all ants within a 12 mile radius. Because this is the Caribbean the ants would think of this distance in kilometers. The cake-hungry bugs crawl up the white bowl toward the prize and drown in the water. If the ants can swim (and some can) they make it to the second bowl but are usually pretty tuckered out and so cannot muster the strength to scale the cake-plate upside down. The few Lance Armstrong ants that do get to the cake are too exhausted to eat.

Post 1

To my great surprise, when I stepped off the plane onto the island of St. Lucia to begin my two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer I didn’t immediately join Princess Jasmine in a devastatingly touching rendition of “A Whole New World” and Lisa Ling didn’t pop out from behind a tree for a tarmac interview. I just stepped off the plane. And now here I am. I still haven’t had the big Peace Corps Freak-out Meltdown Panic Extravaganza of Anxiety I was told to expect.
In the month since my arrival I’ve been living with a host mother in a town on the Southwest coast called Soufriere (pronounced “Sue – fray”) where I’ll be living until October of 2010. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I take an offensively long, gut-wrenchingly windy 1.5 hour bus ride of death (and I use the term “bus” loosely here) into Castries, the country’s crowded capitol, where I punch people and elbow little children in the kidneys to get onto another bus that takes me to the Peace Corps Regional Office. I leave my house at 6:40 to get there by 9 a.m. when training begins, and when I get there I’ve traveled a distance of less than 20 miles. It’s a fab way to start the day.
My training group is full of fun and interesting people (seriously – I like them) and together we study things like Fundamentals of Teaching, Safety and Security, Youth Development Strategies, Cultural Sensitivity and the Creole Language. If you know me at all you have already guessed how I feel about these classes and can imagine my obscene level of excitement at the prospect of training’s end. Four weeks down, three to go.
On Tuesdays I have a “School Internship” with the third grade classes at Soufriere Primary School just a short, nausea-free walk from my house. I spend the morning there observing and aiding the teachers and getting to know the students. Before I leave I always remind the kids that my name is Miss Dyer, I’m new to Soufriere and they should say hello whenever they see me outside of school. Now I hear at least one “Hello, Miss Dyer!” every time I go into town.
Thursdays are for “Shadowing” local community members and current volunteers. So far I’ve spent a day with a member of the St. Lucia Youth and Sports Council and another at The C.A.R.E. School (The Center for Adolescent Renewal and Education – it’s like an alternative school in the states but not exclusively for children with behavioral problems) with about 25 students ages 11 to 16.
Soufriere is the perfect size – small enough that I already know people on the street by name and can get around easily but large enough that I have a bank, grocery store, post office and cell company (no one on the planet needs more than that as far as I’m concerned) and can pay all my bills in town (not the case for lots of other volunteers on other parts of the island.) When training ends in three weeks (!!!!!!!!!) I’ll move just a few blocks down the road from my current home into the first floor of a two story house underneath someone called “Miss Lucy.” We’ll see how it goes. Soon after that I’ll start work for the Ministry of Education at my district’s office to improve their Language Arts Program and possibly implement other programs as well (read: ART. Also read: RIBBON.) The job description is still a little vague and I imagine it will take months to get a real idea of what needs to be done, but this is much more information than the two-word description of “Community Development” I’ve been living with for the past months.
I LOVE hearing from you, so email me at hallie.dyer@gmail.com or better yet, send me a real letter at:

Hallie Dyer
U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 123
Barnard Hill, Sans Soucis Area
Castries
St. Lucia, West Indies

If I haven’t written you by now it’s because I don’t have your address. I want an update on your life, I don’t care who you are. I probably miss you.