Your home on the splendid island of Dominica is the former Salybia School on the Carib Reserve. You and your leaders (staffers) live together in this intimate compound, with different rooms for guys, gals and staffers. You will bring a camping mattress, pillow, and twin sheets. You’ll have a cubby for your personal stuff and handy access to bathrooms and showers. Keep in mind that fresh water is precious where we live, so showers are short and not necessarily taken every day. That’s where bucket showers kick in. We often bathe in the rivers, with biodegradable soap that you’ll bring. Our home base is simple, clean and sufficient. In Dominica there are often temporary interruptions to the water supply and plumbing. In anticipation of this possibility, we collect water from standpipes or from the springs. We do laundry once a week.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head to your chosen service project with your work team and a staffer or two. We typically work five or six hours, with short breaks and at least one hour for lunch. A rotating group of three or four students and one leader stays back from projects each day for "home base" crew. The crew tidies up and cleans our living space, collects the mail, goes to market for the day’s fresh-food shopping, prepares lunch, and helps our Edess, our long-time dinner cook, prepare the evening meal and clean up afterwards.

After work we make time for swimming in rivers or the ocean, nature hikes, visiting community elders and other friends, playing cricket, “rounders”, or volleyball, learning how to carve a calabash gourd, showering or just relaxing before dinner. Several evenings each week after dinner, we set aside time to meet as a group of volunteers. This is a slow-down time to speak and listen to each other, share our reactions to the day or iron out occasional issues together. You’ll have the opportunity to call home once a week.

There will be constant opportunities to explore and learn about the traditional culture of the Carib people, to mix and mingle with the community. You will meet carvers, painters and basket weavers and from them can learn carving and basket weaving yourself. There are day-visits with local families. We attend festivals, tour traditional small villages, and learn about the history of the Caribs from guest speakers and activities with our Dominica friends.

Weekends are all about exploration, including snorkeling and swimming, and maybe a whale-watching boat trip if the whales are sounding off the coast.  We hike into the tropical rain forests with local friends as our guides. We visit Trafalgar Falls and Dominica’s natural hot springs pools, trek into Morne Trois Pitons National Park (a World Heritage Site) to glimpse indigenous Sisserou parrots and other birds, stroll the streets of Roseau, the nation’s capitol, and visit the old fort ruins in Marigot.