Catch the Cruise Bug, It's Fun

If you have never been on a cruise start planning. Everybody deserves at least one cruise in a lifetime. Some people say they do not consider cruising because they are afraid of the water and cannot swim. I have to tell you this; these are not the days of the Titanic. The ships are all fitted with enough lifeboats to accommodate all the passengers on board. When was the last time have you heard of a cruise ship going down and passengers drowned? Times have changed and new technologies have made traveling by sea safer than traveling on land.

I fulfilled a lifetime dream by going on my first cruise. It was a five-day Eastern Caribbean cruise. I did not believe that I would have been able to take a cruise until my retirement. I thought it was something I could not afford and that cruising was for the rich. Wrong! Cruising is for everyone. It does not cost that much. You can afford it. All you need to do is a little planning but even if you have to put it on credit card, the cost is not that prohibitive enough for credit card load. My trip came up out of the blue.

About thirty years ago a group of young girls left their homeland, Guyana, to work in Zambia as stenographers. We were young, inexperienced and naive about the world. For many of us it was the first time we would be traveling by air, living on our own and leaving the comfort and protection of loved ones. As a group we shared a lot together in Zambia - homesickness, lost love, isolation and culture shock of living in a strange land with people who looked like us but spoke different languages. We survived and grew from our collective experiences. Many of us got our jump-start in life from that point. Our contract was for three years. After our contracts ended we all went our separate ways - some to England, Canada, United States, Jamaica, Barbados, Germany etc. It was time to come together and see where we were all at.

Credit goes out to our organizer, Cleo Sinkamba-Islar, who spear-headed the trip. The idea started with a question. Cleo and I were emailing back and forth and one day I asked the question, "I wonder where all the girls are at and what they're up to these days?" We both thought it would be a great thing to find out. That dream and became a reality. We made it happen. We met on the Celebrity Millennium, one of the largest cruise ships on the high seas. We were told it is one of the top of the lines and for us girls it was nothing but the best. We wanted to travel in style.

(Watch out for part 2)