refugees run the seas 'cause we own our own boats

we'd like to think of ourselves as sophisticated travelers, who embrace local culture with sensitivity and insight, who tread lightly when exploring the country's delicate ecosystems, who drink in moderation, who savour the flavours of west indian cuisine...

but who are we kidding?

while we have managed to engage in the activities listed above, the modifiers are a little off.

since we landed in our suprisingly posh condo we've clocked hours and hours of time watching "tempo," the caribbean MTV equivalent. we're both riveted by the amazing displays of west-indian, jamaican, puerto-rican, and cuban bling. we've been dutifully writing down the names of all our favorite artists, only to discover that there's only one CD store on all of st. lucia, and that even after we'd fully terrified the teenage kid behind the counter, he didn't really have anything to sell us.

when the music gets too bad, even for us, or when it's time for the dreaded "downtown island" (sort of akin to "cribs") we flip to HBO or TNT to watch astoundingly bad movies that are only entertaining in their "place that semi-celebrity" capabilities. the came goes roughly like this:
me: "hey, isn't that ryan phillipe"
blogmate: "who?"
me: "you know, married to reese witherspoon?"
blogmate: "who?"
me: "he was in 'cruel intentions'!"
blogmate: "huh?"

we've also been engaged in a lengthy debate about whether leonardo dicaprio and matt damon, are in fact similar enough to be confused with one another.
blogmate: "this is just like that leonardo dicaprio movie"
me: "which one"
blogmate: "the one about the janitor who does math"
me: "you mean matt damon"
blogmate: "what's the difference?"

sometimes we break up the monotony by going on long, sweaty, un-graceful treks to beaches and mountains, that involve alot of tripping, falling and swearing.

then we get home, drink vast quantities of locally produced lime rum, and plan the next day's meals which are a delicate balance of creole fish with plantains and fritos.

our parents would be proud.

petit problem in gros islet

as my blogmate and i furrowed our collective brow at our flat tire (can a tire be very flat or are they all the same degree of deflatedness?) at the beach today we thought longingly back to our 36 hour blitz through coconut bay all-inclusive resort.

let us summarize: land cruise. beach chairs, pina coladas, waterslides, lime rum and diet cokes, lazy river, vieux fort special, lounge chairs, caribbean explosion, buffet lunch, dirty banana, dancing jerk pork carver at buffet dinner, lucian driver, worst most emotionless steel drum cover band EVER, worst white wine ever, lime rum and sprite, gin and tonic, more lime rum and sprite, more worst cover band ever, ten minutes at the gym, one more lime rum and sprite for the road, all-you-can-grilled-cheese, fountain diet coke (a rarity in this country), and best of all, a room to sleep in with ALL FOUR WALLS and much fewer mosquitoes and barking dogs than we thought possible.

our state of despair about the flat tire lasted the entirety of the 40 minutes that it took us to attempt to change to the spare, be assisted by a bored-looking taxi driver, find a "tyre" station, get the "tyre" fixed (for the standard st. lucian rate of $3.50), and find ourselves seated over pitons and spicy fish cakes at our new favorite beach dive.

from this we conclude that some things are just done more quickly in st lucia than in chicago. but this might be the only thing that's fast in st. lucia.

we weren't kidding

walk softly and carry a fake leg

though no one really told us before we came to st. jude's, it's customary for volunteers to bring some kind of donation to the hospital, usually medical supplies. my blogmate and i were lucky to trip into a big stash of medications before we left. we brought them with a fair amount of pomp and circumstance, and not a little bit of whiny complaining. "i can't believe we have to carry this crap," and refrains similar.
as it turns out, our meager contribution was pretty ho-hum... since some of our favorite elders showed up with a suitcase full of prosthetic feet, a coffee maker, and a circular saw.
i'm sure the guys at TSA had a field day.

there goes the neighborhood

on our daily morning walk, i was reminded that i like travelling with my blogmate for the number of times we are thinking the same thing, when she broke the no-coffee-yet silence with the exact words in my head: "does it smell especially chicken-ey today?"

so this afternoon while my blogmate is on call, i was a little sad to venture out for a walk on my own, thinking there would not be nearly so much to laugh about. but my fears were quickly cast aside: in addition to the legions of farm animals lining the roads and the man with machete and bag full of green coconuts laughing at me for how slowly i was climbing the hill, i passed a completely naked man politely wishing me good afternoon as he urinated alongside the road, and another man gesturing wildly at me with a zucchini. the ironic thing is that men in st. lucia don't really sound that offensive when they speak (other than being nude and waving with phallic vegetables). the one man who tried came up with "hello, how are you? you look good. you look like a woman should..." which just sounds too polite when uttered in a quasi-british-caribbean-calypso-music-in-background accent for me to be taken aback.

i'm going to miss this place.

an open letter to the creators of yahoo avatars

dear masterminds behind yahoo avatars,

we love your service, and spend more time than we should re-inventing our appearance and location. however, it has come to our attention that there are not nearly enough third-world backdrops and accessories to suit our current needs. The following are a list of suggestions for add-ins that would assist the volunteer/tourist's avatar needs:

1. enable more than one animal per avatar. who travels in the company of just one pig or chicken?
2. in place of accessories, can we add leering hissing men in pick-up trucks?
3. the only road choices are hiking trail or sidewalk or highway. we need more gravel roads and torn-up blacktop with large potholes marking significant geographical markers.
4. can we add shoes hanging over electric lines to indicate drug houses?
5. the skin color changes we can make are great. but can we add mosquito bites, sunburns, hatband acne, peeling sunburn, and scrapes from falling down on poorly constructed hiking trails?

thanks,
jo-na

honk if you love st. lucia

last weekend my blogmate and i rented a little jeep and drove up the western st. lucia coast. we had a number of tasks: drop off boss at fancy hotel, check out suspiciously cheap rental condo, acquire snorkeling gear... to our loyal readership back home this might not seem like an ambitious list for a saturday afternoon, but by the end of the day we were darned proud of ourselves. we were also mighty tired and each of us had one bright red arm, having let them dangle out of the car with reckless abandon.
there are many obstacles to driving in st. lucia, especially if you insist on cheap, under-the-table car rental. once behind the wheel of the car that came with no papers to speak of, a car that clearly belonged to someone, it finally dawned on me that i was sitting behind the wheel on what i consider to be the passenger side, and that i'd volunteered to drive up the narrow, windy, mountainy road without even considering how scary it might be. i was fortunate not to notice the horrible squeling sounds the little jeep was making in protest of being forced up the hills. also lucky for me, my blogmate was a good cheerleader (and map reader), and before i knew it i was cruising down the "highway," blasting terrible calypso music, and giving the little car horn toot required to alert oncoming traffic that might tearing around the bend.
in doing this, we became aware of the many things that can be said via honking. the various honks have subtle, nearly imperceptible differences, but the meaning varies widely.
there's my honk, the "please slow down as you make your sharp turn so that i you don't run me off the road.
the encouragement honk from the guy behind me that says, "come-on girl, you can do it, i know you can pass the bus in front of you that's going 8km an hour!"
there's, "hey you big stupid cow (or pig or horse), get out of the road!"
as a pedestrian i've learned a few more...
"hey nice girl."
"hey sexy mama!"
"'sup?"
the list goes on.

the official language of st. lucia may be english, but i still have so much to learn...

yoshimi battles the pink robots, part 2

i squished two more cockroaches yesterday.
this time they were actually living before i stepped on them.
feeling pretty strong... although the st. lucian nurse who heard me squeal for my blogmate's assistance might disagree.

in other news, to our friend nm who thinks mosquito nets are useful, i protest.
they do serve to make a romantic-looking hotel room for two, which was oh so useful for my blogmate and me. we looked really classy this weekend at the nice hotel room saying things like "ah yes, i do believe i'll have another round of pringles, brutus" with our non-fancy eats... but no actual avoiding of mosquitos.

jedi masters

my blogmate and i admittedly spend many hours of the day congratulating ourselves on negotiating six weeks in the tropical paradise that is st. lucia. i think we both kind of feel like we're getting away with something (because, well, we are). but even we occasionally stop feeling good about ourselves long enough to think more meaningful thoughts like, "wow, it's kind of weird that it's cold in chicago," or, on a really insightful day, "this is nothing like what we were thought it would be." truthfully, in preparation for our trip i don't think either one of us thought much beyond, "do these flip flops match this bikini?"

meet the parents:

one of the things we didn't really anticipate about life as a st. jude's volunteer was that there would be lots of other st jude's volunteers, all from different walks of life. we certainly didn't realize that there would be a whole community of such people who have been coming here in states of retirement and semi-retirement for years and years.

we call them the elders and we love them. they're smart and funny and have all done really interesting things with their lives. though there are plenty of retired doctors with school teacher wives, there are just as many doctor wives with retired contractor husbands. they kick our butts at trivial pursuit and, most importantly, they know where to get the good coconut buns. the thing about these people is that they know this island inside and out. they know where things are and how much they cost and which beach has the better snorkeling and which day they have lime cake at debbie's.

the elders have been doing this long enough to know that not everyone wants travel advice. as such, it takes a little (but not very much) work to get them talking. sidle up, get spanked at scrabble, and sooner or later the information starts to flow. come with beer and they start inviting you to stuff. we're still trying to coordinate some serious hiking with one of the couples who between them have at least one heart attack and one pace-maker.

i can only hope to be such a bad-ass one day.

yoshimi battles the pink robots, part 1

things that are unpleasant when returning alone from the hospital at 11pm to wash your face before bed include finding a large cockroach scuttling around the sink where you were about to put your face.

our new orleans readers, i understand that you're all laughing at my squeamishness, but in my defense, it was a very big cockroach, and its little horns or tentacles or whatever were about to be in my nose. also in my defense, i did not scream like a little girl. i jumped, thought about screaming like a little girl but decided that it would wake the hyperactive three-year-old downstairs and then i would never get to sleep, and then commenced a ridiculous chasing of the cockroach around the sink with a washcloth. i incorrectly assessed that it was unable to get out of the sink, and promptly scared it to a hiding place underneath the large shelf where my clothes and suitcase are stored. having decided that i could not move the shelf, i got ready for bed, turned out the lights, and tried to ignore the various bug noises coming from outside. but every time i heard a noise i was sure it was coming from inside my room, and i was sure that the cockroach was taunting me. yes, i understand that cockroaches don't taunt. but this morning when i woke up, there was the cockroach, sitting three inches from my backpack, directly facing me, wiggling its tentacles in mockery. i grabbed for my shoe but it ran back behind the shelf.

so needless to say i'm happy that i packed lots of sealable plastic bags. i'm ready to hermetically seal everything i brought. but i got the last laugh for this round; when i came back from a walk this morning i found it lying on its back in some kind of death throes. i whapped it with a shoe a few times to feel better about myself, like i was the one who had conquered. for all i know the dying cockroach was actually the old disabled grandfather of my nemesis, and my nemesis kicked the old man out of his home to show me who's in charge here. we shall see.

suds: a review

one of the many nice things that st jude's hospital offers is laundry service for its volunteers. one of the things that the hospital and voluntter organization does not offer is privacy in asking questions. the other morning at breakfast my blogmate asked one of the more seasoned volunteers if she thought there was a way in which she could drop off clothes to be washed but not dried. after being given a quizzical look, my good blogmate explained that she was worried about her clothes shrinking and fitting funny. the volunteer shrugged, and we assumed the conversation was over. leaving the breakfast table not ten minutes later, we ran into the manager of housekeeping for the entire hospital who asked in her beautiful soft accent, "which of you is the girl who wants her clothes washed but not dried? of course! you just have to ask, we would be more than happy to accomodate you." on returning to the dorm-type area to change into work clothes for the morning, some of the other volunteers shouted in their canadian accent, "hey! the housekeeping manager was just here. did one of you want your clothes washed but not dried?" and on getting to the laundry room a chorus of men broke from their conversation in patois with a loud "which of you is the girl who wants her clothes washed but not dried?"

so my blogmate is famous for her slight high-maintenance-ness. not that we're so vain about protecting our fabulous appearances. yesterday we each stumbled out of our rooms greeting each other with "hi. why does my forehead have pitting edema?" and "hi. how many red welts can i accumulate on my face and legs?"

so a fabulous glamorous start to our caribbean adventure may not be in the cards. but we console ourselves with another nice thing about st. jude's: you can buy beer directly from the hospital. when i first saw the back storage room where it is ordered, i thought for sure it was one of those side-job occupations that most people seem to have, like the surgical-tech-turned-mountain-guide, or the nurse-taxi-driver. but no, this is catholic-hospital-sanctioned beer. you proceed to the main business office and inform the admissions coordinator that you would like a case of piton (the local beer, brewed here in vieux fort). she opens the official business log and writes your name right along with people coming for lab work and outpatient appointments and surgeries, then hands you a slip which you take to the back storage shed in exchange for discount piton.

we're learning cultural and medical things here too, but first things first...

things that go bump in the night

there's a whole new set of sites and sounds that accompany life in the caribbean. nightly my blogmate finds herself on the brink of insanity as a lone mosquito persistently buzzes in her ear and eludes capture (read: horrible death by squashing). i lie in bed listening to the crickets until 5 AM when the 2 hour serial rooster awkakenings begin.
we get up around 6:30 and go "excercise," by which i mean go for a leisurely stroll down the road taking in the local sites. our path invariably becomes obstructed by various forms of livestock. the chorus of bleating and crowing continues as cows, chickens and goats meander on and off of the road.

in contrast, my favorite night-time sound is the tiny hiss of a bottle of piton mystic mountain brew being opened. :)

have blog will travel

as promised, here's installment #1 of filterless in the caribbean. to our loyal readership, we hope we're able to maintain the standard of blogging that you've all come to, um, appreciate. for those of you just joining us- welcome!
it started in a discombobulated fashion that has become par for the course for the women of filterless... 3:30 AM wake up call, 5:00 AM one of us has shoving match with elderly british man, 7:00 AM the other gets knocked out of the way by man-woman wielding suitcase.
of course it was all water under the bridge the minute we saw the palm trees and clear-blue water out of the (tiny) airplane windows. we were downright ecstatic to find a man holding up a jo-na sign for us. a filterless first.
more to come.

throwing in the towel

hot?

hotter?

you decide.

house of pain

all right, you people.
i'm told that the reason one of our loyal readership has not been commenting lately is because my post about the hustle up the hancock sounded too painful.

this raises a few questions:

1) the bikini wax story didn't sound more painful?
2) if nobody has anything to offer on posts that are too painful, the corporate readership ranks grandma's funeral as less painful? you are shallow, faithful readers.
3) this means i can't post about what it's like to go to the gym with a friend who is a physical therapist (but i don't want to hold my stretches for 15 seconds...")
4) and this definitely means i have nothing to say about what it's like to pack suitcases under the calm but ruthless knife of the same friend ("no. two bathing suits. not five. two.")
5) i would write about something fluffy and pleasant, but the first thing that comes to mind are bunnies, and i think n has ruined that for me already.