Address and Cell Phone

Alrighty, so I finally have a permanent address and a cell phone, which I'm still trying to figure out how to use. :) My address is:

Ben Wiechman
Fond St. Jacques Post Office
Soufriere
St. Lucia
West Indies

My cell phone number is 758-285-6813.

I don't have time to write now because about 10 people are in line to use the computer, but things are generally going well so far. I find myself exhausted at the end of the day, but the place is beautiful and people have been very friendly. Peace!

Fond St. Jacques

In two days I'll be moving to Fond St. Jacques, a small rural community of about 1,000 people (150,000 on the whole island) in the rainforest of St. Lucia. Yesterday I had the chance to meet with a member of the developmental organization that I'll be partnered with. He was very friendly and has had experience working with Peace Corps volunteers in the past. After many weeks of uncertainty about what our future work will look like, the opportunity to talk with someone from our future communities put many of the PCTs' minds, including my own, a little more at ease. I found the picture on the left from google images of Fond St. Jacques, so it'll probably look something like that. I was excited to find out that there are some opportunities for hiking in the area and that there are a couple of famous waterfalls nearby. Even more thrilling, however, is the fact that Fond St. Jacques can get a little bit cooler than other places on the island, given that it's in the mountains. My community partner said that sometimes he feels the need for a light blanket at night...maybe that means I'll sleep with the fan a whole foot away from my bed instead of directly on my head. :)

I'm writing this partly because I most likely will not have internet access in my community. I originally thought that I would have internet, as most PCVs do, but Fond St. Jacques is enough inland that landlines aren't even readily available. Wireless internet might be a possibility, but I don't know how feasible that is. One of my good friends lives about three miles away though in a larger city, so hopefully I'll be able to visit her on occasion and use her internet. I will have a cell phone starting here in a few weeks though. I find this particularly ironic, given that I didn't actually ever have one in the States. Join the Peace Corps, finally get a cell phone. check. Many people opt not to get a landline though, so everyone has cell phones, even my 13 year old host brother. It's kind of weird because in some respects St. Lucia is very developed (i.e. everyone has cell phones), but at the same time other areas lag far behind (i.e. access to water...sometimes it's randomly turned off, and apparently during the dry season sometimes for several days at a time).

St. Lucia, and the Eastern Caribbean in general, has it's own unique sense of time (or lack thereof). If a meeting is "scheduled" for 7, nobody will show up til at least 7:30...probably 8. It's just the way it is. The phrase "just now" is very popular and means "wait." I've found though that the "now" part of "just now" really translates to anywhere from 5 minutes from now to never. Even though at times this can be a little frustrating, it's kind of nice to break free from the routinistic schedule that is so prevalent in the U.S. It's especially strange having just graduated from college, where it seemed like nearly every single moment of every day was planned out. In college you would even have to plan time around your hectic schedule to hang out with friends. Here you just hang out when you want to.

I can't wait to see my community here in a couple of days, and hopefully next time will have some more information about my community, as well as a few pictures. Peace!