Grank Turk

On Saturday we all flew to Grand Turk (the nation's capital). I am very fond of Grand Turk and whilst I'm not sure I could live there full time (very small village), it is lovely to visit for a weekend. Nicky had a boat load of trees coming up from the Dominican Republic (about 90 miles south of us) and he needed to organise the planting of same. We flew in a tiny prop. plane which took about 20 passengers - you had to crouch to get into the plane, there was an aisle down the middle, with single seats on either side of the aisle. Osh was very excited about flying in a 'Stuart Little' plane and wasn't the least bit perturbed by the noise (propeller planes are very noisy).

We spent Saturday on the island having lunch and playing in the pool and much of Sunday doing the same. We also paid a visit to Daniel's Grandmother. Daniel's mother was born in Grand Turk and his Grandmother still lives there (as do a collection of Aunties and cousins). Grandma Lucy (as she is known) is a delightful woman who gave Osh $5 to buy sweeties (Osh was delighted with his 'five pound note' as he kept calling it) and provided me with what information she could remember so that Daniel and I can put together his family tree. With ancesters from the UK and Martinique, it is certainly an interesting family!

On Monday Nicky got to grips with planting the trees (which of course first involved finding someone to pull the trailer up from the dock, then finding a telescopic forklift to get them off the trailer (we are talking of 20' coconut palms here....!) and then he needed a back hoe to dig the holes. Somehow I got roped into interpreting for the Dominican driver (there are a lot of Dominican's here too) which was a challenge. The Dominican accent is like a Venezuelan one only more so and my vocabularly of construction vehicles is pretty limited.

Monday also involved sorting out my visa extension - which I had (foolishly) assumed would be easier to do in Grand Turk (on account of it being a much smaller island); WRONG! They wouldn't accept Nicky as surety because he lived in Provo, not Grand Turk. When I asked if I could have 2 new forms so that I could get a Grand Turk resident to act as surety the man looked puzzled and got a more senior officer who then told me that because I was intending to stay in Provo I had to apply for the extension there. Bearing in mind that this is all one country and all arrivals get their visa in Provo at the airport before moving to other islands this rule is bizarre. So, Osh and I hopped on a plane back to Provo to try and get it done there - the visa ran out on Monday so time was of the essence. Getting the paperwork sorted in Provo wasn't too bad - except government offices all have different times. In order to pay for the visa you have to take the money to treasury (which, usefully, closes a full 45 minutes before immigration) and by the time I'd got the paper work sorted out treasury was closed so I spent Monday night and Tuesday morning as an illegal immigrant. That was a first.

Osh is now well versed in just how complex government is and how BORING it is to spend all day waiting for an officer with the magic stamp to get back from whereever he has disappeared to.

The photos are of me and Osh in the pool, Osh opening the door of the Prison in Grand Turk (prison last used in 1990, now been 'disneyfied' for the cruise ship visitors...yuk), the old phone box on Front Street and a salt pond (how the country made it's money until the turn of the 20th c. The pond is no longer in use but still hold water...and can get pretty miffy!). Turns out that Daniel's great great grandfather was a salt man....Daniel was hoping he'd been a slave master but turns out that he was doing this long after slavery was abolished.