Back at home
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Sanne
18 Maart 2013 | Bonaire, The Bottom
Annnnd, another two weeks down! Tomorrow it's exactly 5 weeks ago that I left the Netherlands. It feels like two months rather than one have passed since… How much Saba feels like home already became very clear once more last week. During our stay on Statia we could very clearly see Saba from almost everywhere on the island. Knowing the contours and shapes of Saba, I could point out the approximate position of the main road winding from the harbour on one end to the airport on the other end of it, I could deduce whereabouts our accommodation was and I knew where cars would be driving, where people would be doing their groceries shopping and where the people I know would be at their work at that moment. Looking at Saba like that made it feel like 'home' more than I could have imagined while still being there…
What I'd call 'home' is in the first place the little Ecolodge cottage in the middle of the rainforest up on the mountain at 530 meters above sea level. I share the cottage with Jelmer, my fellow internship student. The cottage is our little place where we come home after work, where we cook dinner, where we chill out in a hammock during a day off, where we don't have to think about work or research at all because we usually leave our laptops at the office and where life is primitive, simple, back to basic and adventurous. There is no electricity, no internet and no hot water (unless you boil it in a pan). What we do have is a cold shower (luke-warm after a sunny day, if you're lucky and get home early before it cools again), some light at night because of solar panels, two stoves and a cool box for some food that you'd normally store in a refrigerator. We both enjoy it tremendously! No noisy roads, no noisy air conditioner or other electrical equipment, hummingbirds that hoover half a meter in front of you in the morning when eating breakfast on the porch, a clear view of the ocean and rainforest and a remarkably bright sky on a clear night!
But like I wrote before, 'home' is much more than that. The island in itself, an approximately circular mountain of 14 square kilometres in size, with its people, culture and climate is home... The office of the Saba Conservation Foundation (SCF), which manages the marine park and other heritage of the island and where Jelmer and I have our work space, is home... Fort Bay harbour, where the office is located, is home... The one main road (called 'The Road') that we travel every day and that winds up and down along the mountain from the airport in the northeast along several villages (including Hell's Gate, Windwardside and The Bottom) toward Fort Bay harbour in the south is home… I'm not entirely sure what the length is of the road, but it is definitely a lot longer than one could even fit in such a small area in the Netherlands, as it keeps turning and twisting around the mountain to go up and down its slope. Windwardside (at 400 meters above sea level) is the village closest to the Ecolodge and it is the place where we go for groceries, the bar (actually several bars) or for restaurant food. Just outside the village is the bottom of the stairs that comes down from the Ecolodge. Every morning we walk down those stairs (almost 300 steps) to get picked up by someone from the SCF and ride to the office. But more about that later... Let's get back to my week on Statia!
Statia, the local name for St. Eustatius, is the island next to Saba. In the same period that Jelmer and I are on Saba for our internships, Suzanne and Tiedo are on Statia for theirs. In the Netherlands we joined forces to prepare for this adventure together and we flew together to St. Maarten. A lot of our research material was shipped to Statia so Jelmer and I had to go there to pick it up. Also we had to practise using our materials. On Statia my method and material had been used a few months ago by two students, so their supervisor could help me get started. Tiedo and Jelmer use the same material and method (BRUV) so they could practise together and learn from Wouter, another internship student who used BRUV on Saba a few months ago and was flown in by our supervisor Martin to teach them. All this basically meant that we were with a great group of people and had a lot of fun helping each other out and complaining about how strict our supervisor's work schedule was… (Working from 7am till 4-5pm and sometimes in the evening too from the Sunday we arrived till the Saturday that we left!) Some photos of my frame and of Statia are already on facebook and on this weblog. Not surprisingly, Jelmer and I were very glad to leave Statia after a week to go back home, accompanied by Wouter who stayed with us till Friday to help out Jelmer some more and to meet everyone on Saba that he knew or had worked with up to two months ago.
Now that we've got our materials, the training is over, our supervisor and tutor have gone back to The Netherlands and we have adapted to life in the Caribbean, the whole preparation phase is behind us. Hopefully now that we're going to start on the real work next week and go out to the Saba Bank for the first time, life will assume a slightly more regular rhythm…. But who knows… This is the Caribbean: a storm, swell or irregularity at the office can very easily change everything in less than a few hours!
Love,
Sanne
What I'd call 'home' is in the first place the little Ecolodge cottage in the middle of the rainforest up on the mountain at 530 meters above sea level. I share the cottage with Jelmer, my fellow internship student. The cottage is our little place where we come home after work, where we cook dinner, where we chill out in a hammock during a day off, where we don't have to think about work or research at all because we usually leave our laptops at the office and where life is primitive, simple, back to basic and adventurous. There is no electricity, no internet and no hot water (unless you boil it in a pan). What we do have is a cold shower (luke-warm after a sunny day, if you're lucky and get home early before it cools again), some light at night because of solar panels, two stoves and a cool box for some food that you'd normally store in a refrigerator. We both enjoy it tremendously! No noisy roads, no noisy air conditioner or other electrical equipment, hummingbirds that hoover half a meter in front of you in the morning when eating breakfast on the porch, a clear view of the ocean and rainforest and a remarkably bright sky on a clear night!
But like I wrote before, 'home' is much more than that. The island in itself, an approximately circular mountain of 14 square kilometres in size, with its people, culture and climate is home... The office of the Saba Conservation Foundation (SCF), which manages the marine park and other heritage of the island and where Jelmer and I have our work space, is home... Fort Bay harbour, where the office is located, is home... The one main road (called 'The Road') that we travel every day and that winds up and down along the mountain from the airport in the northeast along several villages (including Hell's Gate, Windwardside and The Bottom) toward Fort Bay harbour in the south is home… I'm not entirely sure what the length is of the road, but it is definitely a lot longer than one could even fit in such a small area in the Netherlands, as it keeps turning and twisting around the mountain to go up and down its slope. Windwardside (at 400 meters above sea level) is the village closest to the Ecolodge and it is the place where we go for groceries, the bar (actually several bars) or for restaurant food. Just outside the village is the bottom of the stairs that comes down from the Ecolodge. Every morning we walk down those stairs (almost 300 steps) to get picked up by someone from the SCF and ride to the office. But more about that later... Let's get back to my week on Statia!
Statia, the local name for St. Eustatius, is the island next to Saba. In the same period that Jelmer and I are on Saba for our internships, Suzanne and Tiedo are on Statia for theirs. In the Netherlands we joined forces to prepare for this adventure together and we flew together to St. Maarten. A lot of our research material was shipped to Statia so Jelmer and I had to go there to pick it up. Also we had to practise using our materials. On Statia my method and material had been used a few months ago by two students, so their supervisor could help me get started. Tiedo and Jelmer use the same material and method (BRUV) so they could practise together and learn from Wouter, another internship student who used BRUV on Saba a few months ago and was flown in by our supervisor Martin to teach them. All this basically meant that we were with a great group of people and had a lot of fun helping each other out and complaining about how strict our supervisor's work schedule was… (Working from 7am till 4-5pm and sometimes in the evening too from the Sunday we arrived till the Saturday that we left!) Some photos of my frame and of Statia are already on facebook and on this weblog. Not surprisingly, Jelmer and I were very glad to leave Statia after a week to go back home, accompanied by Wouter who stayed with us till Friday to help out Jelmer some more and to meet everyone on Saba that he knew or had worked with up to two months ago.
Now that we've got our materials, the training is over, our supervisor and tutor have gone back to The Netherlands and we have adapted to life in the Caribbean, the whole preparation phase is behind us. Hopefully now that we're going to start on the real work next week and go out to the Saba Bank for the first time, life will assume a slightly more regular rhythm…. But who knows… This is the Caribbean: a storm, swell or irregularity at the office can very easily change everything in less than a few hours!
Love,
Sanne
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