Hard Place to Live

Many tourists I meet are very interested in what it is like to live here. My standard line is that Grand Turk is a great place to visit but a hard place to live.

Today was stifling hot. There was no wind. It was dead calm. The sea was like glass. It was almost eerie. There were not many people outside. But it cooled off tonight, and there were people everywhere.

Today was Monday. Shopping day. The fresh produce boat comes on Monday. We have very few groceries in the house right now. We got through the weekend by eating out. We went to Mr. Cee's and bought groceries for the week, but no meat had come in. From Cee's we went to R&R to see if they had meat. We did manage to get two packages of hamburger. So tomorrow we will have hamburgers. Tonight we had waffles and eggs. One night this week we will have stir fry vegetables.

Debbie and David, who we had dinner with the other night, talked about how they bring a weeks worth of groceries with them when they come to their house on Salt Cay. They freeze everything and check two coolers on the direct flight from Charlotte. Then they charter a plane from Provo to Salt Cay.

Maya, a new employee who started working today at the museum, told an interesting story today as well. She is from here, but has been in New Jersey for many years. She moved back about a year ago. She has friends buy stuff for her in New Jersey. They pack this into a barrel, and ship it from tropical Shipping every few weeks. She ships in all her food and most everything she needs here. She tries not to buy anything locally, except meat.

Before you start packing barrels of meat. You should know that the meat situation today is unusual. Typically, we can buy most of what we want or need. And whenever I am in Provo, I stop at the IGA and bring back lots of meat. I was there at the end of April and we are just about out of what I brought back. But we do have two frozen chickens left.

Yesterday, neighbors who live quite aways away (in fact we dont even know where their house is), showed up at our house with our new puppy. Evidently, it wondered off during the night and showed up at their house, crying outside their window. This in fact is exactly how we came to have this puppy.

This puppy was from the second litter that the wild dog, called Floppy, had in our compound. The mother stopped feeding the pups at about two weeks. Davis found this little pup crying outside our window and has been feeding it milk since then. When animal control came to take the puppies away, the officer took this little puppy out of Davis' hands. This went about as well as you can imagine. We have since had to license this puppy as CeeCee.

Being a dog here is not easy. The puppy has to mix in the pack with the other puppies that are now nine months old. Tics are a constant problem. And they love puppies. Last night Deneen and I removed about 80 ticks from the ears and toes of the puppy.

We could not find the new puppy again this morning. Davis rode his bike down the roads and out into the bush to see if he could find him. Davis found him a little way into the bush past our compound. Dead calm. It looks like he was hit by a car last night. I came home tonight just about dark and buried him beside the road.

Its a hard place to live.