Winding Down

We are really getting down to the wire as far as our time here (can't believe there's only a week left), so needless to say a post is long overdue! It's just steadily gotten hotter and hotter here this past month, which has slowly sapped much of my computer browsing energy in general. And now for some updates:

1. Last week we finished our final settlement survey, making our total number of women surveyed a whopping 180. A great, large number of people and data (trust me, took hours to input all of the surveys into SPSS statistical software based on the data dictionary I'd created. Believe it or not--because I really don't--I've taken on the job of data inputer and stats test-runner extraordinarre. And even more shocking is the fact that I like it). Now we are visiting one settlement in the north, central, and south regions of the island in order to tell communities what we've found and get any extra input.

This is what 180 surveys looks like

We are so pumped we are done! (photo cred: Sara)

2. Also as of last week I am now feeling 23! Yes, the only thing better than having my 21st in Cyprus was having my 23rd (man that sounds old!) in the Bahamas! Spent a relaxing day at the beach, followed by a delicious dinner at the fancy/famous Tippy's beachside restaurant (a favorite of Mariah Carey and Matthew McConaughey) which came as a big surprise from my team members as I thought we would just eat at the fish fry. We made our appearance there later, when the crowd was noticeably more Bahamian/local and got our groove on to some local Bahamian jams (along with about 5 different birthday songs played, to my mortification, in my honor. the best was probably when the song "Birthday Sex" came on, to which one of my team members turns toward me and seriously tells me "sorry but you ain't getting none of that tonight").

Perhaps the most adorable dancing partner ever (photo cred: Sara)

3. We will be coming back! Yes indeedy, we've been invited to present our project/findings at the One Eleuthera Health & Wellness Symposium on cancer the first week in August. I really can't begin to describe how awesome/what an honor it is to have people be this appreciative about our work. It's amazing and really starts to hammer home the idea that slowly but surely I'm starting to become a "public health professional."

I could not have asked for a better team members (photo cred: Sara)

People always tell you that when you go abroad for an extended period of time you are going to go through phases: upon arrival you will be so pumped but after about a week you'll start to get into that moody/homesick/irritable towards all your surroundings period. After this comes the calm contentment that you feel because you've finally become truly comfortable with your environment. I've definitely gone through all of these stages. I was excited, and once that wore off I was hot/sweaty/itchy/generally unpleasant; now I'm coasting, and when I stop to look around at the clear Caribbean beneath my feet I get sad because it's a feeling of calm and beauty that I wish I could (and know I can't) bottle up to take with me and remember forever. I've had my ups and downs here, but Eleuthera and my time spent on the island has been an experience that certainly will stay with me forever. Not your typical summer internship but something that's equally valuable and in a way far more special. Now I just have to look forward to the depression/rea-daptation phase that comes upon your return (but oh, the reunion with a.c. will be so so sweet).

To the North we went!

Pink Sands (if you squint you can see a tinge)

This past week we traveled up to northern Eleuthera in order to make it easier for us to survey settlements and not have to worry about traveling back and forth the hour and a half it usually takes. We lucked out and got to stay on Harbour Island in a fantastic beachfront house. Harbour Island is a small island off the coast, about a 5 minute water taxi ride from the mainland. It's an adorable tourist town where many a wealthy vacationer (and apparently some celebrities) like to park their yachts while indulging in some pink sand beaches. There are few cars on the island, as most get around via golf cart, and compared to the rest of the island, most of the buildings are kept up (probably to look good for the tourists). We had a lot of fun going to the beach everyday and visiting the local bars at night; though nothing could top our first night there, when we got to hang out on the owner of Walgreen's private yacht.

Be still my interior design-loving heart

can I bring you back to Atlanta

Yes, as we were leaving the marina bar we came across a group of college guys, one of whom hopped onto the back of our golf cart. He introduced himself, saying he was from Texas, at which point one of the girls in my group exclaimed "I'm from Texas!" Lo and behold she had actually gone to grade school with some of the guys so we had the chance to see how the other half lives. The owner, one of the guy's dads, had married into the Walgreens family and lets just say they are doing well. It was very hard to leave, though nice to return to our friendly neighborhood of Tarpum Bay.

We did do some work while up north, visiting the various settlements. The most notable had to be Spanish Wells, where the people look like they are from West Virginia, have accents that sound Scottish, live in what looks like the Florida version of pleasantville, and make up perhaps the largest percentage of white Bahamians on the island. They're descendants of the puritans who came looking for religious freedom and the Tories who left following the American Revolution. Over half of the island has the last name Pinder that, along with the weird looks of the locals, indicate that the rumors of inbreeding aren't just rumors.

Don't let this deceptive facade fool you...

Top off our strange visit by seeing a tricked out golf cart that looked like an old 1950's pick up full of Amish people (and their million kids) who looked like they belonged in the coal mines of West Virginia and we were ready to get the hell out of dodge. Currently wrapping up the last of the settlements that still need to be surveyed and we will begin putting together a preliminary report of findings that our stakeholders can have before we leave (yes, we do work while we are here).

How the U.S. got accused of sending canned goods that cause cancer (aka notes from the field)

For the most part we've been relatively well received by the different groups of women that our contact has been able to drum up from different settlements. We have them take a survey and after give a 10 minute presentation about breast cancer in the Bahamas and the importance of getting mammograms for early detection. Last night was a different story; it started off well enough, despite the fact that some of the participants were rather snarky and shrugged off any offer of help (some were looking blankly at their surveys for over 15 minutes) and would look at us and laugh behind their hands.

After the presentation, during question and answer time, a more outspoken lady with a mohawked, bleached stripe of hair running from her forhead to the nape of her neck, started to ask us why breast cancer was becoming so much more of a problem now. Without giving us any time to address her question, she started going into this rant about radiation and how foods from the U.S., including our produce, were making people sick; she claimed that the canned goods from the U.S., with their labels of "export only," were the reasons the Bahamas shouldn't buy food from the U.S., and that they never had this problem in her granny's day (I guess granny lived to be 92). She did a good job stirring up the crowd, which started getting heated and talking all at once, not giving us a chance to say that 1). it's way better to eat fresh vs. canned anyway, 2). a big part of the reason people are so fat and unhealthy here is because they don't eat any fruits and vegetables whatsoever (lay off the conch fritters people) and 3) that people should stop inbreeding in order to prevent the BRCA gene mutation from spreading (we'd never actually tell them to stop inbreeding but seriously, with such a small island and cousins marrying cousins, that's the bulk of the problem as far as genetics goes).

this is pretty much how I felt last night. via

Now I don't know about this whole U.S. "export only" thing, but maybe the reason why white stripe was so unhealthy is because she's a major smoker (believe me I could smell her and heard that phlegmy smokers cough). She also didn't feel any qualms about taking a huge plateful of the free cookies we have for after the presentation. In general, with a thing like cancer it's hard to give people one definitive reason for the cause, which many have found frustrating. I'm hoping that overall we at least reached one person in the crowd last night, and that we won't find ourselves run out of any more meetings.