bctuck

It’s amazing the difference a night will make.

After the evening rain cooled the morning and the sun poked its head above the hills, our imaginings of the day before came to life. The rooms we stayed in were on the second floor of Pax, affording us an even more spectacular view of our mountain home. The nebulous of stars and lights that greeted us the night before had turned into what you see above, a palm tree laden paradise as far as the eye could see. Although it might not seem a paradise to you, there is after all no beach in sight, I saw it (and still see it) as such. For an example why, here’s the story of the rest of that first day.

When you wake up in a new place after having arrived during the night, the next morning is always an interesting experience. Although we had already spent the night there, everything I saw was fresh. Pax lived up to its description. Its colonial feel, view of both the mountain green to the back and the city blue to the front, and service that can only be described as “Radar-like”, made us all truly feel at home. Breakfast was relaxed and scrumptious, with the students straggling in as they woke up. Our illustrious professor, Dr. Steve Hallett, was one of the last down (this will become a theme…). Breakfast was served to us by a wonderful woman, who had a kindness that matched the mood of the morning. We had toast, eggs, and (most importantly) fresh fruit and fruit juice, all of which was enjoyed in front of birds zipping around between avacado trees, lizards running up and down the trunks, and a wind lifting the sounds up from the city and down from the mountains. One flit of the bright yellow tail with steel blue eyes of a crested oropendola hinted at the wonders yet to be seen (click on the wonders below to see them in a slideshow).

Eric pulled up to the driveway right on time in the red and white bus we’d really get to know in those two weeks. Everyone piled in, me with my bright orange bag of medical supplies and muted blue bag of camera supplies (both equally important, but one used thankfully far more than the other). Our first official learning trip was to one of the last remaining anthurium farms in Trinidad. Being an island nation with natural gas and oil reserves, farming is not top on the list of governmental funding in Trinidad and Tobago. This particular farm was started by a Canadian family to take advantage of currency control which allowed freer trade between T&T Dollars and other foreign markets. The output of the farm was more than the local market could accommodate, with a breeding program that backcrossed Dutch varieties with local jungle pinks and reds.

This program, conducted in conjunction with the University of the West Indies, worked to breed against the bacterial wilt that plagued naturally grown anthuriums and allowed the Flying Dutchmen (an obviously European horticulture company…) to outproduce most other nations with their greenhouse grown flowers. Unfortunately, these rare and small tropical farms are not competitive with the large international corporations, what with the increasing rarity of the coconut husks used for the bedding of this semi-epiphyte and the propensity for disease transmission through slipping knives, so Hugh and his family have been transitioning into hydroponic tomato production. In the next few years, his farm, any many like his, will have completely moved away from anthurium production, despite the impressive 2 million stems and 12,000 new varieties they produced in the farms heyday. Well anyway, the family was wonderful (a set of talkative transplants that have made their home on this island nation), and it was a good first adventure into the economy of the nation.

Ok, so I’m long winded. Who knew. This is what I get for taking detailed notes! I’ll finish this story tomorrow, so get ready for capuchins, coconuts, and climbing!

T&T – Stories from Trinidad – the Wonder of the First Night

Hello again, I know it’s been a while.

Almost a year ago, I made the journey down to Trinidad and Tobago with a class of students to learn lots, and to teach a little, about tropical biological and cultural diversity. Like any good student, I tend to take notes on trips like these so I can chronicle the details that otherwise would be lost in the moment. I started to share some of the myriad of stories I collected when I wrote about my prize, but then proceeded to ignore this whole blog thing and go bullheadedly about life. Well, I guess now is better late than never to get back to my promise.

It’s solidly springtime here in Indiana, despite the calendar date, and I have been thinking about my travels fairly frequently. This rush of warm, the incessant blooming, and the beautiful din of bird songs have moved my thoughts back to the first day I arrived in Trinidad. After spending a whole day traveling, bouncing from Indianapolis to Chicago to Miami to Port of Spain (the capital of T&T), we were picked up from the airport by our wonderful bus driver / tour guide Eric and whisked away into the night to our home away from home, Pax Guesthouse. Eric climbed the bus dutifully up the dark switchbacks, guided around the bends by trees and railings that had been painted white to reflect the headlamps. Just when it felt like we would be going back and forth and up the mountain for an eternity, Eric said, “we reach”, meaning that we had gotten to our destination. As we unpacked our luggage, we were greeted by Gerard, the inviting owner and manager, as well as by a tray overflowing with ice-cold glasses of fresh pineapple juice. Rooms were assigned, the balcony was explored, and we all settled down for the night.

Since it was the tropics, the typical house design involves lots of windows, high ceilings with gaps in the upper part of the walls connecting rooms, and, when possible, wonderful fans to help the air circulate. Although the night was hot, it was not, by any means, uncomfortable. The breeze that blew in from the evening was ripe with possibilities, hinting at the exotic and mysterious country we were in, but had yet to actually see. I could smell the night blooming flowers, hear the subdued activity of the city below, and even feel the eerie yet enticing void of civilization that existed in the patch of black and dark vegetation beyond the town we had just been driven through. The mountain behind us was also still left up to our imagination. For all we know at this hour, with no lights except for the monastery that sat just above our home, the forest and rock could have reached up to the heavens.

The only thing that got me to sleep that night was the exhaustion from the rush of travel and the excitement of the weeks ahead. As I lay on top of the covers, with the wind gently ruffling the curtains to expose the vast twinkle of both unfamiliar stars and unfamiliar civilization, I marveled at the possibilities of the days to come, and reveled in the contentment of the moment.

And that was just the first night.

March 18, 2012 0

that everything outside is YELLOW!

March 18, 2012 0

Patience, a virtual virtue.

Maybe it’s the coffee speaking, but I can really be an impatient person.

I’m not content with waiting around doing nothing in between two tasks that I have set out to do. In general, this isn’t a problem. I can fill the lag time with useful short doings like checking my email, making mental lists of things I need to do, or even writing a blog post. Call this multitasking (I don’t), call this task switching (great NPR article about that here), call it being spazzy, I don’t care. I do it a lot, and you probably do as well. I’m just not content with being patient and waiting for one thing to finish before I start the next.

A large portion of our now fast-paced and digital-driven lives are spent in this perpetual push forward. We watch TV (or YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu) while we cook (if we cook), while we eat (because generally we eat alone), and while we do menial tasks for work in front of a computer (or else we’d either go nuts or fall asleep). The simple chore of sitting and waiting has turned into a game to see with what we can occupy our mind in the interlude between activities.

I’m at a point in the evening right now where I’m done with work, finished supper, have played with the dog, and now can’t figure out what to do. I won’t say I’m bored (which is good because I’d hate to have Mom take a toy away from me as was the rule when we re little), just indecisive. Since nothing has started yet, there is a huge number of possibilities, and its hard to wait while I choose ones over the others. Unfortunately, this sometimes drags out long enough that I do indeed get bored and just go to bed instead. It’s as if I’m assuming that i wouldn’t have gotten anything meaningful done on whatever the chosen task was, so there was no use starting it that night.

Task jumping is sometimes a great thing, and other times is debilitating. When it does pay off, however, patience can be the most beautiful thing in the world.

November 26, 2011 1

T&T – Cricket, Part 2.

I mentioned in this post a few months ago that it had been a goal of mine to get a cricket ball while I was in England three years ago, but that didn’t happen. A few weeks ago, however, I had the opportunity to help lead a study abroad in Trinidad and Tobago (also a big cricket playing country). We saw a number of matches being played as we drove around the islands, but never really stopped to watch (too busy learning, I suppose).

At some point in the two weeks, I mentioned this goal to Dr. Hallett (a.k.a. Choo Choo Steve, more on the quickly dubbed trail names later), to which he said “OK, we can do that”. We stopped at a shopping mall near our home base of Pax Guest House outside of Tunapuna, and sport shops were not hard to find. So, I got my cricket ball. And then, I got to play cricket.

That night (the last night we would be in the country), we walked down to our usual Penultimate Frisbee game on the soccer pitch halfway down the mountain road (fine to walk to, a bitch to walk back from), picking up pieces of plywood and branches along the way. The plywood turned into a wicket, and the branches the bats. Hallett said this was very West Indies, and very wartime England, just picking up spare pieces of junk and having a good time of it. The pieces of junk worked great, with the wood propped up on its end to fall when it was hit, and the bats only shattering about every third swing. Chris, one of the Botany students, played baseball in highschool, so he mostly knew what he was doing, and Hallett is English, so he at least sounded like he knew what he was doing. I played tennis and ski raced in highschool (in Wisconsin), so I had very little idea of what I was doing at all. I did manage to get the hang of it after a while, hitting a few runs and even throwing a few batters out. Seriously fun, but my arm hurt for the next week (guess I’m not used to throwing a ball with a locked arm, who knew).

We finished the evening with our Ultimate Penultimate Frisbee game of the trip and fun was had by all, even though the deceptively speedy short professor’s team won. Somehow, a few people had enough energy left after to sprint up the last few switchbacks (where was that energy on the playing field, I asked), and then back off to Pax to collapse, get clean, and wait for the supper gong. That sweet, sweet noise which meant abundant and fantastic food.

Well, this should be the first of many tales from my most recent study abroad. This writing has been a long time coming, and now I finally have some freedom on my hands to set the stories free. So grab a cup of tea or coffee or what have you, sit back, and enjoy.

June 29, 2011 1