Packing and flying out


I spent the last couple of months paying very close attention to Dominica and the rapid recovery they have made since Maria.  Still – a lot of work ahead, but great progress.  I had been planning to see how I could improve my resiliency and that of my local community Tete Morne for energy, communication, food, and water.  I have about 50 lbs of supplies that I was going to test and demonstrate.
The bigger bag to be heading to Dominica while the red bag will be consolidated with my recovered stuff.

 When I fly from St. Lucia to Grenada I’ll have rather strict weight limits, My personal stuff – clothes, shoes, electronics, and kitchen stuff will likely be near the weight limit without those supplies.  Most will go on to Dominica – but I will take one of the solar panels and one of the solar lights to Grenada.  I’ll still work on disaster preparedness and resiliency.

After being told my new assignment I added Grenada as a topic to my Google news feed and so I’ve been catching up on the island.  The island is nice and I’ve received encouraging words from the volunteers I know there.  Expect pictures in future blog posts.

I fly out to St. Lucia early Monday (tomorrow) morning via Miami.  After a week of training, I fly on to my new community on Grenada the following Monday.  (I might not post next week due to limited time and internet).  I’m to be teaching at a small Catholic school, about 10 kids in first grade.  I’ll need to learn about the school and community as quickly as possible – hit the ground running as they say.  I’m not sure if I’ll have a host family for a short time or not – some people will, some will not.  It will take a little bit of time to get to know the island – but I’ll have other Peace Corps volunteers and people in the community to help me get up to speed.

I’ll try to get settled and get working in school as quickly as possible.  It will not be long until Christmas break.

Peace Corps Ghana often said – “you need to be flexible like Gumby”.  Yep, that’s Peace Corps alright…


Love always,

John

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