Hurricane Omar slams into St. Kitts

I’m sitting in my very own apartment, having just returned from the Marriott where I joined the regular Sunday NFL crowd in the casino, with it’s wall-to-wall TV’s, to cheer on our favorite ‘home teams.’ How exciting to watch Da Bears whip the Vik-Queens (48-40) knowing that both my boys were there, having flown in from opposite coasts, for their annual meet-up. What a perfect way to spend this Sunday, especially after such an exciting week.

Hurricane Omar came rushing at our little island on Wednesday night, making landfall at 2:18 a.m. early Thursday morning as a Category 2+, with winds up to 110 mph. It’s what they call here a ‘backward storm,’ as most hurricanes come out of Africa, across the Atlantic and hit us from East to West. Omar came from the West and did a lot of damage along the coast on the Caribbean-side. Roofs blown off, beach bars buried under sand, fishing and even huge ferries thrown up on the shore, the main Bay Road flooded out and covered in sand but thankfully, no one was injured. After hitting the north end of St. Kitts, the storm slammed into Charleston, the capital of Nevis, flooding the downtown and wrecking havoc at The Four Seasons, who had wisely evacuated all of their guest on flights returning to Miami on Wednesday morning. And what, you ask, did I do while the winds were whipping and the lighting and thunder crashed all around? I slept. I never heard a thing and never once woke up! Elvira and Oliver were up putting plastic over all their furniture, as their roof has a tendency to leak, moving stuff around in their open carport, and basically battening down the hatches. And I continued to sleep.

The PC Caribbean command center put all the St. Kitts volunteers on Standby and then called for Consolidation, which means we have to pack a bag and move to a designated safe house. The 3 ‘old folks’ asked to remain at our home-stay locations, realizing that ‘the kids’ had just found a great excuse to party all night long – which they did. When they did sleep, it was 3-4 to a bed. George, Mike and I were so glad we got to stay put and sleep in our own beds! Thursday the entire island got to work cleaning up the mess and restoring order. We had no power or water for the entire day, but thankfully both came back around 9 p.m.

We were scheduled to have our swearing-in ceremony, with the American ambassador administering our Oath of Office, at 10 a.m. Friday. Local dignitaries, business people, home-stay families, etc. were all invited to this celebration. Well, guess what? Very few planes were flying in and the Ambassador had a few things more important to attend to other than we 12 new PCV’s. Plus most places were without power and the locals were busying cleaning up the mess. So we 12 gathered at the little, PC office and our area director, via speakerphone from St. Lucia, administered our Oath of Office while we stood with our hand’s raised looking at the phone! A wee bit anti-climatic after 7 weeks, to say the least. We have to make up our last day of training that we missed on Wednesday and they are planning to have an official ceremony, when we will re-take the Oath on October 31st. The ‘kids’ want to come in costume instead of getting all dressed up.

But for now, it’s down time. I moved my things into my apartment on Friday afternoon, spent all day and night Saturday and Sunday scrubbing this mammoth place, which the landlords had not cleaned for over a year! It was filthy. But I do have all the necessities except a TV, so that’s on my list to purchase, along with reading lamps and a ‘real couch.’ I have 2 purple, vinyl loveseats and multiple chairs that came with in the living room. I don’t see watching TV or even sitting reading a book for more than 5 minutes on one of the rock hard seats! And combine this weather and vinyl and you sit and you stick!

The only other problem is my bed does not have a regular mattress. It’s 2 huge pieces of memory foam on top of one another. Therefore, you sink into a hole when you sit on the edge and when you lay down, your heaviest part sinks into it’s own little hole. Think ‘V’ formation sleeping. I barely slept last night and my back is killing me! My first stop tomorrow is the lumber yard to order sheets of plywood which will fit between the 2 sets of foam and hopefully give my back some support. I’ll keep you posted if this actually works.

Well, that about wraps up my exciting week. I’ve stocked the fridge, have a couple bottles of good wine in the cabinet (you cannot believe how expensive wine is here -where as booze is dirt cheap!) and am starting to feel like this is home. None of us very tired and brain-dead volunteers plan on working this first week of freedom-from-training. I’m scheduled to have my internet and cable service installed tomorrow and still have at least a 100 more things to pick up from the store.

And so saga continues…,

Have a great week and take care of each other. Pixs of my apartment coming later this week once I get a little more settled.

ReAnn

PS: It’s now Tuesday and I penned the above on Sunday night. After 3 nights of no sleep due to the foam, I was wandering the apartment about 3 p.m. this morning and happened to sit down on the guest bed. Guess what?! It’s a real mattress and box springs. So I cooked a huge pot of chicken rice soup last night, fed the young male PCV’s in exchange for moving this monster from the guest bedroom into my master. I can’t wait to lay down tonight! Little things become so important here. And I want to give a big shout-out and thank you to all my sewing friends in and out of the industry for answering my plea to send fabric, notions and fabrics for my sewing class. Everyone said yes and the ladies can’t wait for the packages to start arriving.