Keeping Busy and Networking
It's been a busy and hectic month or so. I have been super involved with everything environmental on the island. From, Green Fete an environmental fair put on by a school environmental club to organizing Clean Up campaigns and prepping for the upcoming school year with a teacher training. Even with all this to keep us busy there are some other fun things sprinkled in like Carnival and the Caribbean SEA youth environmental summer camp. On top of all this I felt under the weather for about 2 weeks.The Green Fete was an awesome opportunity to network with tons of environmentally conscient people and organizations. This was put on by the local Lorax Club in Dennery and was highly publicized. We came to find out The Lorax Club and some of these other types of projects were helped by past Peace Corps volunteers so it was really a cool learning experience and to see some of these things persist in one form or another. All this was great BUT I got to the Saint Lucia Boa and Iguana ( Didn't get to hold them tho).
Saint Lucia Boa
Saint Lucia Iguana
Dennery Beach with Sargassum
Hill above Dennery
Dennery schools from above
The following weekend I went to several Carnival Events. First up was the Panorama. Steel orchestras were playing and it was very cool. Sunday There was the Soca Monarch competition where artists competed with different types of music meant to be able to dance too. Monday and Tuesday was the Carnival Parade where everyone basically got dressed up in costumes and partied.
Pan "orama"
Carnival Float
Carnival Costume
More Costumes
The week after Carnival we had our monthly Clean Up campaign and it was pretty well attended. As we were trying to spread the word and even during the clean up many of the sentiments from people were "It's not my job." It is a shame that people feel this way and that they are not getting paid to keep their community clean. If taxes went up to pay people to clean up more often because of the sheer amount of trash produced would they feel differently? The local grocery store put a price of 25 cents on their plastic bags and there was all the outrage, but people switched to alternatives so they wouldn't have to pay the extra cost. We have been trying to transition them into communities so that they will take responsibility for their waste. There will be many challenges in this plan. I remember hearing a radio interview where they were talking about the plastic problem, and a caller called in concerned about the job of the person producing plastic. Everything comes down to cost.
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!! ( Since I am so far behind)
