"Liberty Lodge" and on to "Bequia"

Saturday, March 13

This morning, we again called Ken to carry us up the long, winding road to the Liberty Lodge Boys’ Training Centre which is perched high on the slopes of Green Hill, overlooking Kingstown. We had previously arranged for Johnny, the Liberty Lodge Driver, to pick us up at the PC, but learned that through some miscommunication, he had in fact been waiting for us at the ferry dock.

Upon arriving at Liberty Lodge, we were greeted by our old friend, Nathaniel Sandy, who is a talented musician, music teacher and housemaster at the centre, along with some of the twenty or boys who reside there. Earlier, we had learned that the Director of Liberty Lodge, Michael Akers, is currently on vacation until March 20. After a brief welcoming ceremony, during which formal greetings were exchanged, and Mr. Sandy entertained the group with a song, we were given a tour of facility by some of the boys. Having served for many years as a Head of House at Lakefield College School in Canada, I was impressed with how tidy the sparsely-furnished dorms were. With no small amount of pride, the boys also showed us the open-ended greenhouse in which seedlings were currently being nurtured, as well as the chicken coup, in which a large number of robust looking egg layers were housed.

At this point, I should say something about the extreme drought which is currently gripping St. Vincent, and apparently, most of the other Caribbean islands. Although the vegetation on St. V. is normally quite lush, as it has been our observation that it typically rains most afternoons when we have visited in the past, conditions are now extremely dry and many of the crops have withered in the unrelenting sun. The Liberty Lodge boys and staff were praying for rain, so that the tiny seedlings which they were tending so carefully could soon be planted on the centre’s steep, terraced slopes.

After bidding goodbye to Mr. Sandy and the boys, we returned to the Pastoral Centre for a quick stop to pick up our belongings. After stopping at our favourite “Chinese chicken restaurant” to pick up boxed lunches for the group, Ken, Lyle and I then headed over to the Kingstown wharf, where we purchased tickets and loaded the luggage onto the Admiral Ferry, in preparation for our 11:30 a.m. crossing. The others joined us a while later and we boarded the ferry for the one-hour crossing to Bequia. En route, we enjoyed looking back at the mountainous terrain of St. Vincent, picking out landmarks like the Pastoral Centre perched on a bluff overlooking the harbour, and Liberty Lodge, which was just a tiny speck high on the slopes of Green Hill, not far below a prominent communications tower which projected from the top of the mountain.

It was an uneventful crossing, during which we reflected on our time in St. Vincent, anticipated the upcoming week on Bequia, and watched the wake of the ferry for the occasional flying fish which soared just above the water’s surface – sometimes for more than fifty metres away from the boat – like a streaking, blue-gray projectile. Arriving in Port Elizabeth, or “the Harbour” as it is known to Bequians, on the shores of Admiralty Bay, we were greeted by our friend and taxi driver, Rudy Gregg. Although it was a bit of a tight squeeze, Rudy loaded our luggage into the back of his cab (which, like most Bequia taxis, consisted of a small, canopy-covered pick-up truck) and delivered us to our rental villa. We were directed up a steep set (of some fifty) steps to the lovely “Hilltop Villa”, which was perched high above Princess Margaret Beach on the road to Lower Bay. We were soon met by our landlady, Aileen Derrick, who showed us around the two-storey villa which would be our home for the next seven days.

After settling into our accommodations, with Jean, Sandra and I on the lower floor and Lyle, Betty and Debbie on the upper, we took the ten minute walk along the winding road to Lower Bay Beach, where we enjoyed our first swim of the trip in the warm Caribbean Sea.

That evening, we caught a ride with Rudy into the Harbour and, after a quick meal of BBQ chicken and fish at the open-air, Hibiscus Restaurant, we walked a couple of blocks to the Seventh Day Adventist Secondary School for the annual ritual of helping the members of the Bequia Mission Local Committee members pack food hampers for elderly shut-ins. At the school we were greeted by the committee Chair, Sylvester Tannis, and his fellow BMLC members, Carmette Gooding, Patsy Chambers, Morrie Hercules (who, in addition to serving as Vice-Chair of the BMLC, is also the Principal of the SDA Secondary School), and a handful of other volunteers, who graciously help out with packing the hampers every year. We soon discovered that, along with the dried foodstuffs which the committee had purchased, there were twenty or so boxes of school supplies and at least thirty boxes of books and toys which we had shipped for a fund-raising sale in support of the committee, all stored in the small classroom in which we would pack the food hampers, so it was even more crowded than usual in the confined space. However, nobody complained and, as always, our two groups caught up on the news of the past year and enjoyed some wonderful camaraderie as we packed the various items (cans of tuna, potatoes, soup, rice, corn meal, tea, margarine, soap and toilet paper – to name only a few of the items) into the seventy or so, zippered nylon bags which we would deliver the following morning. After a couple of hours in the hot, confined space, we were all pretty tired, but thankful for the fellowship we had shared and for the anticipation of what our efforts would mean to the grateful recipients of the gift bags.