Jamee Adams
Link Community School
August 24, 2008
An Experience to Never Forget
A journey, an adventure, something that I have never experienced before was right before me, waiting for me to exhale and grasp hold of it. Before you know it opportunities are knocking away at your door and it’s your job to acquire the one that you want. This summer has been fantastic with so many chances for me to learn and excel. One of the many opportunities that I received this summer was an opportunity to travel with nine of my schoolmates to The Cape Eleuthera Institute Island School.
My first thoughts on going to this institute gave me exciting but skeptical thoughts. I knew that this program was a week long course for students to learn about marine life and how to live in a sustainable environment but I was still unsure about if I was going to enjoy the trip. Having heard about Cape Eleuthera summer institute through family members, alumnus of my school, and the program director I was reassured to would be a fond experience. From that point on my hopes were high and I was ready and willing to make the best of what was to come.
My schoolmates, the two chaperones (teachers from my school), and I departed from our school at 6:00 am to make our flight from Newark, New Jersey to Nassau, Bahamas. The wait for the flights was extremely long but that was the last thing on everybody’s mind. Everyone was anxious and ecstatic, ready to explore and be placed out of our element.
Arriving approximately noon on the 13th of August in Nassau, Bahamas I was happy and relieved that I was almost there. So when I finally arrived at the campus my eyes were filled with astonishment. All I saw was an amazing view of the ocean and an exclusive area where the campus was. I soon learned that the campus ran on solar power and used rain water for all their resources. For example: water that we used to drink, bathe or any other job was used from the rain water collected. At this institute they believe in being resourceful and using natural sources for energy and power.
The Bahamian culture is very different to the way of life in the United States. For example: the people in the townships where very welcoming, not just because the villages were very small, or because everybody knew one another but because they were happy to see other people from another place. Staying in the Bahamas I learned that fishing is their main livelihood. In an environment where the population on the island is only 10,000, everyone is always welcoming to visitors to Eleuthera.
The Island School has taught me so much about being resourceful and using the natural resources around me. The Island School also introduced me to two of their ongoing projects, aquaponics and aquaculture. Aquaculture is the farming of marine organisms such as fish. This procedure is used to help make more fish so that the fish that are endangered or are being over fished will have a chance to repopulate. Aquaponics is another form of repopulation but in a different way. Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaponics is a symbiosis method because there are two things working collectively to benefit each other. In aquaponics, the rich-nutrients waste-water from the aquaculture provides food for growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in. The collaboration of work between the plants and fish create an ecosystem where both the plants and fish can thrive. Aquaponics can be used to produce large quantities of food in very small spaces in an environmentally friendly way and that is one of the reasons way this process is perfect for the Eleuthera Island.
We, the students, worked collectively in groups researching marine life in the Bahamas and discovered so much. For example: we learned about different types of fish and how fish can become endangered. We did morning exercises, rode bikes and some of the students even learned how to swim. The students were made to take responsibility of their personal space and the common rooms. Each student was placed into groups where they were in charge of cleaning the kitchen and assisting everyone at mealtimes.
The opportunity to go out of the country and experience cultures outside my own has been a real joy. Learning about marine life, aquaponics and aquaculture has made this a worthwhile experience. My classmates, teachers, and program directors on the Eleuthera Island made the experience better than what I thought it was going to be. I am glad that I went and was able to learn about a sustainable environment and marine life and my thoughts on how it would be before going have completely changed. Even with all the bugs that were there, and the obstacles that we all we faced, I would go back and spend more time at the Cape Eleuthera Island Institute. |
