So even though I decided a few weeks ago that this was the next cliché I would take on, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, I was stymied right out of the gate by the fact that what I had wanted to write about is a little far afield from the accepted use and meaning of the phrase. Chalk another one up to Ms. Malaprop. Bonus points to nerds like me who remember Sheridan’s The Rivals from high school English class.

According to The Internet, “This expression alludes to a person awakened by a neighbor who loudly dropped one shoe on the floor and is waiting for the second shoe to be dropped.” And its meaning is very neutrally about logical follow through: “To await an event that is expected to happen, due to being causally linked to another event that has already been observed.”  As in “Donald Trump was elected president so it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and all hell broke loose.”

However that is not how I have used that expression. I tend to think about it when good things happen, but I still feel a creeping sense of dread, like something bad must be lurking right around the corner. And that’s when I start asking myself “when is that other shoe going to drop?” Because it seems like it’s bound to.

It’s downright sinister to assume that because things are good, the only logical and expected outcome is that something bad will, or at least could, happen next. (Shauna and Harrison, and pretty much all of you, are probably not in the slightest bit surprised that I have once again taken things in this saturnine direction.) It seems akin to other joy-stealers like imposter syndrome, which tends to kick in for me in what should be moments of triumph, like starting grad school or a great new job.

So I guess I’ve had that saying on my mind because lately I’ve been on a run of good luck (see previous blog post about pura vida and living large in Costa Rica). I’m also embracing some good fortune in heading to Dakar as my next move, “the Paris of West Africa” as I have heard it called, or “the San Diego of West Africa” as I have long thought of it.

And while I have had fleeting thoughts of shoes dropping, or in fact have thought that by my reckoning of the phrase, what with the pandemic, and the economic downturn, and the unprecedented political chicanery that gets worse by the day, and protests against white supremacy testing the frayed fabric of our already polarized nation, that there are simply no shoes left in old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard to drop. All. The. Shoes…have already dropped. But in a positive sign that I might be ready to abandon my perverse take on the cliché, I’m happy to find that in spite of it all, I’m not putting up my falling-shoe-protecting umbrella, I’m mostly still just enjoying pura vida here in Costa Rica and grateful for a silver lining of the pandemic, that the uncertainty about flights, visas, and laissez passers, has imposed a generous time horizon for me to keep on not feeling malaise before I have to report for duty in Senegal and reconnect with those stilettos pictured above. That I may or may not have a chance to wear any time soon. But if so, I’ll do my best not to drop them on the floor loudly, one at a time, and bother my downstairs neighbor.

You’ve definitely heard this expression (or used it yourself). My dad used to say this a lot. In the course of watching sporting events, he trotted it out regularly as the clock was winding down and there was a seemingly insurmountable point differential. The complete expression is “the game isn’t over until the fat lady sings.” Or, excuse me, I stand corrected. Per The Internet: the correct expression is “‘the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.’ It is said that this expression was first used by a sports writer, Dan Cook, writing for the San Antonio News-Express, Texas, round about the year 1976.”

My dad played quarterback at Stonehill college in the 1950s, and was a lifelong football fan. My dad had few passions (or vices) and this was one of the only things I remember him reliably making time for: watching college football on Saturdays and pro ball on Sundays during the football season.

My dad’s use of this expression was so frequent and so predictable in lopsided games that it started to lose credibility. I decided to call him on it during a 1984 college game that only had seconds left. The team that was trailing had possession, but the entire length of the field to go. Like clockwork, with less than a minute to go, my dad said “it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings” and I retorted with an eye roll “come ON! This game is ov-ah!”

To my everlasting chagrin, that game is known as the “Miracle in Miami” because Boston College’s quarterback, Doug Flutie, threw a 48 yard hail mary pass and scored a touchdown to win the game against the ‘Cains.

Epic fail trying to prove my father wrong, and he didn’t let me forget it. I mean here it is, 35 years later, and I’m still smarting from it. But maybe it’s poetic justice, getting a lesson about fat tail distributions early in life, setting me up to think like a risk manager and capitalize on it professionally down the road.

When I worked at Goldman before the last financial meltdown, we would get pushback from traders on the ratings downgrade triggers we insisted on putting in place to trade credit derivatives with AAA rated AIG when Goldman was only single A, this seemed illogical and unnecessary to them. I’d go so far as to say they thought it was hubris. But we stuck to our guns on protections just in case this low probability, high severity scenario came to pass. Which — spoiler alert — it did just a few years later. And it ended up being AIG that was tarred with the hubris brush. Did the “Hail Flutie” subliminally influence me as one of the many data points that pointed to that unlikely, but still possible outcome?

“Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!“

Let’s don’t stop rooting for the underdog, even if we rarely get to see them pull through in such spectacular fashion.

Earlier this week Trevor Noah posted on Instagram about how Amy Cooper “weaponized” racism, and how society isn’t holding up its end of the bargain in the social contract with blacks. In the comments feed, a troll threw shade at Noah for “race-baiting”. Which exposes just how vast the chasm is between what I perceive as rational and obvious truths and the cretins who are focused on the protests and looting and, IMHO, totally missing the fucking point. And it led me to fixate on this as the topic for this installment of the blog by selecting the cliche: “playing the race card.”

Today’s headlines show how out of touch much of white America is about what is going on here: “Minnesota governor says violent unrest is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd”.

But you know what? I beg to differ. I think it is about George Floyd. And Ahmaud Arbery. And Breonna Taylor. And a long list of black victims that you have seen circulating on Facebook that is just the tip of the iceberg, the “I have privilege as a white person because I can do all of these things” list, and worse, all the victims we don’t know about, who were abused and didn’t die. Those who suffered, but weren’t captured on a video that went viral.

In my mind, things wouldn’t have exploded the way they did this week if all the police officers involved in the most recent atrocity in Minneapolis had been arrested at the scene of the crime and brought up on appropriate charges.

Or if Ahmaud’s murderers had been arrested at the scene of the crime and brought up on appropriate charges. Immediately. Not months later.

Or if Freddie Gray’s killers had not been acquitted.

If Sandra Bland hadn’t been racially profiled in Texas and ended up dead in a jail cell three days later with the arresting officer cleared of all charges.

And if practically the exact same thing hadn’t already happened to Eric Garner. In New York City. Six years ago. “I can’t breathe.”

How is it possible another black man can be killed in eerily similar circumstances in the same eon or lifetime, let alone in the same generation?

And if Kapernek hadn’t been persecuted for trying to peacefully protest exactly this kind of violence against blacks and the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators. For taking a knee in the NFL, he was ostracized. Ironically, you could say he was blackballed.

• 

I just moved from Haiti, a nation that has been debilitated by civil unrest, and the attendant opportunistic looting that sadly tends to accompany riots and natural disasters, for the better part of two years (see the moving images of it captured by brave photographers, finalists for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize). If I have learned anything from this miserable set of circumstances, it’s that the violence will continue until the conditions that give rise to it change. What do the rioters, be they Haitian or American, have to lose? Specifically in America, what more can we take from African Americans when we strip them of their lives and humanity on a regular basis with little to no consequences for the abusers?

And we white Americans need to take a beat before we try to shift the narrative and take the moral high ground and start tsk-tsking when there is foreseeable and avoidable backlash to the latest outrage. I am not impressed with the negative reactions from upstanding citizens who are shocked at the wanton destruction of property and looting. This article Violence Never Works? Really? points out the hypocrisy of our recent and historical behavior that I hope will encourage silence, sympathy and empathy rather than judgment.

I do not condone or endorse the violence like this week’s that leads to more injury and death. But seriously, what do we expect? Shit happens during protests when police turn on the tear gas and rubber bullets. Muckrakers and low lifes infiltrate and take advantage of the situation out of desperation or to stir the pot like this gas-masked white guy agent provocateur who broke windows at Minneapolis Auto Zone.

And to the white people who are STILL responding with “all lives matter” I just want to say that they are at best tone deaf to the relentlessness of the injustice. I no longer feel like giving them the benefit of the doubt that they mean it in a kumbaya kind of way “to which no one could object.”

Given the abominable treatment of blacks in the Americas over the past 400 years and the modern day lynchings that are, astonishingly and shamefully, still happening now, it makes me want to get up in the grill of the all lives matter folks and ask them: “Have you no sense of decency?!?”  

“Because of the brutalizing and killing of black people at the hands of the police and the indifference of society in general and the criminal justice system in particular, it is important that we say that…”     

The above are the implicit words that precede Black Lives Matter per a law professor cited in this Vox article

There is very little that could get me to abandon isolation and physical distancing at the moment given my fear and respect for Covid 19, but if I was in the US right now, I think this would draw me out to the streets. Enough is enough.

Greetings all. First of all, it goes without saying, I hope this missive finds you and your families navigating covid19 as well as possible. I know some of you are fighting on the front lines of it, some have suffered through it, some of you have lost family members to it. I send my heartfelt condolences and best wishes to you all to survive and recover from the pain and disorientation caused by the pandemic and efforts to stop its spread.

The blog is taking a detour from its original intent, which was just to stay in touch with family and friends while I was abroad working on humanitarian initiatives and provide glimpses into the trials and tribulations of my privileged existence as an expat in some of the more troubled spots on earth. But now that every spot on earth seems to be troubled it doesn’t seem as necessary or interesting. Hence a change in modus operandi of read the tea leaves.

Also to continue to blithely continue to provide updates on pura vida in Costa Rica while I’m blissfully ensconced here is sure to become redundant and tedious, or worse, potentially engender resentment as many of you are still giving your all on the front lines, and in your homes with your children, and navigating the new normal of zoom fatigue, etc., or worse really struggling through diminished incomes and fearful for how you will continue to keep body and soul together through the coming economic downturn until we are through the worst of the pandemic and maybe on the uptick in the swoosh recovery. I feel you on that last bit, but am just more fortunate in where I’m waiting it out.

Going forward for a while I am going to pick one cliché per post, and then expound on it, either related to (hopefully humorous or poignant) episodes in my own life, or, share my opinion on topical events. I’ll take requests! Feel free to use the comment box to suggest a cliché. I’ve included a very short list below in case you want to use as a pick list.

The title of this blog “Dial a Cliché” might be recognizable to some of you Karens or other members of my Gen-X demo (btw I strenously object to personally being a Karen, except in rare moments when I am asserting my rights as a consumer with obdurate customer service reps or gate agents…oh crap…I think I just incriminated myself? (“Methinks thou dost protest too much” much?!)) Anyway, Dial a Cliché is a Morrissey song from his 1988 album Viva Hate. He and his original band, The Smiths, were like the pied piper of the angst-filled and melancholy stages of my adolescence.

And so today’s blog is taking you on a tangent with me down memory lane, or at least the corridors of Schenley High School, because It reminds me of the time in Freshman or Sophomore year when a bunch of us showed up at school pushing a soundtrack we had all independently discovered after going record shopping (in very High Fidelity-looking record stores like the one on Forbes Avenue in Oakland where I found my copy). It was a soundtrack for a movie none of us had seen yet, John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink.

As an aside, Pretty in Pink, while a fine “other side of the tracks” film, with a heartbreakingly pouty lower-lipped Andrew McCarthy and a pathologically nonplussed James Spader as the rich kids to Molly Ringwald’s poor orphaned but one-of-a-kind bohemian earnest urchin was not the best effort of his brat pack movies of the 80s, which were pretty important pop cultural mileposts in the middle school and high school era of the 80s. It did not hold a candle (haha – see what I did there?) to The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles or even Weird Science. However, the soundtrack with tracks by all of our favorite up and coming alternative Brit bands really was of the moment and we all immediately and simultaneously latched onto it.

As another aside, a really catchy Smiths song was on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack and is like top 20 Smiths (maybe even cracking Top 10): Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want  although it doesn’t come close to as good as the anthem How Soon is Now #amiright. Incidentally How Soon is Now was sampled in Hippychick which was also an adorable early 90s song. But I digress…

So after said weekend of record shopping, we all turn up at school on the stairs that we used to hang out on between classes with the cassette tape of the soundtrack, but none of us was able to take credit for introducing the rest of us to what we each independently thought was unicorn of a find that our friends would be so delighted and amazed to learn about. It took a little out of the wind of our sails as would-be music influencers (eons before that was a thing). I wonder if that could happen now – I mean outside of when Taylor Swift or Queen B drop albums that are downloaded by millions concurrently, are kids organically stumbling on music by potentially less-than-headline acts that speaks to broad subsets of their peers on spotify or apple beats1 playlists? Seems like sources of new, up-and-coming musicians and other pop cultural references are more diffuse now. Or maybe I only think that because I’m not on IG and am not influenced by any influencers. Or please correct me are influencers now so much of a thing they’re with a capital “I”?

A cliché, or cliche (UK: /ˈkliːʃeɪ/ or US: /kliˈʃeɪ/), is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.

It’s been observed that I tend to drop more than my fair share of clichés into conversation (in fact there are two or three above {sigh} not even done on purpose) so I don’t deny it. Not sure why I’m so stuck on clichés I guess a lack of originality? Or a more positive spin, an abililty to draw connections and land on an apt expression to encapsulate common occurrences in our day-to-day lives.

Short List of Cliches:

• The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
• Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
• I’m like a kid in a candy store.
• I lost track of time.
• Roses are red, violets are blue…
• Time heals all wounds.
• We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you.
• Play your cards right.
• Read between the lines.
• Beauty is only skin deep.
• Birds of a feather flock together.
• Let’s touch base.
• When you’re between a rock and a hard place.
• It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
• The proof is in the pudding.
• When it rains it pours.
• Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.
• It is what it is.
• Business is business.
• Rules are rules.
• Whatever happens, happens.
• The who’s who.
• When you know what’s what.
• A deal’s a deal.

Incidentally hose last five on the list came from the most recent Seinfeld comedy special on Netflix 23 Hours to Kill which was entertaining, but maybe funnier for married men of the OK Boomer versus Karen age brackets.

Here are some write-in cliches (thanks peanut gallery!):

• More than you can shake a stick at.
• A chip off the ole block.
• All’s well that ends well.
• Between a rock and a hard place.
• Fit as a fiddle.
• The writing’s on the wall.
• A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
• Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
• Strange times.
• The simple things in life.

Pura vida. It’s the ultimate Costa Rican colloquialism and it loses all of its distinction if you transliterate rather than translate it. “Pure life” comes up short in English. The expression has so many dimensions in the vernacular in Costa Rica that it frankly defies translation so I don’t know why I think I’ll be able to do it justice, but in the times we are living it is worth a try. And speaking of living, that is its essence – living large might be one of the simplest ways of encapsulating it. Especially now when the corona virus is dampening joy, well it’s another reason I’m glad I’m on lockdown here and have frequent nudges toward pura vida.

Pura vida does not simply mean pure living in a puritanical sense, or in a vegan-eating, smoothie-drinking, yoga-doing, surfer hang ten kind of vibe, although all of those things are pura vida.

The phrase pura vida is ubiquitous. It can be used as a greeting or send off, much like aloha and shalom. It is akin to hakuna matata (about which I waxed poetic in an update from the field dated 18 Nov 2017), but less passive and more of a proactive affirmation. It can be used as thank you and you’re welcome, like when we delivered groceries to elderly folks in the community where I’m staying; or as a way of cheering on or offering encouragement when you pass another hiker or jogger on the trail (at the prescribed distance of course); or an exclamation to acknowledge the sighting of fantastic flora or fauna, as happens regularly here; or when you have any good news to celebrate. It can also be used as an adverb when trying to emphasize that something is simply the most archetypal example of its kind – I hear it used by Ticos all the time in that context. Like the runaround to get the right documents from the ministry in charge of – fill in the blank, no shortage of ministries to choose from – could be described as the pura vida of bureaucracy.

But mostly pura vida is a phrase used to embrace life with robust gratitude, and Costa Rica is the kind of place that makes you want to do just that. I feel very lucky to be here, there’s nowhere I’d rather be in idyllic isolation. Many of my lockdowns over previous years working abroad have been pretty awful, so it is a new experience to have a lockdown I’ve been able to lean into, and I’m making the most of it. I commented to a friend recently that this may be the most at ease that I’ve ever felt, and I’m only sorry it took the whole world grinding to a halt to be able to let go.

Don’t want to imply I’m able to completely transcend the anxiety induced by the pandemic, of how it is upending (or just ending) the lives of so many, including health care workers and their families and the most vulnerable, and in particular how it will affect those in level1-3 countries in socio-economic circumstances that do not allow for social distancing or adequate hygiene or have medical systems that can provide care and treatment for the multi-generational families living together in close quarters who are bound to infect one another. It is going to be devastating. I just hope we can get through this, continuing to demonstrate our heightened powers to adapt and connect and support each other in new and different ways, and emerge stronger. Wouldn’t it be great if we hold on to some of the work-arounds? It turns out some of these temporary solutions could prove to offer lasting benefits for our mental health and for the climate and environment if they were mainstreamed, including more telecommuting and virtual meetings, for example. Or as this piece recommended by a wise friend calls out:

“As Covid stirs our compassion, more and more of us realize that we don’t want to go back to a normal so sorely lacking it. We have the opportunity now to forge a new, more compassionate normal.”

— The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein

Pura vida people! Feast your eyes on some pura vida porn in Costa Rica, rafting dating before social distancing, obvi.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Covid 19 may be the pura vida of viruses, but I hope it allows you to grab pura vida by the horns and hold onto it tight.

On a practical note, I’m not sure when I will leave Costa Rica or where I will land next. There are prospects in Africa, the Bay Area, and DC, but suffice it to say I’m not in a huge hurry. And neither is the world at large or potential future employers with all the uncertainties that remain.

It has been a dog’s age since I’ve updated you, sorry about that. My heart just hasn’t been in it, things in Haiti, always precarious at best, have been completely FUBAR the past 18 months. Cycles of violent protests, extortionary road blocks, and prolonged fuel shortages have paralyzed both urban and rural areas. Government, businesses and schools were closed most of the summer and fall of 2018. It is a new noun-verb in Kreyol: peyi lòk, essentially the country was on lockdown.

Embassies and NGOs have changed to unaccompanied post status and have spent much of the year in various stages of evacuation of all but non-essential staff. Many who weren’t involuntarily evacuated have voluntarily separated, and now I will join their number at the end of this month. It is neither safe nor productive for me to remain, I am resigning my position and handing over Haiti Takes Root to local resources.

Coverage of the recent 10-year anniversary of the earthquake, after which all were heartily committed to Build Back Better, was predictably maudlin https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/haiti-faces-difficult-questions-ten-years-after-a-devastating-earthquake

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article238836103.html

But here is a short that at least has a somewhat more positive spin:

I’m sad to leave this place that has so much potential and means so much to me, but at least I’m going out on a high note: the Christmas and New Year seasons have been relatively calm in spite of many political problems the likes of which would have triggered a peyi lòk in previous months. Kids are back at school, and gang activity at a major artery that leads out of town was somewhat diminished and it allowed me to go to a great glamping spot near Petit Goave with some friends. Also they managed to pull off PAPJAZZ music festival and I was able to hit that with some friends. Also was able to attend the CORE https://www.coreresponse.org/ (formerly J/P HRO) annual gala in LA where I was once again star-struck by the A-listers in attendance.

Although I’m still exploring options for the next full-time gig, don’t fret, I’ve lined up some remote consulting and will be spending the month of February (at least) in Jaco, Costa Rica.

As one of my colleagues here likes to say, Peace & Trees.

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving!

Since you last heard from me work has been progressing trying to resuscitate the public-private partnership that the Haitian ministries of Agriculture and Environment had been moving forward with our help and that of the French, the World Bank and the IDB and other actors. However we hit a roadblock with other parts of the administration here and we went to the mattresses working more with regional and local government than national for the time being, and launching a five year agroforesty project in the department of Nippes that we are providing parallel financing for along side the World Bank. It is s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w going.

I never was a patient person, and this work definitely tries my patience, but I am perseverant and we shall persevere. You can follow what we are doing on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/HaitiTakesRoot/?ref=bookmarks and on twitter @HaitiTakesRoot

Also doing preliminary work that may lead to the launch of incubator for agribusinesses and an accelerator for social enterprises with solutions to environmental problems in 2020. Have been on the road for convenings including Jamaica for the Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator and Guatemala the Forum for Impact Investing for Central America and the Caribbean.

Had a good dive holiday over Toussaint (All Saint’s Day) in Curacao.

But of note recently has been civil unrest that has us on our 5^th day of sheltering in place and our 3^rd day of “Haitian snow days” – most businesses are closed due to strikes of transport drivers and impediments to getting to work, like burning tires, oil on the road, throwing rocks and gunshots.

Protests this past weekend were planned months in advance by a grassroots effort that is anti-corruption and trying to create more accountability. It’s an excellent movement and I hope a tipping point for transparency going forward. However, the opposition party has co-opted the movement to call for the President to step down, and they’re holding the rest of the country hostage this week (or at least under house arrest). You would have heard about it on facebook except that the algorithms seem to have kept it off my feed, visible only to me…I’d blame the Russians, except that I don’t think they’re very interested in Haitian politics. Well you know what, in the words of Glenn Close “I won’t be ignored” see below.

Thankful for you all and wishing you a great holiday!

Hi everyone! Guess who moved back to Haiti? This girl. In late January. With three pets in tow. We made a detour en route from the Sahel to the Bay Area, where the dog and I got to enjoy the hospitality of Uncle Fred and Aunt Sandra and got to roam the hills of Sleepy Hollow in Marin, and the cats enjoyed the hospitality of Uncle Russ and gave us multiple anxiety attacks when they pulled Houdini acts in his in-law apartment, which I had previously thought too spartan to provide hiding places. But they found them. Like in the undercarriage of Russ’ pickup truck in the adjoining garage.

Haiti is much improved since I was here after the earthquake and during the cholera outbreak, in spite of devastating hurricane Matthew that came through in 2016 and from which the southern peninsula is still recovering. It offers a better quality of life than my most recent base of operations, and I’m glad to be in closer proximity and the same or fewer time zones away from loved ones stateside like many of you.

Haiti Takes Root thanks to F-O-S. I’m now working for an accidental relief organization that is essentially a foundation. I’m the Executive Director of a public-private partnership called Haiti Takes Root that seeks to promote reforestation and improve climate change resilience. Science tells us that the frequency and severity of storms is going to increase, and Haiti is definitely in the crosshairs. We’re co-funding a project with the World Bank and have a small portfolio of pilot projects with NGOs and social enterprises, and we are trying to convene stakeholders in regular coordination and knowledge management meetings with buy-in from the donor community, NGOs, private sector under the leadership of the GOH, but the GOH, which is mercurial in the best of times, is having a #MeToo moment after decades of misbehavior and bullying by NGOs, in some cases truly unforgivable, like the UN peacekeepers sexual abuse of vulnerable women and minors and similar shenanigans  and they’re not really having it right now. So in Godfather terms, w/r/t getting the GOH to take the lead on Haiti Takes Root, we are going to the mattresses until the situation calms down. Oh yeah there was a cabinet shakeup last night so that one of our key champions, the Minister of Ag, was replaced and we’ll have to start virtually from scratch with his replacement. All par for the course.

Cyrptocurrency for Haiti. The subject line is inspired by an era not that long ago. So do you remember that time in the late 90s when Greens

pan said there wasn’t anything indicative of “irrational exuberance” but when you went to the auto mechanic and he was talking about the P/E ratio of snap-on tools after their IPO you couldn’t help but wonder if the stock market bubble was about to burst? And then it did? I think cryptocurrencies are at that same cusp. On the basis of the fact that I have seen at least three banners like this one about cryptocurriencies in Haiti, including one that was an advertisement for English language classes that said “Bitcoin accepted”. I think it is time to run not walk for the exits in that market. It feels like shark jumping territory to me.

Visitors welcome. Have a nice apartment here with a very zen terrace and, once my shipment gets here (maybe this weekend!) I’ll have guest accoutrements that can comfortably accomodate five, so consider coming down for a visit. It is after all the Caribbean, and there’s great art, music, beaches and hiking.

xo

TK