Grenada first week

Grenada
The Spice of the Caribbean

Fall 2007

Rusty ol' gears at Westerhall Estate.

Fish Friday!
We joined Noga and Eran on November 16th for another edition of Fish Friday in Gouave. We rode in extreme comfort in their luxury-mobile there and back...even adventuring our way through the unrepaired old"road" along the sea and its cliffs. It turns out this isn't the best shortcut to take after a good rainfall, but we made it just the same!

In his quest toward ever greater health, Peter adds more FISH to his diet! Above is a freshly grilled (whole) red snapper with vegetables.

Mmm. Homemade ice cream and a show! We enjoyed the holiday stylings of a wonderful drum band with my favorite aspect of Fish Friday: fresh ice cream! (Fish-free, in case you were wondering!)

Ancho: pretending to be stoic Frisco: I have a very pet-able belly!

New doggie photos! I took a few new photos for Christine.

The brothers: Ancho, Frisco, and Greedy.

Noga and I have lunch at The Nutmeg on the lagoon.

We enjoyed post-(American) Thanksgiving socializing at Peter and Erik's after a dinner at Savvy.

Westerhall no longer distills their own alcohol. The old distillery, as you can see above, is in...rather aesthetically beautiful...ruin. Here, we were delighted by yet another intrepid tour guide, Arthur - who is related to the current estate owners. He explained that when the distillery needed to be updated, they discovered they could operate more cheaply by purchasing the grain alcohol from Trinidad than they could refurbish all the required equipment and continue to distill rum themselves. The alcohol purchased in Trinidad is still mixed on the estate as always.

Arthur, with one of the old furnaces.

Westerhall's many brews, from the old to the new. They are now producing a Havana rum (fourth from the right) brewed especially for the Cuban communities in Florida. Cuban ex patriots approached the estate with their special recipe and asked them to recreate the rum of their homeland, which they evidently missed quite a bit. (I won't divulge the secret ingredients!)

Westerhall's wonderful little museum was, surprisingly, the most well documented we had seen to date. Above are a few remnants from the Bianca C., a sunken vessel off Grenada's southern coast which is today a popular diving site.

Grenada's oldest car.

An old gas pump, a thermometer/barometer, and soda carbonating equipment.

Every museum has painful reminders of Grenada and the Caribbean's slave trade history. These leg and neck irons were particularly disturbing tools of the trade.

Amazingly, we...er...discovered...some treasures that are not on display to the public at this museum as well. On the left is a scrapbook of Gairy's visit to Surinam, and on the right is a photo documenting Gairy's trip to...of all places...Detroit.

The end of November saw the graduation of Dr. Marianne Szauer-Arritt's Richmond Hill prisoners from her HIV/AIDS peer training program which I have been involved in all semester. The 21 male and 3 female inmates did a marvelous job, working hard to educate themselves and their peers on HIV/AIDS. Marianne offered the inmates information, respect, and independence, and she was rewarded in spades with attentive, enthusiastic, and creative pupils, who throw themselves to the task of spreading accurate information to their peers. The lack of accurate HIV/AIDS information in Grenada is astounding. The lack of medical knowledge is compounded by complicated sexual and gender issues. The need for education is dire, and the prison program, combined with a similar peer education program in the community, is a wonderful success in beginning to fill this void. At times, it can be easy to sit back and judge the foreign culture around as being backwards and behind the times. However, the truth is that this is our future. The scary trend is that while some select areas around the world are enjoying increased education on sexuality, gender, and sexually transmitted diseases, the much greater trend in the United States is a rapid decline into a state of ignorance. Thanks to the Bush administration, funding for sexual education programs, both at home and abroad, has been obliterated for programs mentioning anything but abstenance. I've known this for some time, as a result of my work with children, teens, and adults in Colorado. Ironically, This American Life produced a show called "How to Talk to Kids" just last month which touches on this very trend. It's a terrifying future, which can be seen in action in the community at large here in Grenada. Through this program, though, Marianne reminded me that one person can make a difference. A big difference.

Graduation Day!