Sep 29 2011
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One month later
I am taking the plunge. Blogging again…
Apr 08 2010
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Closing this chapter.
This blog was intended to be a travel blog. Its purpose was to document a 6 months internship in St. Lucia. I shared my joys, frustrations, photos, travels and lessons learned at both home and in the several new places I visited in the last 7 months….I gave my self an extension! My experiences were shared with new and old friends who I remain indebted to. Thank you. I received numerous comments, words of encouragement and support from family, friends, colleagues, strangers, and fellow tumblrs.
I am writing my paper. I will graduate in a few weeks. Thank you for reading.
This is the end. Atleast for now. Maybe I’ll have another adventure to share. Who knows?
My interests remain Caribbean, Conservation, Chic.
Love, Tamika
Apr 07 2010
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Caribbean politics……let McCain try this!
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"Indigenous have smaller ecological footprint on Amazon than colonists"
A new study in the journal Conservation Biology shows that indigenous people in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon have a lower impact on the rainforest than the colonists who have moved into the area.
SUR- flippin-PRISE!
Apr 05 2010
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“
MAYBE I SHOULD RENAME MY BLOG!!
(ALWAYS)Jamaican citizen.
(STILL)Reluctant American resident.
(FORMER)Temporary St. Lucian expatriate.
done!
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“Edith Bellot wearing the traditional costume of Dominica, based on French eighteenth century fashion”
c. 1961 via The National UK Archive
Apr 04 2010
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On being “home”
As soon as I walked into the swarm of people bustling to find their appropriate lines at Miami International Airport, I knew. The lines had the labels and accompanying rights, Citizen, Resident, Visitor. “US passport holder over here”, she shouted. ” The others need to be printed and photographed. This line is faster”. And when the ‘Americans’ did not respond to her cry fast enough, ” you pay your taxes for this faster service”, she added. And when I was processed, the officer smiled and said “welcome home Mrs. Ferguson”, I was reminded then of a book from my favourite Jamaican author, Anthony C. Winkler. GOING HOME TO TEACH.
And if that did not prompt my recollection of the third page, last night’s movie theatre and restaurant experience affirmed what I knew….
Living in America as an immigrant was for me like living in a vivid dream. Sometimes things were briefly clear, you saw this and that and why so and so, but then abruptly the picture would change and you feel giddy in your own denseness. It was like walking into a movie that was half over and picking up the storyline in the middle. Some things you got from the context others escaped you. The despair of it all was that you could never see the movie from the start and so were forever doomed only to dimly understand it.
I felt no love for this land. It did not smell right. Even after 13 years it still had the alien unrecognizable spoor of a foreign place. It did not smell of labouring bodies, burning cane fields, and animal dung, and smell that way whether in the windless heat of noon or in the feathery breeze of the evenings in Jamaica [and St.Lucia] did. Instead, it had the odour of things man-made and lifeless – store bought clothes or the felt of a new hat. “ Every fox likes the smell of his own hole.” Grandfather used to say. I did not like the smell of America.
(A.Winkler, Going Home to Teach. p 3)
Apr 03 2010
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Cover girl….Derek and I.
So I walked into a gas station last week end in rural SLU, the attendants says ” a she!, glancing at me and comparing the paper she was reading”. I had no idea i made the front page of the St. Lucian Star. Sir Derek Walcott and I…..I told you I was having dinner with him. I guess I got more.
Literary Festival off to good start with Derek Walcott
Written By: Toni Nicholas on Mar 29th, 2010
Following his reading Derek Walcott held a book signing at Samaans Park. Fans of the Nobel Laureate were visibly in awe of his presence.
The turn out could have been better. There were more ministry of education and government officials at the launch of Denys Springer’s bird book, which turned out to be nothing more than a rotten egg. The worldwide launch and premiere of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s new book “White Egrets” paled in comparison to the other events which had been held at the ……
See full story here: The St. lucia Star
“BLUSH” P.S Good things happen when you wear your best friend’s pretty dress. Taa Kerr! It photographs well.
Mar 31 2010
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Mar 26 2010
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last of fridays in this place…random thoughts
today was rough. 9am - 3pm interviews. I AM CHIEF PROCRASTINATOR! why was there a fire drill while i was at my former internship office? so much for trying to hide. they thought i left the country. well most of them. good conversation with the head huncho. i thought hated me. well not really. he’s human.
guess who owns a signed copy of Sir Derek Walcott’s new book of poetry? uh huh. me! pictures coming. promise. found a group of like minded folks last night at the book launch and reading. that man’s a bit arrogant. the man is Walcott. the folks i met were just awesome( american expression). why do i leave in time minus 3 days? i dub poet spit poetry about my hair in my ear.
Gros Islet for dinner and to soak up the Lucianess! tonight i write. time is against me.
Mar 25 2010
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And that was Antigua…
The island boast 365 beaches. Skeptics suggest that not all are actual beaches, but for marketing reasons the country sticks to the claim. After all, they have no rivers, no real mountain ranges. Beaches, white and or pink sand (that left like carpet under my feet) and natural harbours makes the country a seaman’s paradise. Not just now, but since those colonial bastards ruled the Caribbean.
Thanks to my friends Terry and Urika for a lovely time! Ofcourse there was a musuem trip, a J’can dancehall, a soca fete, quick trip to the beach and round the island drive. No trip is comlte without a walk in town, the craft market and old buildings. And lots of tom foolery on my part. I had a grand time. …..oh yeah.
So the island is home to too many J’cans, who both contribute to and tear down the island. ( all immigrants do that) It was the first place however that when I broke out in a Jamaican dialect I felt quite at home. The stories of slave masters relocating families from Jamaica to Antigua inorder to break up the family structure is suggested as the reason for the simiarity in accents despte the distance and the continued migration of J’cans to Antigua. J’can patties are quite common but cost a fortune $7.50 EC. That’s a lot. The same cost $4.50 in St. Vincent!!
Some sailor carved “Mohawk” in this door. He knew I’d come wearing one 200 hundred years later!
Some sailor dude named Nelson “His Majesty’s Antigua Naval Yard at English Harbour was built starting about 1725. Its function was to maintain the Royal Naval warships that captured valuable sugar islands of the Eastern Caribbean thus cutting off enemy trade and increasing Britain’s own wealth.
Nelson’s Dockyard National Park.
They shared the island’s up as if we were theirs to share!
English Harbour view from Fort Shirley. Straw clutch, hand made in St.Lucia ( Caribbean fashion rocks)
St. Barnabas Anglican Church. One of the most photographed churches on the island. It is green because of the stones used to build it. I could not get any information on why the stones were green.
St. John’s Cathedral built 1848.
Asking the tour guide questions. They say it’s an American trait to ask questions. That’s bullshit…if I aint know. I going to “hask”!!
Not trying to be rude, but this creepy guy wouldnt leave me alone in the church graveyard. For a second I wondered if he was real. I probably had no business walking grave to grave reading headstones any way. Man headstones can be funny.
My little ‘Tigan partner, J’Daniah.
They call this feature Devil’s Bridge. It’s some kind of landform caused by wave action or erosion….you need a Bachelors in Geography to know this. Sorry cant help ya!!
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Preamble to Antigua
Outside of the third degree interrogation and near strip search at the V.C Bird Aiport for carrying a Jamaican passport and acting non-chalant about my return dates, I enjoyed Antigua. They gave me only 4 days in the country, the exact number of days on the return ticket. The ticket I couldn’t produce when first asked. So much for Caribbean integration huh? CARICOM? CSME? Free movement?
On exit from the country the Immigration Officer asked why I had entry stamps for the USA but no USA visa in my passport……ahmmmm. Well….ahhmmmm….so I told her I kinda live their legally i. documented alien. I kid you not, after telling her of the horror story of entering the country and that it was feared that I would remain illegally like many of my countrymen, she said ” If you live in USA you wouldn’t want to say here”. I really wanted to say ” so you think!” But I was in an airport and decided to be mindful of my otherwise loose tongue! AMERICAN SUPREMACY REIGNS!!!
I doubt a USA immigration officer would assume that your legal status in Australia, UK or Japan meant you didnt want to live in the USA illegally.
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I’m having dinner with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott tonight!
My last Thursday in SLU. I should be “writing” but Derek Walcott will be launching his new collection of poems less than 10 minutes from my apt……
“The WORD ALIVE International Literary Festival will serve as a special tribute to St Lucian Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott who celebrated his 80th birthday January 23 this year. Walcott has given the event his blessing and will use it to launch his new book White Egrets. The launch will be held during the opening event on Thursday (March 25) at 7:00 pm. Walcott will be introduced by Professor Emeritus Edward Baugh of Jamaica, hailed as the preeminent Walcott scholar. The evening will also feature a visual art exhibition by secondary school students with the poetry of Derek Walcott as its theme. Local film director Davina Lee will put on a video presentation as her interpretation of the work of several St. Lucian poets?
I woke up at 2am to do some work. I deserve a break huh. Okay, another break. The last 2 weeks of travelling was more than a break.
See story here
I am bursting with excitement!!!
Mar 24 2010
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Claudius Lousien lives in a corrugated lean-to, without electricity or water, but has turned down an offer of $60m for his land.
His bed is a rackety ‘lounger’, upon which a rich tourist once sunbathed by a five-star pool; the mattress has long since lost its linen cover and the foam padding all but disintegrated.
His lifestyle is organic in the extreme - dinner consists of the fish he catches cooked on the left-over coals from his charcoal fire.
Claudius’s humble home is atop a hill at Anst La Voute, St Lucia, with a wafting breeze and commanding view in all directions. The only sounds are the distant whoosh of the waves on the shore, the call of a bird, and the crackle of embers on a charcoal fire.
He owns 55 sun-drenched acres of undulating hillside and mangroves overlooking white-tipped waves and turquoise waters.
Claudius and his father before him were born here on the golden sands of the Robinson Crusoe-style beach.
The 70 year old has never visited a doctor or, for that matter, a dentist.
“This is a nice place, cool and quiet, with all these beautiful trees,” he replies when asked why he wouldn’t sell to the man who offered him sixty million dollars for his land, “I want to be buried here.”
Mar 23 2010
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Developed or Developing? Dividing The World Into The Haves and The Have-Nots First World or Third World? LDC or MDC? Global North or South?
Third World - Developing Countries - LDC
Mar 14 2010The world is divided into those countries that are industrialized, have political and economic stability, and have high levels of human health, and those countries that do not. The way we identify these countries has changed and evolved over the years as we have moved through the Cold War-era and into the modern age; however, it remains that there is no consensus as to how we should classify countries by their development status.
