Road Trip to Belmont Estate

On Friday we ventured off on our longest-distance road trip yet-- a visit to Belmont Estate on the northern side of the island. Grenada is about 26mi by 12mi. Our usual area to explore on the southern end could probably be encompassed by a circle 3mi in diameter, so there's a lot that we haven't seen yet.

Belmont Plantation has been around for more than 300 years. Originally owned by the French, it was once a nutmeg plantation. Grenada is the world's largest exporter of nutmeg. In the 1930s there was a crash in the nutmeg market. Our tour guide, Kelly, said it was the equivalent of nutmeg prices going from $5/lb to $0.05/lb. So some of the locals decided to squirrel away their nutmeg harvest and save it for better times. At that time, a couple of indentured servants originally from India (Norbert and Lyris Nyack) bought up these stores of nutmeg. When the market rebounded several years later, they were able to sell their stockpile for something like $1million. With the proceeds, they were able to purchase Belmont Estate and five other estates on the island. The Estate is still owned by decendents of the Nyacks and now functions as an organic farm.

The primary crop for the farm is cocoa. As mentioned above, it had originally been nutmeg, but Hurricane Ivan wiped out the nutmeg trees in September 2004. Cocoa trees grow much faster and have been able to recover enough to produce crops at this point. So...The image above is a picture of a cocoa pod, which grows straight off the trunks and branches of the trees. Harvesters go through cutting these off the trees, then other folks go through cutting them open with machetes. This liberates the sticky white seeds you can see tour guide Kelly dangling to the right. I got to eat one of those slippery little suckers. It's incredibly sweet and sort of milky, with sort of a sour aftertaste. We were supposed to just suck of the sticky white attachment tissue and spit out the seeds, but they were so slippery I swallowed mine right away. So Penny got to enjoy some chocolate milk for much of the day, I guess.

Once you've got the cocoa beans out of the pod, they have to ferment for a bit in the bins in a giant barn seen here. So when you walk toward the main building for the estate, the smell of chocolate beer fills the air. Once the beans have fermented sufficiently, you have to dry out the beans. Tough in a rainforest. The beans are laid out in giant trays and every 30 minutes during business hours, staff walk through them to turn them over. Here are our friends, Erica and little Kylin helping to walk the beans. Their feet were pretty sticky and chocolatey smelling afterward. Once we finished helping to turn the beans, we sampled some fresh chocolate tea (and bought some Grenadian Organic Chocolate Bars). Then we had a break for lunch and rain before heading home. I'll share photos from the road at another time... it was really fun seeing so much of the island.

Cute in Cloth

As Penny and I prepared to come to Grenada, we put some serious thought into whether we wanted to give cloth diapers a try. Dan was pretty grossed out from the start -- didn't want to have to scrape poo off cloth repeatedly. So I knew we'd have a hybrid system at best. Everything I found online, though, talked about how it was economically better and you seriously cut down on the amount of waste getting dumped in landfills. Those of you who've done disposables know how quickly they add up. They seem to make diaper pails purposely small because of their smelly contents, but I was emptying ours on an every other day basis.

I did lots of research while we were in England and started a wish list of different brands so we could try them out in Ohio and make a purchase before we headed to Grenada. Most of the brands we tried were one-size-fits-all. Most also were pocket diapers -- a waterproof shell with a pocket in which you stash absorbent materials. We had a total of six diaper brands we tried out and had some trouble winnowing it down to the final choice. Most were pretty good at containing some impressive messes, certainly comparable with disposables. The Swaddlebees EcoNappy pictured in cow print here survived some real doozies, but was eliminated solely due to price.

I ended up preferring snaps over velcro closures (less snagging my clothes and potentially snaps last longer). The best reviewed diaper, BumGenius 3.0 pictured here in grasshopper green, was great, cheap ($17.95 at Target.com), but the washing instructions were complicated. Ultimately, we wouldn't have hot water at all in Grenada, so I couldn't use anything that required that.

I did try out some diapers that come in different sizes. Penny is kicking around in a FuzziBunz Small in the video. The sized diapers didn't make her butt look quite so big, but then I'd have to have several different repetoires in each size in order to make it through the year here. That gets pricey at about $20 per diaper.

So our final choice was to go with Mommy's Touch one size fits all and all in one (no pocket, just absorbant layers that snap together). It is nice to not have to reach into a poo-filled pocket to remove inserts, though I still do have to touch pooiness. Her butt does look enormous, as you can see at right, but the cool pattern kinda makes up for it, no? You can see our rainbowy selection hanging outside our apartment at the top of this blog. Penny has about a dozen of these and we wash them every other day, which keeps in constant supply. We use one disposable a day after Penny's massage because the baby oil would clog a cloth diaper. Though Dan's still not quite sold on the poo scraping, he does recognize the savings potential. Penny has been here over a month and we still haven't gone through our second pack of disposables. Which is good because they are about twice as expensive here as they are in the U.S.

So that's our take on cloth diapers -- ok, it was an excuse to show off some more cute pictures of Penny. But hopefully, it can act as a public service announcement for anyone else considering cloth out there. Babykind has great information about cloth diapers. I bought mine from HeinyKing.com, which has great variety and quantity discounts.

So What Is Dan Doing?

Dan has been studying hard since we arrived in Grenada. "Duh" right? Well, I just wanted to show off a bit...

Dan was inducted into the Honor Society, Iota Epsilon Alpha. No small feat since the school doesn't curve the grades at all and you have to have close to all A's to get in. Also, medical school seems to involve a lot of self-teaching, which Dan seems to have gotten the knack of at last.

This weekend, we had a graduation ceremony for the students who studied in Newcastle. The coursework Dan completed through Northumbria University last year qualified him for a Diploma of Higher Education in Medical Sciences (DipHE for short). So some of the faculty from Northumbria came down for the ceremony, including the Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria University (and he brought a Newcastle footballer to boot (he's without a robe on the far left of the picture.

Penny was doing her part to advance Dan's career. She was the cutest kid there. So she acted a bit like a magnet for all his classmates, who had followed along in embryology with additional interest, knowing Penny was coming along. Plus, she got introduced to the Vice-Chancellor as the first kid born into the program in Newcastle. Fiona (I think program director for the Newcastle program) corrected that she's not the first conceived during the program, but was the first born in England. So here's Penny helping Dan network with (left to right) the Dean of Applied Sciences (Prof. Julie Mennell), me, Penny, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Northumbria Prof. Craig Mahoney, and Chancellor of St. George's Dr. Charles Modica. Dr. Modica hung out with us for a bit talking about Penny. Dan was especially thrilled that he mentioned something about doing a special thing at St. George's graduation to recognize Penny. I don't know if he'll remember, but that would be awfully cool.


I so rarely get to picture the actual students, so here are Dan, Celeste, Matt and Hugh, all the folks with significant others in Dan's class while in Newcastle. There's lots more significant others now that we're in Grenada, but we're so spaced out that it's taking a bit to get to know folks here. We're working on it, though.


For those of you who just can't get enough pictures of Penny, I've created a special site with shutterfly.com. I will try to upload pictures as we get them so there's something new at least once a week. If you don't have the address, let me know and I can send it to you.

It's the Little Things...

When moving to another country, sometimes there are big things that are different, and sometimes it is little things that are different. For example, I have some paperwork I have to send to our financial planner. Dan has noticed mail taking more than two weeks to get from here to the US. Sadly, my paper needs to be at its destination next week. Our backup, then is UPS or FedEx. Their offices are in the capital city, which requires taking university bus to campus, then transfer to Grand Anse beach campus, then transferring to city bus/taxi to get to capital, then walk remainder of way because the bus isn't allowed to stop anywhere in town except the one bus stop. By bus, I mean big passenger van in most cases, BTW. It took a little doing, but I did finally find phone numbers for each (online through their company websites because they weren't listed in the online or printed phone books) and did discover they do pickup. Pickup is challenging, though, since we don't have a street address. We're "on the road behind Kudos...the apartment building labeled 'Flats for Rent.'" Shipping cost for a letter is more than $100 Eastern Caribbean Dollars (EC), which is somewhere in the range of $40-60 USD because they only do overnight service here. I'm currently waiting for a pickup and made sure to give them my cell in case they get lost.

Another fun difference is water. When did you last think how much water you use in a day? We have cold running water in the apartment. I think I was told that it is usually drinkable, but that changes without warning, so it is best to use bottled, boiled, or water from campus for drinking. So Dan bought several 3L jugs of bottled water to start with and he occasionally refills them on campus (because they have their own water filtration system there). Whenever I boil bottles in tap water, which has been less frequent of late since my milk is doing better, I keep the water and run it through a water filter in the frige for drinking later. Still, it is tough to keep up with the amount of water two or three people are supposed to drink in a day. The water comes cold for most of the day. Pipes run along the roof, so we do get some pretty warm stuff in the afternoon. We also have an electric wire running along our showerhead, which warms the water when you throw the switch. Sounds incredibly safe, right?


I had some fun this morning photographing the Caribbean Crab Grass and various flowers in the two blocks to the field where they live. Just thought I'd share some of the exotic and vaguely familiar. The top picture is a vine that reminded me of wild cucumber with it's spiky/furry fruits. The bottom picture looks an awful lot like the Carolina Dayflower we used to have at the side of the house at 31 Richmond. I'm very proud to have captured the little wasp there, though he is somewhat out of focus.

Grenada First Impressions

Penny and I have completed our first full week here in Grenada. We're close to settled in, just have to rearrange the bedrooms a bit so Dan can study in one room while we sleep in the other. For our first week here, Dan spent a lot of time at home. Apparently, this was the lightest time during the semester, so he figured he could spare a week to hang out. So Penny has had some time to reaquaint herself with Daddy -- walking to church, napping, etc. As you can see, it is considerably more sunny than Newcastle. I have burnt a little on my shoulder. It's not a bad burn, but reflects the need to be vigilant and ask for help for those tough to reach spots. Penny is doing well so far, though, with the thick slathering of sunscreen she gets whenever we go out.

The preparatory purchase Dan is most proud of is an exercise mat for Penny. She has been thoroughly enjoying preparing to crawl. She often does some kicking exercises with me while I exercise my arm. Here you can see that I've worked my way up to a can of kidney beans, not just the weight of the arm, for my exercises.

Grenada is full of all kinds of natural beauty. We found this lovely three inch specimen just walking to the beach in our neighborhood. Dan says our neighborhood (Lance aux Epines, we pronounce it LANS-o-peen) is sort of like Beverly Hills in status on Grenada -- lots of expensive houses and private beaches. The University Club is also located here. Though usually reserved for visiting professors, we were allowed a visit for an induction banquet for the honor society here at St. George's. This is a view from the main veranda at the University Club at sunset. Dan is hoping to stay in the honor society, so we'll have to be a bit less distracting in the coming months.