US History you have never heard

Last week was Statia Days… a celebration of the island and, ironically, of their important part in the American Revolution. It was strange to be in a totally non-American country but still I basically felt like I was at some go America patriotic celebration. So here’s the history, more or less.

During the early American Revolution Statia was a “free port”, basically tariff-free trading for all countries, and therefore a popular site especially for trading between countries that wouldn’t trade directly with eachother (for instance if they were at war with eachother or something like that). Actually that’s basically what Statia is known and proud of, is that they are the “golden rock” where everyone could trade anything with anyone. So anyhow, early American Revolution we declare ourselves an independant nation and then give the mission to the brigantine the Andrew Doria to come south to Statia to trade goods; we arrived in the harbor with a never-before-seen flag flying and fired 13 canon shots, which were answered by the Statian fort comander with 11 canon shots. So they make a big deal out of this as the first international acknowledgement of the United States. And so in commemoration of that event we had a week of festivities with a talent show and some live music and dance groups and festival food and everyone wandering the streets and drinking lots of alcohol and then on Sunday at 6 in the morning we all went down to the fort and listened to about 2 hours of very boring speeches and lists of names of important dignitaries, and then finally there was a reenactment of the canon shots which was kinda exciting. Everything here is kinda of like not quite as exciting and spectacular as you probably would think it would be… I guess cause it’s a small island and so not as much money or supplies or people to provide talent etc. It was fun anyways though. And interesting that they make such a deal out of their part in US history when I don’t think probably anyone reading this will have heard of the event. They make a big deal of Obama too, as in there is actually a rap song about Obama which played on the radio a lot right around the election… written by some group on St. Martin. And they said “yes we can” and mentioned Obama at least 5 times in the Statia Days speeches…. I mean he is exciting, but it’s just wierd how I am someplace totally not part of the US, but I sometimes feel like it could be an american colony here or something.

Today we had a beach-cleanup, which is definately the absolutely most depressing and life sucking activity I have ever done. As far as I’m concerned, there is no satisfaction of an important job well done afterward, there is no joy in doing it, and I’m not even happy to be done and finished cause I just feel gross and sticky and DEPRESSED as Hell. Basically the way it works is that the “dump” here is just a section of the beach. Not even a pit they bury. Sometimes they kinda bulldoze bits into the dirt or compact it or something, but pretty much you take stuff to the dump by driving down a steep hill to the beach and throwing your bags out the truck into the huge stack of other trash, some in bags and some not, and a large assortment of feral pigs and chickens eatting through the trash and shitting all over the place. Pardon the language but I think in this case it is actually apropriate. So then of course the trash blows into the ocean, gets carried by the tides, and ends up on the beach. Basically the only sandy beach around, not to mention the beach where the turtles would come up and lay eggs when it is turtle season. So yeah, we just spent the morning walking up and down the beach picking up bottles and bags and shoes and beer cans and condom wrappers etc etc etc etc etc… only to bag em up and bring them to….. the dump! So they can wash back again. Fucking depressing. And so I think the only way I can really change the situation is to stop using trash as much as possible. But there is hardly any agriculture on the island — basically if I want to eat I will be buying food shipped by boat from some other place so highly over packaged. If I ever drink juice I will be buying it in juice bottles that I’ll have to throw away. And the worst overpackaged foods are by far the fruits and veggies, so if I”m gonna try to cut back on overpackaged crap, I will be eatting poorly. And no matter what I do, there is the rest of this whole bloody island and if those of us who are educated and have seen better systems and spend our time cleaning the beaches can’t be bothered to try to make a difference in trash disposal, how can we expect the average Statia to care at all?

That’s my rant for the day. Life is great and wonderful but humans suck and really I think I just want to crawl off to some nook in the mountains and grow food and harness natural energy and disappear from the rest of the shitty world. Except there’s no point to that, right, cause it’ll still creep up and find me, so I have to just keep fighting an uphill battle against all the bad things in the world even though I know eventually we will fail.

Must write something uplifting now… This weekend I am going to help one of the other interns search for orchids on the volcano, which will of course be amazing and fun. And (this one is especially aimed at any bird nerds out there) there is a plethera of American Kestrals on this island. Like a ton of them! I see them basically every day, and this morning I was out running and saw one just up on a tree about the road and it just stayed as I walked by and watched me watching it… very cool birds. I love to watch them swoop across the road just as we drive by is my favorite, with their sharp wing angle and the way they drop just to car level and then carry the momentum up up and off across the scrubland towards the ocean is beautiful.