Caribelle Batik & Nevis

Spent our P-day at the old Wingfield Plantation where there are only reminders of days gone by when sugar cane, tobacco, rum and more were grown and produced in St. Kitts.  Parasite plants now grow on old smoke stacks that once expelled smoke from the fire that made steam to heat huge copper bowls that melted sugar cane to make sugar and rum.  Seemed strange to learn that St. Kitts is the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson.  He was born at Wingfield.  Stranger still that Nevis (which you'll see later) is the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton.

  

This one big old tree covers a quarter of an acre.

Caribelle Batik is located on the old estate.  Batik is a process of waxing and dying to create designs on fabric.  

Sweet faces on these donkeys, don't ya think!

P-day over!  Work day followed. While we waited for the ferry to load Thursday morning Sister Hymas and I walked a sandy road to the rusting grounded barge you see in the distance in the crystal-clear water at the south end of St. Kitts.  We  didn't snorkel but we did see the sting ray that makes these waters his home.

Car ferry leaves St. Kitts on the odd hours and returns on the even.  It takes a darned good driver to

back cars onto the deck close enough to have to climb out the window!

Nevis is St. Kitts' sister island.  We thought Dominica was a small island until we came to St. Kitts.  Nevis is even smaller--little more than a big rock.  It's home to another medical school where this semester four members are enrolled.  John Makoni (red shirt) and Jake Ledbetter (green scrubs) are two of them.  John recently started his first semester.  He was surprised when he met Jake.  They served at the same time as missionaries in Nicaragua!  Small world! 

President Hymas asked that the members hold Sacrament Meetings in their apartments and generally strengthen one another as there is currently no formal church activity on Nevis.

Some things are hard but "somebody has to do it."

This little frame house was home to Sister Amparo, a Spanish-speaker from the  Dominican Republic, who agreed to hold church meetings here and then left the island.  Where she is or when she'll return no one knows.