Sorted

OOOhhhhh, We are now Connected.  We have internet at home even though I am squatting on our bedroom floor (do not even ask why) and Tyler had to run around with the out-of-retirement- I remember- your-parents technician to actually, physically (this is a true story) go and 'help' with making the ADSL connection at the main station his very own self......Luckily we had the background in telecoms installations and my rather vicious lack of patience, which I  had on Thursday,  when I was told that C & W were no longer doing any installations "due to  d'hurricane". I fail to understand Caribbean at such times, and generally become unpleasant and unreasonable until a solution is found. This combination of on the job technical know-how and murderous focus seems to have worked this time, but should probably not be used too often going forward  if we want to live here longer than about a year.

Anyhow, I can now buy a Kindle and shop on-line and rejoin the human race.   I was starting to have a few Doris Lessing moments - aimless White woman flopping around the Tropics listlessly in thin, sticky cotton dress (just without the sex). A month of no technology has definetly re-affirmed my love of all things Global.

News for the Week:

Friday: I went out for dinner with new friends. Since I'm no longer use to either adult company or going out at night,  I got rather over-excited and had to spend Saturday mainly cowering under our mosquito net with a Grade A headache.
Saturday: See Friday
Sunday: We went out for lunch in Josiahs Bay to celebrate our wedding anniversary - which was actually on Saturday, but see Friday.
Monday: Tyler saw a shark on our dive. I, thankfully, did not, otherwise I would have walked back to the island.
Tuesday: Signed my new contract. Never thought I'd say this but I'm actually looking forward to working again. Start on Friday - Georgies birthday. Went to spend the afternoon with lovely SA friend in Lamberts Bay. Got the children home at 7:30. Disgraceful mother. Children exhausted and still had to do homework. Anyway it was a lovely afternoon.

Highlights for the Week going forward include a new book club on Thursday. This is a very grown up one where you actually have to read the book ( The Help by Kathryn Sprockett - excellent) and behave (unlike our one in Joburg). Lunch (hopefully)  with Abigail  - Sugar Apple blogger newfriend. Starting work.

Urrr, that is about it.

Photo from Le Tartine Gourmande

PS In defence of my driving skills, which illicited some comments:

1. The cars are left hand drive (you keep looking for the gears with your left arm and end up with the door handle)
2. The roads are right hand drive (in keeping with the US/UK parity here)
3. Most roads look like this picture.

Loving/Not Loving

I’m not having a good island day today, in fact it is not even 9:30 in the morning and I’m shaking like a leaf. Reason? I cannot reverse out of our driveway in the new car. I have been trying now for the past hour and cannot get enough power to get up it, not stall, and not scrape the wall – which I managed to do in the hired car. So I’m not loving today, and I’ve had to phone Tyler to come and help me. And you all thought our driveway in Seventh Avenue was bad!!

In my efforts to calm myself down, I am playing mental Cosmopolitan love/hate lists, so here we are:

What I love about living on the island:

1. The island sparkles. My permafrost is thawing and I sleep at night. I’m starting to dream again. The pace is wonderful and everything seems manageable. I see a life.

2. Men seem very happy here. Maybe it’s the slightly swashbuckling 4X4/Machette/Work/Sea combination – but men seem to be very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Most of the “city” here are lawyers who all work long days and then seem to sail a lot. All my men – both big and small are thriving.

3. The lifestyle – when everything works – is magical. Lovely homes, sociable, fun.

4. The access to everything in both the US and Europe is so easy and reasonable. To be able to receive things 2-5 days after placing the order and for it to actually arrive through the postal system, is still a huge novelty.

5. People are wonderful – easy, friendly and supportive. I’m looking forward to making new friends and lots of parties!

What I’m not loving so much:

1. It’s like living in the Transkei. Things take time, it’s scruffy and many things remain inexplicable. I’m becoming furious about our lack of internet connection, but everyone just smiles indulgently and then tells you their horror story (“it took 3 months/2 years/never worked” etc).

2. The roads are seriously hectic. Very steep, narrow and potholed - compounded by everyone roaring around in huge cars. One gets accused of being “a bit of a girl” when any fear is shown. A Hummer is definitely an option (if only to drive over the latter).

3. Bugs. Particulary horrible are these little buggers called “no-see-ums” (because you can’t see them) which just eat you up until you develop an immunity. Then the mosquitos (“I hate Skeeto’s” says William) are constant. We have mosquito covers on all the doors and windows, and my new perfume is “Peaceful Sleep”.

4. Culture. The choice is Gospel or Reggae. There is a cinema and it only costs $2 to hire all the latest DVD’s from the local pirate above the (very good) Chinese takeaway. Satellite TV is meant to be coming to the island, so we’ll hang in there.

5. Tacky Tourism. When the cruise boats arrive, the island seems to go into theme park mode. It’s an excuse for crappy food, bad service, high prices and a knee-jerk Calypso style, which is cringe-inducing. If anyone knows ‘Nims Island’ – it is just like the Buccaneer ship arriving!

On balance however, as long as one dosn't burn out the clutch too often, it is everything and more that we could have dreamed of. Paradise it ain't - but a very good life, certainly.

I’m treating myself to an Internet Fest today - replying to emails, reading papers, looking at eBay and Amazon. Tyler is working all day at the restaurant and this is the first morning I’ve actually had to myself in about a month!  I've loved having this time off and have another glorious week until I start with Osiris at the beginning of October.

I've now cheered myself up with writing this so Happy Days.

Flat Earth Society

We still, boringly, do not have our internet connection at home yet, and we’ve not had much time to hang around the marinas’s for the wi-fi, so I'm still feeling like we have fallen off the face of the earth and would dearly love to have the internet for those long evenings whilst T is working. On the plus side, Cable & Wireless have just landed a sea-cable onto the island, and are busy putting in a large fibre optic pipe up our road, so soon we are going to have excellent bandwidths and speeds – just not this week.

We had another busy week last week with Tyler starting work at Red Rock (http://www.redrockbvi.net/)%20on on Tuesday. September is the lowest of the low season, and 90% of all the restaurants are closed – which Red Rock is doing in October. So he has a couple of weeks to learn the menu and then has the month off, before they start to get busy in November again. Frustratingly all our cookery books are in the Container, but we’ve had some fun with looking at new ideas and developing Tyler’s Caribbean collection.

We’ve also bought our new cars – which takes forever. We finally decided on this huge Hyundai Terracan (not sure I’ve even seen them in SA) as it has extra seats in the boot and will be large enough for 3 growing boys and all our clobber, and Tyler has an old Nissan Pathfinder.

The boys are really settling in now, and have a routine already. William had his first playdate on Friday with his new little friend Sammy and Georgie had a sleepover at his friend Derek, who has a fabulous tree house in his garden, where the boys spent most of the night. Saturday was a hectic blur of kids birthday parties with Georgie off at a swimming party at the one end of the island (on the scariest 70˚ degree hill you’ve ever seen, which I had to drive/slide down in torrential rain) and James on a rather ill-fated camping party at the other end of island on Saturday night. He has been so badly bitten by sand fleas that we’ve had to take him to the doctor for cortisone. It all sounded a bit Lord of the Fliesish, and don’t think he will want to do that again in a hurry.

Our big news for last week was the opening of the new supermarket, which actually looks like a normal supermarket (ie clean floors, wide isles, fresh vegetables etc) which must seem so banal as news, but is really BIG here. One S. African girl said she almost cried when she walked in, she was so happy! Anyhow we are hoping that this will raise the bar.  The island is developing so rapidly, with a new bit of civilisation been added everday. This is, of course, both a good and bad thing, however hopefully the next fronteir will  be daily decent newspapers. Since we pay $7 for a loaf of bread and $6.50 for 2l fresh milk, one can only imagine howmuch they would cost, but I can see this rather flat earth existence becoming wearying unless one has hard connections to the 'outside world'.

However, we are definetly settling well into island life. Yesterday Tyler and I started our diving course. This is our wedding anniversary present to ourselves, as it is actually how we met (diving in the Maldives) and we had promised ourselves to start diving again. It was a magical day. We went off to Norman Island – passing HMS "Wave Ruler", which is currently moored out in Drakes Channel for ‘hurricane support’ and to keep a watchful eye on the British islands, which is strangely reassuring.  We did all our mask flooding and buddy-breathing in a little bay and then went off and did a ‘proper’ 15m deep dive off Angel Fish Reef and saw lots of coral and fish including a sea turtle, a sting ray and some Spiny Caribbean Lobster, which looked about the best fresh fish we’d seen since we got here!

Other news ( you can see our world is getting smaller) is that our vegetable seeds are sprouting like triffids, and we are going to have to start our vegetable patch a lot sooner than we thought. Since the whole  island is like one big greenhouse, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, but we are not used to anything happening so quickly anymore!

No escaping the bouncy castles

Sunday 12 September


We have now been on the island for 2 weeks, and what a long week it has been. Time seems to be slower here, longer, heavier. A week feels about a month.We are all pleased it is the weekend.

William went to his first birthday party yesterday – there was even a bouncy castle (grimly roped up to all kinds of poles because of the wind and soggy ground after a night of torrential rain). Five year old parties seem to have a universal ubiquity to them, and this one was no exception. I was however impressed by the endless Pimms for the parents, and several magnums of champagne, which everyone quaffed down in plastic cups.

Last night we also had the Woodfields and Jermyns around for a braai. Tyler and I had spent most of Friday foraging (local term for food shopping) and came up with local beef T Bones, local beef spareribs and chicken drumsticks. We also found arugula (big treat) and went American-stylee with corn and potato salad. We redeemed ourselves with Tyler’s chocolate pavlova (but with blueberries, not raspberries!). We have a very basic kitchen and are really looking forward to our container arriving with our stuff – which will still take months.

We’ve managed to get all the Start Up done however – all we are waiting for now is our landline and internet connection at home. The level of petty bureaucracy on a small island is mind-blowing, but we havn’t taken to the rum (in a big way) just yet and we still think most of it is quite charming. We also need to buy 2 cars. We are currently looking at a Jeep Cherokee for me, and a Ford Durango (V8!!) for T.

We’ve also started to put out our social feelers. We’ve had dinner at Red Rock, the restaurant where Tyler is going to be executive chef (starting Tuesday) which is really lovely and the food good.  I’ve met with my new company, and am just waiting for all my Belonger papers to come through, and then I will start working.

We are also starting to find things on the radar now. Right next door to my new office is a great home store, where I’ve met a group of Cedar Mums – including a great South African girl who has been living here for 2 years (Jane Chatsworthy) and opposite my office is a brilliant French deli – where we had saucisson baguettes and a glass of French wine for lunch on Wednesday (not quite Assagi, but not half bad either).

The boys are getting into a routine with school and are settling into Spanish (Hola Mama, hasta la vista) PE, serious lunch boxes and all things new. We’ve been going to the beach most days after school which we can continue to do, as I’m only working until 3pm. The boys snorkel for hours because the water is like a tepid bath and we come home when the sun sets. After supper it’s frog-hunting and yesterday, much to all the boys delight, they found a snake. Nothing on the island is venomous, so I’m reasonably chilled about all of this – particularly since Tyler and his little friends used to go in for tarantula-teasing when they were kids.

I’ve now not read a newspaper for 2 weeks, nor seen any television (I hear a sharp intake of breath from the SA-side!). Yesterday I treated myself to ‘This Week’ (31 July) and August Elle, which had all the winter fashions in it. Since I’ve almost not stopped wearing either my shorts or vest-tops since we got here – it could have been from another planet. I think the feeling is described as being discombobulated. It’s not a bad feeling, just weirdly disconnected – bobbing along on our little watery island, zooming up and down steep hills. A strangely small life.  Quite likeable, but very different.

We seem to have a lot of time. I guess there’s not much sitting in traffic jams or other time- wasting things. We read at night and fall into these long, deep sleeps under our mosquito net, which leaves one feeling saturated in the morning.  We are definitely getting Kindles and iPads. Gadgets like that are made for places like this, where our primary distractions are either the weather and the local to-ings and fro-ings. The irony, I suppose, is that we now have more time for everything.

I cannot wait to get our home internet and feel like I will only settle when I get this.  I’m dying to Skype, update my blog, get news feeds from the New York Times and all other normal, Wordly things.  Everyone here also lives on email.

It seems like the more one feels disconnected, the more connected one wants to be.

A Normal Week

Tuesday 7 September

Hurricane Gaston has made itself felt a bit through the night – strong winds and spectacular Joburg-type thunderstorms rolling over the sea plus the inevitable power failure, so I’m already up at 5am. It is still dark but hot and sticky. Also the many roosters start crowing around about now and I can hear the neighbours Hummer growling up the driveway – so a new day starts on Tortola.

The week started off with a punctured tire and a dead bird in the driveway (have we already pissed off the afore mentioned Jamaican neighbours, d’ya think?). The drive to school is about 20 minutes and school runs from 8:45 till 3pm. It's quite late as neighbouring island kids have to get to Tortola via boat.  Little William is loving ‘big school’ (it’s the uniform) but said “it lasts forever” and they are all wilting a bit when they get home in the afternoon.

Yesterday morning (Monday) Tyler and I went to a “List”. When people need to leave the island, big lists get circulated for stuff to buy. This poor woman had been on the island for 4 months and had  lost the plot – hurricanes and tropical storms, bugs, mud-slides, incalcitrant bureaucrats, horrible supermarkets (she is from LA but has been living in Tuscany) was just all too much and she had decided to leave within 72 hours. I think this place can do that to one quite easily. It certainly has a Wages of Fear aspect to it, as can be seen from this photo from Tyler’s dads seventies collection. Many roads still look like this. [I’m posting this later and when we came past Elevator Rd this morning, a car had slid down on its roof (there is some rain today) and it looked like a poor little tortoise on its shell, thus deepening my sense of Wages of Fear.]

Anyway – us chirpy new islanders - had a shopping fest, limited only by the amount of dollars we had on us and we came away with laundry baskets, mosquito nets and enough loo paper, cling film and Twinings English Breakfast tea to last a couple of years. People here have serious Food Storage, and do impressively huge bulk buying in St Thomas and bring in their ‘national’ foods with alacrity, but there is only so much Campbells tinned soup I’m actually prepared to eat. I’m now deeply thrilled that our efficient shippers packed all our food – bar the contents of the fridge – so that I too soon can have a storage cupboard to be proud of. There is a South African shop with the inevitable Mrs Balls, Niknaks and Ina Paarman but it also has an excellent wine shop where we picked up a bottle of Chocolate Block and Pongrancz at $19 (yipee!).

The rest of the day was spent ‘Starting Up’ including an hour and half at the Cable & Wireless offices. We will have our home phone and internet in about 10 days with unlimited broadband, so excited about that. In the meantime, we will continue to hang around the cays with all the yachties and their Apple Macs on wi-fi.
We got home about 4pm and I collapsed on the veranda to read my book (the new James North Patterson) and Tyler took the kids swimming. I then had my first rum drink about 6pm with limes from the garden

Although our big garden was badly trashed last week by Earl, we still have paw paw trees, mango trees, banana trees, coconuts from all the palms, sugar apples, limes, bread fruit, tamarind and a few other things I don’t recognise. I’ve already planned out where I’m going to put my vegetable patch, but just need to find seeds (and everything else actually) to get this going. We have several chickens and their chicks scratching through the garden, so Tyler is threatening a coop.

The sun is up now and soon we will have to start the new day. I can see that it is already noon in South Africa. This quiet dawn time has been rather pleasant – so may make it a habit (after my early morning run and yoga on the beach of course).

It was wonderful to get so many emails yesterday, so please keep writing. Please also pass on the blog address, particularly to class moms and other school people so that the boys can remain in touch. They are all getting their own email addresses.

Photos from the edge

Morning

It's another beautiful day here in the islands. We are sitting at Village Cay, so that I can be on-line and then we are off to go and swim and snorkel.  The boys are busy watching Castaway on the bar TV, which is a bit how we felt last week!

Anyhow, we have found a beautiful 4 bedroomed semi-furnished house on a very nice estate on the south shore above Sea Cows Bay.  The road to our house is called the Elevator Rd as it is so steep, and our rented tank of a car, grinds up slowly – but it means we have lovely breezes (it is hot & humid) and beautiful views. The whole house is orientated towards the large wrap- around veranda, where we live. The ceiling fans are on all the timeand it  is all so - um….island and colonial,  one does feel a little bit falling into the ‘Island Living’ book  with a dash of Graham Greene and Pottery Barn thrown into the mix.

The island itself is pretty rickety and very, urr ……Caribbean! Chickens and goats are all over the place, everyone living on their veranda’s, the roads are truly bad and filled with Jeeps, Land Rovers, Mitshubisis & millions of Suzuki Vittaras. There are currently many men wielding machettes (the ubiquitous way it seems to deal with everything. T already has one!) and large, forbidding women all called Myrtle and Prudence who have loud, unintelligible opinions on everything, but are generally very sweet.

We are finding our way around the ‘supermarkets’ which all feel like your nightmare Spar in Port St Johns – and we have already firmly concluded that we need to become self-sufficient and only shop for basics and luxuries. There is a Thrupps-equivalent which is actually a good chandlers, and we have been going there a lot, but the main store stocks a whole Waitrose selection – so it’s not all bad, but Woolworths it certainly ain’t.

We are already moving onto island time and are trying not to be blasé. The boys want to snorkel and swim everyday, and yesterday James saw a sea turtle whilst snorkelling. School started late because of the hurricane, but it looks great and we think that the boys will thrive. James and Georgie are both doing Spanish, which is a novelty – but are treating everything as a huge adventure.

Trying to get back to normal, but it still feels like we almost fell off the edge of the world last week.

Welcome to Paradise - Category 4

View from our car of Sopers Hole on Monday morning

To say that the last week has been a bit challenging, would be the understatement of the century! Not only has Tortola not had a hurricane for 15 years, it can't remember the last time it had a 'real' one like Earl! We've managed to arrive in our new home the day before a hurricane hit it!

So the flight over was long but uneventful and all the other connections went well. We checked into a hotel on the north shore and were warned about a storm but everyone seemed quite laid back about it. Anyway we snorkeled around and kept saying things like "pinch me, pinch me"  and then on Monday all hell broke lose. This is a photo from the car - we had rushed over to the meet the headmaster (Tyler was actually freaking out because we were 20 mins late) and when we got to the empty school this completely incredulous person said "no of course we are closed , it's a hurricane!"

We hunkered down in our electricity-less,water-less hotel for 2 days until they threw us out and hoped that we would get to see our new life longer than a weekend. When we got up the next day (can't say we had much sleep) the world was a very different place, with major damage and a completely gob-smacked populace, who were annoyed that the hurricane services had not given a hurricane warning when one was actually hitting us (but since it was not hitting the US Virgin Islands and NOAH is Miami-based, go figure).

Anyway we survived, and since Wednesday things have been getting back to normal. The kids started school on Friday. We have found a lovely house, and we are starting to sort things out, but it is slow - mainly due to the impact of the hurricane and clearn-up.

Will get back on-line tomorrow again (we are sitting at the Nanny Cay bar with wi-fi right now) and start replying to individual mails and getting re-connected again.   Will also post more photo's and more news. This is just a quick one to let everyone know we hadn't been blown away!

I realised with deep certainty today, that we are well and truly in the Caribbean, when I tried all 5 radio stations in our brute of a Mitshubisi Dakar 4X4, that every single one was playing reggae.

Even as I type, Bob Marley (Exodus) is blaring out in the background, and Georgie has just bumped into a little school friend who lives on a yacht.

We are all well, but boy sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for!!