Passion Vine (in front of my house)

Tried to grow this in Phoenix once. Ended up harvesting caterpillars and hatching them into beautiful butterflies on my windowsill, as my boys will tell you. The boys stayed home from school to watch some hatch, so they still remember. (In keeping with Twain, we try never to let our schooling interfere with our education :) In any case, the Monarchs (butterflies) eventually overwhelmed the vine. (Oh, so THIS is what it was supposed to look like!)

Chief complaints...

They drive on the WRONG side of the road.


They think I am functionally illiterate because I don't put extra letters in my words. Hello! There is no 'u' in "color" and no 'me' at the end of "program"! :) Also, I don't say "vex", "venue" or x, y, "zed", I "make" a decision rather than "take" one, and I say I will "get ready" instead of "organize myself".


Okay, I'm just kidding about this stuff, but for real...


Vans, the main form of transport, go much too fast through the steep, narrow streets and nearly every time I ride in one, I find myself crossing myself...and I'm not even Catholic! When I first arrived, I asked how people know which van to take because there are no signs on the vans. They said they just recognized the vehicles. Seems absurd, but I now do the same! Plus, the vans all have names (while the streets don't). The one pictured is "Be loyal 2 D game", printed on its back :)

Greetings, greetings from lovely,lovely St. Vincent!

Everybody says their greetings twice here. Like "morning, morning", "yah, yah", "okay, okay", "nice, nice" :)

And now for a bit of East Indian history...

Between 1860-1880 about 7 ships carrying a total of around 2,450 Indians landed on the shores of St. Vincent. The Indians were brought as indentured laborers to work in the sugar industry. Though they were not slaves, they lived under similar conditions. At one point, they staged a peaceful protest by marching from Argyle to Kingstown, only to be rounded up and jailed, as the law did not allow them to wander more than 2 miles from the compound. Ultimately they were to be sent back to India with fully paid passage, but the St. Vincent government did not uphold this part of the bargain. Apparently, the government had already spent 80,000 pounds to get the Indians here, while a previous batch of Portuguese had only cost them 10,000 pounds, so I guess there were second thoughts about plunking out extra funds to send them back. Interestingly, they never got any Chinese because the Chinese were even more expensive. Some of the East Indians remained and have now become completely immersed in society. There are no remnants of Indian festivals or religion that I can see, so maybe "absorbed" is a better word.

This history comes courtesy of Dr. Adams, a retired optometrist and local history buff. I met him at the Cruise Ship Terminal, where I often go for lunch, as long there are no ships in sight. At those times, it is peaceful and quiet and spacious there. Anyway, I love listening to Dr. Adams tell me about the history of St. Vincent (so much more fun than reading it in a book!) and have made it a habit to harass him at least weekly.

It's raining, it's pouring...

Finally got some meaningful showers! Vincys say they haven't seen such since October of last year! Many villages had not had running water for the past week, and the vegetation here is not as lush as usual, so all were very, very happy for the soaking. Of course, I made sure to get drenched :)

How to make a 'boley'

Hollowed, dried boleys were used as bowls before china came along. I prefer them! Here is how to make them:

First, find a Boley tree and ask the owner if she can spare one (...or two, or three:) boleys.











Second, cut your boley in half. There is a natural line on the boley which makes life simple (i.e. no need to measure or draw).











Third, gut your boley. It is similar to gutting pumpkins at Halloween, but they say the pulp and seeds are not for consumption. Everyone here thinks the guts smell bad (like Noni, which turned out to have huge health benefits), so I dunno. The guts do stain your skin and clothes... kind of a brownish blue.






Fourth, Scrape out the inside as thoroughly as possible.
(Trust Mommy Wynne...it makes a difference!)
















Fifth, carve your boley with advanced tools (pictured here: kitchen knife, screw & nail :), rub inside and out with lime, and set to dry. I was over-zealous about carving and now feel like I have Carpal Tunnels :) You do not have to finish it in a day, but it is easier to carve on day one, before it dries out.






Finally, the inside will need to be sanded, so the surface will be smooth.

May I walk, please?

Downtown Kingstown is no more than a mile long. Still, if you choose to walk across town for something important (like Soursop sorbet :), people wonder why you aren't taking a 'van' (public transport). The funny thing is, I can walk across town faster than the vehicles during rush hour here, which is weekdays between 8-9 a.m.


I live in the beautiful village of Green Hill. I walk
the 2 miles to and from work daily, so to locals I'm crazy. I try to refuse rides from my neighbors as politely as possible, but sometimes there's just no saying 'no'! There is no public transportation on Sundays and holidays, and it's pretty hard to get anything after 11 p.m on the rest of the days (i.e. you can't get a van when you really need one). Visiting the sights seems to take more planning than I would have liked, and I'm not up to hitching like I used to in Belize...(yet).