I seem to be in the writing mood of late, so I figured I’d share two short stories. The first story is a humorous story.

One of the main reasons I was moved to Bellevue was to help with the water system that was constructed in the past few years. Whether or not I’ve actually accomplished anything with the water system is debatable, but I’ve tried. One of my attempts has been to establish regular water testing to make sure it is safe to drink. To this end, I have been working with the water quality person at the Ministry of Health in Port Antonio. Now that it is getting to be the last few months of my service and I really need to start “working myself out of a job,” I figured it would be a good time to set a meeting between the water quality person and some people from my community who help with the water testing. I want to see if my community members can do the testing on their own during my last few months.

The meeting was scheduled for a weekday morning when I wasn’t too busy with other work, so I figured that I’d ride my bike there and carry a change of clothes so I wouldn’t show up all sweaty and covered in mud. I woke up early and hoped on my bike before it got too hot. I reached down to Porti in plenty of time to clean up and change when I noticed my first problem of the morning; I forgot to pack a belt. My first thought was “No big deal;” after all, my jeans aren’t too loose… Well, turns out they are. I guess I really did loose those 15 pounds since being here. I noticed this when I walked halfway across town to grab a cup of coffee before the meeting and ended up having to hold my pants up by the belt loops while I was walking.

While I was sitting there drinking my coffee, I pondered two options: 1) buy a new belt 2) make my own belt. I had to reject the first option because I recently spent all my money on a community project and had a few weeks before my next stipend. Ok, so option 2 - how to make my own belt. As I was trying to concentrate, I looked down at my feet and realized that I could just use one of the shoes laces from my sneakers! Brilliant! Problem solved! After all, its not like I had to tuck my shirt in and someone would see that I had a shoelace holding up my jeans.

As I walked over to the office for the meeting, I was feeling proud of myself for finding such a quick and easy solution. When I got to the office, I few minutes early so I sat under a tree to wait. While I waited, looked down to my feet and realized something. My shoes were mud stained, had holes in them and one was hanging half way with no lace. Moving up, my jeans were trimmed off at the bottoms, there are stains a rip is starting to form in the thigh, and these are my “good” jeans. Moving up further, my shirt was starting to shred with holes starting to form and I saw a big stain on the sleeve I apparently missed over the weekend doing my wash. I’ve never claimed to be overly concerned about my appearance, but this is a bit much. Two years in Peace Corps has finally taken its toll.

Now for story two, a story of inspiration.

For anyone who has been to Jamaica and experienced the pleasures of public transportation, they can tell you all about the comforts of “smalling up,” the smooth rhythms of dancehall being played at maximum volume, and the sweet smell of people sweating all over you. Well, the taxis in my community are a daily adventure that includes doors falling off, cars overheating, dodging police, running out of gas, and so on. Each taxi has its own unique quirks that make it an adventure every time. One of my favorites is Jackie’s van. (A van in Jamaica is a pick-up.) Jackie’s van is a small Nisan truck with the bed being about six or seven feet long and about four feet wide. Jackie runs a moving business in Porti but he is usually the last person from Bellevue to leave Porti at night, and so he usually takes any stragglers who missed the other taxis. Now, according to PC policy, I always try take regular taxis unless there is an extreme circumstance...

I was running a bit late and Jackie told me he would be leaving around 6. At 5:55 I walked up to his van to see more people standing around then I could count on my fingers and toes (and yes, I still have all of them.) My previous record on a trip with Jackie was in the high teens set a few months ago. Would this be a record-breaking trip? When we finally loaded up, some of the older guys couldn’t fit and were left to find family or friends to stay with for the night. I settled into my seat, wedged among my community members, partly upset we couldn’t set a new record. However, shortly after leaving Porti, we stopped at a primary school a few miles up the valley to pick up some students who were still waiting. Record broken, and then some! To make room, and to anchor themselves in a little better, everyone sitting around the edge of the truck bed had to put someone on their lap.

At one point going up into the valley, a taxi pulled up behind us and was amazed by the site of a small van overflowing with people and what appeared to be a white person wedged in with them. They started blowing the horn and screamed out, “How unu do the white man so?” Before I had a chance to say anything, someone in the truck with me shouted back, “Him fi wi family!” There were a few murmurs of agreement and then the conversation went back to whatever it was before. After that, all I could do was smile (and wonder why the person on my lap seemed to be gaining weight every time we hit a bump). Even with all the failures and frustrations I’ve had, maybe I accomplished something after all.

Most of my posts up to now have been about things that have happened. I will continue with that for this post, since it has been a long time since I’ve written a post and plenty of things have happened in that time, but I want to start off with a few thoughts first. The reason for the change is the fact that many of the things that have happened in the past few months have given me cause to start thinking about different things.

I don’t claim to be a very introspective person. When I have a problem or an issue, it doesn’t usually take more then a few minutes to think things through and figure out what it is I want to do. I’m not sure if this is the right way to do things, but it has gotten me through for the past 27 (soon 28) years. However, here it has taken a little more time to think through a few different things.

So here are the few thoughts I want to share before I tell you more about my past few months:

1 – My life here in Jamaica has been pretty stressful, mostly from pressure I put on myself. I think it comes from a feeling I have that it is always more important to please other people before I please myself. It doesn’t matter how busy I already am, I always feel that I can squeeze in a little more time to help someone. And being here where my job is to help people in my community, it just gives me the excuse to try to work that much harder. The problem is, in a community of about 600 people, once people start getting comfortable with me and feel secure in asking me for help, the pressure I put on myself quickly turns from a small stream of work to overwhelming torrent. Two things I’ve learned from this: 1) I’ve learned how to spot the people that are just using me because they have nothing better to do and the ones who really need help and 2) sometimes its more important for me to take time for myself. I’ve learned that if I’m not having fun, I’m not doing a good job. Having fun means that sometimes I can say no to helping someone if I already have something to do, it means that I’m allowed to take it easy on a Wednesday if I’m really feeling stressed from working all weekend, and it means that getting away from my site on occasion is necessary to keep sane.

2 – There are some people that are just not worth trying to help. This point took a bit of time for me to wrap my head around and might surprise a few people, especially when I get into my reasoning for it, but it is the truth and it has really helped me.

In the past few months, I’ve committed a lot of time and effort to helping at the primary school in my community. If you’ve never seen a rural Jamaican school, it is something entirely different then an American school. What I consider common respect for teachers is virtually non-existent in most students. Rules with walking in and out of class, talking in class and non-school people on the school premises are, well, not there.

I’ve spent a lot of time spinning my wheels trying to help Grades 4 through 6 with subjects like literacy and computers. At first, I thought it was because they either didn’t trust me, didn’t understand me, or where really trying but just needed a little extra help. What I found out was that there comes a point when I put out the effort and it was up to them to respond. I noticed that the disrespect not only continued, but escalated. I had to quit…on 10 and 12 year olds... It’s hard to come to grips with quitting on a 10 or 12 year old kid, but I’ve realized that 10 or 12 is old enough to understand consequences. Maybe not understand life long consequences, but at least understand the consequence that if you don’t show respect, you won’t get respect. To understand that if you don’t study, you will fail. To understand that if you fail, you won’t move on. At least there are a few that are willing to work, and I have just put my efforts into them.

3 – The underlying cause for some issues are not always apparent, and efforts to correct the issue won’t do much if they don’t address the cause. There are a number of issues that I’ve come across here that just mystify me as to how people don’t recognize them and take action to correct them. I had a big long thing typed out for this section that I decided to just delete and make as simple as possible. (Though if you want to have a few drinks and talk about it, there are things I can talk about for hours.) I have seen problems with people trusting their own family members, young men and women unwilling to work or even learn a skill when it is offered to them, kids responding to anything but physical punishment, kids dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, etc. These are all problems that we have in abundance in America without a doubt, but I’ve never seen them so common and accepted as I have here.

In the end, what I’ve come to understand is a lot comes down to issues with families dynamics. Raising kids in families where there are not consistent parent figures is more damaging then any kind of physical injury. And the fact is, to find a traditional nuclear family in Jamaica, especially rural Jamaica, is the exception. I have come to appreciate the opportunity I had to grow up in a solid, cohesive family. Sure we had our issues (my siblings and I are still notorious for arguing and fighting with each other), but we were raised together and we’ll stay together.

4 – Give thanks and praise for what you have. This is something I learn a new appreciation for every day. When I see life here, I see all the advantages I have had that allowed me to achieve what I have. But at the same time, when I hear people here talk about how hard life is, I see that they don’t often appreciate advantages that they have. True, the road is horrible, but at least there is a road. True the electricity goes in and out a lot, but there is electricity. True the piped water is not always reliable, but there is piped water, and when there isn’t, there are clean springs within a 10-minute walk. True the farmers are struggling to make money, but their families are not struggling to find food to eat (at the moment there is more fruit on the trees then can possibly be eaten). Life is certainly not easy, but it is not that hard.

Alright, enough of my random thoughts, here is what has been going on in my life in the past few months. As I said previously, I have started spending a lot more time then I used to at the school. I have pretty much worked out a consistent schedule of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday at the school and occasional Fridays. Each day I have my scheduled time working with the basic school kids on Phonics and Grades 1 through 3 on literacy, math and computer skills (drawing in Paint and typing simple sentences). When I’m not with the kids, I’m either organizing the library or doing random things for the teachers like making posters, looking up information and typing up tests. Here is a picture of me and one of the basic school teachers working with the kids on Phonics:

I have a video of them trying to learn the letter “Y” sound that is pretty funny and I’ll see if I can load it later.

One other thing I’ve done at the school is help the principal with a mural on the school wall. For a while she had talked to me about the idea of painting a mural with “Welcome to Bellevue Primary School” with the school motto “Together We Light The Way Forward” and a symbol (hands cupping a flame). Finally, one Monday morning when I was busy on a poster or something, she came to me and told me that she bought the paint and talked to some guys in the community to come and help, they’d be here in a few minutes. Gee, glad I knew so that I could make sure everything was ready.

In the end, everything worked out pretty well. It took about 3 or 4 days to do the initial mural, with about 4 of the young guys in the community who don’t work and spend most of their days on the road walking up and down helping me paint. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:

Work just starting

The guys starting to find their stride

Finishing up the work

What it looks like in the end

Things turned out pretty well and I even impressed myself with how it looked in the end. Not to mention the guys learned a bit about painting in terms of making your own stencils and how to transfer a small drawing on a paper to a larger drawing on the wall using a grid. The principal was so impressed she commissioned me to paint the national symbols on the wall as well. They turned out pretty well too. Their still a work in progress though.

My other main work success is starting a farmers group and building two produce storage sheds in the community. This is something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I got here last summer. There was a concrete platform on the side of the road up near the school that used to be a small shed used by the farmers to box banana a few years ago before the banana export market was shut down. The shed was destroyed during a storm and never rebuilt since it was a community structure and no group existed to take care of it. After about 6 months of waiting for the Minister of Parliament to give money to build it, I got tired. I was running one morning when I got the idea to try to get money through a SPA grant.

SPA is the Small Projects Assistance grant that is given by USAID through Peace Corps Volunteers. The limit on the money that we have is US $3,000. When I started looking into the project around December, I found that with that money, I could afford to build two sheds that are about 10ft wide x 16 feet long, built with wood and a zinc roof. I applied for the money in February and finally got the money at the end of April. So, now $3,000 of your tax money, plus a bit me for a few extra unseen costs, is in Bellevue, being used as farm produce storage sheds. These sheds have shelves to get things up and off the ground, tubs to wash the produce in, locks to keep the kids out at night, and proper construction with bolts and hurricane straps to hopefully keep the thing standing for a few years. Here are a few pictures:

Yeah - the guy is standing on a concrete block on standing on its end using a circular saw...real safe, but got the job done

We added a message board to the front - why not use some empty space

An idea I got watching a red stripe commercial - turned out pretty good

Besides that, I’ve been busy with other things like computer training classes, helping high school and college kids with their homework, working on the water system, and a few other things not worth mentioning.

One very fun thing was that about 3 weeks ago my parents finally came for a visit. They came for about a week and it was great. I was in pretty desperate need of a break from work up in Bellevue and it was good to be able to show my parents around a bit. My parents were troopers getting on public transportation with no big complaints. We spent most of the time in Port Antonio, going to a few beaches and having some good dinners. We spent one night with my host family in Bellevue which was a lot of fun, playing interpreter because my parents were having trouble understanding my host family and my host family was having trouble understanding my parents. But the food was excellent and everyone really enjoyed meeting each other. The last day they were here we went to Kingston to see the Peace Corps office and for some shopping. All in all, it was a great time and not nearly as stressful as I’ve heard other volunteers say it is hosting family.

A view from our guest house looking over one of the bays in Port Antonio

My parents having a drink with my host family after dinner

Now things are winding down for me. I have my COS (Close of Service) conference in little over a week, school finishes in early July, and most of my work is finished here. I’m looking forward to really taking it easy in July and August before I leave, learning to enjoy the rural Jamaican experience without the pressure of trying to get things done. I’ll still be attending community meetings and helping where I can, but my goal is to work myself out of my job and have community members pick up the work. We’ll see how much that actually happens.

In recent news – I don’t know if anyone back home has heard much about what is going on down here with all this Dudus Extradition case going on. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say on the matter – all I will say is it is pretty sad that a man is hiding behind innocent men, women and children to prevent being extradited. Too many people have died already. I just hope that things finish soon and we can start moving around without trouble again.

Anyways, it’s on to the next step after I’m finished here in Jamaica, which I have already sorted out, and a few people know about, but not many. But that is a whole other post unto itself. Look for that one in the next week or two.

First off - I have a lot of pictures I'm trying to load into this post, but because of what is going on here in Jamaica, I'm not able to get to a fast internet connection. Hopefully next week some time I'll be able to get them loaded.

Most of my posts up to now have been about things that have happened. I will continue with that for this post, since it has been a long time since I’ve written a post and plenty of things have happened in that time, but I want to start off with a few thoughts first. The reason for the change is the fact that many of the things that have happened in the past few months have given me cause to start thinking about different things.

I don’t claim to be a very introspective person. When I have a problem or an issue, it doesn’t usually take more then a few minutes to think things through and figure out what it is I want to do. I’m not sure if this is the right way to do things, but it has gotten me through for the past 27 (soon 28) years. However, here it has taken a little more time to think through a few different things.

So here are the few thoughts I want to share before I tell you more about my past few months:

1 – My life here in Jamaica has been pretty stressful, mostly from pressure I put on myself. I think it comes from a feeling I have that it is always more important to please other people before I please myself. It doesn’t matter how busy I already am, I always feel that I can squeeze in a little more time to help someone. And being here where my job is to help people in my community, it just gives me the excuse to try to work that much harder. The problem is, in a community of about 600 people, once people start getting comfortable with me and feel secure in asking me for help, the pressure I put on myself quickly turns from a small stream of work to overwhelming torrent. Two things I’ve learned from this: 1) I’ve learned how to spot the people that are just using me because they have nothing better to do and the ones who really need help and 2) sometimes its more important for me to take time for myself. I’ve learned that if I’m not having fun, I’m not doing a good job. Having fun means that sometimes I can say no to helping someone if I already have something to do, it means that I’m allowed to take it easy on a Wednesday if I’m really feeling stressed from working all weekend, and it means that getting away from my site on occasion is necessary to keep sane.

2 – There are some people that are just not worth trying to help. This point took a bit of time for me to wrap my head around and might surprise a few people, especially when I get into my reasoning for it, but it is the truth and it has really helped me.

In the past few months, I’ve committed a lot of time and effort to helping at the primary school in my community. If you’ve never seen a rural Jamaican school, it is something entirely different then an American school. What I consider common respect for teachers is virtually non-existent in most students. Rules with walking in and out of class, talking in class and non-school people on the school premises are, well, not there.

I’ve spent a lot of time spinning my wheels trying to help Grades 4 through 6 with subjects like literacy and computers. At first, I thought it was because they either didn’t trust me, didn’t understand me, or where really trying but just needed a little extra help. What I found out was that there comes a point when I put out the effort and it was up to them to respond. I noticed that the disrespect not only continued, but escalated. I had to quit…on 10 and 12 year olds... It’s hard to come to grips with quitting on a 10 or 12 year old kid, but I’ve realized that 10 or 12 is old enough to understand consequences. Maybe not understand life long consequences, but at least understand the consequence that if you don’t show respect, you won’t get respect. To understand that if you don’t study, you will fail. To understand that if you fail, you won’t move on. At least there are a few that are willing to work, and I have just put my efforts into them.

3 – The underlying cause for some issues are not always apparent, and efforts to correct the issue won’t do much if they don’t address the cause. There are a number of issues that I’ve come across here that just mystify me as to how people don’t recognize them and take action to correct them. I had a big long thing typed out for this section that I decided to just delete and make as simple as possible. (Though if you want to have a few drinks and talk about it, there are things I can talk about for hours.) I have seen problems with people trusting their own family members, young men and women unwilling to work or even learn a skill when it is offered to them, kids responding to anything but physical punishment, kids dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, etc. These are all problems that we have in abundance in America without a doubt, but I’ve never seen them so common and accepted as I have here.

In the end, what I’ve come to understand is a lot comes down to issues with families dynamics. Raising kids in families where there are not consistent parent figures is more damaging then any kind of physical injury. And the fact is, to find a traditional nuclear family in Jamaica, especially rural Jamaica, is the exception. I have come to appreciate the opportunity I had to grow up in a solid, cohesive family. Sure we had our issues (my siblings and I are still notorious for arguing and fighting with each other), but we were raised together and we’ll stay together.

4 – Give thanks and praise for what you have. This is something I learn a new appreciation for every day. When I see life here, I see all the advantages I have had that allowed me to achieve what I have. But at the same time, when I hear people here talk about how hard life is, I see that they don’t often appreciate advantages that they have. True, the road is horrible, but at least there is a road. True the electricity goes in and out a lot, but there is electricity. True the piped water is not always reliable, but there is piped water, and when there isn’t, there are clean springs within a 10-minute walk. True the farmers are struggling to make money, but their families are not struggling to find food to eat (at the moment there is more fruit on the trees then can possibly be eaten). Life is certainly not easy, but it is not that hard.

Alright, enough of my random thoughts, here is what has been going on in my life in the past few months. As I said previously, I have started spending a lot more time then I used to at the school. I have pretty much worked out a consistent schedule of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday at the school and occasional Fridays. Each day I have my scheduled time working with the basic school kids on Phonics and Grades 1 through 3 on literacy, math and computer skills (drawing in Paint and typing simple sentences). When I’m not with the kids, I’m either organizing the library or doing random things for the teachers like making posters, looking up information and typing up tests. Here is a picture of me and one of the basic school teachers working with the kids on Phonics:

I have a video of them trying to learn the letter “Y” sound that is pretty funny and I’ll see if I can load it later.

One other thing I’ve done at the school is help the principal with a mural on the school wall. For a while she had talked to me about the idea of painting a mural with “Welcome to Bellevue Primary School” with the school motto “Together We Light The Way Forward” and a symbol (hands cupping a flame). Finally, one Monday morning when I was busy on a poster or something, she came to me and told me that she bought the paint and talked to some guys in the community to come and help, they’d be here in a few minutes. Gee, glad I knew so that I could make sure everything was ready.

In the end, everything worked out pretty well. It took about 3 or 4 days to do the initial mural, with about 4 of the young guys in the community who don’t work and spend most of their days on the road walking up and down helping me paint. Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:

Things turned out pretty well and I even impressed myself with how it looked in the end. Not to mention the guys learned a bit about painting in terms of making your own stencils and how to transfer a small drawing on a paper to a larger drawing on the wall using a grid. The principal was so impressed she commissioned me to paint the national symbols on the wall as well. They turned out pretty well too. Their still a work in progress though.

My other main work success is starting a farmers group and building two produce storage sheds in the community. This is something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I got here last summer. There was a concrete platform on the side of the road up near the school that used to be a small shed used by the farmers to box banana a few years ago before the banana export market was shut down. The shed was destroyed during a storm and never rebuilt since it was a community structure and no group existed to take care of it. After about 6 months of waiting for the Minister of Parliament to give money to build it, I got tired. I was running one morning when I got the idea to try to get money through a SPA grant.

SPA is the Small Projects Assistance grant that is given by USAID through Peace Corps Volunteers. The limit on the money that we have is US $3,000. When I started looking into the project around December, I found that with that money, I could afford to build two sheds that are about 10ft wide x 16 feet long, built with wood and a zinc roof. I applied for the money in February and finally got the money at the end of April. So, now $3,000 of your tax money, plus a bit me for a few extra unseen costs, is in Bellevue, being used as farm produce storage sheds. These sheds have shelves to get things up and off the ground, tubs to wash the produce in, locks to keep the kids out at night, and proper construction with bolts and hurricane straps to hopefully keep the thing standing for a few years. Here are a few pictures:

Besides that, I’ve been busy with other things like computer training classes, helping high school and college kids with their homework, working on the water system, and a few other things not worth mentioning.

One very fun thing was that about 3 weeks ago my parents finally came for a visit. They came for about a week and it was great. I was in pretty desperate need of a break from work up in Bellevue and it was good to be able to show my parents around a bit. My parents were troopers getting on public transportation with no big complaints. We spent most of the time in Port Antonio, going to a few beaches and having some good dinners. We spent one night with my host family in Bellevue which was a lot of fun, playing interpreter because my parents were having trouble understanding my host family and my host family was having trouble understanding my parents. But the food was excellent and everyone really enjoyed meeting each other. The last day they were here we went to Kingston to see the Peace Corps office and for some shopping. All in all, it was a great time and not nearly as stressful as I’ve heard other volunteers say it is hosting family.

Now things are winding down for me. I have my COS (Close of Service) conference in little over a week, school finishes in early July, and most of my work is finished here. I’m looking forward to really taking it easy in July and August before I leave, learning to enjoy the rural Jamaican experience without the pressure of trying to get things done. I’ll still be attending community meetings and helping where I can, but my goal is to work myself out of my job and have community members pick up the work. We’ll see how much that actually happens.

In recent news – I don’t know if anyone back home has heard much about what is going on down here with all this Dudus Extradition case going on. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say on the matter – all I will say is it is pretty sad that a man is hiding behind innocent men, women and children to prevent being extradited. Too many people have died already. I just hope that things finish soon and we can start moving around without trouble again.

Anyways, it’s on to the next step after I’m finished here in Jamaica, which I have already sorted out, and a few people know about, but not many. But that is a whole other post unto itself. Look for that one in the next week or two.

Ever since moving to Bellevue at the beginning of last summer, I’ve wanted to make a trip to a place called Nanny Town Camp Site, though I’ve always been too busy with other things. The hike is usually a 3 day trip, or, if you’re stupid and in a rush like me, 2 days. If it wasn’t school it was, it was night classes, JSIF trips or PC meetings that had always kept me busy. Finally, during the last half of December, everything shut down and I decided that it was now or never. I had spoken to a community member who hunts wild hog in that area and is a trained guide about the trip and he agreed to take me back there. Unfortunately, he got a busy during the holidays and pushed the trip back until the 1st week in January, right when school was starting back up. Knowing that I wasn’t going to get another chance for a while, I decided to go for it, and I’m glad I did.First off, a little background about the location and my guide. Nanny Town is an important historic location that helped the Windward Maroons hide from and defend against the British who tried to overtake and enslave them. From my understanding, Nanny Town was eventually abandoned for another location a few miles to the west, near current day Charlestown, where the Maroon’s eventually signed their treaty with the British. However there is still a lot of history from Nanny Town and some ruins to see. Nanny Town is located far back in the Blue Mountains, at the base of some very steep sloped mountains.As I said earlier, my guide is a man who hunts wild hog back in that area whose name is Ulie (my best approximation of the spelling for his yard name). Ulie grew up in the town of Coopers Hill, which is further down the Rio Grande Valley, nearer to Port Antonio, but just as rural as Bellevue. Ulie’s father was a park ranger for the Blue and John Crow State Forrest, constantly hiking through the bush to monitor for people illegally cutting down trees, burning areas and growing marijuana. In that way, Ulie grew up living in the bush and learning where all the trails lead. Back in the 80’s Ulie helped out with a professor from UWI who was doing summer research trips to Nanny Town with students to do 2 month long archeological digs, so he has spent a fair amount of time in the area. Below is a picture of Ulie during one of our small stream crossings – I tried to get a better picture of the small water falls in the back, but that didn’t work out. So, Ulie and I had set to meet up on the road in Bellevue where the trail leads off into the bush at 7 on a Monday morning. After a quick breakfast of crackers and water and packing a bag that included a clean shirt and underwear, a toothbrush, some crackers and water and a camera, I managed to lock my shoes in my room while rushing out the door. Yes, I realize the only two things I actually needed that I didn’t bring were a knife and lighter, but Ulie said he was bringing these things and I knew me having a knife while stumbling through the bush would only lead to trouble. Either way, I got to the meeting spot a few minutes late and Ulie was waiting for me (what an un-Bellevue surprise that was).With a simple, “Ready?” “Yup” we were off. Almost immediately we turned off the trail I’m used to and started heading north and west instead of north and east. Shortly after starting, Ulie cut me a walking stick, or, as I called it, my bostaff. I have made skills with a bostaff as you will soon see. After about a ½ hour of easy hiking, we made our way down to the Guava River, which I attempted to cross by jumping across stones and promptly had my first of many falls. From there on, I decided to just walk across the river bottoms. What difference did it really make if my shoes were wet if, after a ½ hour of walking through the bush and brushing up against trees and bushes, my clothes were already soaking wet? After an hour we reached an area where an old abandoned community used to be. All that was left was a bunch of flat grassy areas with decorative plants and flowers around them and rusted out old 2” cast iron water lines. Ulie didn’t know the name of the abandoned district, but he did know all about the old water system that used to feed this abandoned community, another abandoned community called Johns Hall and Bellevue. It was a bit weird walking an hour from any road accessible by vehicle and seeing this and I can’t imagine how hard it must to live here – imagine going to town for groceries. I guess they were a bit more self-sufficient back then. Here is a picture of some of the views from this area:About an hour after passing this area, we came down to another river crossing and then to an area where someone raises cows in the bush. This was really annoying for two reasons. First, the cows tear up the trail pretty bad, making it a big muddy, slippery mess. Second, the cows attract tons of tics that then get all over me. Good thing Jamaica doesn’t have lime’s disease. After passing the cows, we started our hour and a half accent up the side of a steep mountain where this time the trail was torn up by wild hog instead of cows. At least the hogs don’t have ticks like the cows. This was actually one of the easy parts of the hike for me because hiking up hill mostly requires being fit, not much technical abilities or good hiking boots.After finally reaching the top, a place Ulie referred to as Gun Barrel, no story behind the name, we sat down for a short rest, a drink of water and some crackers. At this point Ulie also did something interesting. He took a small bottle of white rum and poured a little on the ground, then took some in his mouth and sprayed it around in the air and then muttered some words just saying we were passing through and asked for a good hike. He said this was an old tradition he learned from his father when passing through some areas to let the spirits know what was going on and keep them happy. I always see Jamaican men pouring the first sip of a beer or other drink on the ground, but the spraying and the mutterings was a first. I was certainly in support of making the spirits happy, especially with how the hike was about to go for me. Below is a section of trail near Gun Barrel – see if you can find the trail. After leaving Gun Barrel, Ulie said there were no more big hills, which turned out to be like a Jamaican telling you something is around the corner when it is about 3 miles away. Yes, there were no more hour and a half climbs, but there were plenty of ups and downs on the steep gullies and lose dirt and slippery mud. Also, there were plenty of wild hogs along the way that used the trails as their own playground, digging everything up and making a complete mess of the area. At some points there were some almost vertical mountain sides with loose dirt and gravel where the trail was no more than an inch wide. My first major non-river fall was in one of these areas where I slipped and fell on my back side, sliding about 10 feet down the side of the gully before getting caught up in some small trees. Unfortunately my walking stick went a bit further down – bostaff #1 gone. I told you I have skills. I crawled back up to the trail and Ulie cut me another stick. After a few more hours of rough hiking and a few minor falls, we came down to the Stoney River which is where Base Camp was. This was great for me because the trail really was flat finally and all I had to deal with were river crossings, which I managed not to fall on. A few hundred yards before reaching base camp, we came across a really cool looking small falls seen below. The falls was only about 3 feet or so, but the water at the bottom had an amazing bright blue color and the random red flowers on the opposite bank were really cool looking. Finally, after about 6 ½ hours of walking, we reached base camp:As I said earlier, Ulie and his brother and friends come back here every few weeks to hunt, so they keep up this camp with pots and pans and bedding, which made it a much easier hike then having to haul tents and sleeping bags. After reaching, Ulie got right to work, doing his rum ceremony, making a fire and getting some clean water while me, being the useful person I am, went down to the river to take a look around, swim around a little and take pictures. Granted, when I offered to help, Ulie never accepted. The river was nice and cool and had some cool small falls near the camp.Ulie heated up some really tasty Sunday-Mondays (left over rice and peas from Sunday) that he had carried with him and some tined Mackerel for a late lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon / evening hanging out in the camp around the fire and eventually made festivals for dinner. According to Ulie, they needed more sugar and corn meal, but I was just happy to be having festivals for the first time in about 9 months, especially out in the middle of the bush. Since there wasn’t much else to do, it was an early night to bed around 7:30 on the very comfortable (….) bed.Though I really have nothing to complain about since I didn’t have to build it myself, I didn’t have to carry a sleeping bag with me, and we kept dry from the pouring rain all night. It was an early start to the next morning, getting up a little after 6 to try to get started walking by 7. Unfortunately it took a little longer then planned to get the breakfast of boiled dumplings and tined corned beef ready.We finally hit the trail a little after 8 and we had a long day ahead of us. It would be and 1½ hours to Nanny Town and then trying to make it all the way back the Bellevue before dark. Our hike to Nanny Town was pretty uneventful, taking the River Road, crossing back and forth along the Stoney River most of the way. The last 20 minutes where a bit interesting when we had to basically hike down the side of the mountain on a “trail” that, in reality Ulie had cut for himself since it had been about 8 months since the last person had passed this way and it had all grown over.Finally we made it down to Nanny Town, and it was pretty obvious why they had chosen this location. They were protected on three sides by very steep mountains and could know well in advance when anyone was coming their way. There were three really cool things about Nanny Town. 1 – there was a 4 sided stone enclosure that is the only remaining structure in the area. Here is a picture of Ulie bushing it out.2 – There were two carved stone monument type things, the first Ulie said was done by the British soldiers after the camp had been abandoned by the Maroons and the second done obviously a bit more recently:

3 – There was an orange tree that had some delicious ripe oranges! I had 3 while at the camp and brought about 8 home with me! (Can you tell which one I liked the most?)

After about 45 minutes here and realizing that doing anything more would mean spending another night and missing my ultimately useless meetings in Porti the next day (a year and a half and I still haven’t realized that 75% of my meetings are useless…but there is always that chance…). So now it was a race to get back to Bellevue before dark. We left Nanny Town around 10:30 and Ulie decided to take the Mountain Road back to Base Camp, which was longer and harder then the River Road. Some how I managed to hold it together and made this portion of the hike without problem. Even after leaving from Base Camp and hiking the few hours it took to get to Gun Barrel I managed to do much better then I had the previous day, even though we had to hike through 2 hours of rain. The biggest problem was that we some how managed to find a lot of trees with maka, or what we would call prickers, then we did the first day, leading to a good number of cuts on my hands. It wasn’t until after we passed Gun Barrel that the fun really began. I had learned through my experience with our water system that uphill is easy for me, downhill is my nemesis, and I finally figured out why: my hiking shoes are just that, soft soled hiking shoes, not hard soled boots like the water boots all the farmers wear. These are crucial, especially when walking down the side of a mountain where the trail is complete mud from the wild hogs and recent rain. So here we are, coming down the mountain, with Ulie in front, constantly talking about all the wild hog tracks he sees and wishing he had brought his dogs or some rope for a trap and me coming crashing behind him, using my mad skills with two feet and a bostaff to fall into trees and bushes the whole way down. On the way, I managed to lose my second bostaff, which Ulie quickly replaced, and managed not to break any bones, just completely lose my pride.

It literally felt half the time that I was skiing down hill trying to turn this way and that way, grabbing onto trees and bushes to slow down and change direction. At one particularly scary moment I had the feeling I was on the bunny slope learning the wedge again, and was very scared I was about to do a face plant into a very steep gully. At another particularly painful moment at the bottom of the mountain, a maka managed to dig into my ear and spin my head all the way around, almost making me lose my balance and fall yet again. That was the one time that Ulie heard some very American curses during the trip.Once we reached the bottom, then it really turned into a foot race to reach Bellevue before dark. There were a few more falls in the last hour of the hike, but nothing like during the decent from Gun Barrel, and they were mostly because the trail was getting very dark under the dense vegetation with the setting sun. Ulie was gracious enough to give me a few minutes to try to clean up a little in the Guava River before the home stretch to Bellevue so it didn’t look like I had fallen quite so many times. By some miracle, we reached the Bellevue Road just as the sun set, and I had time, and just enough battery left in my camera, to take one last picture:

Walking down to my yard in the dark a little after 6, it started raining again, but I was still decently warm from the hike. As soon as I got back, my host family came out saying they were afraid I was lost in the bush somewhere and were getting ready to set out looking for me (apparently I didn’t make it clear enough that the original plan was for a 3 day hike). I was just thankful they had a plate of food for me! After cleaning up a bit, I finally started taking care of the ticks, trying to pick them off and squish them between my finger nails that are a bit too short. When my host sister and brother saw my futile efforts, they offered help and then spent the next half hour combing my arms, legs and back for ticks to kill. There’s nothing like a little communal grooming. (Does that count as an integration activity?)Now a few days after the fact, the only physical effects are a few scratches on my arms and legs, some annoying bug bites, and some toe issues (I hope I don’t lose the nails on my big toes….). Otherwise, it was a lot of fun and I would recommend it to anyone who is up for a rough hike, just buy a proper pair of boots first!

I know I'm posting this a little late, but I haven't been down from the Bellevue for a while. Either way, I stayed in Jamaica for my second Christmas, this time spending it with my host family in Bellevue. It was quite a different experience from last year when I spent it with other volunteers.

First off, in the weeks before Christmas here, most families do a thorough house cleaning similar to a Spring Cleaning back home. This was a pretty big thing at my house this year since a lot of construction has taken place and two of the rooms were not really furnished as yet. So, after two days of painting and scrubbing, my family put down linoleum, carpet and moved in a bunch of furniture along with cleaning out and re-arranging all the furniture in each of the other rooms of the house. Now we officially have a living room and each person has their own bedroom.

About 2 days before Christmas is when the real preparations began. My host father raises chickens throughout the year, and Christmas is a time when everyone places orders. In addition, his brother and sister down in Port Antonio bought a goat from a neighbor and asked my host father to butcher it and send it down. Of course, this all means that my host brothers have a lot of work to do. Since school was out and I didn't have a lot going on, I offered my help since they had to kill a goat and 27 chickens all in one day (while it was raining). While Rick and I were sharpening the knives and bringing the goat around back, Rick asked if I wanted to kill the goat. I was a bit hesitant, but then again, it's just a goat, not a cow or something big that could do any damage, and if I'm not willing to kill it, I shouldn't be willing to eat it. So, I said, "What the hell, there is a first for everything."

This is me "Grabbing the Goat by the horns" and taking care of business. The picture doesn't show it, but we are on the side of a gully, in the rain and mud and I almost slipped and cut my own throat, but all turned out well, except for the goat of course. Before I killed him, I thanked the goat, saying "Thanks Mr. Goat for making such a good soup and tasting so good with curry." I thought it was appropriate. I can't say it was the best job, but it worked, and thanks to Rick for helping and butchering him after we were done.

After we finished with the goat, it was time to take care of the chickens. I'm not real fast at plucking the chickens, so it was my job to chase them around the coup, put them upside-down in the baskets and cut off their heads. At least I'm good enough now so that I don't get blood all over my clothes like the first time I tired a few months ago. By the end we had Rick, Tallest, Sammy and myself working on the chickens with occasional help from Lebert (mostly giving us rum to try to warm up - it was pretty cold with the rain). It was a long day of cutting, plucking and bagging, but at least it made for some tasty meals.

Next up was Grand Market on Christmas Eve. Grand Market is a day and night affair where the shops all stay open until 11 or midnight on Christmas Eve and have pretty good deals and people are out on the streets walking and partying. Josh (another PCV) took a bunch of pictures, so check those to see what it was like. It is pretty amazing to see so many people out on the road - certainly not something you see every day. I came down with my host family around 6 PM, met up with Josh, Jesse and Molly in Port Antonio and brought them back up to Bellevue around 1 or 2 AM.

Next was Christmas Day - a relaxing day where most people just hand around their yards, eating, drinking and occasionally going to see other friends and family at their yards. After waking up and having breakfast, I took Josh, Jesse and Molly for a bit of a walk around showing them the sites around Bellevue. Here is a picture of me on my roof showing them some of the sites.Also - here is a cool picture of my host families house from the top of the hill coming down that Josh took:(Josh really can take some crazy pictures)

We also had Tallest and his baby mother (yes - that is a technical term here) come by the house for a while with Tallest's little sister Samoya. We took a few family pictures that I printed out and gave to Lebert for his birthday on January 1st. Here is one of them:

From left to right it is Lebert, his son Sammy, Omar, Julie, Rick and Tallest (cousins of the family but I pretty much consider them brothers), Tallests baby mother Rochelle with their baby Rihanaa, Samoya in front and then me.

The rest of the week between Christmas and New Years was pretty low key. A few community parties at night, some grave cleanings during the day (which is a party in itself) and a lot of time to relax and read. I think I've read about 4 books in two weeks. New Years was another small community party and then January 1st was Lebert's birthday, which had a bunch of people stopping by to give him well wishes and have a few drinks. I gave him the picture in a frame and a bottle of whiskey - he seemed to enjoy it. I know I certainly enjoyed a small break from the rum.

That was about it - now it's time to get started into a new year and get some work done. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and have a healthy and prosperous new year and new decade!

Public transportation in Jamaica is an interesting beast. Normally, it is hot, crowded, loud and fairly dangerous. I swear listening to Celine Dion at full blast while sitting in 100 degree heat smalled up to the point where it feels like your ribs are going to break is a form of torture. But, since we are only allowed bicycles, we have to depend on public to get any significant distance. While I have experienced much crazier happenings on busses and in taxis before, I thought this one was fairly amusing and I haven't stopped laughing about it.

Yesterday I was on a bus from Kingston coming back to Port Antonio, reading my book and minding my own business in relative comfort (as comfortable as you can be when you're sharing one seat with another man) when I finally realized what was playing on the radio. No, it wasn't the Dancehall, Reggae or Hip Hop, and it wasn't the Celine Dion or random Country song that comes on, it was OPERA! After a long day of traveling 5 1/2 hours to get to Kingston for about 2 hours worth of meetings to be told that everyone will taking off from now until after the new year (which I already knew), listening to a few minutes of opera music on a bus hurtling around corners and narrowly missing other vehicles on the Junction Road really made my day. The best part was the Jamaican guy next to me humming along to the music. After the opera song was over, it went back to dancehall (I think it was "Ride it like a 10 speed bicycle" - a pretty hilarious song), but it was a few moments of Zen.

That's about it for now. I'll try to come up with a better post before Christmas to update everyone on my recent happenings with my trip home and what's going on now.

For those looking at this in facebook, I'll upload the pictures seperately. Over the past few months, I’ve started to understand how hard life can be without easy access to water. Bellevue is supposed to get an average of over 200 inches of rain each year, but for the past three months, we have hardly had more than an inch. There are some springs in the community that have dried up for the first time that most of the old timers can remember. The community started having problems with our water supply in the beginning of the summer and the last time we had water in our pipes was some time in early August. Ever since then, my host family has been depending on the water in our two 400 gallon tanks, which lasted a whole week thanks to the guys mixing cement for the ongoing construction at the house, and carrying water from the spring.

Here is a pictuer of the spring to the left. Its not the best, but it is dark and my camera is not the best. I do have to admit that it hasn’t been too tough for me mostly because of the preferential treatment my host family shows me. They never ask me to carry water up from the spring, I just try to when ever I can because I feel that I should try to pull my weight as much as possible. I especially felt that it was my responsibility to carry water when it came to needing water for my garden. After a few weeks of dry weather, I noticed that my tomato plants were starting to die so I tried to make at least one trip with a 5 gallon water jug to carry them. The spring nearest to our house is less then a ¼ mile away, which is really close compared to some people, but the only problem that the spring is a ¼ mile down the side of the mountain. That means that when I carry the water, it’s a ¼ mile up a steep hill. Oh well, like I said, it could be a lot longer.

After the water in our tanks ran out, I have to admit that I went a week with, let’s just say, infrequent bathing. I finally got over myself and decided that bathing at the spring can’t be that bad, hell, I’ve been bathing outside under a standpipe for the past 4 months anyway, how bad can walking down to the spring really be. It was actually kind of nice, the spring is back into the bush a little so it is even more private then the standpipe in my host family’s yard. I was getting used to bathing down there and everything was going fine when I also decided that 3 weeks was long enough and I really had to do some wash. I mentioned it to my host sister who happened to be talking on the phone with my host mother who is on a work program in America. Next thing I know I’m on the phone with my host mother, who I still haven’t met face to face, getting yelled at that “You shouldn’t be going to the spring at all! You should get someone to carry water for you! Bla bla bla.” All I could do was just say “Yes mam” and wait for the verbal assault to be over. When I woke up the next morning around 7 to go down to the spring, my host brother Rick was coming down from his last trip to catch water, filling two 50 gallon drums for the “family to use.” I can’t say I was disappointed that I didn’t have to do my wash at the spring, but the special treatment is a bit annoying at times. Would it really have been that hard for Rick to let me help him carry some water?

This was going to be the end of my story dealing with the water until about 3 days ago when rainy season finally started. The two pictures to the left shows clouds coming over the John Crown Mountains into the Rio Grande Valley with my house in the bottom of the pictures (its gong to rain soon...) It is pretty amazing, after 3 months of pure sun shine with hardly any clouds and maybe an inch of rain, it has been pure clouds and rain for the past 3 days with maybe 4 inches of rain or more. Now that we have enough water, we’re having problems with the light. It has been on and off since it started raining, luckily today the light came back on this afternoon and has stayed on since. I guess we’re now settling in for the official “Rainy Season” and I’ll finally experience what it is like to live in a place that gets over 200 inches of rain. I’m sure I’ll be singing “Rain, rain, go away” soon enough.

In other news, besides the occasional annoyance of special treatment by my host family, everything is going really well with them. Everyone is healthy and happy, which is a good thing. I’ve finally started to get brave enough to try some recipes from home with my host family. My first attempt was with pancakes, using a recipe from the PC Jamaica cookbook making the batter from scratch. I started with this one because it is pretty simple and Jamaicans have a lot of flour recipes already, so I figured it would fit well. It went ok, except I don’t have actual measuring utensils at my host families house, so it was all estimation and I didn’t add enough baking powder, so they were too flat and doughy. My host family seemed to still enjoy them enough and even have cooked them on their own a few times since then. My second attempt was making spaghetti. I was unsure on this one because Jamaicans don’t eat a lot of beef or meet without bones and they don’t eat a lot of stuff in tomato sauce. To my surprise, it went very well, and the 2 lbs. of beef along with a bunch of vegetables and 2 lb of pasta was completely finished off by the end of the night. Looks like I’ll have to start that one again. My next try will be with pizza, which will be this weekend. Again, I’m a little weary because Jamaicans don’t eat a lot of cheese, especially mozzarella, so we’ll see how it goes. As you can see, I’ve been thinking a lot about Italian food lately…..all I want is a big plate of beefy, cheesy, tomatoy goodness.

Enough about food before I drool all over my keyboard. School (the picture to the left) has started up and Omar, my 5 year old host brother, has started Grade 1. He is pretty much a terror, but our school has a really good Grade 1 teacher who is able to manage him and the rest of the class pretty well. The problem for me is when I’m left alone with them, or any other class for that matter. I remember not taking substitute teachers too seriously when I was in school, but completely disregarding them and running around beating each other up is another thing entirely. Today, the Grade 1 teacher had to leave early because the principal wanted her to attend a training seminar, so she asked me to read a story to the class and do some exercises with them. As soon as she got in the taxi and drove off, the kids ran to the door to see her go, then turned to each other and literally started beating on each other. I did what I could and got 2 or 3 of them to concentrate on their work, but the others only wanted me to chase them around or hide under desks, so I tried to ignore them and work with the ones that were responding to me. Finally one of their mothers who works in the canteen came in and whipped the rest of them into shape (amazing how it really is a motherly figure they all respond to). After that, the principal just put the Grade 1 in the same class with Grades 2 & 3, which made them start to cry because the Grade 2 kids can beat them up and the Grade 2 & 3 teacher uses the belt to keep order in her classroom.

Instead of reading to the Grade 1 class, I ended up taking the Grade 6 to the library and getting them started on checking out books. Its amazing, a few weeks ago we had a group from the National Library Service come up and help revamp our school library, taking it from an unorganized closet with books in it to an actual library with fiction, non-fiction, reference and West Indian sections and posters and other colorful signs (See two pictures to the left). I’m even working on an alphabet chart with Winney the Poo and Dora the Explorer on it (the picture to the lft). I knew all that copying of cartoons from magazines when I was a kid would come in handy some day. I’ve even been commissioned by some of the teachers to do some more drawings for their classrooms. Not exactly saving the world, but at least it might brighten a wall in a classroom and help a kid actually pay attention to a lesson, lord knows that is hard enough as it is.

That is about it for anything I consider interested. The water system in my community is an ongoing project. Hopefully I’ll have something to report next month if we get some grant money to hook up a better spring onto the system. Yeay, hauling concrete, sand and metal pipes 2½ miles back into the bush! Can’t wait! Anyways, like I said, that is about it for now. Below are just some random pictures.

The ongoing construction at my yard. They will soon take down what remains of the board house to build 3 additional rooms on this side.

Our new puppy out our yard, his name is Zeekes. He's fun except for when I wake up at 5 to run and he attacks my shoes while I'm trying to tie them.

Sammy, my host brother, holding his nephew, Omar, also my host brother

Julie, my host sister and Omar's mother. I usually just call her my host mother since she does all the cooking and treats me like a son, even though I'm older then her.

A view from the Bellevue School looking down towards Port Antonio. Its 6 AM and you can still see the couds in the valley from last nights rain.

I apologize ahead of time - these pictures loaded in the wrong order - I'll have to work on that for next time.

This is the next spring that runs better during the dry season. We are going to try to make a small dam and run about 400 m of pipe to connect to the existing system. Hopefully this will happen some time in the next year.

This is the dam used for our community water system. It works well, except that during the summer when it doesn’t rain often, the spring runs low and doesn’t flow enough to fill the middle chamber where the outlet pipe is.

This is my 5 year old host brother, Omar. It is almost impossible to get a picture of him standing still because he is always running around getting himself into trouble somewhere.

This is the view from the side of my house (a window for my room is in the back left of the pictures). You can see the Valley between the John Crow and Blue Mountains where the communities of Ginger House, Comfort Castle and Millbank are. You can see all the weather coming this way when the clouds spill over the top of the John Crow Mountains and head our way.

This is the front of my host family’s house. As with most houses, it’s a construction in progress. They are currently taking down the old board house and putting up block and steel, one room at a time.

This is the view from the front of my host family’s house. You can see the coffee trees in the foreground and a few banana trees that my host father has and again you can see the Rio Grande and the Caribbean Sea in the distance. I get to see this every day, which is pretty sweet (also the reason Bellevue has it’s name).

View from “Look Out” about ½ the way between Bellevue and the dam for the water system. My house is the one in the middle of the picture, the school I teach at is the big roof to the left of it. The river is the Rio Grande and in the distance you can see part of the Port Antonio Harbor and the Caribbean Sea.

Tuesday, July 20, 2009 So far, life in Bellevue is going well. When I first got here, school was still in session, so I was teaching a few days a week and spent the other days helping out with maintenance of the water system. Since the end of June, I’ve kept busy most days with the water system and also trying to coordinate with some Ministry of Health persons in Port Antonio to get a few various projects running up here in Bellevue. Due to the really bad road conditions, the MOH does not have a strong presence in the community. The closest operational health clinic is only about 10 miles away in Fellowship, which is the first community in the Valley up from Port Antonio. Unfortunately this 10 miles takes over 45 minutes to drive due to the condition of the road, and this is only once you catch a taxi, which can take 2 or 3 hours. Since the beginning of July, I have started a computer training class for interested community members on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It’s run out of the school library, where we have two working computers that I am able to teach 4 students at a time. We don’t have a blackboard in the library so, with advice from another volunteer, I was able to jerry-rig a white board with some cardboard, white paper, paperclips and plastic report covers that I duct tape to the wall during class. It works great! Hopefully I’ll get a picture of it for next time. My students are mostly female and range in age from teenagers to probably mid thirties. I look forward to continuing this through the rest of the summer and then holding it another 1 or 2 times in the next year before I leave. Part of my time recently has also been spent working on the community water system. The system took about 6 years to build with the help of a few former volunteers and has been actually running since about November or December last year. Unfortunately, after all the work that went into building the system, there was no strong, organized group running it in a transparent manor. So far, we have organized a new Water Committee, brought new persons into the system, started holding regular meetings and started to set rules and regulations. It’s a long process and will take more then the remaining year that I have, but I am hopeful that things will work out. Just today we had a Community Work Day where 8 males and 5 females went up to the water lines to clear the bush that has overgrown the pipes. I wish I had some pictures of the work we did, cutting incredibly thick vegetation on steep slopes where there are 200 feet drops to the valley below. All total, we cleared about a mile of bush, which is pretty good. I think I showed some of the guys that I can manage a machete and walking along some rough areas. My hands and arms are all scratched up and I think I lost about 10 pounds from sweating, but I enjoyed the day. Besides all the day-to-day activities, the summer time is a great place here. The best part is that everything is coming ripe now. Mangoes are all over the place, bread fruit and ackee are starting to come in, avocado will soon be in season. There are occasional jack fruits still on the trees. My host father hasn’t been able to sell all of his banana in the market so we are getting a lot of ripe banana. The vegetable garden I started with my host family is doing well and soon we will have all the carrots, callaloo, pumpkin and corn that we can eat. We also have okra, scotch bonnet pepper, sweet pepper, lettuce and tomato that are starting to do well. Unfortunately the bugs are attacking the tomato so I have to sort something out with that. The past two Saturdays I’ve had the chance to go to Port Antonio to hang out with some volunteers at some of the beaches around Port Antonio, which is a welcome break from the summer heat. That is about it for now. I’m planning a trip home towards the end of October till mid November (I probably won’t be home for Thanksgiving). Hope to see some people then.

It was good having a cup of coffee and a piece of pecan pie for breakfast with my grandfather the other morning.  For me, it was my first cup of coffee in a few months and my first taste of Grandma’s baking in over a year.  For my grandfather, it was one of the first things he had eaten in about a week.  We never have been accused of being crazy about health foods.   A few days ago in Jamaica I got one of those calls.  I was woken up at 5:30 in the morning by a phone call from my mom saying that things were not going well with Grandpa, how soon could I get there?  By the time I had contacted the Peace Corps office, sorted things out in Bellevue and packed a bag, I missed the last morning taxi down to Port Antonio.  I walked the three miles down to the cross roads at the Alligator Bridge hoping to get a taxi from the other side of the valley, but still had to wait three hours for the next taxi.   Fortunately I was able to make it to Kingston before the end of the day and arranged a flight for the next morning, sorted things out with Peace Corps and got a place to stay for the night.  My flight had no delays for the first time in a long time and I was able to meet my dad at the Philly Airport old school style with no cell phones.  A few hours drive later and I was at my grandparent’s place with the rest of my family for the first time since our dinner last summer in Philly.  It felt good, though it would have been nice under better circumstances.   Over the next few days, with no real explanation of how or why, my grandfather seemed to get better.  He felt so good in fact that he decided to get on the tractor and mow the lawn, refusing to let any of us do it for him.  I did have to put my foot down when my grandmother asked me to start the weed whacker for her so that she could finish the lawn.  There is something about an 85 year old, 110-pound lady walking around the yard with a weed whacker while her 26 year old grandson watches that just doesn’t seem right to me.    When I left yesterday, Grandpa was back to normal, eating his dinner of corned beef, cabbage and potatoes with a small side of creamed spinach and broccoli for “health” and complaining that he couldn’t understand what took our family so long to pack up and leave.  Now that my mind is free to wonder, it’s starting to feel a little weird being back.  The first time I got behind the wheel to drive, I had to ask my sister if I was driving on the right side of the road and I have a fear/guilt feeling of going into a grocery store among a few other things.  No offense to my family or friends, but I’d rather be back in Jamaica right now and deal with these things in a few months when I have a planned trip home. 

I’ve been in Bellevue for a little less then two weeks now and I’m enjoying myself so far.  I would like to think that I’ve been here long enough and had enough different sites to know when I have found a good place, and I think I have.  Bellevue is a small rural community of about 600 people in the mountains about 15 miles south of Port Antonio.  If you don’t mind smalling up in a taxi for about an hour on really bad roads, the people are nice, the food is good and the views are amazing.  From my house, I can see down the Rio Grande Valley all the way back to Port Antonio and the ocean.  I finally have batteries again, so I’ll take pictures when I get back to site and post them as soon as possible.  Like I said, the community members are really friendly.  One reason for this is that they had a volunteer living in the community a few years ago who everyone really liked, so they have a good view of volunteers already.  Another reason is that, with the community being so small, everyone knows everyone and most of them help each other with their farms and raising animals. The hardest part so far is trying to remember everyone’s name.  Walking down the street, I have been getting into a lot of conversations with people who know me and who I’ve met before, but can’t remember.  A few more months a few thousand more awkward conversations and I’m sure it will sort itself out.   My host family has been a real highlight so far.  They are farmers who have a sizable piece of land and grow yams, dasheene, bananas and coffee (yes, blue mountain coffee) along with some random fruit trees like papaya, mango and pair (avocado).  They also raise goats and chickens.  I’ve already seen my first goat butchered and will be seeing the first round of chickens go next week.  Also, in a few weeks, one of my host brothers will have a birthday and said he wants to butcher a hog, definitely looking forward to some nice fresh pork.  I’ve enjoyed eating with the family and learning more about real Jamaican cooking.  There is never a shortage of yams and dumplings at dinner.    As for work, it has been the typical Peace Corps experience of “easing” into the process.  I’ve been able to get involved with the maintenance of the community water supply system, which is a pretty big task, trying to maintain a few miles of pipe through some rough terrain.  In addition, the principal at the school has been enthusiastic about letting me help with literacy and computer lessons.  It is just beginning now, but I’m looking forward to getting more involved with the school.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to all the frustrations that volunteers have in schools, but it is better then commuting into Kingston on a daily basis.   So that is about it for my first two weeks.  Can’t wait to get back to site.

I never thought that I could be so busy when I’m not really doing much. For the past few weeks, I have not been doing too much in terms of work because I am in the process of moving again….for the last time!!! All I’ve really done is help to put together some group grant applications totaling about $5 million Jamaican (a little over $50,000 US) for projects for other volunteers and typed up a disaster plan for the basic school up the street from where I currently live. The best part about doing work at the basic school was going out and spending time in the school with about 20 little kids who are 3 years old and dressed up in school uniforms, just about the cutest thing you’d ever see.

Then, a little over a week ago, I hosted my first visitors with my sister Kelly and her boyfriend Tim came down for a week long visit. It was a great trip! I took them up to Portland Parish and showed them Port Antonio, San-San beach and parts of the Rio Grande Valley. The highlight of this part of the trip was definitely visiting Jesse and Josh in Comfort Castle with Kelly, Tim and Liza and hiking to the Dry River Water Fall. As we were hiking into the bush to get to the water fall, a group of about 15 Pikini (Patios for children) who looked like they had just finished a mud fight, ran past us and beat us to the river. We all spent a while swimming around and jumping off the rocks. As soon as I get some pictures from Liza I’ll be sure to post some.

After that, I took Kelly and Tim to the Riu, outside of Ochi to get them checked in for their last few days of vacation. By some miracle, the guy gave us three all-inclusive bracelets when Kelly had only signed up and paid for two. Kelly and Tim said it was cool for me to stay with them, so I spent three days eating tons of food, drinking tons of booze (a few too many White Russians as usual) and sleeping on the floor. Its certainly a different side of Jamaica being in a resort with all tourists, still trying to “process” it, to use the PC lingo.

All in all, it was a great trip and I really enjoyed myself. It was a lot of fun trying to teach Kelly and Tim some Patios and having them chat a little to the taxi drivers and bar tenders. They certainly were troopers handling the “smalling up” on public transportation so well. I had a few days after arriving on island before getting into a bus, they had about 30 minutes. I’m sure we’ll have even more fun the next time they come and visit…..

Now I’m back in Parottee trying to get packed up to move to Bellevue on Monday. The only problem was that I haven’t done laundry in about 3 weeks and yesterday I didn’t have power or water all day. Hopefully Lauryn, an awesome PCV that lives about a mile down the road and has a washing machine, will have power and water tomorrow or else I’m going to be spending my first day at my new site hand washing almost every piece of clothing I currently own.

One last note, my new house has one of the best views I’ve seen in Jamaica. It is out on the edge of a mountain that is looking down the Rio Grande Valley almost 15 miles to Port Antonio and the Caribbean Sea. Stop by if you want to see a great view, meet some cool people and experience some of the worst roads in Jamaica.

I was a bit of a nomad after graduating college: 4 states, 3 jobs, 2 grad schools and 1 car with a lot of mileage.  I guess it’s not a surprise that this lifestyle has followed me into the Peace Corps.  I am about to move my 3rd site: Black River.  It’s not my fault that one of the only places Peace Corps does not let me live is where JSIF’s only office is.  So, after about 8 months of commuting into Kingston more then I should, I’m moving out west to work with community groups on maintenance training and disaster preparation, or something like that… I’ve noticed that I’m trying to convince myself that this is the right thing to do, almost like the decision to join Peace Corps in the first place.  I know that my current work with JSIF that consists of writing training manuals and power point presentations is not very fulfilling and not exactly what I should be doing, but it has become comfortable.  I don’t struggle to find stuff to do on a day-to-day basis; I can always go to the office and find something to do or I can sign up for a field visit and check out a few sites.   Moving is going to require more self motivation to find projects and people to work with. I’m certainly going to miss the ease of living in Portmore.  I have two grocery stores in walking distance, fruit and vegetable stands nearby, a cool Rasta that sells fried fish and festivals on my way home from work and consistent water and electricity.  Most of all, I’m going to miss my host mothers: Ms. White and Ms. Susie!  These two ladies are great to me, they always keep me rolling in citrus and cane, they’re always up for a random conversation and they take down and fold my clothes if I’m not home during the day.  I’m certainly going to miss them. I’m also going to miss the easy access to the rest of the island and both Spanish Town and Kingston that living in Portmore gives.  This has been really usefull when traveling to help other volunteers at their sites.  I have multiple choices of transportation at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week.  Where I’m going to live is off the main road, has only a few taxis and, from what I hear, almost no travel on Sundays.  Oh well.  The whole idea is that I’m going to start working more directly with the communities that need help rather then working for JSIF to help them help communities.  It’s going to suck trying to gain the trust of new groups of people and learning a new part of the island, but it’s also going to be fun gaining the trust of new groups of people and learning a new part of the island.  It’s also going to be great being within walking distance of a swimming beach! I don’t know what I would do if I actually settled down a bit, but I don't think I have to worry about that happening for a while.

January 10, 2009 Ever since coming down here, I have had a pleasant break from engineering. The hardest thing I have had to do so far is climb up on a platform where a concrete slab roof was being prepared and help someone I work with check the rebar placement against the design. However, as I have started to get my bearings a little more, I have been getting more involved with things at my work and with other PCVs. One such thing is to get involved with a PC committee called the “Nuts and Bolts” committee, which is comprised of a group of engineers (civil, mechanical, chemical, and maybe a few others I can’t remember) and other technical volunteers who try to help other volunteers around the island with problems the find at their sites. At a meeting a few months ago, Bill and Gail, two volunteers living in the community of Castleton, St. Andrew, in the mountains along the Junction Road about half way between Kingston and Annotto Bay, mentioned that a section of their community was experiencing significant erosion problems with one of their gullies. Since I was the engineer who lived closest to the site, I was chosen to go and take a look at it. During my first site visit, I met with the volunteers and a few community members, took a general look at the community and the gully and thought that it didn’t look too large and expensive nor to technical and time consuming, perfect for a group of volunteers with no money and a two year time limit. Therefore I told the volunteers and the community members that I would “soon come” back to take some measurements of the gully so that we could get a better idea of what the cost and scope would actually be and really get to work. Well, in Jamaica, “soon come” can range from 5 minutes to never, so the fact that “soon come” in this case took about a month and a half (which included the holidays) was a pretty short amount of time. This time I returned with two other engineers (Tiffany and Scott – a cool married couple from Ohio), a 100 meter long tape measure and a slight case of sleep deprivation from the night before (you have to try to have fun any time PC puts you up in a hotel in Kingston for free). After meeting up with Bill, Gail and their daughter Jill who was visiting for a few days, and after Scott changed into a sweet pair of knee high water boots, we took the 5 minute bus ride down to the bridge that you had to walk over to get to the community. Did I mention that this community has no vehicle access? The only way to get there by walking over one of a few pedestrian bridges in the area. We had a brief meet and great with some volunteers and we quickly got to work. We all climbed into the gully and Scott and I worked the 300-foot tape, Tiffany worked the bamboo stick with foot markings on it for elevation, Gail recorded the chaos while Bill and Jill tried to get more information from the community members who came out to help. Unfortunately there had been a hard rain for a few hours during the morning before we started, so the gully was running with a few inches of water. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem except for the areas where there were steep 5 foot drops or the areas where there were 2 foot deep pools. At one point, I was standing on a rock after taking a measurement, talking to a community member and getting ready to wheel in the tape. I made a slight shift in my weight and my feet slipped out from under me. I then proceeded to slip three more times within a minute while standing on the same rock trying to wheel in the tape. I never claimed to be a quick learner. A few minutes later, about 20 meters up the gully, we came to an area where the gully is about 5 feet below the surrounding ground surface. This also happens to be the area where the gully has a few pools that are about 2 feet deep. Rather then getting out of the gully and walking around the pools to the other side, I figured that it would be a good idea to stay in the gully and try to shimmy over the pools. I had about 10 community members (mostly old ladies) and PCVs standing at the top, each telling me to go in different directions or do something differently, and I had my feet half way up one gully wall and my hands propped up on the other side, trying to hang onto the tape measure and not fall into the water all at the same time. It’s not too hard to guess what happened a few seconds later… The only pair of pants I had brought with me for the weekend were now soaked above the knees and my water proof hiking boats were now full of water. After hearing a bunch of “Me did tel yu fi do dis…” I got my last measurement and Scott kindly offered a hand and drug me up and out of the gully. After finishing with all of our measurements and talking with the community members, we all grabbed some chicken rice and peas from a cook shop and sat in the botanical gardens near by while the sun dried us out a bit (yes, it is January and it is still in the 80’s during the day here). Not a bad way to get back into “engineering.”

December 6, 2008

At 4:00 am, I woke up to the sound of my phone beeping. The first thought was I hate morning swim practice. Then I remembered that the last morning practice I had was over four years ago back in Ithaca, which seems like a world away now. I picked up my head and remembered that I was in Negril, Jamaica and it was time to get up and get ready to run a half marathon…Great, why do I always put myself through this kind of stuff… was the watered down version of the next few thoughts that went through my mind.

Slowly dragging myself out of bed, I immediately started to regret the three plates of pasta, bread and fruit that I had eaten the night before at the free dinner. But tell me, how was a PCV, living off of a steady diet of mac and cheese (the fake stuff), veggie mince and rice supposed to turn away from the first site of real pasta in almost 6 months? Oh well, that is why I have gotten up so many mornings over the past few months at 5 am, so that I’m ready for this early stuff, right? What is an extra few pounds of pasta in my stomach?

After washing up and a few handfuls of dry cereal, I came back into the bedroom of the house I was staying at and saw my girlfriend, Liza, still in bed…even more motivation to get dressed and go run 13 miles. I paid my money, got my free tee shirt and ate my free dinner, I might as well drink the free water and Gatorade along the course too. I put on my red Cornell running shorts that I have been using ever since my freshman year and my tank top that Liza and another PCV, Tami, helped me decorate the day before. As I start putting my shoes on, Liza sits up and takes a picture, saying that she wants to document the occasion. Great, that’s all I want are pictures at 4:30 in the morning.

Now it’s off to the race. As I step outside for the first time, I’m a little shocked by how cold it is. I have gotten used to Portmore where, even at 5 am, it isn’t much below 75 or 70 at the lowest. Here, it’s probably in the low 60’s. I remember that it is December and I’m walking outside in shorts and a tank top at 4:30 in the morning…just try doing that back in Philly and see how far you make it. I walk the mile or so to the town square where the busses are picking up the runners and volunteers and taking them to the start and water stations. As I run to get on the last bus, I start to here a few laughs after I passed by some people standing on the side of the road.

When I get to the start line, the sky is dark but the organizers have put a whole line of tiki torches along the side of the road to light the first hundred meters or so of the race. A steel drum band is playing in front of a nearby resort and a whole group of runners are getting themselves ready on the road. Among the crowed, I find Scott, a PCV who is running the 10K race and a few other PCVs who are volunteering at the water stations and finish line. I do a few quick stretches, jump up and down a few times, and wait for things to start, hoping that my knee doesn’t start acting up on me. Again, I hear people behind me laughing a little bit.

There is a very short speech and then, at 5:15 am on the dot, the starting beep goes off. Wow, this is the first non-“Soon Come” thing I have experienced in Jamaica. I was really expecting to stand here until 5:30 or 5:45 before taking off. At least we will be able to run most of the race before the sun fully rises and heats the place up.

The race goes by quickly and without any incident, which is always good for these types of things. I run the race as I like to. Start out in the middle of the pack and slowly work my way up through the crowd so that I am continually passing other runners. I know it is a bit cruel to the other runners, but it motivates me to run faster to pass other runners and feeling like they are trying to chase me down after I do it. It is funny though, after passing some people, I hear laughter rather than the usual mumbled curses.

The best part is the fact that the water stations are every mile and, at most of the water stations, there is at least one PCV that I recognized and cheered me along. The other really good part of the race is at the finish line, a guy with a machete is chopping coconuts so that all of the runners can have some fresh coconut water after we finish. Nothing like drinking coconut water straight out of the coconut! The stuff really is better than Gatorade in helping to re-hydrate you.

While I am drinking my coconut water, tired and a bit dazed, I hear a group of people standing behind me laughing and yelling, “Rice and Peas! Rice and Peas! Can we have a picture?” I turned around and walked to them. I held my coconut in one hand, a banana in another, and gave them the best smile possible after running 13 miles. “No, turn around, we don’t want a picture of you, we want a picture of the back of your shirt!”

November 27, 2008

Today was the first time that I have spent Thanksgiving away from my family. Usually we I go to my parents or my grandparents house with the rest of my family and we eat, drink, argue and do the typical family thing for a few days. This year both my twin sister Kelly and I were unable to make it home (Kelly living in Chicago and starting to settle in out there). It was nice today when I was able to call home and talk to everyone in my family and hear that they were all enjoying their Thanksgivings.

The weirdest thing to me is how normal today feels to me. I’m not sure if it is because I am still a little shell shocked by things even after four months or the fact that the weather still feels like the middle of summer or maybe not being around Americans who are talking about Thanksgiving. What ever it is, it doesn’t even really feel like I’m missing out on Thanksgiving this year because it doesn’t feel like it is Thanksgiving to me.

When I woke up this morning for my run (to the sounds Browny, one of the dogs in my yard, barking continuously from 4:30 to 5 AM), one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was that it was Thanksgiving and I needed to call home. After I finished my run, ate breakfast, did laundry and cleaned up around my apartment, I had to remind myself again that it was Thanksgiving and that I needed to call home. I then saw the stick of sugar cane leaning against my fridge that Ms. White, my host mother, gave me this past weekend that I have been meaning to cut. While I was out on my veranda cutting the skin off and chopping the cane into pieces, I started to look around:

This is a picture from my rooftop looking north towards the mountains.

This is the view from my veranda looking west with the Cumberland High School in the distance

I know you can’t tell by the pictures, but they were taken at about 9 in the morning and it already in the upper 80’s and shaping up to be another hot day in Portmore. What is sad is that this is winter when it is as cool as it gets, and I’m still sweating…oh well, things could be worse.

After finishing with the cane, I had a chance to call my parents. They were doing well, at home preparing food and getting a small construction project around the house ready for the family members that were about to show up. This year, the project was to replace the door from the kitchen out to the deck. This is pretty minor to the Thanksgiving back when I was in college where they decided to replace the linoleum floor in the kitchen with tile during Thanksgiving. That was a fun time, getting a hammer rather than a handshake when I showed up the night before Thanksgiving and watching my mom trying to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with a kitchen floor that was torn up.

I was finally picked up by a co-worker at JSIF around 11 and we went up to a school in a town called Christiana, a place way up in the mountains in Manchester Parish where the views are amazing and the air is cool. We had a short meeting with the principal, some teachers and some parents about the reconstruction of the school and a nearby roadway and then it was back on the road to go home. What a hard day of work…

After getting home, it was time to warm up a left over bowl of red pea soup that I had cooked last weekend and a few phone calls to my family back home to see how things were going. It was really nice hearing from everyone, but like I said earlier, it really just didn’t feel like thanksgiving to me. I think it is a good thing because I wasn’t getting really home sick like a few of the other volunteers I know, which is good for the “mental stability” that can be an issue down here.

I guess what I am trying to say in the end is that I do miss my family and wish I was there to spend the holidays with them, but I think I have reached to point where do not need to do so. I am ready to accept situations as they end up without getting upset if they don’t live up to unrealistic expectations. Maybe that is a lot of what my experience here has been a lot about. As much as I tried not to set expectations before coming down, it is impossible not to. When I heard PC, visions of mud huts half-way around with a village of people excited to see me and work with me came to mind. Instead I got a nice house on a tropical island a few hours from the coast of America where there are a lot of very nice people but also a lot of people who are skeptical of my motives for wanting to do PC.

In conclusion, I am thankful for a lot of things and will certainly miss many of them in my short list: The health, support and love of my family, my friends (both in the States and here on the island), being an American who has this opportunity and last, but not least, chicken, rice and peas!

I have finally gotten around to posting some pictures of my travels in Jamaica over the past four months. Most of them are mine, some of them I have taken from other PCVs, but I have been at least been present for all of them. I am not a great photographer, but I have posted a link for another Volunteer who is, and he also happens to live in one of the most beautiful places on the island, so he has some great pictures.

Things have been going well for me lately. Just this past week I was finally able to start branching out and getting other work outside of my primary assignment of JSIF. The first project I started working on is a USAID project in Portland Cottage. The place is a very depressed area of the island that has little industry and, therefore, high crime. It also happens to be one of the lowest lying areas on the island, making it highly vulnerable to hurricanes. During Hurricane Dean last summer, the storm surge flooded almost the entire area (similar to what happened in New Orleans), luckily all of the residents had evacuated. Along with the flooding, the winds damaged many of the roofs on the houses. In one neighborhood of 93 homes, 92 roofs were either damaged or totally destroyed. As a result, USAID is repairing or replacing the roofs. Due to budgetary constraints (Yeay politics) they have asked peace corps to help with the construction inspection. Not very glamorous, but at least it keeps me busy and gets me contacts with USAID.

Other than that, I was finally able to make contact with the high school that is across the street from where I live, Cumberland High School. There was a PCV for the past two years helping out in the IT department, and that is where they want me to help out as well. They have asked me to help them create a web site. I have no clue how to do this, but it looks like I will be learning! They also mentioned helping with teaching literacy at night for adults in the area. I really hope this actually comes to fruition! Again, not that I have any idea how to teach literacy, but PC has a lot of material to help me start.

In non-work related things, how about that election? I know that the people who read this blog have a variety of political opinions, so I will try not to offend anyone. But I will admit that I voted for Obama. I had pretty much made this decision before my service after doing as much research as possible on the two candidates, so it wasn't one of those voting for the party things for me. It was very interesting seeing the election process from the Jamaican view though. Pretty much the entire island was supporting Obama. There were some Jamaicans I spoke with that had done there homework and could explain the reasons that they supported him over Obama. But, at the same time, there were many who had not done any research and liked him simply because he was black. To all of these people that I met, I did my best to explain that there was so much to my choice then that. Some of the understood, some of them had no interest in understanding.

Either way, the way I see it in the end is that our system is made of checks and balances and that, no matter who is the President, these checks and balances will not let the country stray off the course of progress. Some leaders will slow this progress, some will accelerate it. We just have to trust that our elected leaders can come together and continue to move our country in the right direction.

Regardless of your political choice, everyone has to admit that it was amazing to see our country take another step towards this progress in voting our first black president into office. I know that I had a moment of reflection last Tuesday night where I thought just how amazing this moment was when just 50 some years ago, there were laws that segregated the people of our country. Now we have our first black President that has run his campaign on the promise of unity. Let us hope that this progress continues.

That is about it for now. I'll try to do better with the pictures from now on, but please enjoy what is there now.

October 22, 2008

I have been trying to slow myself down and realize that I need to take pride in small accomplishments since I have been down here in Jamaica. Today, I think I finally made progress towards this. I am in Port Antonio for a few days trying to help a small community up in the mountains, Bellevue, finish construction of their community water system. This project has been going on for about six years and has had no progress in the last six months. After finally getting pressure from some members of the local government and some higher ups at JSIF, myself and a JSIF consultant, Nevil, were sent here to help the community finish the project.

We were initially supposed to meet the community members yesterday to go over the list of required materials, go to the bank to get money and then go to the hardware store to purchase the material. Unfortunately, this meeting fell through (not totally unexpected) and was rescheduled for 9 am this morning. This supposedly gave the community members plenty of time in the morning to make the hour long trip down from Bellevue to Porti. Luckily, this meeting happened except it started at 10:30 instead of 9, which is on time in Jamaica time.

A person would think that this meeting would be very simple: looking at the previously approved list of materials, making small adjustments for recent breakdowns, going to the bank and making the purchase…you would think. Instead, as soon as the meeting started, the community members started arguing that the list of materials was wrong and we had to go through each item (type of pipe, fittings, valves, hack saws and so on) and decide what was the actual amount they thought was needed. This new, more “accurate” list was made through a negotiation between the community members and Nevil who all had different opinions as to what was currently installed at the site. “I don’t think 3 fittings are enough, make it 6.” Either way, after about an hour, a finalized list of materials was agreed on and was submitted to the hardware store for pricing. The level of accuracy of this list is will be tested when construction starts next week.

Then came the negotiation on price with the owner of the hardware store. 90% of the prices were accepted without question. The other 10% took about 45 minutes to negotiate, resulting with Nevil calling his contact at his distributor in Kingston to get all of the pipes for about half the price. I’m still trying to figure out why this took 45 minutes, but I have stopped asking questions.

Next came the trip to the bank. Coming from the States, I thought this would be quick matter of 10 or 15 minutes without much hassle, so I stayed at the hardware store while the community members and Nevil went to the bank. After talking to the hardware store owner for over an hour and a half about his travels around the world as an employee for the cruise ship industry, they finally show back up and took another 30 minutes to pay for the material that they have already agreed on.

Now its about 2 in the afternoon and we’re all a bit hungry. We went around the corner to a small cook shop expecting that they would have some fried chicken or curried goat still on the stove. Nope. They had to cook up a new batch of chicken and goat for us, taking another hour. Finally, at about 3 the community members went off to finish some errands before heading back, myself and Nevil visited the Parish Council and made a few other stops on the way back to the Hotel.

I can’t explain why, but after spending an entire day just to purchase some material to finish a water line, I actually felt that something had been accomplished. Back home, this would have felt like an unproductive and a wasteful day. But here, it seems perfectly reasonable that it took all day just to purchase plumbing materials. We’ll see how this new definition of accomplishment holds during my service.

I finally went to my first professional football (soccer) game this past weekend, the Jamaica vs. Mexico World Cup qualifying match. What a game to see. After being defeated in the game at Mexico a few weeks ago, the Reggae Boyz were in a win or go home situation. After going up 1-0 early in the first half, the Jamaican team was able to shut down the Mexican team for the remainder of the game and win their first game, taking a big step towards advancing to the next qualifying round. This was just part of a fun, very non-Peace Corp type weekend.

After another Friday night similar to last week, I was up a little after 6 am to go to the local community pick-up football game. I’ve been going for the past few weeks and most of the guys have started to recognize me and gotten to know who I am. I do tend to stand out being the only white, non Jamaican person, so it is pretty easy for them. Most communities around the island have daily or weekly football games that the guys play in. Depending on the community and the age range, the quality of game can be pretty variable. This particular game is comprised mostly of men in their mid twenties to late thirties who have been playing pretty much all their lives and for at least a few years with each other. Needless to say, they are all pretty good and I have a tough time not falling flat on my face in front of them.

During the first game I went to, I was introduced to the group by my host mother’s son that plays and they all knew my name pretty much right away. But since that first game, as is typical in Jamaica, they have given many different nicknames, ranging from the typical “White-man” to some pretty inventive ones like “tourism” and my personal favorite “Senator McCain.” For the most part, these names aren’t meant as anything derogatory, its just part of Jamaican culture to be very upfront about appearances. If your fat, they call you “fata,” if your skinny, they call you “maga,” if you have a beard and dreds, they call you “rasta,” etc.

Another aspect of Jamaicans is that the entire island is obsessed with Obama. If Obama wins the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a national holiday here. I get asked very often about my political affiliation and whom I’m voting for. Come to think of it, I’ve been asked at each game about this stuff. And up until this point, I have always tried to remain some what neutral, saying I’m registered Democrat but haven’t put in my vote just yet just in case I would offend someone that might support McCain. In retrospect, this was retarded. If I didn’t expressly say that I was voting for Obama, then, by default, they figured I must be voting for McCain, and therefore earned the nickname “Senator McCain.” Imagine having one white guy running around in a football game with a bunch of Jamaicans and every time the ball came to me, they started yelling “Senator McCain!” it was pretty funny.

But, at the same time, I also got the impression that it wasn’t such a good thing seeing that none of them actually like McCain. So this past week when I got to the game, I was greeted with “Wagwan (What’s going on) Senator McCain?” At that point, I finally told them that just the day before I mailed in my absentee ballot and had voted for Obama. This then set off a discussion of why they like him for more than just the fact that he is black and all this other stuff which I just sat and listened to like usual. Then I started to notice the most amazing thing, from that point on, they actually started to refer to me by my actual name! I guess that’s all it took to get their respect. Either way, it was nice to finally not have to keep track of 10 different names while playing a game that I’m already at a disadvantage from not having played since I was in grade school.

After the game, I headed into Kingston to meet up with some other PCVs to take a trip to the Bob Marley museum and get ready for the football game. The museum is at the house that Marley lived at in a section of town called Liguanea, where he moved to once he became well known and started making money. Not to get too much into it, but I found it inspirational just to see how much this man had in terms of honor, respect and love from people world wide, yet also how simply he lived. While certainly nice, the house was no mansion. And it was also nice to really explore some of the meanings of his songs beyond the laid back, pot smoking stereo type that is often assigned to his music. He really did do so much to inform the world about the oppression and struggles he and other people like him were going through and at the same time putting that aside and spreading the idea of peace.

After that, it was off to the game. It was great walking into the national stadium and seeing a sea of black, green and gold with easily over 100 speakers spread around the track blasting dancehall music while the teams were warming up. We were able to get bleacher seats not to far up from the field near the midfield area, where we had a great view of the entire place. After the goal, the entire stadium erupted in cheers and the enthusiasm of the crowd never went down for the rest of the game.

Luckily, some of the other volunteers that came into the game were able to get some wrist bracelets that got them access to a section on the track right next to the field where Red Stripe was giving out free booze, hot dogs and cotton candy. Best of all, they were able to take these bracelets off and share the wealth. I was in the last group to go down to the Red Stripe area which near the end of the game. So while we taking full advantage of the free stuff, standing no more than 10 yards from the field, time expired and the Jamaicans won! The entire stadium erupted again and the air was filled with people throwing what ever beverage of choice happened to be in their hands. It was certainly something I never expected to experience during my time in Peace Corps, but I’m glad I did. Now lets see if they can beat Honduras on Wednesday and take another step towards to World Cup.

It's pretty amusing to me how "hard" things are down here, even though I'm not nearly as busy or stressed out as I was back home. Before I came into the Peace Corps, I was working a full time job that required 40+ hours of work a week, on average about an hour and fifteen minutes of commuting each way to get to work and taking night classes twice a week after work. I also managed to train for a marathon, travel a lot on weekends to see family and friends and hold down a decently active social life in Philly where I lived at the time. On top of this even, I was able to do a bit of reading for pleasure, averaging about a book a month or even a little more.

Coming into the Peace Corps, I figured that I would not be working nearly as much or nearly as hard, I wouldn't be taking night classes and I wouldn't have the disposable income to have such an active social life. Therefore, I figured that I would have plenty of time to do a lot of reading, catching up on a lot of books I have been meaning to read but haven't gotten around to. While most of this is true, the reading part certainly is not. I've now been here for 3 months and I've completed a total of 1 book. Its not that I don't have the time, its that I'm a lot more tired than I thought I would be. I'm not sure if it is the stress of still adjusting to the new culture and ways of doing things, trying to get used to the never ending heat or just plain laziness kicking in. All I know is that when I sit down to do a little reading, I might make it a total of 5 pages into a book or magazine before I pass out.

This last Friday was a great example. After a week of traveling over a lot of the island, I was in the office on Friday to sit in on a meeting and get a few things organized. Certainly not a tough day. In reality, I don't think I accomplished anything other than working out my travel schedule for next week, which should be considered an accomplishment seeing that it took about 2 hours of talking with 10 different people to get 4 trips planned. Anyways, I was able to leave work around 4 pm, watched the parade of the Jamaican Olympic track athletes in Kingston (the Jamaicans have not stopped going crazy for Bolt for a solid month now) and made my way home by about 5:30 pm. After having some leftovers for dinner on the veranda of my host families house, I figured I would try to relax and do some reading for a few hours, then have a drink or two at the bar nearby before going to bed around 10 pm or so. Nothing to stressful, just a relaxing Friday evening. Well, I sat down to do some reading and the next thing I knew I was waking up and it was 3 am on Saturday morning.

This is not a rare occurence. Almost every night during the week, I struggle to keep my eyes open much past 8:30 or 9. Oh well, I guess I'll soon adjust, or just get a lot of sleep that I have been missing out on for the past few years.

Since I’ve been here on the island, I have been getting accustomed to many different ways of doing things. I don’t know if it is that I have started adjusting more and things don’t surprise me as much now, or if it is the fact that I try not to dwell on things that aren’t important to the job at hand, but it wasn’t until last Friday was over that I realized how strange of a day it was compared to my normal days back in the states. The day started off well, sleeping in a little and skipping my normal 5am run and having a bowl of oats porridge for breakfast. The driver from JSIF picked me up a little after 8 and we took off for our site visit to a community called Bybrook, located in the mountains of Portland parish. We were going to inspect a water system that had been installed by the community with funding from JSIF to make sure that it was functioning and could be turned over to the community.

After spending about an hour getting through the Kingston traffic, we finally got on the Junction Road, which leads through the Blue Mountains from Kingston to Annotto Bay. It’s hard to describe the experience of driving on this road. It is a two lane road (for the most part) that runs along a valley with very steep cliffs that are easily more than a 100 feet in places with a lot of blind turns and a few scattered communities on the side. The entire time you can see rain forest on the mountain slopes along with bare patches where there has been a recent landslide. About two weeks ago I was on this road during a rain storm and almost got stuck behind a small landslide. When we came around the corner of one of the sharp bends, we saw rocks and soil completely blocking one lane of traffic and only partially blocking the other. The other passenger and I got out of the car while there were still a few small rocks coming down and threw the rocks that were only partially blocking the second lane over the cliff while the driver managed to squeeze by. Luckily, this past Friday there was no rain storm and no landslides to be concerned about.

We finally met up with our community contact person in a town called Buff Bay, which is on the coast, about 20 minutes east of Annotto Bay. On our drive back to Bybrook we took a turn off the main road onto a typical mountain road that I have become accustomed to driving on. In most places, these roads are only wide enough for one vehicle to drive on, the roads are in varying condition, usually with a lot of potholes making for a pretty slow, bumpy ride. When we reached the town, we picked up another local resident who was involved in the maintenance of the water system. I have gotten used to seeing people who live out in the bush carrying machetes and other knives, but they usually carry them in there hand because how sharp they keep them. He was actually wearing his knife in his pants, with no sheath. Another thing that struck me as strange was that it was only about 11am and Ian was smoking.

I figured that at this point we would get out of the car and start hiking up to the water source, which I had been told was a 45 minute hike up into the mountains. I was mistaken. We then turned off the small mountain road onto an even smaller road leading up into the mountains that I don’t think had more than an inch or two of extra room on some of the corners that, if we fell into, would have been a long, steep drop into the gully. The places of this road where there was asphalt, it couldn’t have been more than about a ½ inch thick. Other places had some potholes that were more than 6 inches deep. After driving on this road for about 10 minutes, we finally came to a point where the driver said he couldn’t go any further (which I would have said was about a ½ mile earlier).

The hike finally began. The hike to the water source was up hill for about 20 or 30 minutes in some pretty dense bush and next to some real steep gullies. The picture (admittedly not a great one) shows one view from the trail of the mountains accross the valley. It gives some idea of what the landscape and the bush is like.I just followed the maintenance guy as close as I could while he continued smoking and I was trying to inspect the water lines as we passed. It was tough keeping up with him, even though I, who consider myself in shape, was wearing my hiking boots and he was wearing a pair of boating shoes that probably had no traction left on them. On the hike up, the maintenance guy mentioned that he had already hiked up to the water source once today, walking not only the part of the hike that we were currently doing but also the part that we had driven up from the town. This guy was a machine.

We finally got to the catchment which is a four-foot high concrete dam that impounds water so that it can be piped down to a treatment shed and storage tank. The picture below shows the catchment and the maintenance guy getting ready to drain the water. Imagine hauling all that cement, rebar, piping and other suplies up this trail, I know why it took them two years to construct this thing. While at the catchment, the maintenance guy decided to remove the “silt” build up that was behind the dam. The “silt” was really all sand and gravel and there must have been close to 1,000 pounds behind that he dug out without any question or complaint. This would have worn me out and I would have been sweating buckets by the time I was done. All this work didn’t even seem to phase him.

After about an hour at the catchment, we hiked back down to the car, with the maintenace guy continuing to smoke entire time. While driving down to the treatment and storage tanks, we met a local farmer who offered some of his crops to us. The maintenance guy cut some sugar cane, a small bushel of plantains (large bananas), two bushels of bananas and a sack full of yellow yam and cho cho (similar to a potato). While he was digging up the cho cho, we heard a loud bang come from over by the treatment house and storage tank, which was weird since we were so far out in the bush. When we got down to the treatment house, we saw water gushing out from behind the door. After opening the door and letting the water drain out, we realized that after cleaning out the silt from the dam and unclogging the pipes, the water pressure down at the treatment house was so large that it blew the top off of the sand filter.

We left the maintenance guy at the treatment house and went to get a hack saw to cut the pipes and put a temporary patch on the system. By the time we got back, which was about 15 minutes, the maintenance guy was smoking again and cleaning up the storage compartment next to the treatment shed. I then tried to help in vain while he put a temporary patch on system so that he could fix the sand filter the next day.

After all of this, I was pretty well exhausted and hungry, and all I did was hike the trail and observe the walk. On the drive back, the JSIF driver stopped at a small shop on the side of the Junction Road and we had a cup of fish soup and a plate of fried chicken, rice and peas that I devoured. It was then that I realized how phenomenal Jamaican style rice and peas are and how I’m not sure what I would be doing without them. When I got home around 7pm, I managed to get enough energy to go to a bar a few blocks away and have a few beers. While sitting on the second floor of the bar, zoning out and staring into oblivion with maybe 2 other people in the entire place, a 9 year old boy started talking to me. It caught me a little off guard to see a 9 year old boy in a bar on a Friday night, but as I said before, I’m getting used to these things. Come to find out, this boy lives with his grandparents who live next door to the bar and work as cooks in the kitchen. As a result, the boy spends almost every night at the bar, talking to whoever comes in.

Finally, at around 10 pm, exhausted and ready for sleep, I made my way back home and passed out, getting ready for my Saturday morning football game with some of the local guys in the community. It was far from the most stressful day here, but it certainly sticks out as being unique to me.

Finally, after two months of training, we were finally sworn in as Volunteers last Thursday! 49 trainees of the 52 that showed up on island made it through the full two months. Now I have no more endless days of lectures, no more studying for tests on Peace Corps policy, and no more restrictions on traveling and staying somewhere over night.

In reality, I don’t have too much to complain about with the last week of training. PC put all the trainees up in a pretty nice hotel in Kingston which was set up as a bunch of smaller buildings on a pretty large compound. The rooms were comfortable and some even had kitchens, which made eating during the week a lot cheaper than going out every night (which we can’t really afford to do, especially with the prices in town). It was nice to finally take a shower and shave with hot water for the first time in a few months. The hotel even had a bar and a pool on site which allowed for some enjoyable nights and coffee to help wake up in the mornings.

The week in general was very relaxing. The only hard part was the final exam we had to pass in order to become volunteers. Talk about awkward, we had to sit down in front of a panel of six people and answer random questions about various PC policies, information regarding out assigned agencies, information about reports that we are required to fill out every few months and questions about Jamaican culture and Patios. The test was supposed to take about 30 minutes, but I just couldn’t talk that much about each topic, so I think mine only took about 20 minutes, including a lot of long, awkward pauses. I’m pretty sure that I answered every question wrong, but, just like most my tests in college, I got enough partial credit to pass. Other than that, there was only one day of lectures, a BBQ/pool party at a really nice apartment complex where most of the US Embassy workers live and a few late spent talking with the other trainees.

Finally, on Thursday morning, we all got dressed up in our jackets, shirts and ties (which will probably be the only time I where those things for the next 2 years) and went over to the Embassy to be sworn in by Ambassador. The Embassy itself was very impressive building to see (not to mention a little weird to actually see a bunch of other white people around) and we heard some good speeches from the Ambassador, the PC Country Director and the Jamaican Minister of Agriculture. The best speech, however, was one that one of our fellow trainees was required to give in Patios. It was hilarious to see him say “Big op tu di bassda!” (Give props to the Ambassador)

After the swearing in ceremony was over and we were all officially volunteers, we were supposed to have a few refreshments and then be taken back to our sites by our supervisors from the local agencies we are working with. However, due to the fact that Tropical Storm Gustav started to hit the island on Thursday morning and most businesses were shut down, only supervisors for 9 of the 49 trainees actually showed up. Therefore, the rest of us were loaded back onto the buses and taken back to the hotel to ride out the storm. Other than being let out to get groceries early Thursday afternoon, PC put us on lock down and did not let us leave the hotel for two days; not that we wanted to since the hotel had its own generator and water storage tanks. So while most of the rest of the island had no power and no water, we were enjoying watching movies on laptops and taking hot showers.

Other than the fact that it rained hard for two straight days, the winds were not very strong and there was limited damage around the island. The places worst hit were on the far eastern side of the island, in the parishes of St. Thomas and Portland (where I was originally posted in Port Antonio). One major bridge was cut in half and a few roads were blocked due to landslides. Most of the volunteers were finally sent back to site on Saturday except for those stationed in St. Thomas, Portland and a few other localized areas that had to spend an extra two days in the hotel before they were able to get back to their sites.

When I got back to my site there was no damage in the neighborhood, we had electricity but we had no water until late Sunday night. Fortunately, my host family had prepared by filling two large containers with about 150 gallons of water, so we never had to really go without anything.

The weirdest part about finally being done with training was that I was happy to finally be done with all the lectures and tests, however it a little scary finally being turned out on my own and PC basically saying that the next time I would have to see anyone would be in a few months when they have a large meeting in Kingston for all the volunteers. It finally hit that I would be a lot more on my own than I have been so far. Granted the fact that there is a PC support staff and there are a little under 100 volunteers around the island (two of which live a few blocks away from me) whom I’m sure I will be visiting throughout my service, but it is up to me to keep in touch, up to me to find out how to get around, and up to me get things done. It took a day or so (and a lot of sleep) to grasp this realization and come to terms with it.

The next big test comes next week when I no longer come into my agencies office on a daily basis and start setting my own schedule of traveling to job sites and trying to get work done at home. We’ll see how that works out.

I have finished about half of my training here in Jamaica to become a PC volunteer. The normal PC training program has the trainees kept in one location for the duration of training (2 months), with a few site visits to active volunteers in the field. It is not until the end of training that the volunteers find out what their assignment is and where it will be. However, here things are a little bit different. This is the second year they have tried a “Site Based Training” approach where we were given our assignments and our sites after only two weeks of training. So, after spending the first two weeks on a college campus in Kingston with the other 51 new trainees, we were all shipped off to different parts of the island to be introduced to our sites and our communities that we will be working on for the next two years.

Initially, I was assigned to live in the town of Port Antonio (Porti), which is located on the north-east coast of the island in Portland Parish. As a brief side note, I highly recommend visiting Porti if you come to Jamaica – it has great beaches and awesome hiking very close by. It is not very touristy and its pretty safe. The agency that I have been assigned to is the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) which is an organization that gets money from various international aid agencies and then use this money to construct needed infrastructure on a community level. Examples of the types of work they do are the water collection and distribution projects currently underway near Porti. There are two communities located in the mountains about 5 to 10 miles south of Porti that do not currently have running water. These communities depend on water trucks, nearby streams and small rainwater collection systems to get water. They then store this water in large tanks around their houses for use when needed. This water is un-treated and needs to be boiled if it is to be used for drinking or cooking. JSIF worked with these communities to construct water catchments (small man-made ponds) to collect water at springs in the mountains near the communities. The water is then piped to holding tanks in the communities where the water can be treated and stored for use. The water is then distributed from these tanks to the houses in these communities.

These projects are community run and community constructed. Various members of the communities form a board that is in charge of handling the money given to them by JSIF and is in charge of coordinating the necessary labor required to construct the project. These board members receive training from JSIF on how to perform these duties, however the board member are not paid for this work. Therefore, the role of the PCV is to act as a facilitator to make sure that these board members, who are busy with their full time work and family obligations, are doing what is necessary to get the job done, properly handling the money, and giving technical advice on how to interpret engineering designs that may be lacking in detail. In addition, it is also required that the PCV actually performs some work and trains the community members how to do various tasks that may be new or unfamiliar to them.

So, for the past two weeks, I have been traveling around Porti with the current PCV, seeing these sites, learning how to navigate the town and adjusting to a new host family. Unfortunately, JSIF realized that the current projects in the area around Porti are almost completed and will not be able to keep me busy for two full years. Therefore, at the end of the two weeks, I was transferred to a town called Portmore in St. Catharine Parish, which is located on the south coast, near the middle of the island, about 30 minutes west of Kingston. The types of projects I have been told that I will be working on are reconstruction projects for roadways, schools and health clinics around the Portmore area that were damaged during Hurricane Dean last year. I only briefly met my new host family on Saturday for about one hour when I dropped off my luggage at their house before I was required to travel back to Kingston for another week of training at the college campus.

It has been very interesting being back here on campus with the other trainees after being at site for two weeks. Each of the 52 trainees all had very different experiences, however there are a lot of the same feelings. Some people are living in very small, rural mountain communities where there nearest town is an hour drive on horrible roads and some are in urban areas where they can walk to downtown areas. Some are within walking distance of beaches (as I was in Porti) and some have awesome hiking trails and waterfalls very close by. Some people spent two weeks just trying to talk to people and trying to figure out what people were saying, others spent two weeks working in very structured job with a boss constantly telling them what to do. In general, everyone is a little shell shocked and trying to adjust to a culture that is very different from what we’re used to.

I’m sorry for not giving more detail about my specific situation at this point, but, as I said, I was moved at the last minute and have only had one hour to meet my new host family and see my community. Hopefully I will have more detail in the next few weeks and will also have some interesting stories. I am excited to get back out to site and meet my new family and start working with my agency. So far, most of my experiences have been positive and I am remaining optimistic. Jamaica is a country of contrasts, and it will take a while to get used to it, but I am looking forward to the challenge.

I have been in training for about a week now and things are going very well. The two days in Miami seem like a blur now - all I really remember was spending a lot of time in a hotel conference room talking about logistics, trying to remember 51 new people's names and eating some good Cuban food.

Arriving in Kingston was interesting. It was only my second international flight, so I was not very used to going through immigration and customs. Some how I managed to make it out of the airport first in the group and met the director and a bunch of waiting volunteers outside. It was refreshing to see so many smiling faces with welcome posters as your first sight in a foreign country. The two things that were immediately noticeable were the heat - even with a strong wind I was pretty much drenched in sweat within a few minutes, and the landscape - seeing the city of Kingston across the bay with the mountains behind it is an impressive sight.

Since our arrival, all of the trainees have been staying in a college in Kingston, having a pretty strict schedule of classes from 8 am to 6 pm and trying to get to know each other at night. One interesting thing is that all of the classroom buildings have open walls that let the wind blow through because there is no air conditioning here. Being in a computer lab on campus right now with air conditioning is a weird feeling. The heat along with all of the new information being thrown at us each day makes for long, draining days. I am happy that the showers only have cold water - it makes it much easier to cool off, even in the morning.

We were taken on a walk-about around the city of Kingston in small groups on Saturday to show us how the transportation system works, how the people interact and to start getting us ready to be on our own. The buses drive fast and full and the markets are loud and exciting. The people for the most part are warm and welcoming, but everyone has to be on guard for pick pockets and theft at all times.

The Patwa language is very interesting and fun to learn. We have been having some amazing teachers trying to help us learn the basics. They are very patient and willing to put up with our many mistakes and questions. I have started being able to pick up some parts of conversations here and there, but it is a very quick language and is not written very much, so it will be a real learning experience. Hopefully I will be able to write a post soon in Patwa and see if you can understand it.

I am excited for some field trips we have coming up soon around the city of Kingston and hopefully going to a beach soon as well. I am also very excited to learn next week were my assignment will be on the island and traveling to meet my host family the week after that.

Finally, on a sad note, I just received word from friends that a former co-worker of mine, Karan, has recently passed away. I am deeply saddened to hear this. Karan was a young man with a very bright future ahead of him. All who knew him knew that he was a funny, intelligent hard working person that made the world around him a better place. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

To start off, let me say that I am not even a Met's fan....but we'll get to that part.

I woke up around 9:00 AM yesterday and finally got out of bed around 10 or so (yeah, its nice being unemployed). So after bumming around for a while, I finally started to pack up my apartment and prepare for my trip to Jamaica next week. After a few minutes of packing, I realized that I still needed to go through some of my paper work for my staging event. As I was going through the forms and booklets that I received, most of which I had already filled out, I stumble across a "Peace Corps Eligibility" form. I realize that this was not just a check list, as I originally thought, but a form that actually needed to be filled out. As I began to read it, I realize that the form was asking if I have been charged with any misdemeanors or received any citations since my original application and background check. Then I remember back to the end of May....(flash back)

John, a friend of mine at my old job invited me to a Met's game back on May 30th, saying that he had a few extra box seat tickets. Since I had never been to Shea Stadium and I am always looking for an excuse to leave work a few hours early on a Friday, I gladly accepted his offer. John also invited other coworkers of ours, Brian and Karan, with the remaining tickets he had. So we all left work around 2:00 PM and carpooled to Shea Stadium.

We finally arrived at Shea Stadium after sitting in about 4 hours of horrible New York City traffic and had about an hour before the game started. After parking the car, Brian and Karan went off to find a restroom and John and I sat on the bumper of his car and each opened up a beer to do a little tailgating. There were lots of other people in the parking lot drinking their beverages, so we didn't think there was anything wrong until a police car pulled up next to us. Two NYPD officers stepped out and informed us that we were in violation of a public drinking ordinance and were going to issue us $25.00 citations. They also informed us that all we needed to do to avoid these citations was to pour our drinks into plastic cups rather than drink them directly from the can! Somehow drinking out of a plastic cup makes drinking in public legal!?!? So, a few days later I mailed in my guilty plea along with $25.00 and thought the situation was over....(back to the present)

I immediately called the phone number on the eligibility form to get in touch with a Peace Corps Eligibility officer. The person on the other end of the phone was not happy and informed me that the PC has a pretty strict policy when it comes to any drugs and alcohol convictions, even misdemeanors like this. Their policy usually caries a minimum 1 year period from the date of the incident where you become ineligible to serve. This wouldn't have been the end of the world, but considering that I had just recently quit my job, was in the process of packing up my apartment, and was planning on flying to Miami NEXT WEEK for my staging event, I was a little freaked out. I sent in some additional information, filled out some additional paperwork, and spent the next six hours convinced that I was going to have to find a new job and new place to live for the next year.

Fortunately the PC has some very diligent, compassionate people working for them who understood that this was not a major incident that warranted such harsh repercussions. At the end of the day, I received an e-mail saying that I was still eligible for PC service and was allowed to join my training class next week. Looking back, I probably over reacted a bit and shouldn't have gotten so worked up. What was the worst that could have happened - I delay my service a year? Life could be a lot worse. But a lesson for future volunteers - to avoid any hastles like this, be extra careful to stay out of these types of situations.

It is a little hard to believe that I am leaving tomorrow for my staging event in Miami and then on to Jamaica on Thursday. I put my initial application in a year ago and its been a long, drawn out wait to this point. Its funny, I was nervous a few weeks ago, and then I got to the point where I was tired of being nervous and just wanted to get started. Now, in the past day or so, I've started to get nervous again. It's probably because I've started saying a few more goodbyes in the past couple of days.

It started at the wedding I went to for a college friend of mine, Jeremy Sample, this past weekend near Scranton, PA (and no, I didn't get a picture of the sign from The Office). The wedding was a lot of fun (hopefully someone will send me a picture that I can post here...). I got to see a bunch of the guys from Phi Psi, got to see Sample's family for the first time since graduation, and, obviously, got to see Sample and Aimee get married. I think that everyone that knows Sample knows that he, more than most people, truly deserves happiness in life. And after meeting his new wife and seeing that seeing that she can put up with the Phi Psi guys (Pauli most of all), I know he's found that. Congratulations buddy - I hope the honeymoon is like the table your brother described in his speech.....

To get back to what I was saying, it was good to be see a lot of friends from college and see how they are doing before I leave. It was interesting to see how each of us have taken pretty different paths in the four years since graduation and to see where these paths have lead so far. We are spread out from Boston to Indianapolis. Most of the guys seem to be in pretty good relationships at this point (which makes me think that I may be missing a lot of weddings over the next two years). There are some of the guys that have been working since graduation, have put in their time doing the grunt work and are starting their ascent up the corporate ladder. There are others that either went straight to graduate school after graduation or went back to school after a few years of work and are looking forward to doing the grunt work. And then there are others (or maybe just me) that have put in four years of work and extra schooling and are in the process of trying to change paths completely. I guess that is the benefit of being in my generation, I'm not expected to stay in the same job or in the same career my entire life - its acceptable to jump around a little. I sure have - this will be my 5th move and 4th job in four years.

Well, I guess it is time to pack my bags and say my final goodbye's. My next entry will hopefully be from Kingston.

So I just finished hosting my family in Philly for the weekend and I'm thankful that I'm unemployed right now so I can sleep in and watch movies all day to try and recover. My sister Kelly and her boyfriend Tim flew in from Chicago early Friday morning and the weekend was non-stop until I dropped them off at the airport this morning a little before 5 am. I have to hand it to Kelly and Tim though - they were real troopers and hung out all weekend.

We started off on Friday doing a tour of most of Old City (Liberty Bell, Christ Church, etc.), parts of South Philly (Italian Market) and a little of the Art Museum, walking most of the way... My older sister Susan arrived a bit later - in time for dinner at the World Cafe and seeing a performance by Cas Halley - which by the way I highly recommend.

On Saturday we got a pretty early start so that we could get tickets for the tour of Independence Hall which we missed out on, on Friday. After spending most of the morning walking around Old City and Center City, it was back to the apartment to prepare for the big event - the arrival of my grandparents, my parents and my brother Adam with his wife and baby for dinner. Again - my hat goes off to Tim, seeing that this was his first encounter with the rest of the Payne family, and he took it all in stride. With the help of a few drinks, there was only a small amount of tension and drama that goes along with any family gathering. After dinner, everyone went back to their respective homes except Kelly, Tim and Adam. Saturday night was a good time with a few drinks at my place, going to a few bars in Center City, a stop at Geno's for a cheese steak, a few stops in University City and capping the night off on the balcony of my apartment with a few more drinks - a few "caucasians" Lebowski style.

Needless to say, we were all feeling pretty good on Sunday morning, but managed to rally in time for the Philly's game that started at 1:30 in the afternoon. My parents came back down along with Adam's wife and baby for the game. Unfortunately the Philly's finished up their series with the Angels by getting swept, but it was still a good afternoon for a game. Luckily, after dinner, Kelly, Tim and I went to a bar down the street from my apartment and watched the Cubs finish a sweep of the White Sox, so it all seemed to balance out somehow.

In the end, the weekend had good food, good drinks and good company. I'm happy that everyone was able to get together one last time before I take off next week.

I've been asked by a bunch of family and friends to try to do something that will make it easier to keep in touch when I go to Jamaica for the next 2 years to serve with the Peace Corps. Hopefully this blog will help me do that and also be a way where I can try to share some of my stories for people who are interested to see them. Please feel free to respond to anything I write.

So the past few weeks have been pretty interesting for me. Last week I finally finished my masters degree at Drexel in Geotechnical Engineering (ie: playing with dirt) after 2 1/2 years of night school and long weekends. This week I celebrated my 26th birthday (thanks to Tom for making the "sacrifice" of going out in Philly with me until 2 am on a Thursday night) and also had my last day of work. That is the third job I have quit since graduating college four years ago. It is probably not an ideal situation to be in, but at least I have been able to see different parts of the country, see how different companies operate and meet a lot of good people. It was tough leaving this job because I really enjoyed working with some of the people in this last year.

Now I have the next two weeks to make sure my life is in some type of relative order before I leave for the Peace Corps. I have to move my few possessions out of my apartment in Philly back into my parents place and also make sure my parents have power over all my "finances" and such. Its fortunate that I don't own much and that Drexel has sufficiently drained most of my money over the past 2 years, so there isn't much to really take care of. Other than that, I'll pretty much be relaxing and having a two week vacation.

Next weekend, my family is coming to Philly to have a graduation/going away/birthday celebration. I'm looking forward to all the drama that usually surrounds these types of family gatherings, but hey, their family and you have to love them. The following weekend, I'll be going to Sample's wedding in Scranton PA, which will be cool to see him and his soon to be wife, and also good to see a bunch of other friends from college.

Then, the Tuesday after the wedding, its off to Miami for two days of orientation and then off to Jamaica for two months of training and two years of service. Sounds a little scary right now, but then again, its the Peace Corps and its Jamaica, things could be a lot worse.