Snorkel Club:

On Mondays I’ve started working with Snorkel Club. I love it because it gives me time away from the garden and in the water. It’s a way for the children around Statia to learn to snorkel and sometimes even swim. Most of the time they say they know how to swim, but need to hold on to you when they do their 200-M swim test. Only three showed up last week, but this week there should be at least 5 more of them. Once they learn how to snorkel we take them to different snorkel spots so they can see the different diversity of corals and fish and then identify them when we’re done.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m involved with the Junior Rangers. Junior Rangers is a program for the children that have graduated from snorkel club and want to continue on. Junior Rangers is a much wider program, they come and learn up in the garden about how plants grow, renewable energies, and edible plants. Later, they hike the Quill and possibly even the Boven to learn about trail maintenance. They will also do more advanced snorkeling.

Beach Cleanup:

Last Saturday we were involved in the worldwide largest beach cleanup. I love being involved in cleanups back home. However, here they are not my most favorite thing to do. Unfortunately, the village landfill overlooks the beach. STENAPA has been lobbying for them to move the landfill to a different spot or even just close the hole up so that it doesn’t wash onto the beach. Apparently, next year Statia becomes part of the Dutch government, which has much stricter rules about trash and how you should get rid of it. There isn’t even recycling on the island. It’s an environmentalist’s nightmare! Anyway, back to the cleanup. There were about 20 of us cleaning up the beach, and we were able to get a whole truckload of trash off the beach. Cleaning the beach is still important (whether or not I like to do it) because the baby turtle hatchlings get caught in the trash and can’t make it out to sea.

(Bradley and Brook at the beach cleanup)

Demographics of Statia:

Statia has a year-round population of approximately 3,000 people. The majority of the locals are descendants of the African slave trade that was a huge part of Statia’s early history. Also, because Statia is a Netherland Antilles island, many of the locals are also Dutch. In addition, there are approximately 300 medical students that live here for most of the year. There is also a very large Chinese population on the island.

With all these diverse groups of people, there are many different religions. The most prominent on Statia is the Seventh-Day Adventists. I don’t know much about this particular religion, but I know they don’t believe in evolution and they don’t work from sundown on Saturday till Sunday night. It makes it hard to buy groceries because they have the largest grocery stores on the island. However, some of them are open for a couple hours in the morning on Sunday because people come over from St. Kitts to buy groceries for the week. It’s very expensive to come over from St. Kitts, but since their taxes are so high they each pay the $100 round-trip ferry ride and come over here to buy groceries. Apparently, even with the ferry charge, it’s still cheaper to get their groceries on Statia.

In addition to Seventh-Day Adventists, there are Catholics, Methodists, Protestants, Buddhists, and Muslims. A co-worker of mine told me that in total there are about 12 different practicing religions on the island.

Me and my scooter: What do you think? Just kidding. I don't have one yet. Wishful thinking :)