I could see the silhouette of a lizard on my window screen. Thinking I’d take a picture, I got close enough to see the lizard was inside the kitchen, not on the outside like I assumed. With a quick leap, he flew eight inches to the wall, stuck fast and then scurried up to the ceiling. He must’ve been six inches long, tiny compared to some of the iguanas I’ve seen lounging around here, but good-sized enough for a houseguest. I knew from his alert eyes that I wasn’t going to be able to catch him, so I had to accept him as my roommate for now.

With no real winter, there is an abundance of living creatures in St. Thomas. When I went to shop for my “island car”, the dealer showed me a Jeep over in the corner of the lot. A couple of two-foot iguanas were lounging nearby. Later, when I took my car back because I forgot how to pop the hood, the same Jeep had a goat hanging out by it. Chickens are everywhere. The situation is not as bad as on St. Croix, but there is certainly an abundance of chickens. I think the people here may eat them. Not as many roosters can be heard in the wee hours. On St. Croix, when the noise of the traffic dies down and everyone is trying to sleep, all that can be heard across the whole island is roosters crowing. The sound is incredible. One rooster starts up and pretty soon the whole island-full of them starts going. St. Thomas is far quieter in the pre-dawn hours. Mostly what can be heard are the frogs.

 I have an efficiency apartment near Bolongo Bay that costs $600 a month (including utilities and furnishings) and is seven minutes from work, if I stop to throw out the trash. On St. Thomas, trash doesn’t get picked up, you get to put it in your car and drive it to one of the many dumpsters dotting the shoulders of the main roads. It’s kind of like basketball, if it’s raining and your trash bags are used grocery bags. The other neat thing about the efficiency is that the stove runs on a small gas grill propane tank attached outside. The only utility I have to pay for is the propane tank. I had to swap the empty tank for a full one when I moved in and I found that a handy rusty pipe wrench stays outside on a pile of rocks just for that purpose.

My windows are just screens with metal adjustable shutters. There is no air conditioning. The unit came with a wall fan, but much to my dismay, the fan had been mounted too high up the wall for the cord to reach the outlet. The mistake was disguised by hiding the dangling end of the cord behind the bed. Seeking relief from the heat, I took the fan off the mounting and tried to get it to stand up right. It refused, creaking by spring action back into its wall mount position. Finally my Virginian instincts kicked in and I found I could hang the thing upside down on a folding chair and push it near the window. It was plenty close to the outlet then and could draw in the cooler night air. Since it’s just me for now, I don’t need the other chair anyway.

The job has been going well. I’m on my second week there and have been working on the documentation and quality assurance plan. The construction of my chemistry lab is not quite done, but there are so many other things to do right now. The lab is next to a mangrove lagoon and there are resident land crabs living just over the chain link fence. A few live in the parking lot. Their orange shells are as big as a tomato but they are shy, pulling in their thick claws as they slide down their burrows. The laboratory staff feed them their lunch scraps. The crabs run when they see people but if you throw them food and come back in an hour, it’s gone. Sometimes the land crabs can be seen scurrying across the roads in the night. They look white in the headlights, frantically waving their claws and scuttling sideways.

Arriving here, I had a rental car for a few days so I could hunt down an “island car”. As described in a previous post, the island car is an old beater that still runs but would never pass inspection stateside. On St. Thomas, there are two kinds of island car: those that can climb Donkey Hill and those that can’t. I found a promising pickup truck, but the owner said it couldn’t climb Donkey Hill if traffic stops so he has to take a different route to town. I found a nice Wrangler, but the top was what looked like a bandana stretched to cover the roll bars. It looked like fun on a sunny day but if it rains, you’re getting wet. I eventually settled on a Toyota. It doesn’t leak, has tread left on the tires, and climbs Donkey Hill. The transmission seems to only have two speeds on a good day, but that’s fine since the speed limit is 35 on all roads outside of town.

The visit to the laundromat was hellish. With the temperature easily 90 degrees outside, the inside of the laundromat was probably 120 degrees. It was a horrible inferno. Within a minute of walking in, I felt lightheaded, but noticing no one was passed out on the floor from the heat, I figured I too would acclimate. Looking around, I noted that ten of the 25 washing machines were broken. The same ratio applies to the dryers. Sunday afternoon is apparently a popular day for getting the laundry done. I had to stake a claim on a soon-to-be available set of washing machines and wait in the thick heat cranked out by the stacked gas dryers. Everybody stands in there sweating and waiting and folding clothes, shuffling their baskets across the floor. A box fan exchanges the hot air outside for the sweltering air inside. Next week, I’m going to seek out better facilities. But for now, I have clean clothes.