Sweating and Eating: Sugar Cake

The spouses and significant others of students at Ross Veterinary School are unselfconsciously referred to as VIPs (Very Important Partners). A few VIPs are certified teachers in the States and are qualified to work for Ross at the preparatory school here on campus, but the government of St Kitts does not allow employment outside of Ross University for any non-citizens. So, most VIPs do, uh....a bunch of nothing. Well, that's not entirely true: some are completing masters degrees online, but many more of us fill our days with housewifery, countless hours on facebook, and sometimes beach volleyball or book clubs...yeah, it's tough life, I know. I never thought I would say this, but - not having anything to do? It gets old, quickly. Around the beginning of Leah's second week of classes, I started to become near-despondent with boredom. I was flailing around, anxious and sullen, picking arguments for no reason and having temper tantrums at the gym. I don't like people watching me exercise, okay? And yeah, I'm going to cry about it.
So I began looking for something to do with my time here, to save my and Leah's sanity. I found a volunteer opportunity at Ade's Place, a day facility for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Ade's Place focuses on independence and life-skills training, and the organizers also work out individual vocation training plans for the attendees (called "trainees"). I was nervous at first, having limited experience with volunteering and none at all with mental disability, but everyone at Ade's Place immediately welcomed me warmly. It is a very light and fun environment; every person, trainees and staff, seems sincerely happy that he or she is there. More than anything that we do, we laugh. There is always so much joking and poking fun and silly nonsense, some days my cheeks ache from it. Josephine, the executive director, told me that I would fit in nicely there because of my booming cackle: "it's quite like a black woman's, isn't it? the way you tip your head back and everything." (oh, picture that with a British accent - she was raised in England.)

On Mondays, Michelle (a staff member) teaches the trainees how to prepare a snack. Today we made sugar cakes. Which, as it turns out, are not baked cakes so much as they are like coconut pralines, made from cooking grated coconut in a simple syrup with a demerrera sugar to water ratio of about 29:1 (truly ungodly, terrifying amounts of sugar) until all of the water has boiled off and you're left with a sticky batter, which you then spoon into small piles on a clean surface to let cool. The cooled cakes are hard and crumbly, very molasses-y, and blindingly sweet.