In January 2011, 12-year-old Chrislon Fraser took to the stage in front of a packed dining room at the Rehobot Restaurant in Keartons, St. Vincent. With a calm, confident stride the lanky young musician wearing wire-rimmed glasses made his way to the keyboard, set against the glow of a string of purple lights. Throughout his [...]
Please login first to post comments.
I traveled home for Christmas this year by way of St. Vincent, Puerto Rico, and Boston before landing in Long Beach, CA. When I finally touched down in SoCal I found my mom at the baggage claim desk next to a Jetblue agent in the same almost-tears I had when I realized I’d just missed [...]
On Tuesday, December 6th the Chateaubelair Methodist School held a ceremony to commemorate the opening of the new school library. Our APCD Mr. Cool – my neighbor, who once worked as a teacher at the school – gave remarks on the importance of reading and literacy, and how he has made sure that this school [...]
“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.” -Marsha Norman For years I’ve harbored this fear that I’ll be discovered; a fraud whose accomplishments were never legitimately earned, one of those people who skated by in life by mere luck and coincidence of being in the right place at the right [...]
Exhausted; sleep deprived with tired eyes, our weekend packs containing souvenirs and laundry, Jessica and I stepped foot on the tarmac in St. Vincent on Monday after a whirlwind holiday to Dominica. A three-day itinerary of consecutive adventure laden expeditions proved enough to temporarily satisfy the expanding wanderlust for each of us as our soul searching [...]
“We should organise a candlelight vigil,” Mr. Derrick said. It was during a meeting at the restaurant in Chateau that he shared this idea after two vicious and fatal crimes had taken place in the North Leeward communities within a three-week period. On October 5th, 2011 members of these violence-stricken communities came together to join [...]
Fun fact: The blue represents the sky and sea. The gold is for warmth, the bright sprit of the people and the golden sands of the Grenadines. The green represents the lush vegetation of St. Vincent’s agriculture and the enduring vitality of the people. (http://www.visitsvg.com/intro/symbol.html)
One of the beautiful things about Peace Corps is the irony of the whole experience. We move into villages where we stick out like a sore thumb, and Peace Corps tells us, Here’s your new neighborhood, PCV [enter name here]. Get to know your community- learn names, places, jobs, resources. Identify issues, change behaviors, formulate [...]
Today in the kindergarten classes we looked at the book The Butterfly Alphabet to gain inspiration for creating our own butterfly wings and decorating them with the letters in our names. Here’s a video on how today’s lesson turned out. Just a warning, you may want to turn your volume down first…
It was September of last year and the tropical morning air sat thick on my skin. I had just finished getting ready for a day of training and was about to head out and catch a van into town when my host mother, standing next to the fridge with her hand on the door asked [...]
Although threatened by heavy rains, Chateaubelair’s 8th annual Breadfruit Festival took place on August 20th. Under the theme, “Sustaining our Culture, Preserving Our Heritage,” the event celebrated the breadfruit in St. Vincent as vendors offered a variety of local dishes featuring this staple food. Sustainable design was also practiced as members of the community came [...]
Being tapped on the shoulder to help out with this dynamic program was the perfect way to ease into the summer break. My first clue that it was going to be a positive experience came when I attended a planning meeting in May for the Youlou Arts Foundation’s 3rd annual summer arts fair and discovered [...]
Just before the close of the school year last June, students in grades 2-5 at Chateaubelair Methodist School each received a laptop netbook courtesy of the Venezuelan Government in collaboration with St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ministry of Education. Delivery of these netbooks to the North Leeward region marked the culmination of the first phase [...]
My big lesson from June/July: St. Vincent is an island that knows how to party like it’s the eve of Y2K. Carnival season officially started with a launch party in early May and concluded with a Mardi Gras celebration on July 5th. One must carefully plan his/her activities and subsequent (lack of) sleep schedule during [...]
Youroumein, an Arawakan word for St. Vincent, is said to mean the beauty of the rainbows in the valleys. On its best days Youroumein sparkles like a gem in the sun, rainbows painting the sky and valleys overflowing with light. The mountains are lush with a thousand shades of green as freshwater streams connect mountaintops [...]
the lunar sky brings darkness to light we see where once we could not before hidden dreams buried pain the possibility of joy revealed in the absence of the sun you rise to cast your gentle glow on what we could not see without you
History of Peace Corps The United States Peace Corps marked its official 50th Anniversary on March 1, 2011. By executive order of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the establishment of Peace Corps gave American citizens the opportunity to serve abroad in two- to three-year assignments with the support of the U.S. Government. Over 200,000 [...]
Following a footpath through St. Vincent’s Botanic Gardens, I walked in search of a place I could sit in reflective contemplation within the landscape of natural sanctuary. My body needed a place to rest and my mind needed a place to settle. With each step it seemed like another superfluous thought or worry entered my [...]
“When ya learn from ya eldahs ya learn de troot.” My host mother, Ms. Toney, imparted these words of wisdom to me during my first weeks in St. Vincent. We had been having a discussion about love, life, and the universal pursuit of happiness. I listened as she shared her stories of raising a family [...]
This is the story of Smiley Shark… Once upon a time, there lived the friendliest, funniest, and sunniest shark in all the world. Smiley Shark loved to smile, and all he wanted was to swim freely with all of the other fish in the sea. Unfortunately, none of the other sea creatures wanted to be [...]
A trip to Canouan, Mayreau, and Union for National Heroes Day
A Peace Corps staff member told me last week, “Part of being in the Peace Corps is to feel entirely overcome by a complete loss of control.” He couldn’t have been more right, and I couldn’t have been more blatantly slapped in the face with an internal struggle that had been brewing under the surface [...]
Students, parents, and teachers, accompanied by the Rose Bank drumming group, marched together through the streets of North Leeward on the morning of Friday 25th January in an effort to promote reading and literacy. This activity marked the final day of Chateaubelair Methodist School’s participation in “Hats Off to Reading” week. Throughout the term, teachers [...]
Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months. Already half a year has passed since this journey began. The air is cooler and the humidity scarce, but the days are basically as long as they were when we arrived last August. An endless summer does exist and it is here in the lush green rolling [...]
As a guest on the Art Room radio show last week with Vonnie and students Sean and Conroy, we discussed the idea of encouraging creativity in the youth of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. More specifically, what can we do (collectively speaking) to encourage young people here to externalize their internal struggles through art and [...]
“I found out everybody’s different — the same kind of different as me.” -Denver Moore Part of the reason I joined Peace Corps was to experience sacrifice. To live without certain luxuries, to remove myself from the rampant American consumerist culture, and to try to survive on the bare necessities instead of becoming distracted by [...]
“I love snapping pictures!” said Sheridon, age 8, holding my four-month-old Canon Rebel T1i. “I know you do, I can tell!” I said, and smiled at her smiling as she brought the camera to her face to look through the viewfinder. At the wedding her family and I attended last week, I had lent Sheridon [...]
Who am I Where do I belong All this time I thought I knew where I was going This place of foreign This other land I didn’t grow up here but I’m starting to wish I had Feel the rhythm moving Feel the water’s song I can feel me changing Who knows if for how [...]
Last month, my fellow PCV Stephen and I visited an art class at the community college in a town called Villa. We were meant to shadow the instructor in hopes of gaining ideas for some creative expression classes that we are each going to facilitate in our respective communities. Little did we know that we [...]
In the time since being sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers, we’ve helped to ring in the nation’s 31st year of independence from British rule, subsequently traveled by boat to the picturesque Grenadine island Mustique, and survived our first natural disaster: Hurricane Tomas. The recent series of events has resulted in schools closing for this entire week, [...]
What an honor it was to deliver this speech on behalf of my amazing group of newly sworn in Volunteers here in St. Vincent. What an even bigger honor to serve in the Peace Corps in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Congratulations EC82s! Ambassador to the Republic of China on Taiwan, [...]
On more than several occasions in this last month, sometimes multiple times a day, I have had to remind myself that this is my life. Most of the time, these moments come when I’m on a bus as it zooms past one breathtaking panoramic ocean view after another. Other times it’s when I’m in my [...]
Perhaps the most exciting cultural experience I have had yet on St. Vincent has been the use of public transportation. The commute from my assigned village to the Peace Corps training site in Kingstown is over an hour long, and consists of a narrow winding road up and down the island’s sloping mountainous terrain, combined [...]
For the last year I had imagined what my Peace Corps experience might be like. I pictured myself living in a straw hut with no running water or electricity, little or no access to internet and television, and training sessions filled with hours of dense information facilitated by people who wanted to weed out the [...]
Last August I called my mom from my apartment in Somerville, MA and told her I had news. ”I’m joining the Peace Corps. I submitted my application today.” She let out a sound that made me think of a medium-sized animal whose foot had just been stepped on. “Don’t sound like that! I need you to [...]
How many entries are we showing above?
For now, we are showing up to 50 entries on each page. Entries that
are too short are filtered out. For more entries, please use
archives.
|
Connect to Peace Corps Journals
About the Journal
Contact Us
Disclaimer:
| |
| Copyright (c) 2010 |
