Gone fishin'

For fun, and to take Oisin's mind of his wasp sting we took him fishing yesterday. We caught not a thing (no surprise there!) but Osh's curiosity was addressed (hold my rod Mim, it's really boring...). Osh put his rod down-time to good use by fishing old conch shells out of the water and lining them up in his conch shop. Yesterday was, in fact, a very exciting and achievy sort of day. I spent a couple of hours in the morning weeding the coconuts which were planted in trenches months ago and have been unattended by the goons currently running the nursery. With potentially thousands of dollars worth of tree not thriving we decided that action was needed: Nicky has laid out the irrigation for them and I tackled the weeds. In amongst them I found 3 tomato plants so we had fried green tomatoes (very tasty) for breakfast yesterday.

We've had the backhoe in most of the week digging holes for new digesters, moving the spoil piles from the new holes to new places and generally tidying up and creating new room for growing stuff. We might have 15 acres here but very little of it is immediately useful (being covered in bush) so we have to make the best of what space we do have. Osh's wasp sting (I was nearly stung!) was not too bad actually - I ushered him into the house and Daniel, unbeknownst to us went to find out what had bitten/stung him (bless that boy for his foresight and common sense). The sting didn't look tooooo bad but afterwards Daniel told me that had it been a small brown spider we would have had to whip him up the hospital (child, not the spider) for treatment because if you leave spider bites they necrose....lovely!

Daniel is back at school today and an air of gloom is settling on the house as Daniel tackles the misery of the government school (staffed by teachers motivated by their US dollar paychecks, populated with dim students, no light bulbs in the class rooms, not enough desks etc etc) and we all silently face Thursday. Osh is very excited about going home - not because he is home sick or doesn't like being here, just because he is looking forward to seeing his Dad and the cats and so on. The other day he told me not to be sad about leaving: don't be sad Mim, Nicky can come to our house for a chat every day and then go home on the plane....I don't think the distance thing has quite registered yet. He is certainly going to miss have such freedom outdoors and so many things to play with.

Today's favourite play thing is a broken down Hi-Lux jeep: Nicky acquired it from a friend and is keeping it for spares for his Hi-Lux. With the government now banning the import of any car over 7 years old the possibility of spares on-island are reducing and having a bank of spares to hand certainly saves money. So Osh is currently in the drivers seat making brooming noises (it has no engine) and being the boss of his own little world.

The jeep, it transpires, has another function. Nocius is a Haitian labourer who works for Nicky - he is incredibly hard working and diligent and is paid by the hour. No contract, no security - a very hand-to-mouth existence. As we came back from dinner with friends last night we found Nocius getting into the jeep....bedding down for a night's sleep. Turns out that because he lives so far away he finds it very difficult to get to work on time (very few jitneys running at 6am and little chance of hitching a lift) so he often sleeps here. That was a rather humbling thought as we sat in the house bemoaning the mosquitoes (a plague of them at the moment) and the heat. We've decided to build Nocius a small house on the property (a 1 room thing) so that he doesn't have to sleep in the car. Nicky also suspects that he sleeps in teh jeep to save money on (very high) rent.

Osh is certainly getting a glimpse of how the other half live and struggle!