Until you step foot on Terre-de-Bas and see Petite Anse with your own eyes you cannot have imagined how uniquely charming the island is, among the archipelago islands off Guadeloupe’s southeast coast. The Saintes truly are a small universe and Les Santoise a warm and gentle people who live in a tiny fishing community that personifies the word “enchanting”.

VISIONS has worked in Guadeloupe since 1996, initially in coastal Trois Rivieres, and our love affair with the Saintes began in 2004. Guadeloupeis enchanting and Petite Anse even more so. Once you meet the people of Petite Anse, you’ll soon feel at home.

Your residence is Service Technique, Petite Anse’s former public school on the edge of the little town. The “campus” is small with a few buildings on spacious grounds with flowering plants and trees and a quick stroll to a little bridge over the river. Staffers and participants sleep on beds in gender-separate one-story mini-dorms. You will bring a pillow and twin sheets. We have running water, bathrooms and showers, though keep in mind that fresh water is precious in the Caribbean, so showers are short and not necessarily taken every day. Our living quarters are simple, clean, and more than sufficient. We do laundry once a week.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head to your chosen community service project with your work team and a staffer or two. We walk to our projects, saying good morning along the way to our Saintoise hosts. 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 staffer stays back from projects each day for "home base" crew. The crew tidies up and cleans our living space, collects the mail, prepares lunch, and helps Pierrette, our cook and all-around Mom, with dinner preparations and clean-up afterwards. Home base crew might join another work crew later in the day.

After work there is time for other activities, such as swimming, short hikes, workshops with craftspeople, Zouk and Gwoka (Creole for "big drum") dance and drumming lessons, 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. Once a week, everyone has the opportunity to call home.

There are constant opportunities to explore and absorb French Creole culture, and for mixing and mingling with the community. You will practice your French with local friends, join festivals, visit marketplaces, have apprenticeships with fisherman, a sourbet vendor, and artisans, among them, Cami, who keeps alive the unique craft of making madras cloth-covered salaku hats from native reeds and grasses. In all the world salakus are made only on Terre-de-Bas. There will be dinner stays when you and another participant join a family in their home once a week to share a meal and simple time together.

We devote weekends to excursions and exploration. You will hike the whole of Terre-de-Bas, ferry to neighboring Terre-de-Haut, the little tourist island with its charming shops, cafes, and centuries-old historic fort. Swimming and snorkeling are always on the docket. We take the ferry to mainland Guadeloupe to stroll the aromatic seaside marketplaces, hike through the rain forests to waterfalls and La Soufriere volcano and to centuries-old pictographs. We spend a day of scuba diving in one of Jacque Cousteau’s favorite reefs.