Impending EC

Yes, our Eager Crew are making a return visit and are due to arrive tonight, Guy Fawkes Day. We are all atwitter with joy and have been polishing the brightwork and holystoning the decks. Well, ok, I washed the soles and made up their berth while WW waterproofed the bimini and put patches on a couple of little holes. He thinks the bimini is coming to the end of its time on Earth and that perhaps we'll see about getting a new one made over Christmas, while we're back in Canada. Not orange. There will be a sea change regarding colour, trust me.

When last I posted, we had spent a goodly portion of Saturday with an intrepid group of Tot Club members, tarting up one of the several paths they maintain in the area and then celebrating our efforts. It was hot, hard work on a steep slope covered with dense scrub. WW wielded heavy clippers, clearing undergrowth and lopping the tips off Spanish bayonet near the trail. I raked. In a tropical forest, leaves are dropping all the time, so raking is an endless task. We were working in an area called Jones Valley and the trails dropped down the hillside from just beside an old fort called Shirley Heights. A huge cistern marks the start of the trail, which then drops down to two old graveyards, then to a riverbed and a dam. I was instructed to rake as far as the second graveyard then to come back to the top. "You'll be exhausted. Go no farther," Terry told me. He was right.

Terry the Thorn Tree Trimmer, beside the old cistern

The graveyards seem to be just loose collections of headstones with no discernible plan or pattern. The first or upper graveyard has about a dozen graves, only one headstone is still partially legible and several are broken. The one headstone still readable tells us that Caroline Weiburg was buried there in 1808 with at least one of her children. Terry says there is no way of knowing whether these people were criminals hanged for their crimes, servants or settlers. Of Caroline, we can only speculate that she either died in childbirth or that disease (yellow fever and malaria were rampant) took her and her child(ren).

We started at 10 a.m. and finished at noon. The last bit of my energy was expended climbing back up the hill. Terry drove us to Charly's (Charlotte's) house whence the work crew had been summoned for drinks and nibbles. I asked him how these little patches of graveyards had been found in the dense Antiguan undergrowth. Terry power. He found a map of the island dated 1822 and, being an exploratory soul, he took his trusty machete and went hunting. He has found any number of remnants of the island's colonial history and continues to find them still. The Tot Club does its work with a measure of support from the Antiguan parks people, who pay for signs and minor expenses, and allow the work crews access to the land.

Drinks and nibbles in Charly's glorious garden.

And now the news you have all been waiting for...our examination results. We passed! We have not yet taken our 7th and final initiation tot, but will be doing that tonight, followed by a mismuster...another tot. We should be in grand shape by the time the Eager Crew arrives.