Summer Fruit - Hog Plumbs - Part Five

This is my last entry on summer fruit. Perhaps I have saved the best for last. But didn't I say sugar apples and guavas were my favorite? I wasn't lying

...but...

hog plums are my favorite fruit is too. About the size of a grape tomato, they have a large seed inside. There isn’t a lot of meat, but when you pop one in your mouth and break the skin they burst open with a surprising amount of wonderful sweet citrusy juice. The skin in edible, but doesn’t have much flavor and so I don’t usually eat it.

Hog plums are native to the Caribbean Basin, but I don’t know if they are indigenous to the Virgin Islands or if they were brought here by the Taino Indians. Like mangoes, they are part of the Sumac family which includes mango, pistachio, cashew, and poison ivy. If one is allergic to mangoes, one might be allergic to hog plums, which is too bad because they are so flavorful. On the other hand that just leaves more for me.

I love their color. Eye candy for an artist.


Here’s what one looks like after it’s been eaten (by me of course.)

See the juice? Hmm, hmmm good.

Summer Fruit - Sugar Apples - Part Four

Aside from the small thin skinned yellow guavas that grow in the islands, my favorite fruit is the sugar apple. It too comes from the East Indies.

This rather ugly fruit holds within its knobby green skin a white meat with shiny black seeds. I have shown them here next to an orange to give you an idea of their size.

It is ripe when it is absolutely soft and mushy, and like its name implies, is wonderfully sweet, but not too sweet. Each knob is home to a seed that is surrounded by smooth textured meat. Between the skin and the base of seeds, which are loosely attached to the skin, there is a pasty sort of mush. It is kind of gritty, but has the same sweet flavor as the meat surrounding the seeds.

Here’s what a sugar apple looks like on the inside along with a few seeds. They just sort of fall apart when they are ripe.

I learned from my friend Vijaya that in India they are called sitafal, fruit of Sita. She was the wife of Rama, the epitome of wifely and womanly virtues, which might give you a clue as to the fruit's delicate and delectable flavor.

The tree they grow on is rather nondescript. It doesn’t get very big, perhaps 15 to 20 feet at the most and is rather rangy, with long spindly branches.

This is a young one about 3 years old grown from a seed. Maybe one day I will see it bear fruit.

Homophonic Monday - S

shear, sheer, shears, sheers

Looking down the face of the sheer cliff, he took his shears and cut the sheer fabic into to strips. Before he started lowering himself down he said, "Sheers to you!" (ooooo, me bad.)


S
sac, sack, sacque
saccharin, saccharine
sachet, sashay
sacks, sacs, sax
sale, sail
salter, psalter
sane, seine
saner, seiner
satire, satyr
saver, savor
sawed, sod
scarf, scarph
scend,send
scene, seen
scent, cent, sent
scull, skull
sea, see
seal, seel
sealing, ceiling
seam, seem
seamen, semen
seams, seems
sear, seer, sere
seas, sees, seize
season, seisin
sects, sex
seed, cede
seeder, cedar
seeding, ceding
seek, Sikh
sell, cell
seller, cellar
sense, scents, cents
senses, census
sensor, censer
sequence, sequents
serf, surf
serge, surge
serial, cereal
series, Ceres
serous, cirrus
session, cession
set, sett
sew, so, sol, (la, ti, do) sow
sewer, sower
sewer, suer
sewn, sown
shake, sheik
she’ll, shill
shear, sheer
shear, sheer
shears, sheers
sheave, shiv
shew, shoe, shoo,
shier, shyer, shire
shone, shown
shoot, chute
sic, sick
sics, six
sigh, psi
sighed, side
sigher, sire
sighs, size
sight, site, cite
sign, sine
signet, cygnet
sink, sync
Sioux, sou, sough, sue, Sue
slay, sleigh, sley
sleight, slight
slew, slough, slue
sloe, slow
soak, soke
soar, sore
soared, sword
socks, sox
sol, sole, soul
solace, soulless
sold, soled, souled
some, sum
son, sun
sonny, sunny
soot, suit
sordid, sorted
spade, spayed
specs, specks
spoor, spore
staff, staph
staid, stayed
stair, stare
stake, steak
statice, status
stationary, stationery
steal, steel
step, steppe
stile, style
stoop, stoup
storey, story
straight, strait
succor, sucker
suede, swayed
summary, summery
sundae, Sunday
surplice, surplus
swat, swot
sweet, suite
symbol, cymbal

Summer Fruit - Breadfruit - Part Three

The notorious Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty is given credit for bringing breadfruit to the Caribbean. (Although some believe it was Captain James Cook, explorer extraordinaire.) Because they are a wonderful source of starch, he (Bligh) and the King of England thought they would be a good food staple for the slaves. It is said an ancient tree still growing on the island of St. Vincent is one that he planted.

Here’s a picture of one, weighing in at about 3 pounds.
It has tough leathery skin. The meat is off white. When it ripens it is soft and the meat is slightly sweet. It is best cooked while it is still hard and green. Boiled up it has much the same taste and texture as potatoes.

Here’s a picture of some cooked breadfruit.

When I visit in the summer I make the rounds to the many small produce stands along the road sides hunting breadfruit. They are so popular they fly off the shelves in no time.

One Friday about 4:30 PM I got a call from my friend Margaret to say there were breadfruit for sale at a busy intersection just up the road from our house. I hopped into the car, dressed in my house rags, hair falling out of my chopstick bun and went up as soon as I got the word.

When I arrived I saw breadfruit in the back of the man’s pick-up. He said, “If you see someting you like, bring it.” So I picked out the nice large green one pictured above.

“Good afternoon,” I said. One always begins a conversation or business transaction with a “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening.”

“Good afternoon,” he replied.

“How much for your breadfruit?” I asked.

“A dollar a pound. How much you tink it weigh?”

I moved it around in my hands trying to gauge its weight. “Oh, about 3 pounds I think.” I replied.

“Let me see.” I handed it to him. He had no scale, and judged the weight as I had.

“You close,” he said. “$2.50.”

Another man with him said, “Yea, man, give she a break. She honest. So many people deeze days want more for less.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How much for your fresh eggs?” Truly fresh eggs can be hard to come by as eggs are cold shipped from the states and already a week or more old and almost always of the white variety. When we can get a dozen fresh brown eggs we snap at the opportunity.

“$4.00,” he said

So my total was $7.50. All I had was a ten and he had no quarters. “Keep the change.” I said.

“Tank you, tank you,” he replied.

Smiles went all around.

“Have a good afternoon,” I said.

“And you as well,” the man replied.

That’s how one does road side shopping here. He was so pleasant. At one point a car looked like it was going to go up the hill from his stand and he pulled gently at my arm to get me out of the way.

“I don’t want you get run over,” he said.

Sweet.

Summer Fruit - Genips - Part Two

As you may be able to see from the above picture genips are grape-sized fruit. They grow in bunches on large beautiful trees that have a smooth silvery-gray bark. This is a picture of a male tree. It is about 40 feet tall. Males do not bare fruit.

Genips are tart/sweet. Beneath the green shell, which you can easily break open with your teeth, is peach colored meat covering a large seed.

Here are before an after pictures. Open and ready to eat.

And eaten.

Kids without genips in the summer is like Christmas without Santa. My sister and I, along with all the other kids, knew which trees produced the sweetest genips, which trees were the easiest to climb. We had spitting contests to see who could spit the green shells the farthest. To spit a shell, you put one half of it over the tip of your tongue and then propel it off your tongue with a force of air, just as you would propel a good hawker.

Genips are native to South America and have become naturalized throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. More than likely they made the journey up the Caribbean chain with the Taino Indians. Although I’ve never had them, the seeds after being roasted can be eaten or ground into a meal. Genips also make a very nice jelly.

A little know fact is the original key-lime pie was made with genips, not limes.

Homophonic Monday - R

Wrapped in her wrap, she rapped at the door, waiting in rapt attention.

R
rabbet, rabbit
rack, wrack
racket, racquet
radical, radicle
rail, rale
rain, reign, rein
raise, rays, raze
raiser, razer, razor
rancor, ranker
rang, wrang
rap, wrap
rapped, rapt, wrapped
ray, re (do, re, mi)
read, red, redd
read, rede, reed
reading, reeding
ready, reddy
real, reel
recede, reseed
receipt, reseat
reck, wreck
readout, redoubt
reek, wreak
reference, referents
relaid, relayed
rends, wrens
residence, residents
resinate, resonate
resisters, resistors
rest, wrest
retch, wretch
review, revue
rex, wrecks
rheumy, roomie, roomy
rho, roe, row
rhumb, rum
rhyme, rime
rigger, rigor
right, rite, write, wright
righting, writing
rind, rynd
ring, wring
ringer, wringer
riot, ryot
rise, ryes
road, rode, rowed
roam, Rome
roc, rock
roes, rose, rows
roil, royal
role, roll
roo roux, rue
rood, rude, rued
roomer, rumor
root, route
rot, wrought
rote, wrote
rout, route
rouse, rows
rued, rude
rues, ruse
ruff, rough
rung, wrung
rye, wry

Summer Fruit - Mangoes - Part One

One of the things I delight in when I visit the islands is being able to eat local fruit.

In the summer many things are in season. Like mangoes. Most everyone is familiar with the large stringless mangoes one finds in the supermarket. They are a grafted variety that do not grow true to seed. Truth be told, most mangoes are small, about the size of a computer mouse and stringy. My great-grandfather said eating a mango was like eating custard off a paint brush. The ones that grow on a tree my mother planted are the sweetest I’ve ever eaten and very stringy. Other varieties are the small kidney shaped ones that turn bright yellow when they are ripe, and larger ones whose green skins take on a reddish blush.

Mangoes are part of the large Sumac family which includes cashew, pistachio, and poison ivy. Some people, like my father was, are very allergic to them, to the point where even handling them can cause a rash. They were brought to the area from the East Indies.

The true and proper way to eat one of the common stringy mangoes is to roll it around between your hands to break up the pulp and make it soft and juicy (like rolling a lemon or orange before squeezing the juice out.) Then you bite a small hole in the skin at the top through which you suck out the meat and juice as you squeeze the fruit. No matter how hard you try there comes a point when your face gets sticky with juice which in turn dribbles down your hands to your elbows, so it’s best to eat a mango over a sink or even better, in the ocean.

I remember with fondness the last time my mother and I ate mangoes over the kitchen sink, about 5 or 6 years ago. I think between the two of us we must have eaten 8 or 10. We stood there together delighting in their sweetness, laughing at how sticky we got.

Blog Action Day

It's Blog Action Day . Take a moment to check out The Eco Women.

As for me, I want to remind everyone about plastic. Plastic is NOT biodegradable. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. Every piece of plastic that has ever been produced is still in existence.

In the northern Pacific Ocean is a great plastic garbage swirl that is by the estimation of some twice the size of Texas. No one knows how deep it is. To learn more about it, watch this video of Capt. Charles Moore, the man who discovered it over ten years ago.

Help save the planet and humankind else we will drown in a sea of plastic.

Here are some easy things you can do to reduce the use of plastic.

1.) Take your own bags when you go shopping.
2.) Use glass storage containers in your kitchen.
3.) Use aluminum foil and/or freezer paper instead of plastic wrap. Both can be recycled.
4.) Use an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle and stop getting water in plastic bottles.
5.) Reduce the amount of soda you drink/buy. Of course it would be best if you eliminated soda altogether. But I'm not going to lecture you on that.
6.) Use real glasses, stoneware, and/or china instead of plastic dishes.
7.) Recycle, recycle, recycle.

Downtown Smells - Part Three

The Waterfront of Charlotte Amalie had its own symphony of smells.

First and foremost was the smell of the harbor water; salty, with a trace of seaweed. Because so many fishermen sold their daily catches there, there the distinct smell of fish. Mixed up with fish and salt was the smell of gasoline and diesel produced by the many motor boats which plied the waters.

Sloops from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and from Puerto Rico used to line the concrete shore, selling everything from bananas to fish. At the far end of this picture, center left, below the hill is French Town. The Russian Embassy was located there.

Down the road from this picture was the Potts Rum factory. To me it smelled just like ripe black olives. Potts Rum is no longer in business, though on St. Croix the finest rum of the Caribbean, Cruzan, is still made eight generations later.

French Town smelled very much like the Waterfront. It is the home of our contingent of French Huguenots, a people who fled France due to religious prosecution. Some of them found their way into the southern United States and are the Cajuns. French Town is a cluster of small homes and businesses separate from, yet next to, the city of Charlotte Amalie. It is right on the water and the Frenchies who live there are the fisherman, whereas those who live up on the Northside of the island are the farmers.

Away from town, down by the airport, was the St. Johns Bay Rum Factory. For a short while we lived right up the hill from it. Talk about a wonderful aroma! If you have never smelled Bay Rum (it’s not something you drink, it’s a kind of perfume) I can only describe it as spicy; a combination of cinnamon and cloves. It is made from the oils of the leaf of the Bay Tree, not to be confused with Bay Laura used in cooking.

Here's a picture of a Bay Tree growing in our yard.

It’s a beautiful tree, with smooth silvery bark and shiny deep green leaves. The company is still in existence, though their operation has moved to Havensite Hall down at the dock where the cruse ships come in.

Lastly, hovering over all these smells; the smell of the bakery, the market, the waterfront, the rum and the bay rum factories, was that of the effluent that flowed right through town and into the harbor.

Yes, that’s right folks. Raw sewage used to be dumped into the harbor and that raw sewage flowed down large open concrete lined drainage ditches called guts.

Whiffs of it could be detected everywhere. When it was particularly strong we called it the Sewer Rose. The guts, thank goodness, are all covered now, and very little sewage finds it way to the harbor now that there is a treatment plant. Yet of all the odors from my childhood, that of the harbor water and the Sewer Rose are the only ones that still remain.

Homophonic Monday - P and Q

The presidents use precedence to set precedents that become a yoke upon the people.

P
paced, paste
packed, pact
packs, pax
paean, peon
pail, pale
pain, pane
pair, pare, pear
palate, pallet, palette
pall, Paul, pawl
parish, perish
parity, parody
pascal, paschal
passable, passible
passed, past
paten, patten
patience, patients
pause, paws
pea, pee
peak, peek, peke, pique
peal, peel
pearl, purl
peas, peace, pees, piece
pect, pecked
pedal, peddle
peeking, Peking
peer, pier
pence, pents
pend, penned
pendant, pendent
pendants, pendence
pends, pens
penitence, penitents
per, purr
petrel, petrol
pharaoh, farrow
phase, faze
phew, few
phial, file
philter, filter
phlox, flocks
pi, pie
pica, pike
picks, pix, pyx
picnic, pyknik
pidgin, pigeon
pieced, piste
pincer, pincher, pinscher
pinion, pinon (nut)
pistil, pistol
place, plaice
plain, plane
plaintiff, plaintive
plait, plate
planar, planer
plantar, planter
pleas, please
pleural, plural
plum, plumb
pocks, pox
pokey, poky
polar, poler
pole, Pole, poll
poled, polled
poof, pouffe
poor, pore, pour
popery, potpourri
populace, populous
pores, pours
practice, practice
praise, prays, preys
pray, prey
precedence, precedents, presidents
premier, premiere
presence, presents
pride, pried
pries, prize
prince, prints
principal, principle
prior, pryer
profit, prophet
pros, prose
Psalter, salter
psi, sigh, xi
puttee, putty


Q
quarts, quarz
quay, cay
quean, queen
queue, cue
quince, quints
quire, choir
quoin, coin

Downtown Smells - Part Two

There was for a time, down by the Catholic Church and the accompanying school of St. Peter and Paul’s, a Coca Cola bottling plant. In that area you could smell the sticky sweet of sugar and the syrup used to make the soda. The formula used in the islands was sweeter than that used in the states and I never developed a taste for it. But the smell from the bottling plant drifted onto to the street with its own distinct aroma. There was also the noise of rattling bottles.

Near-by was the subtle, watery, musty odor that emanated from the ice plant. Here bags of ice and large blocks were made for those who did not yet have refrigeration. The large blocks were also used by the men who sold shaved ice. Their carts smelled of the various syrups they poured over the ice; guava, tamarind, coconut, orange, banana…. These cool treats were the closest any of us got to snow covered with maple syrup.

A block or so away from the bottling and ice plants was Market Square. In its hay day, it was the center of activity. Everything was bought and sold there including a quarter of a million slaves.
Most everyone shopped there on Saturday for fresh fruit, vegetables and fish, including my grandmother and mother, who made the long journey from St. John, coming over on Friday and spending the night at either Hotel 1829 or the Grand Hotel so they could get to Market at the screech of dawn.

All around was the bustle of activity, of people gossiping and laughing and hawking their wares.

The Northside Frenchies came down from their farms up in the hills bringing their produce. Fisherman brought their catches. Women sold jams, jellies, homemade candy, coconut and guava tarts, herbs and spices. You would also see women carrying large baskets on their heads, baskets filled with fruit and vegetables and flowers. You have only to close your eyes and you can easily imagine the accompanying smells weaving themselves into the air. Like warm and cold currents in the ocean, each odor was distinct. Some stronger, some weaker, some heavy, some delicate.

Market Square is still there. And early on Saturday mornings people still sell their wares. While I there this summer I went down Market. But it is a shadow of its former self, with only one row of tables set up and only one stall in the bungalow being used.

Market Square at about 6 AM on a Saturday morning.

Nowadays the bungalow is merely something historic that tourists can take a picture of.

Town has lost its hub.

Downtown Smells - Part One

In the 1950s and 60s there was a cacophony of odors that alternately caressed and assailed your nose as you walked or drove through Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas.

Some odors were confined to certain areas; others seemed to permeate the air and could be sniffed from almost any place in town. One of the most delicious smells that wafted its way up Garden Street towards All Saints where I went to school was that of Lockhart’s Bakery.

It was located on Backstreet, just a few blocks down from the school. They baked all manner of breads and pastries using a traditional wood/charcoal fired outdoor oven. Most everyone knows the warm yeasty smell of baking bread, of bread just pulled from the oven. There is something comforting about it. Now-a-days the closest most children might get to experiencing that kind of odor might be as they walk through the bakery department at a supermarket. But this is usually much too sweet, as they tend to bake lots and cakes, cookies, doughnuts and pies which are stacked in over abundance on counters and shelves.

Lockhart’s Bakery made pastries, but they baked more bread than anything else; long loaves of French bread, soft rolls and hard rolls, loaves of white bread, brown bread, and rye bread. There were several kids who regularly snuck out of school during lunch to run down to the bakery to get one of their hard rolls or buy a pie and then sell a slice to fellow students.

It was a sad day when the bakery closed its doors. If I close my eyes I can almost catch a whiff of wafting wraiths, the ghostly tendrils of fresh baked bread.

A Walking Tour

While I was in the islands I went with my friend Margaret on an historical walking tour she conducts for groups of tourists off the cruise ships.

The tour took us to some of the more interesting older buildings in down town Charlotte Amalia. I thought I'd take you on it.

We drove passed Market Square on our way to our drop-off point. This was for centuries the hub of activity, the place everyone went to buy fresh produce, fish and other goods, like baskets and hats. It also has the dark honor of being the place where a quarter of a million slaves were bought and sold.

The actual tour started at Bakery Square, what used to be Lockhart's Bakery, a place that perfumed the air with all sorts of freshly baked breads and pastries. Now it has several small shops in it which are hardly ever open.

The front of Bakery Square on Back Street.

The back of Bakery Square. Behind the parked car on the right you can see the old charcoal fired outdoor oven, which was used when the bakery was in business.

The oven.

Next to Bakery Square is the Dutch Reform Church, second stop on the tour. It was founded in 1744. Denmark's queen, Charlotte Amalia, was Dutch. Because there were a lot of Dutch immigrants to the islands, it was appropriate to establish a Dutch church, even though the official state religion was Lutheran because the islands belonged to Denmark.

The front, please excuse the power lines!


Inside. The painted pews, pillars, balconies, and altar are original and were made of the local mahogany which is termite proof.

This is Crystal Gade (pronounced ga-da, it means street in Danish) right next to the Dutch Reform Church. It was named Crystal Gade because at the top of this hill is the Crystal Palace the first house to have glass windows. Flat panes of glass were very hard to ship from Europe and very expensive. (Shameless plug! The Crystal Palace is a B & B owned and operated by one of my classmates, Ronnie Lockhart. His family has been in the islands for-e-ver and owned the Bakery too.)

The hill Crystal Gade goes up is called Synagogue Hill because...the second oldest continually used synagogue in the Western Hemisphere is located half-way up.

I love this sign in their "parking lot."

The outside.

The inside. Here again are examples of the local mahogany.

This synagogue is one of only a few that has a sand floor. A common misconception is that the sand represents the Israelites 40 years of wandering in the desert. The truth is, the Jews who settled in St. Thomas were Sephardic Jews from Spain. During the Spanish Inquisition they were persecuted and forced to become Christians or face a horrible death. Despite "converting" many continued to hold services in the basements of their homes. They covered the floors with sand to help muffle the sounds of their chanting. The sand on this synagogue's floor commemorates those brave Jews.

From the synagogue the tour went down to Main Street and stopped at the Pissarro Building.

Camille Pissarro was born in this building in 1830. It is a warren of stairways, small balconies, and rooms. One can almost hear the clatter of the Pissarro children as they ran up and down the stairs playing hide and seek.

It's a shame people aren't as familiar with his work as they are with many of his contemporaries, who include, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and the other Impressionists. And yet he is considered a founding father of the Impressionist Era and was a mentor to Cezanne and Gauguin.

Pissarro was strongly influenced by what he saw of slavery as a child and young man. At 12 his father sent him to France to be educated. He returned to St. Thomas when he was 17. At 18 he witnessed the emancipation of the slaves who won their freedom in 1848. He so hated the mercantile business his father wanted him to learn, and so loved painting, he "ran away" from home with a fellow painter and went to Caracas, Venesuela. Several years later he went back home. His father now convinced of his love for painting sent him back to France to study. Pissarro was about 26 or 27 at the time and never returned to St. Thomas.

Through out his life he painted country scenes, the homely scenes of peasants working. He refused to paint portraits of the upper class. Nor did he whip out paintings (as Monet did of hay stacks) simply because the subject was popular. He stayed true to his principles, even though it meant he and his large family lived poorly. He loved painting outside, though in the end it cost him his sight as he developed a chronic inflammatory eye disease. Still, even in old age, and nearly blind he continued to paint.

From the Pissarro Building the tour went to the Warehouse District, a group of several old long buildings where all sorts of cargo was stored. The harbor of Charlotte Amalia is the deepest, most protected natural harbor in the Caribbean. It became a center of commerce. Ships passing to and from Europe, the United States, South America, and Africa stopped here to load, unload, buy, sell, or have their ships refitted and restocked before continuing their journeys. Cotton, tobacco, indigo, sugar, molasses, rum and slaves are just a few of the items that came and went.

The harbor.

Here's a picture of a plaque that describes how and when the warehouses were built.

And this is what one of the three alley ways between the buildings looks like. That blue at the far end is the harbor.

From the Warehouse District we made our way up to the Lutheran Church. At 400 years old it is the oldest established church on the island.

Here again, all the wood is mahogany, even the painted pews.

Our tour is coming to an end. Next to last stop, the oldest structure on the island, Fort Christian, built in 1671 soon after Denmark took control of the island away from Spain. It is currently being renovated.

Last stop and where the tour ended, Emancipation Gardens. It is the place where the slaves were told they had won their freedom. The date was July 3, 1848.

To the left is a statue of a man carrying a cane knife and blowing a conch shell. He is calling the slaves to rise-up, calling the slaves to freedom.

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour which has been my pleasure to share. Tips are welcomed :)

Turtle Sitting - Part Two

Almost every night for 3 weeks I sat down at Brewer’s Bay with other volunteer turtle nest sitters and three lovely employees from Coral World. Erica, Jason and Kitty were more than willing to tell us everything they know about sea turtles and leatherbacks in particular. Below is a picture of me, Erica, Kitty and Jason on my last night.

There were many small adventures.

Like this one. While taking a stroll along the beach I found this little guy, half in, half out of the water.

I named the baby iguana Lime Juice. He seemed very tired, as if he had just completed a long journey. He sat in my hand for at least an hour.

Isn’t he cute? When he began to show signs of activity I put him on a branch among the Maho trees and wished him a long life.

As we sat there in the evenings we experienced a number of different things. Once we were visited by a pair of dolphins that sported around and at one point came quite close to shore. In the early evenings we saw a baby green turtle, no more than 8 or 10 inches long. He often swam up and down the beach in the shallows right in front of the nest site. His little flippers would rise up out of the water and it looked for all the world as if he was calling to the babies under the sand, “Come on in, the water’s fine!” He was given the name Brewster.

One night we were serenaded by of loud group of young people who had a guitar and probably too much to drink. We were thankful they stayed up under the trees and didn’t camp out near our nest. We really didn’t want their energy around us. The music was bad and the language was…terrible.

Almost every night a group of men sat at one of the beach tables under the street lights and played dominoes, a favorite West Indian game. We could here the loud slap of tiles hitting the table top. Slamming down tiles is all part of how the game is played. It’s like an exclamation point, a way for the player to say, “Beat dis tile, I dare you!” Games can get loud as the men laugh and yell, beer slopping from bottles as the table shakes with a decisive slamming down of a tile.

At the far end of the beach there was a regular group of dred-locked young men who puffed away on marijuana. The other end was a bit spookier a place where homeless and/or crack addicts hung out deep among the Maho trees.

The most interesting thing to happen was the night of September 3rd when a group of about 200 Hindi folk came down to the beach to celebrate the last day of a month long celebration honoring the elephant god, Lord Ganesha. There was lots of singing and dancing and clapping ending with some of the men taking 2 large idols out into the water and sinking them. We were told they were made of raw (unfired) clay so they would dissolve. The rite is celebrated to bring, good-luck for new beginnings and…wisdom. It was an honor to have been present for such a celebration. As things were winding down I went wondering down the beach, and discovered a small stature of the god, sitting in the sand facing out to sea.

Precious.

But I’m sure by now you are wondering; did I see the baby turtles emerge from the sand?
The answer is…No.

I learned yesterday that the nest was water-logged due either to rain and/or the ocean. This means the eggs probably dissolved. As hard as it is, we must realize that as many as 50% of leatherback turtle nests never hatch and that only 1 in 100 baby turtles live to adulthood.

Still it was an honor to sit by the nest and be a protector. It was also wonderful to talk with the other volunteers who showed up each night; families with kids as young as three, school kids getting in community service hours, retired folk enjoying a cool breezy evening on the beach, all ages, all kinds of back-grounds. Sometimes there were as many as 15 or 18 of us ringed around the nest.

Beautiful.

On my last night a very nice lady presented me with a cake in thanks for my coming down to the beach. It was shared with everyone there.

As a caveat to all this, one night Erica and company went down to another beach they suspected to be a turtle nesting beach. As they were patrolling they saw a hawksbill in the process of digging her nest. Here's what Erica wrote to me in an email: "...a hawksbill, around 80 pounds or so, was just digging her egg chamber!!!! ....we all watched her finish digging, lay her eggs, cover her babies and head back out to sea! It was the most amazing and moving moment. Under the brightest stars, she left her legacy for us. We wished so much that you had been there with us to witness it as well. You would have loved it. We counted her eggs, marked her nest, and saw her off. Thought you would like to know about her.......We named her "Bish", she laid 80 eggs, and in 50 days we will be sitting in our chairs...waiting on her little ones."

I was/am moved to tears.

As for the leatherbacks, St. Thomas is on the map as a leatherback nesting island. X marks the spot and in fine calligraphy is written, "Here There Be Leatherbacks."