After that awful meeting we decided to head for the Tricentennial celebration at Fort George. About 8 of us volunteers went to see what it was about, but more importantly support one of our trainers who was in charge of the entire event. Once again we had heard it was completely unorganized and was thrown together last night so we wanted to see just how it turned out. We were thoroughly surprised to see quite a view vendors, a crazy Grenadian lady selling herbs, Clark's Court Rum booths, FOOD and good music.
They started the ceremony by introducing members of Parliament, diplomats, ambassadors and other important people i had never seen before. In the middle of the presentation of the new rum on island, in walks a very well dressed man with lots of people surrounding him. Another volunteer leans over and says "that's the Prime Minister dude, he is important!" Sure enough, it was Prime Minister Tillman Thomas of Grenada. Soon enough our trainer Michael tells us to follow him and we were off to be introduced to the President of Grenada. No pressure right?
He was very personable and was excited to hear more volunteers were on island. He wished us the best of luck, snapped a pic with us and was on his way to mingle more. It was so interesting to see the big man of Grenada intermixing with local citizens like it was nothing. I couldn't imagine Obama being able to do that and gave me a great sense of just how personable the culture is here. It was just like he was another person on island as he was working the crowd.
It personally made my job here so far. I was so excited to meet such a person of importance and to hear he was proud of us. Makes you feel like your job here is worthwhile and means something.
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