Island Time: Meetings

Island Time. Whether you like it or not, if you are in Dominica, you will experience it. Especially if you come from a society where everything comes and leaves on time and punctuality is the norm and the beauty, like in Japan, North America or Germany, it may be tough to adopt to the concept of time on the island.

A meeting never starts on time. From my experience at work, I can just say that if there is ever a meeting, it is great. There is always a big possibility that the meeting will be canceled, due to any kind of reason, such as weather, stomach ache, transportation break down, or by simply being forgotten. Soon you learn, reconfirmation is mandatory.

Let's say there is finally going to be a meeting. How late will it start? Again, from my observations at work, it is about 30 to 40 minutes. This morning we had a meeting, supposed to start at 9:00 a.m., and actually, it started at 9:40. Of course there is nobody there at 9:00 a.m. In Central America, where my previous experience is from, the delay was normally 15 to 20 minutes, so Dominica is even more "flexible" than that.

Another thing is about how a meeting is called and how everyone is informed. And for how long in advance. This, I think, is another challenge for non-islanders. Again, the meeting this morning, I was informed about 2 minutes before it started. My boss said "oh, I think I did not tell you, but can you come to the meeting now?". Fortunately I did not have to do anything, just sit there.

It is not that easy to schedule anything in advance on the island. If someone want to have a meeting with you, he or she may say "I will look you up sometime next week". Then he will probably specify more later, like "early next week". Well, that can be Monday, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. All you can do is hold the uncertainty. Because next week, he will say "how about Tuesday? How about Tuesday mid-morning?". That probably means 10:00, or 10:30, or 11:00. Eventually the meeting will take place around that time.

For many Dominicans it does not feel good, and it does not seem "appropriate" to make an appointment like in Western society. A normal phrase for me, like "let's have a meeting Thursday July 5th at 10:45 a.m." just doesn’t work here.

So if you want to be on this island and you are punctual person, you have to prepare yourself. Bus comes when it comes, air plane leaves when it leaves. And I am not kidding. Just don't hassle islanders with questions like "when is the bus coming? At what time? It is already late! I can not miss the flight. I have another appointment!" You just have to disconnect from the busy developed world. "When? What time?" are almost taboo questions here.

On the island, bus comes when it comes, air plane leaves when it leaves.
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Toucarie Bay

Toucarie is a really small village, more or less one road along the beautiful Toucarie Bay, about fifteen minutes north of Portsmouth and Cabrits. If it wasn’t because we have friends living in the village, I am not sure we would have discovered it. That would would definitely have been a pity.

The small bay is normally really calm, calmer than most other beaches on the island. It is excellent for swimming, the water some of the warmest I have experienced on the island, and a lot of fun for both adults and children. Once our one and a half year old has got his arm floaters on and he is in, it is hardly impossible to get him out of the water. So we take turns. One of us keeps an eye of the little one, while the goes off with the snorkel. Because snorkeling and diving, is even better. All along the left side there is plenty of fish and coral, as well as straight out, although that might be harder to find on one’s own. But, any of the locals hanging out on or around the beach, most probably in any of the little snackettes, will be able to help pointing out the best places. However, don’t ever try to put your foot down while snorkeling, as there are plenty of beautiful but ay so stingy sea urchins, with ten to twenty centimeter long and extremely sharp black spines. If you accidentally touch them, once they are in they are hardly impossible to take out. You will just have to stand the pain for some time. A local advice given to us was to put the foot over a candle, the heat will melt the spines, we were explained. We never understood what would happen to the flesh around the wound, maybe to the entire foot, though, and never tried. Needles and tweezers wont do it either, though, so, just keep swimming.

For some great underwater photos and videos from Toucarie Bay, and other dive sites around Dominica, take some time to look at LiquidGuru’s really nice pictures.

Toucarie is a great place for an afternoon of hanging out in a small village, and the beach is definitely still worth a visit. But, as so often, everything is not perfect. Beach erosion is a serious problem, and the habit of taking sand from the island’s few beaches for construction and other work does not make it better. There is rarely a day we visit when we don’t see people coming down to the beach with shovels and empty sandbags, filling up as many as possible. Hurricanes and tropical storms are other factors that continuously threatens Dominica’s beaches. From 1990 to 1999 the number of hurricane days and the number of category 3, 4 and 5 hurricanes quadrupled. Little can be done, at least locally, to prevent the rising number of hurricanes. But this, in combination with local practices, have resulted in the Toucarie Bay beach loosing 30% of its extension during the last twenty years. Unesco has more information on beach erosion.

How to dive there: The Cabrits diveshop in Portsmouth, located just after the huge Ross University building, can arrange dive tours to Toucarie, as probably most other dive shops in the area or around the island. See http://www.cabritsdive.com/

How to get there: From Portsmouth it is not more than ten or fifteen minutes. You pass the town, the Prince Ruperts Bay and head towards Cabrits. In the first real junction you make a right and continue on that road until you reach the forest and another junction. Turning right will take you to the small village of Guillet, turning right will take you to the Toucarie Bay. First you have to go up and then down again, passing through some beautiful but sharp curves on the way down. But as it is completely impossible to go anything other than very slow, and the habit of beeping loudly when approaching a curve is almost obligatory, there is really no danger.

Rainbow Yoga

The air in the Dominica Club is always cool, and while the yoga teacher sweeps the floor the air fills with the refreshing smell of Bay Leaf oil, well known for its antibacterial and healthy qualities, and great for mixing with the soap water. After an afternoon running errands in the hot and humid, noisy and chaotic village Roseau is, this smell together with greetings and a brief chat with more or less the same group of women and few men have a true meditative effect on me. When the class starts, every time exactly on the minute, possibly the only event on the entire island not captured by island time, I am already relaxed.

If you are in or around Roseau, there is rarely a day you won’t be able to enjoy a class of yoga. Of course, several of the larger hotels and lodges offers yoga classes, but a Rainbow Yoga class at the ancient Dominica Club, the walls full of memories from great and glorious days, is definitely much funnier.

The class lasts for an hour and a half and is mainly a flowing series of yoga exercises designed to work all parts of the body, combined with some Pilates’ movements and plenty of stretching. The final relaxation is thorough, but it always seems like the final quiet moment when we are supposed to visualize a beautiful rainbow, or a beautiful green, or a beautiful sunset in the mind’s eye, is too short. It is one of the few moments a week I get to not think of anything; not concentrating, not making the least of an effort, much less thinking about rainbows or sunsets or colors, my entire body completely relaxed, me, just being.

The roof is really high and the building a typically old colonial one. Except for a large veranda, it consists of not much more than one giant room. Apart from the yoga it is being used for steel drum classes and carnival rehearsals, and behind it there are a couple of tennis courts, even though they seem in quite some need for a bit of restoration. This summer the Dominica Club will also host the first ever Irie Eco Summer School. There is yoga on the schedule every day, our son is already enrolled!

I usually take the five o’clock class, and as there is a half an hour gap between the classes, there is also plenty of time for some more chatting and information sharing after class. As in every small community, which Dominica as a country, as definitely Roseau as a capital is, information travels not so much through official channels as through the grapevines. Announcements are made; there is a hike up the Morne Diablotin on Saturday, you should go to Harlem Plaza for lunch this week, they have a lot of activities going on for the African Liberation Day, there is an art exhibition at the Community Center in Newtown, cooking classes at Aliance Francaise have started again or just information on why X or Y is not attending class today: her son is visiting or she went to Martinique, will be back on Sunday. Someone brings free mangoes, someone else sells a cookbook.

How to do this: For latest information on hours and classes, see Rainbow Yoga’s homepage, but mainly it is Monday and Wednesday, at five and seven p.m. and at Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. Yoga mats are available but be sure to bring insect repellent and maybe a cloth to cover you feet with, for final relaxation. Sometimes the mosquitoes hit hard.

How to get there: The Dominica Club, or Legion Hall, is at the corner of Legion and High street in Roseau. Coming from the town center the easiest way is to pass the Fort Young Hotel and Public Library, then take the next street to the left, just after the pink Congress building. That is High Street and the Dominica Club is the last house on the left hand side, however the main entrance is found around the corner, on Legion Street.

Rainforest Mushrooms

When we first come to Brother Mathew Luke and his wife Christine’s small mushroom farm and café, it is for a yoga retreat organized by Rainbow Yoga.

On the right, just after the Pond Cassé junction, on your way to the Melville Hall airport, coming from Roseau, you see the sign. And the place – it is hard to tell if it is a café, a mushroom farm, an art studio or their home, all of it wonderfully mixed up, I think – is just like the colorful and flourishing sign: Welcoming, friendly and homemade.

At the outdoor veranda we are served a delicious fruit juice and have some time to chat with the other participants in this “Yoga in the Rainforest” retreat. Including our son, who just turned one and just learned to walk, there are six of us from Roseau, and another four or five from Ross University in Portsmouth.

During a brief tour through the Mushroom farm, the only one in the Caribbean, we learn a great deal on growing mushrooms. Which turn out being more of a science than farming. And as I immediately understand I can not do this at home, I concentrate on the surroundings, on the sounds and the smells, on the intense beauty of this fully organic “production site”, in the middle of the rainforest. And on when we get to taste those indigenous gourmet oyster mushrooms that grow everywhere and in all different sizes, in the “greenhouse”. We do, of course, and there is little comparison.

The mushrooms are cultured first out of spawn and then multiplied in sawdust or grain. Today the majority of the mushrooms are cultivated in bagasse (pressed sugar cane from the rum industry) mixed with sawdust and coffee husks. After inoculation the mix is put in sterile containers and left in the dark for ten days before being put in strong light and high humidity conditions. Harvesting can then start after another ten days, in ten-day-intervals. The mushrooms we get to taste directly from the cultivations are the oyster mushrooms, and they are exquisite, juicy and soft, full of flavor, perfect in texture. One of the participants tells us she got sick when she first discovered the Rainforest Mushroom farm. Not because of the mushrooms, she explains, but because “I just couldn’t stop eating.”

One of the reasons for our visit is to do a yoga class in the middle of the forest. So we find our spots and the strongest memory is when it towards the end of the class starts to rain. It takes, of course, a while for the raindrops to trickle their way down to us on the ground. But standing in the middle of the forest, looking up towards the treetops and seeing the perfectly shaped drops slowly, slowly – at least that is what it feels like – fall down towards you, and finally land on your cheeks or forehead, is amazing. Now, this look up at raindrop thing can be done almost everywhere, as Dominica is almost completely covered with easy accessible, lush rainforest, and a day seldom passes by without a little rain.

Brother Mathew’s lunch is outstanding. It is local, it is organic, it is vegetarian and full of mushrooms, it is abundant and it is delicious. If you want to come, to be on the safe side, making a reservation is highly recommended.

The oyster mushroom also grow wild on Dominica, and mushroom gathering has long been a tradition. Eating the islands mushrooms is said to be one of the reasons the island can boast of a higher percentage of centenarians than any other country on earth.

Behind the café veranda is the arts and music studio. One by one we all enter, wander along, look at completed and not so completed art works. Incense, oils, crafts, hand painted t-shirts, paintings, posters, musical instruments, bush teas and more are carefully arranged in a chaotically esthetic disorder, all for sale. Then, the music is turned on and the instruments are taken out, both the ones we brought and the ones in the house. Guitar, drums, thumb piano, maracas, hand clapping, wonderful singing and a whole lot of laughing is mixed with the reggae beats from the music equipment. Brother Mathew is a great dancer.

How to do this: For info on the Rainforest Mushrooms café, on lunches and guided farm tours, see their web page. For info on Rainbow Yoga retreats, see their web page.

How to get there: While coming from Roseau, you drive towards Marigot and Melville Hall airport, Just when you pass the Fond Cassé junction, look out to your right. There you see the sign. Get of the bus or park your car and walk the short path to the place.

Sea turtles at Rosalie Beach

Three of the world’s seven types of sea turtles come to nest at the beaches of Dominica every year. Last Saturday we went to Rosalie beach to see the largest of them, the Leatherback turtle, laying her eggs.

From Roseau, it is about an hours drive across the island, to the small Rosalie beach, soon to be surrounded by the Rosalie Bay Resort. But as the beach itself is public it is still ok to get in there, even to put up our small tent under the coconut palms. Between May and August, sea turtles come up to nest almost every night, so it is great to try to pick a full moon night, as we did.

In June it gets dark around seven, and as it takes a little for the moon to come out, we put up the tent and had our picnic dinner early. Luckily our one and a half year old son was really tired, and fell asleep soon after. So did we, and we all got a couple of hours of sleep. Later on, more and more people started to arrive, until a small party was going around the tent.

Some nights as many as ten or twenty turtles come to nest, but this night was quite windy and the waves somewhat rough. The turtle also need dry sand to be able to dig the whole for the eggs, and when the first turtle came ashore she could not find that, and decided to go back, without nesting.

A couple of hours later, a second turtle reached the shore and at the critical moment when she starts digging the hole and is easily distracted, guides from the local sea turtle initiative, RoSTI, make sure no curious people, like us and the rest of the crowd, come to close. The sea turtles have existed for over 600 million years, and nested on the beaches when the dinosaurs where still around. Today they are what scientists call critically endangered, basically meaning they are extremely close to permanent extinction. In Dominica, as in many other countries where the giant turtles nest, they have been hunted for their shell and their meet, and for the eggs. The belief that eating turtle eggs is good aphrodisiac is of course nothing but a belief, and completely incorrect. The work done by RoSTI have highly risen the awareness of the importance of protecting the sea turtles, and the killing has gradually diminished, though far from completely. In Laplaine, more than six turtles have been killed during this month. Although there is no law in Dominica preventing people from eating turlte meat, the law says that when a turtle is on the beach it is in its nesting activity and must not be touched.

Once the turtle start laying her eggs, she goes into a kind of "trance", and will not stop the process until the eggs have been laid and the nest is completely covered. Good, I think, as once the eggs are safe in the hole and the covering up process starts, the party also start again. The RoSTI guides move on along the beach, in search for more turtles who may need some protection while trying to make their way up, and "our" turtle is left alone, with us and about twenty more people. Even though the moon is out flashlights are used, to check the face and the eyes closely, camera flashes goes off constantly and every now and then the bravest of the young men jump up on the turtles back, do a few moves and jump off. Finally, nest covering is completed, and the very, very tired turtle crawls back, with a young man riding on her back until he falls of when she reaches the first waves and disappears into the ocean.

But – no eggs are taken, neither are there any suggestions on killing the turtle, just curiosity of who she is and what she looks like. The Coral Reef Alliance have guidelines for turtle watching, if you click here, and it is probably much calmer if you come during the week.

If they make it through the first critical years, a sea turtle lives for an average of 50 to 70 years, but it takes at least 30 years before they can lay any eggs. By clicking here, you can actually track two of the lady turtles who made it to Rosalie beach this year.

We are already planning on when to go back to see the hatchlings make it to the deep blue. And to philosophize on how many of them will make it back again, in 30 years time or so.

Some more facts: Except for the Leatherback turtle, also the Hawksbill and the Green Turtle come to nest at Dominica’s beaches. The Leatherback is by far the largest of all sea turtles, and may reach a length of about 8 feet (2.4 meters), and weigh nearly half a ton while nesting. They have a span of nearly 10 feet (3 meters) from the tip of one front flipper to the tip of the other, and can dive to nearly 4.000 feet in a single dive.

How to get there: From Roseau you cross the island, making a right when you reach the Pont Cassé junction. Before you get to the Rosalie village, just after crossing a small bridge, you turn left and actually pass the entrance to the construction site of the Rosalie Bay Resort. From there you see the beach.

Welcome

to a blog about Dominica. About nature, culture, arts and other things you may not find on other pages about the island.
Enjoy.