Water Crisis

Wednesday afternoon, the water crisis started.  I had just finished drinking my second liter of water of the day (you need to stay hydrated down here) when I checked my email.  What I found made my stomach churn. A lovely (please note the sarcasm) email saying that the water was no longer potable and had been that way since the morning.  This meant that I had just drunk 2 liters of water that was contaminated by who knows what.

For the rest of the night, we got subsequent emails giving us further information about the water.  We received one email which said "do not come in contact with contaminated water under any circumstance." At this point in time, hypochondriac mode took over. I made the mistake of looking up all of the water-borne illnesses. I kept thinking that I was now infested with a parasite, or heavy metal or some other super nasty thing that has been incubating in the volcanic soil of Dominica.  Thankfully there were no actual symptoms of drinking bad water.

I hit the 24 hour mark and still no symptoms.  (Thank you for prophylactic antibiotics!  Kept my stomach all nice and happy).  On Thursday morning, I was at the IGA when it opened and bought two cases of water. I think I bought some of the last cases they had.   We received an email Thursday afternoon, which stated that after testing, the water was safe to shower in and that boiling made it safe to wash dishes with.  I have to say that boiling water for dishes is an extremely annoying, tedious process.  It made the relatively simple task of hand-washing dishes that much worse.  (Boiling the amount of water needed to wash a sink full of dishes took around an hour.)  I have a new-found appreciation for the settlers of the west and people who have to do this on a daily basis.

Now it is Friday and still no solution to the water crisis.  I talked to my maid this morning and she was upset about the situation as well.  She said that her daughters didn't have water at school and that she didn't have the extra money to buy them bottles to take with them.  I ended up giving her two of my bottles so that she would have water for her kids on Monday.   My school has provided a free ration of water for the Ross community. (We each get a 1.5L bottle and a .5L bottle).  

Truck being unloaded.  

One of the trucks with all the empty boxes. 

My 2L of water!  Now I can say I waited in line to get my rations. 

UPDATE--As soon as I got back from picking up my water, I received an email saying our water is clear to drink.  YAY!! However, I still think that I am going to drink bottled water for the weekend until the bad water runs through the system.

IGA's hot commodity!

When I first arrived back on the island two weeks ago, I needed to stock up on groceries.  So I went to the IGA.  I was met with practically empty shelves (we are talking as empty as when people raid the grocery store before a snowstorm or apocalypse).  I couldn't even find milk!  I mean any kind of milk, including fresh milk, powdered milk, reconstituted milk, and canned milk. Normally I can find the boxed reconstituted milk but not this time.

And then the word was spread by text message, facebook, and email that the IGA was getting a delivery of fresh milk!! Fresh milk is a rarity.   We get it maybe two or three times a semester. I think it is imported from Puerto Rico, which is quite the journey for a poor bottle of milk.  I was there when it the store opened at 8am.  I was able to buy a gallon of milk but other people were not so lucky.  One of my friends tried to go the next day and she didn't have any luck!  The IGA was out of milk again!

Basically here in Dominica, you have to jump at every occasion to buy food.  If you see it in the store, chances are it will not be there the next day.  You will see people buying twenty cans of tuna fish or three bottles of grape jelly.  Frozen vegetables are another popular food item (especially if it is frozen broccoli). Right now they only have frozen Okra, which I have no idea how to cook. When the store has boneless chicken breasts, I will buy 8 packages of them because that is my staple food down here.

It reminds me of the stories my mom used to tell me about my grandmother during the wars.  She would stockpile sugar and other hard to get goods.  That is exactly how I feel here.  If someone looked at my kitchen, they would think I was some survivalist because of all the food I have stockpiled. Confession--I have used survivalist blogs to figure out how to use powdered milk and how to creatively use rice and dried beans.  Of course these people were preparing for the upcoming Mayan apocalypse while I am just preparing to survive 11 more months in Dominica.  Surprisingly we have a lot in common!

This is why I was so so so excited to go into Whole Foods and Wegmans when I was back in the states.  It was amazing to not have to wonder if they would have the food I was looking for but instead just be able to walk into the store and have everything there.  

The Trip Back to Dominica for Second Semester

The flight back to Dominica was quite the experience.  Everything was alright until we reached the Antigua airport.   The airport lounge was absolutely packed, standing-room only status.  Passengers were squished shoulder-to-shoulder.  The past three times I have flown through the airport, the little "in-transit" lounge area has been relatively empty.  But this time it was pure chaos.  Four flights, including one trans-Atlantic flight, were trapped in the lounge, waiting for the airlines to announce the boarding of their flight.   What made me really nervous was that there was a trapped Liat (my airline) flight that was supposed to head to Dominica.  I was convinced we were going to have to spend the night in Antigua.

How crowded the Antigua airport was.
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Thankfully after only an hour delay, the boarding of our flight was announced. One mad dash to the plane later and I was on my way to Dominica.  While climbing the steps to board the plane, I saw my bags being placed aboard.  I was ecstatic !  I knew my bags were going to arrive in Dominica.  After all, I had seen the baggage handlers physically place them on the plane.  I sat back and relaxed, figuring everything would be smooth flowing from there.  

All of a sudden the captain told the cabin to buckle up and prepare for "a bit of bumpiness".  After saying that, the plane suddenly makes a sharp turn and the captain comes back on. He tells us that due to "extreme winds" we were not going to be able to land.  We started circling for what felt like an hour.  We went up and down, made sharp turns, and at one point, when I looked out at the water, I swear we were 30 feet above the white-cap covered ocean.  The captain comes back on again.  This time he says the dreaded words "Folks, this is our last attempt to land.  If we don't make it this time, we have to turn back to Antigua or run out of fuel." 

EEKK! I don't know what worried me the most.  The fact that I could see the runway and that we couldn't land or that we were close to having a fuel issue. I kept thinking that we were going to be a real life version of Castaway or Lost. On the final attempt, the pilot did some fancy maneuver and we got closer and closer to the runway.  The landing gear touched down and the plane kept zooming forward.  I don't think I have ever experienced a plane go this fast when it was landing.  But we made it thanks to our amazing pilot. 

Now I thought. Nothing else could go wrong.  I was on the island.  I knew my bags were on the plane with me.  I had a motion-sickness patch on, which meant I would survive the road to campus.  I even had granola bars in my checked bag, which meant I could have something for dinner. Boy, was I wrong.

We were ushered off the plane into customs.  While waiting in line to talk with the customs agent, they started placing the bags on the baggage claim.  And then they closed the door, which meant no more bags were coming.  Only 11 bags were placed on the baggage claim.  My flight had 50 people on it, the majority of which had at least one bag, if not two bags. This was not going to be good.

One of my bags made it off the flight. The Liat personnel said that they could not fully unload the plane because the plane did not have enough fuel to idle on the runway while it was being unloaded.  Since Dominica does not have any fuel, the plane had to take off right away and head for Antigua.  Liat promised that our bags would come in on the next flight. We just had to fill out some quick paperwork and then they would do the rest. 40 minutes later, my paperwork was filled out and I was headed back to campus.  

Saturday--All flights to the island were cancelled or delayed.  No bags. I am still zen at this point in time. 

Sunday--No words on my bag. I couldn't reach the airline. Still attempting to be zen. I kept telling myself that it was island time and that this is how things work on Dominica.

Monday (today)--I receive a phone call at 9am from Liat (and a call later from school) saying my bag has arrived in Dominica.  YAYYYY! Nope, not so fast.  It turns out because this was my second-checked bag, Liat felt that they were not responsible for getting the bag to me.  They wanted me to come to the airport to pick it up. (This would be at least a 5 hour trip that would probably cost me around $150 US, would make me extremely carsick, and would take me away from my studies.)  I told them that it was not possible for me to make it to the airport.  Then Liat said that they could have someone deliver it to my apartment by noon for 20EC (that is cheap!) So I headed home around 11 and waited for that knock on my door announcing that my bag arrived.

Around 6pm, my bag still had not arrived yet. Other people on my flight and people who arrived on Sunday flights had all received their bags. This was the final straw. I was no longer zen.  All I could think of was how I had wasted the majority of my day waiting for my bag to come, when I could have been doing errands and that my bag was most likely soaked because of the monsoon that was going on outside.  I called my school's housing department (This was the department arranging pickups from the airport and that had called me this morning saying my bag was in) and asked them if they knew anything.  They said they had no record of my bag and that they recommended I try calling the airline (which was closed at this point in time).

My envisioned mode of transport to the airport.
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I was beyond frustrated at this point in time. Ranting to my sister about how I was going to have to ride a cow to the airport to get my 50 pound bag (I wasn't making much sense at this point in time) and how all my Christmas gifts were somewhere lost in the Dominica hills, got a lot of my frustration out.  I decided to call the school again and ask if they had my bag. Within 5 minutes of hanging up the phone with me, I received a call saying that someone was bringing my bag over right now.  They even carried my bag up to my apartment!  The bubble-wrap and ziplock bags that I packed everything in did its job. Nothing was harmed!  

Everything worked out in the end (I just gained a few more grey hairs and another story for my blog).  After experiencing no major issues on all my previous flights, I guess Liat felt that I needed to have the true Liat experience.  (People say that Liat stands for Leave Island Any Time).

I guess I am lucky that my bags didn't end up in Europe (True story...This actually happened to one of my professors.  Dominica seems to be a very confusing destination.  My professor didn't get his bag back for months).  In retrospect, I am extremely glad that the pilot had our safety in mind while landing on Friday night.  Zen breaths got me through the experience and now I have lots of bubble wrap to use for stress relief during the semester! 

Christmas Break

Christmas break was awesome!! I got to see tons of friends from college, high school and even one from middle school!  One of the first things I did when I got back to the states was to get a peppermint mocha in the red Starbucks cups.  It was heaven! The barista had no idea why I was so excited.  I guess normal people don't get giddy over Starbucks.

So happy to get my starbucks! 

After being home for one day, I was super anxious to drive again.  So I took off for an epic 5 day roadtrip.  First stop was in Ithaca, where I got to see all of my friends still at Cornell and I got to meet with my favorite Human Ecology administrators. I even went to the December graduation ceremony as an alumni guest!

After Ithaca, I headed to NYC.  I can now check off "driving in NYC" from my bucket list.  I definitely will not be rushing to do it again.  Getting through the tunnels and onto the island was pure chaos! Now  I know why NJ and NYC drivers have such bad road rage. People are scary, scary drivers.   It also didn't help that my GPS hated me. It kept telling me to make this one turn that I couldn't make because of construction and kept rerouting me back to the original place.

Eating beef intestines. YUCK!

Then I was off to NJ to visit my epic, wonderful, amazing roomies from college.  We had tons of fun together. We went shopping, had a wine and cheese night, went to the movies and even tried some exciting food.  We went to a Korean BBQ place that had some interesting food.  I tried shrimp with their heads still on, beef intestines, and beef heart. I figured since I eat strange foods when I am in Dominica, I might as well gives these a try.

After NJ, I went to Philly to visit Amelia and Carter.  It was nice to have to the chance to catch up with them.  Also, they let me loose in Whole Foods which was dangerous! Since I had been deprived of groceries due to living on my third world island. I kept wandering around the store in awe of all the wonderful foods they had.  I behaved myself reasonably well and only bought two random things (a pomelo and egg nog).

11 types of Christmas cookies.

Once I got back to Buffalo, all the Christmas festivities started with the annual Christams cookie baking party!  My friend Krisitn and I baked 11 different kinds of cookies with help from my mom and sister.  All of them turned out delicious!

Then I took my mom Christmas shopping.  We made the mistake of going shopping at Petsmart.  Poor Sindar, my 12-year old German Shepard, received the holiday "present" of a reindeer costume.  I put him in the costume and I don't think he was amused. He lasted only long enough to have a picture taken. Thankfully after I gave him some dog treats he forgave me.