There are a lot of things about Jamaica that I have sort of a love/ hate relationship with. Right at the top of that list is Jamaican public transportation (usually just referred to as public). In a lot of ways, the public transportation system here is incredible – you can get to the most remote corners of the island on public and it is usually relatively cheap. But in many other ways, it is incredibly frustrating sometimes – it requires a lot of patience, a lack of need for personal space and usually a good sense of humor. Either way, it’s a huge part of my life here, and so something I should explain to those who want to know what life is really like in Jamrock. So, come, let’s take a trip on public, shall we? As Negril is in the westernmost corner if the island, I happen to live as far from Kingston (a.k.a. – Town) as possible. Despite this, I often have to go to the Peace Corps office in Town for various reasons. The trip is about 150 miles or so, but often takes me upwards of 6 hours. Usually I have to be in Town sometime in the early afternoon, and so to make it anywhere near on time, I wake up at about 5am. I take a quick shower, get dressed, maybe grab a small bite to eat and head out. If I’m awake enough, I’ll remember to take an Alieve or two before I leave, or throw the whole bottle in my bag – my knees and back will thank me at the end of the trip. So by about 5:30 or so, I’m heading down my lane to wait for the first of a few taxis. I’ve explained this before, but in Jamaica, taxis run like buses. They are usually regular 4-door cars, but they drive on a specific route, and people get on or off anywhere along the route for fixed prices. Licensed, insured taxis can be identified by their red license plates while private cars operating as taxis have white plates. It is usually preferred to take red plates, but in certain areas this just isn’t realistic – getting a red plate is a lot of money and work, and so a lot of drivers just don’t do it. Thus, you are sometimes left with no choice but to take a white plate. Anyway, back to the trip. After about a 2 minute walk down my lane, I reach the main road that goes down to Negril and I wait. Sometimes I luck out and get a drive in just a minute or two, other times it takes as much as half an hour – you just never know. But eventually I get a ride and after about a 5 minute drive I make it down to Negril for J$90 – just over US$1 (total vehicle count so far: 1, total cost so far: J$90, approximate total driving time: 5 minutes). From here I have a decision to make – I can either get to Kingston via the north or south coast, and there’s a continual debate over which route is better. To go south coast, I have to get to a town called Sav, about half an hour south-east. But the road from Sav to Town is awful, and the bus park in Sav is very slow. So if you don’t get a full bus, it might be 2+ hours until the next one leaves (more on why this is so later). The north coast road is much, much better, but it’s a little longer. However, the buses on this route tend to fill faster, making the overall trip time pretty equal. I like the smoother road, so I usually take the north coast, through Montego Bay (MoBay). So, decision made and off to MoBay we go. First stop is a town called Lucea, halfway between Negril and MoBay – there are no public buses/ cars that go straight from Negril to MoBay. I usually end up waiting for a Lucea taxi in the Negril bus park for at least 10 minutes, as it’s so early that most drivers are still asleep in their beds. But eventually a taxi will come, and at least 3 of us will pile in. The drivers like to make the most bang for their buck, so they like to put at least 5 passengers in their car – 1 in front and 4 in back (yes, this is in a standard 4 door sedan type car). Often times, there are 2 people in the front and more than 4 in the back, especially if a few of the passengers happen to be small kids or teenagers. There is no real comfortable way to sit 4 in the backseat, but the best way to do it is to have one of the two people in the middle (usually women), “sit up”. This means one of them moves up in the seat so that they are just on the edge of the seat and their knees are sort of at an angle. Usually it is the smallest or the youngest woman who does this. As long as the other passengers in the car aren’t selfish about their space or aren’t too fluffy (a Jamaican term for larger ladies, usually used in an endearing manner) this actually always terribly uncomfortable. But sometimes it’s just downright painful. So, now we’re all “smalled up” in the car. Comfortable? Good, because we’ll be like this for about half an hour on this leg. The driver makes his way out of Negril and towards Lucea, to the north-east. If the car’s full, he’ll drive as fast as he can, passing other cars, buses, trucks or anything in his way (drivers are almost exclusively men). Often around blind curves. Yes, this is dangerous. No, he’s not going to slow down, so it’s best to just sit back and relax as best you can. (It’s a true sign of a PCV’s integration when they get out of a taxi saying “Man, he was going way too slow! Only passed like 2 people on the way!”) If the driver doesn’t have a full car, he’ll slow down at every person he passes and honk, asking if they need a ride in the direction he’s going. At one point, one of the passengers will say something like: “Wan stop driver”, or “let off”, or simply “right up here driver” to signal that they want to get out. They pay their fare, get out, and if you were smalled up, you and the rest of the passengers can now readjust. But don’t get too comfortable – the driver will soon pick up someone else, so it’ll be time to small up again. After about half an hour in this car, you’ll reach Lucea. You get out at the park (each town has a central bus park where most of the buses/ taxis gather and load, and it’s usually just referred to as the park), pay your fare and make your way to the MoBay buses. (vehicle count: 2, cost: $290, driving time: 35 minutes). Now, time to be alert. The MoBay buses all queue up in one area, and it should be that the buses load in order that they come in, one at a time. But this isn’t always the case. So as soon as you get out of your taxis, you will have “loaders” come at you asking if you are going to MoBay. Loaders are people who are paid by the drivers to load their bus fast so they can get back out on the road. They’ll use any tactic necessary to get you into their bus: flattery, intimidation, rushing you, grabbing your arm/ bag/ sweater/ etc, they’ll lie to you about where the other buses are going – anything. This sometimes leads to fights between loaders, but usually it’s just understood that it’s part of the job and unless someone does something really out of order, the different loaders are relatively civil to each other. The key to dealing with the loaders? Stand your ground and don’t let them fluster you. You never give them your bag – that’s pretty much agreeing to go in whatever bus they put you in. And you definitely don’t want to lie to them about where you are going to get them off your back – that’s just asking for trouble. When the first loader approaches to asking if you’re going to MoBay, it’s best to say yes but also explain that you are getting on the fullest bus, no matter whose it is. Usually if you are firm enough and very clear about that point, he’ll ease up a bit. Not totally, but a little. So look around and find the fullest bus going to MoBay you can and get on. Different routes have their own areas to load in, and each bus/taxi also has their route printed either on the front or side so you know which bus is going where. Now, we’re moving up and no longer in taxis, but in “mini-buses”, 15 passenger vans. But since this is Jamaica, there will be about 20 people in this vehicle, so once again, get ready to small up. If you’re lucky, you get a real seat, even if it is squished. If not, you get a “cross-seat”, a piece of cushion on a hard board that is spread across the 10 inch space in the “aisle” of the bus for you to sit on. These are by far the worst seats on the bus, as they are the most squished and there is no back to lean against. If it’s a long trip, it might be worth it to fight for a better seat or to wait for the next bus to load, but since this one is only about half an hour, I usually just take whatever seat I can get. So once the bus is fully loaded and more people are squished on than seems possible, you’re ready to go. Even though this is a bigger vehicle, it works exactly the same as the taxis, so there will be stops to let some people off and then on throughout the ride. By now, it’s about 6:30/7, so people will be more lively and talkative on this ride. It’s generally way to curvy and squished to read on the buses, and a few people will listen to headphones on the way. There will usually be music playing anyway – often the radio, but sometimes the pick of the driver which is pretty much like musical Russian roulette. But there’s usually a good amount of chatter, and noise to keep you entertained on this short leg. And before you know it, there you are: MoBay. After a few standard stops on the outskirts of town at different ports or factories, you’ll make it to the park. Once again, you make your way out of the bus as gracefully as possible (not always easy after being squished and likely losing circulation in at least one extremity), pay your fare and look for your next bus. (vehicle count: 3, total cost: $470, driving time: 1hr, 40 min) Now, since MoBay – Kingston is such a long route, the drivers are much better at queuing and staying in order, so you don’t have to be so defensive with the loaders. So find the line of Town buses, make your way on to the first bus and get comfy – you’ll be here for a while. This is a much bigger bus – one of those that’s about 10 – 15 feet long and would usually seat about 25 people. They can easily sit 4 people across a row (with one unlucky passenger in the “jump seat” that folds down into the aisle), but often 5 get squeezed across. A lot of people also have big bags, boxes or other things, especially on the longer hauls. These are all creatively squeezed in somewhere. Some people make a fuss about being smalled up too much, especially if one of them happens to be fluffy. But usually it’s just understood that this is the reality of public. If the bus is almost entirely full, you’re in luck and you’ll leave out pretty soon. If not, well, that sucks. Buses and taxis usually don’t move until they are full. Well full. I’ve waited for just over 2 hours for buses to load. It can be one of the most infuriating things in the world. Especially in the mid-day, people just aren’t travelling as much or as far so the buses take forever to fill. Sometimes the people try to convince the driver to get going anyway, but that’s usually a futile effort. And again, people don’t really read or listen to ipods, and since you already stand out enough you probably shouldn’t either. It’s not a hard and fast rule that you can’t, but you just generally don’t (the newspaper is one general exception to this). So be patient. Stressing it will do nothing but raise your blood pressure and give the Jamaicans something to tease the whitey about. While the bus is loading, there will be plenty of vendors coming to sell you various items. Usually it’s some sort of snack or drink, or phone credit, but sometimes they pop up with really random items. Manicure sets, toothbrushes, underwear, DVDs, CDs, jewelry and more are all common items that are usually sold in the major parks. It’s pretty nice though – if you want a bottle of water, you know you don’t have to wait too long before someone walks up to the bus to sell you some. Or if you want an excuse to stretch your legs after sitting for so long, go and get one yourself. So once the bus is full and people make their final adjustments, the bus is ready to move out. This is the long part of the trip. It’s at least a 4 hour ride, so let’s hope you’re comfortable. If not, you can try to adjust a bit, but it usually doesn’t help so just get used to it. Just like on airplanes, your neighbors can make or break your trip. Hopefully you’re not sitting next to someone too fluffy or selfish about their space, someone who smells or someone who will attempt to hit on you the entire time. But it’s all just luck of the draw on public. The other nice thing about the north coast route is that they always make a pit stop about halfway through. So after about 1.5 – 2 hours, you’ll stop at a gas station with a bathroom that’s surprisingly clean for the circumstances, and a nice little store. After about 10 minutes, it’s time to pile back into the bus. This is always my least favorite part of the ride. The first 2 hours or so on a ride are fine. A little boring, but nothing I can’t handle. But after about 2 hours squished into a bus, I tend to start loosing the will to live. I just don’t want to do it anymore. But I don’t really have a choice, so I have to just go with it. Hopefully there are people on the bus to make the ride entertaining. Although, just like the neighbors, this is definitely luck of the draw – they can make or break the trip. Some common topics of conversation on buses are: problems in Jamaica, politics (if this is the topic, best to keep your head down and make a few ambiguous nods), music, religion, dating, differences between men and women in general, the sex lives or preferences of different passengers, etc. Keep in mind that generally everyone on the bus is strangers. But in Jamaica, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk loudly and publicly about the last person you slept with or your preferred positions – many Jamaicans just aren’t phased by that kind of conversation. If you have a good group of people on your bus, these conversations definitely make the trip go faster. But often times everyone is relatively quiet. In that case hopefully the driver makes good time and you don’t hit any traffic. About 3 hours into the ride, people will start getting off at various towns. On the long rides, it’s understood that you don’t get on that bus unless you’re going at least half way. On these rides, in addition to the driver, you will also have the ducta (short for conductor). He is the one that collects the fare and also the one who tells the driver when people want to get off along the way. About a half hour outside of Town, he’ll collect everyone’s fare. I’m always kind of impressed by this. He collects generally in order, but makes change for people as he goes and keeps track of where people get on and off and how much they owe. If he doesn’t have the right change at the moment, he’ll get as close as he can and then give you the rest when he gets it. In general, drivers and ductas are really honest about the fares and actually don’t try to rip people off. You’ll get your exception to this, for sure, and that’s always really frustrating. But generally they are really honest about giving you the correct change and telling you the correct fare if you ask. (One quick aside: in Jamaica, it is standard practice to identify strangers by their job. So if you don’t know your taxi driver, but want to get his attention, you refer to him as “driver” – this isn’t at all condescending. Same with the ducta. The guy who sells small bags of nuts in the park? Nutsy. The fruit vendor? Fruitsy. It also works with physical characteristics – someone with dreadlocks is simply called Rasta, a light skinned person is brownie or browning, an Asian person is Mr or Mrs Chin, an Indian person is Coolie, someone who is particularly dark is blackie. This is a weird thing to get used to, but it’s not done to be politically incorrect and is actually really useful. If you want to point someone out, why not just use the characteristic that makes them stand out the most? When you say “That whitey over there” it’s much easier for everyone to know who you’re talking about than if you say “That man wearing the blue shirt”.) Once you start making to the outskirts of Town, pay attention. At one point, the ducta will call out “Anyone for three mile?”. That’s the stop you want. As the bus is getting closer to downtown and the main park in Kingston, the ducta will call out “Anyone for Three Mile?”, and this is the best spot to get off. The bus will go straight to the main park in downtown Kingston, but there’s no need to go that far. And by this point, I’m always so ready to get off the bus that I’ll stop pretty much anywhere. So I get off at three mile. The ducta has already collected my fare, and for the first time in at least 2 or 3 hours, I can actually stretch out my legs – sometimes a pretty painful process. (Vehicle count: 3, total cost: $1,120, travel time: 5hours, 40 minutes) Now, once again there’s a choice to make. I can either take a regular taxi to the PC office, or charter. Chartering is just hiring a taxi to take you and you alone straight to where you’re going. It’s a lot more convenient, but a lot more expensive. There are always about 5 – 10 drivers waiting to be chartered at three mile, and they all know PC. So anytime a whitey gets off the bus, they automatically start yelling “Peace Corps! Come with me, Peace Corps!”. If you decide to take one of these guys, it will take about 15 minutes to reach the office, but it’ll cost about $500 – almost as much as the whole MoBay – Town trip. But usually the drivers are really nice, and like most Jamaicans, making small talk with them is really easy (if not exhausting after 5+ hours of travel). You never, ever have the same conversation with Jamaicans twice, so it’s always interesting to see where the conversation goes. And before you know it you are at the Peace Corps office! If you’re lucky, you have some time to rest and stretch out before you have to do whatever it is you came in to do. (Vehicle count: 4, total cost: $1,620 (about US$12), travel time: 5hrs, 55 min). But sometimes I’m not in the mood to pay $500 to charter, so I continue on public. To do this, I have to walk past all the drivers waiting to be chartered, which can be pretty difficult. Just like the loaders, they can be pretty aggressive. But just beyond them, there are regular route taxis that go to Halfway Tree – the major transportation hub in local destinations in and around Town. Usually this driver doesn’t wait for a full 5 person load, and leave within a few minutes. Sometimes there’s less chatter in a route taxi but again, it’s all luck of the draw based on the driver and other passengers. Kingston is a really confusing city, and I’m always really impressed that the drivers know it so well. And it seems like I never really go the same way twice. After the 4 – 5 hour trip from MoBay, this 10/15 minute drive in a not smalled up car is always nice. And it’s only J$80 to Halfway Tree, a much cheaper option. (Vehicle Count: 4, total cost: $1,200, travel time: 5 hours, 55 min) From Halfway Tree, you can either get in one final taxi to the area of Town the PC Office is in, or you can walk. Walking is about 20 minutes, and the ride is about 5 – 10 depending on traffic. If you opt for the taxi, when you reach the office, you’ll have been in 5 different vehicles, spent $1,280 and driven for just over 6 hours (remember, that’s not counting time spent waiting for the rides!). Either way, it’s an exhausting trip. But at this point, it’s probably only about noon or so, and you still have a half day’s worth of activities and errands to take care of in Town. Not to mention socializing with any other volunteers who happen to be in the area after that. Needless to say I usually sleep pretty well and pretty early on travel days. And my average stay in Town is usually just about 18 hours. If you’re in Town for official PC business (meetings, Dr appts, etc), they put you up in a hotel and even give you per diem. But this adds up pretty quick, so you can usually just get one night, maybe 2 if you’re lucky. Meaning that the next day, you’ll likely have to make the whole trip in reverse! And yes, that is just as depressing as it seems. After a half day of travel, waking up the next morning knowing you have to do it all over again is a bit demoralizing. But at least at the end of that trip, you can sleep in your own bed – sometimes my only motivation to get back on that bus. This was a rather long post, so congrats for making it all the way through! But it seems fitting that a long ordeal like this gets a long post, no? And stay tuned for a post in the next few weeks too – this year is my first and only Jamaican Christmas, and I’ll definitely share the experience with all of you! Till then, Happy Holidays to all!

I think I mentioned this in my last post, but recently I've started working in a school once a week. The amount that I've learned in just a few weeks has been amazing, and it's really helped me to understand Jamaicans and Jamaican culture a lot better. To be totally honest and politically incorrect, Jamaican schools are a mess. I am planning on doing a whole post on schools, and that soon come. But for the purpose of this post, suffice it to say that I've seen a lot at the schools that makes my sick for a lot of reasons - teachers using belts as their primary discipline tactic, 10 year olds who can barely write their own names, students embarrassed in front of the whole class for the smallest transgressions, and much more. But yesterday, I saw something that truly made my skin crawl. And the most ironic part is that it has nothing to do with Jamaicans, just with naive and ignorant white people. Life is funny.

After school finished, I was walking down the road with some of the kids, chatting, joking, and having a good time. There's a central spot nearby the school where the kids go to get their taxis home (there are no school buses in Jamaica, so people who drive taxis through the different neighborhoods come to take them too and from school, and the kids pay about J$50 each way - about $0.60). It's organized chaos - there are about 150 students in this little area, but the kids usually go with one of the same 2 or 3 drivers every day, and the drivers know where to let the kids off. But collecting all the kids they are supposed to collect, squeezing them in the car (at least 8 kids, usually more like 10, in a typical 4 door Civic type car), collecting the fare, etc, is a bit of a circus. But it actually works pretty well.

Anyway, the students and I approached this taxi area, and as we were about to go our separate ways, a car with 3 white woman in their late 20's and one Jamaican man drives up. The women were wearing matching tye-die t-shirts and seemed very, very out of place. I was walking away and I saw them approach one of the kids I had just been talking to. They draped this brand new, really nice backpack around his shoulder, took a few pictures each and walked away. I could not believe my eyes. And of course before they made it back to their car, a fight had broken out with all the kids trying to get their piece of the bag (which, I found out afterwards, also had a brand new soccer ball and notebooks inside). The Jamaican the women were with had to come over and mediate, meaning he yelled at the kids to behave and told them that the bag was his and his alone.

I was in shock about what I had seen - could they really be so ...I'm not even sure what the word is. But I think white is the word I'm looking for. Not in color, but attitude. You just come here, give a kid a bag, take some pictures and walk away? Never to be heard from again? And you think that's helpful in any real sense? Really? Stop pretending there's anything altruistic about this and just admit to yourself that you're real goal has nothing to do with this poor Jamaican kid you are "helping" but with making yourself feel good and having some cute pictures you can put on facebook to show off to your friends.

I couldn't just walk away, so I went up to the Jamaican who had brought them up, and asked where they were from. "Colorado" he said. And I asked what they were doing here, and he gave some vauge answer about helping. I asked if they were working at the school or just giving things away, and the Jamaican said no, just giving things away. In response I muttered "That is not what Jamaica needs". He didn't really hear me, but I didn't want to get into anything, so I just walked away, ignoring the women. I wanted to make it clear to the whole of my community and especially the kids that I had nothing to do with this whole thing.

Then I went over to the kid who had gotten the backpack to ask if he had ever seen those women before. He hadn't. "Well, did they say why they gave that to you?" "Because they saw me talking to you, Miss." Greeeaat. Pick the one kid out of 150 that the only other whitey is talking to and single him out with a random gift for no good reason. I truly hope that the kid misunderstood the situation, and that they had a better reason for giving it to him. But who knows. And at this point, I was so upset at the whole situation that I had to walk away before I went over and made a scene with the women. Who were still standing awkwardly by their car, about to be mobbed by kids wanting a backpack for themselves, or money, or candy or really anything.

Now, I know that on the surface my reaction might seem pretty harsh. They were just trying to do some good, right? I do understand that, and yes, I'm glad this kid now has a new backpack. But there is so much wrong with the whole situation that I don't even know where to begin.

For one, they know nothing about the kid except that another whitey was talking to him. I barely know anything about this kid - he's not one of the ones I work with on a regular basis. He seems like a good kid, but he could have easily been the biggest bully in school. Or the richest kid in school. They had no idea.

More importantly though, they are just feeding into a mentality that is awful in Jamaica. There's a sense that all white people are rich and have something to give to everyone here - I can't tell you how often people beg me for things. Anything. Sometimes they actually need what they're begging for, but often times they just want to see if they can get something out of you. It's a game of sorts. In fact, the kid who they gave the backpack to had just finished asking me for $50 for his fare home, despite the fact that he knew I had just seen him put more than that in his pocket right before asking me. But it makes sense. If people are constantly coming and giving you things, why do you need to work for anything? Eventually someone will come along with something. Whether it's a new backpack for a student, a new computer lab, a new road for the country, or a meal. It's actually a demotivator in Jamaica. Now, if these women had come and spent some time with the kids and given the bag as some sort of prize, that would have been different. Still a little weird, but at least there would have been interaction and incentive for the kids, instead of just this random gift.

Not to mention that in a selfish way, it just makes my job harder. I don't have any material things to give anyone, or any money. But I will gladly spend the day with almost anyone in my community who is interested in learning something from me. Or even who just wants someone to chat with. And that's why Peace Corps is such a great model. It goes back to that old cliche - give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. Teaching takes more time, yes, but usually the investment is well worth it in the end.

The last point I'll bring up is the lack of cultural knowledge. These women probably had no idea the kids would start fighting right away. But talk to anyone who has worked with kids here at all, and they could have seen that coming a mile away. And there's a good chance that when the kid went home with his goodies, telling the parent about the white women who came to give it to him and him alone, they aren't going to believe him. Best case scenario, they laugh it off and let it go. Worst case, the kid gets beat for lying and stealing the bag from someone else. And then the parent will probably take the bag for themselves or, more likely try and sell it, because what use is a nice backpack when you can't put food on the table?

I could go on and on about this. And I realize that it goes deeper than just this one instance. But this was such a clear example of a lot of what bothers me about relationships between developed and developing countries and their citizens. And I know there's no right answer. Like I said, these women thought they were doing good. The kid now has a nice new backpack (hopefully he still has it). But, I don't know. It's just such a bad way to go about "helping", and will make me think a lot harder anytime next time I try to "help" people in a one-off situation like this.

As usual, I am long overdue on an update. While you should be used to it by now, that's no excuse and this was an exceptionally long lag between posts. I’m sorry. I will try to recap my summer in one post. Ready? Go. China - the last post was so long ago that I was actually on a different continent when I wrote it. I was in China for the first week or so of June for the FEE Annual Meeting (see last post for a 2 sentence synopsis). It is incredible that I had the opportunity to travel to China as a PCV and something that I am very grateful for. I learned a lot at the conference, and had a wonderful time traveling around Hong Kong. Luckily people in HK spoke enough English that I could get by. Travelling solo is not really for me, especially in a country where people don't speak enough English to just start up a conversation, but it was still an amazing few days. And yes - the food was awesome. The flavors were surprisingly similar to American Chinese food, but the ingredients were definitely different. My favorite dish? Pineapple & chicken fried rice. I know, not exotic at all, but totally delish. Since I'm not really sure what else to share about the trip, I'll just share some photos - they tell the story better than I could: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2336320&id=5301199&l=0d29e0a7d3 On my 46 hours of travel back from HK (yes, 46 HOURS), I was lucky enough to have a 12 hour layover in New York! My sister Morgan was nice enough to lend the use of her apartment (even though she was not there herself) and my mom was nice enough to pick me up for some QT, and so I could use a washer and dryer, eat a good Italian meal and take a shower. I landed in Jamaica exhausted, but overall really happy to be back. July seemed to fly by, and ended with an exhibit at the Denbigh Agricultural Show. It’s like a state fair, except for all of Jamaica, and it’s a pretty big deal. Each parish has their own pavilion where they display the accomplishments of the last year and try to out-do the other parishes. In true Jamaican style, this involves a competition to see who has the most impressive pavilion. (Want to get a Jamaican to really, really work hard on something? Make it a competition.) NEPT was asked to do the environmental section of Westmoreland’s display, and I have to say, I think we did a pretty good job. We had a huge table display of the Negril Great Morass (Wetland) and used it to explain what a morass does and how important it is and what activities take place in the morass (farming, building, dumping, etc). It was really interesting talking to Jamaicans about all this – most of them had no idea. And while I’m not sure how much behavior change will come of it, it was promising to see how interested they were in it. It was an incredibly stressful weekend – we spent all night Friday setting up and not sleeping, had to stand and talk to people all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday and there were a lot of frustrations that came out of lack of sleep, cultural differences, heat and the like. But overall it was something that I’m happy I did…just something that I never really want to do again. Oh, and no, Westmoreland didn’t win. We came in a disappointing 7th. I think this was a bit unfair, but yes, I am biased. As a result of the lack of sleep, stress and drama of Denbigh I spent the middle half of August pretty sick with a bad respiratory infection. After a few trips to the doctor (including one memorable trip where I was sent to a quarantine room while waiting to see her because I was coughing so much), a week of bed rest, plenty of soup and a course of antibiotics, the infection passed and the rest of August went by pretty slowly and uneventfully. September brought a new school year and a new secondary project for me. I now work one day a week in my local school. The school is what’s called an All Age School, and it houses students from grade 1 – 9 (the ages of these grade are roughly the same as in American schools). There are 500 kids in the school and I have to say, Jamaican schools are a lesson in organized chaos. The fact that any kid learns in the environment is a testament to his or her own determination more than anything else. That may seem a bit harsh, but I can barely focus when I’m sitting in on a class! I’ll likely be teaching kids in grade 4 and 6, helping them with a sort of small group tutoring sessions. At the end of the school year, kids in both of these grades take big tests (grade 4 a literacy test and grade 6 a test called GSAT, which decides where they can go to high school). So getting those kids ready is a huge deal. I’m not at all qualified to work in a school and have not really ever done anything like this before. I’m kind of just figuring it out as I go though – something I’ve learned to be very good at through Peace Corps. I could go on and on about school and the intricacies of it, but I’ll save that for a post of its own in the coming weeks. The end of September/ beginning of October brought Tropical Storm Nicole to Jamaica. It was 5 days of rain and about 2 of pretty high wind. Luckily, the damage was relatively minimal, but the flooding was huge. The road leading up to my school was totally flooded out and for about a week after the storm the students who live below the flooding just couldn’t go to school. People who lived above the flooding could get into town a different way, but this turned what was normally a 10 minute drive into a 30 minute drive. The water has since been pumped out from that area and things are mostly back to normal. After making it through a relatively minor storm, I take back all the times I ever said I wanted to see a hurricane – I definitely don’t, and I’m glad hurricane season will soon finish! And the middle of October was spent in the states on a wonderful 2 week vacation. Even though I wasn’t able to pull off a birthday surprise for my mom (how did I ever think I could?? That woman knows everything!), it was a great two weeks spent with family and friends. I got to see my mom’s condo in Burlington, which is really nice and in such an amazing town. I also spent time in NY and DC – two of my favorite places. I got to see friends, eat amazing food (the culinary obsession this time around? Salads and craisins.). The amount of choices that confront Americans everywhere was a bit overwhelming, but it was a good way for me to recharge myself for the rest of my 6.5 months in Jamaica. And that, my friends brings us up to today. Coming back was hard, and I feel like a lot of the other volunteers are in a bit of a slump right now. We have just over 6 months left, which is a long time, but will go by fast. We have a lot of decisions and transitions coming up but can’t do anything about them yet. We still want to do work but don’t want to start any new projects since we probably won’t have enough time to see them through. It’s a strange time in a PCV’s service. (but then again, when isn’t??) But! There’s a lot to look forward to in the next few months. Some amazing concerts, at least 1 visitor, possibly 3, a repeat of the Reggae (half) Marathon, Christmas and New Year’s and a possible sprint triathalon among others. The 6 months will be up before I know it and I’m trying to remind myself of that every day! I promise my next post won’t be in another 4 months, but until then, there are two more links I wanted to leave you with. The first is the latest newsletter that I put together for NEPT: http://nept.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/september-newsletter/ And the second is some more pictures from my summer: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2358707&id=5301199&l=d1e81e6cbb

Yes, that's right - I'm in China. Hong Kong to be exact. How and why did I get to China you ask? Well, it just so happens that Green Key (the eco-certification program I'm developing with hotels) is part of an international organization, FEE - the Foundation for Environmental Education. FEE runs 4 programs in addition to Greek Key, and there are member countries around the world. Once a year, FEE has an Annual General Assembly, and this year the meeting was in...you guessed it! China. And I got to go. Pretty neat, huh?

Everyone was so nice, and I learned a lot from just sitting in the meeting and just talking with everyone. The first day, I had lunch with a Kenyan, Moroccan, Brit, Cyrprus...ian(?), Greek, Tunisian, Slovakian, Jordanian and Matla...n(?). It was one of the coolest experiences I've had in a while.

The conference finished yesterday and now I'm playing tourist in Hong Kong for a few days. I only got here yesterday but I already really like Hong Kong a lot - it actually reminds me a lot of Manhattan. I spent yesterday walking around, getting to know the city and browsing in the street markets here. It's such a different lifestyle than Jamaica, and I'm not sure I could live here, but I'm really glad I'm getting to see it, if only for a few days.

More updates and definitely some pictures to come when I get back to Jamaica this weekend.

My apologies for lack of updates for the past month. I’ve moved houses, and no longer have internet at my house. And I’ve actually been busy at work, leaving me little time for blogging! But I’ll try to get back on track with more regular updates. For now, the biggest update I have is my new house, which I absolutely love. Before I get to that, I should mention that May 15th was my 1 year anniversary of Swearing-In! That means I’ve gotten over the 1 year milestone, and let me tell you, it feels awesome. I feel like my projects are at a good point, that I have a lot of traction with them and that I’ll be able to get a lot of work done in the next year (11.5 months, technically. But who’s counting?). Most importantly, I really understand the culture now and I really know how to work and get things done and relate to Jamaicans. That’s something that is vital to any successful Peace Corps service, and I’m so happy to have reached that point. The other big change for me this past month was moving to a new community! I moved to Negril in August, and was living on the Beach Road – a strip of all hotels and no community. I didn’t realize until a few months ago how lonely it really was, and although I really enjoyed living close to my landlords, I decided to move. I found an apartment I really liked in a community I knew I liked, got Peace Corps approval and moved in on May 1! The main house on the property is a HUGE 8 bedroom, 2 story house. There’s an older married couple who live in the main house, and they don’t even use the second story of the house – it’s just for when guests and family come to visit. There are 2 kitchens in the house (one for each story), 2 huge living rooms (again, one for each story) and a huge dining room. It’s crazy big. And my apartment? It’s the maid quarters. Yup, around the back they built a small, semi-attached studio and had it for a live in maid. But to my luck, they haven’t wanted to hire one yet and wanted to make a little extra money, so they decided to rent it! It’s the perfect amount of space too. My own kitchen, bathroom, bed room and even a veranda that has become more like a living room. The veranda has a long zinc roofed overhang, and sitting out there during a rain storm has become one of my favorite past times. And lucky for me it’s rainy season! But more than just a good apartment, the best part has been having neighbors and a community. I live about halfway down a lane that’s loaded with people, and they all knew my name within a week of me moving in. Not so hard to learn one white girl’s name I guess. But learning all their names? That’s something I’m still working on. Soon come. My closest friends on the lane so far? The two little girls from next door, Shea and Sabrina. Shea is 3, Sabrina is 5. They are adorable, and start yelling my name as soon as they see me walking down the lane (maybe part of the reason everyone knows me…) They come over my house as often as they can, and are making good use of the two coloring books that I brought down! I’ve introduced Sabrina to go-fish and memory, two games that she loves. I’m gonna start watching cartoons with them (educational, don’t worry!), and maybe even doing some crafts. They’ve given me countless tours around the neighborhood, and introduced me to all their friends (I’m totally a hit in the 3 – 7 year old demographic, by the way). All the adults love to see me walking around with the kids too – they get a total kick out of it. And of course they use it as an excuse to say that I should have a brown baby and stay in Jamaica (specifically Good Hope). I think it’s a compliment, but it’s not a piece of advice I’m planning on taking... But it’s been a great move for me, and something I should have done a while ago. I do miss my old landlords, but the tradeoff was well worth it. Before I go, I should also say that none of the civil unrest that went down in Kingston last week really affected me much. Peace Corps has all volunteers on a travel ban and a 6:30 curfew due to an upswing in crime, but that should be lifted soon. Things seem to be calming down for now and hopefully it’ll stay that way. I’m planning on writing a more detailed post about the whole situation later this week, so I’ll save my thoughts for that. But thank you to everyone who emailed and called asking how I was – I really appreciate it. But like I said, look for another update about it soon!

I recently put together another newsletter for NEPT, my agency and I wanted to share it with you. The easiest way to see it is to go to the NEPT website and click the link from there. It should be easy enough to find, but it was posted there on April 16 if you need to search for it.

You can also take a look around the website if you want - one of my co-workers put it together and it's awesome!

www.nept.wordpress.com

Enjoy!

“Did you hear what happened at 23/7?” “No, what happened?” “Well, it’s kind of not there anymore…” 23/7 is (was) a bar about half a mile from my house. It was a really cool place – a bar right on the beach that never closed, had amazing pizza and a truly laid back vibe. There are plenty of bars on the beach in Negril, but this was one of the rare places that would let you sit at the bar for hours and didn’t really care how much you ordered (which is key for PCVs who make less than $10/day). When you did order, they had delicious drinks, awesome pizza and cold, cold Red Stripes ready. In short, it was one of our favorite places to hang out, watch the sunset and play bananagrams. But all good things must come to an end, right? I got a call from Eric today (fellow Negril PCV and fellow 23/7 patron) who informed me that the bar was no longer there. “Um, what do you mean, not there?” Apparently, late last night the owner (a middle aged Canadian man) got into a huge fight with a Jamaican – I think over a girl. The fight involved machetes and baseball bats and the Jamaican man got pretty cut up. He was taken the hospital to get all his cuts stitched up, but as far as I know he’s gonna be alright. And the owner? He was caught by the cops at the airport while trying to flee the country. He’s in jail now, and no one is really sure what’s gonna happen to him. After Eric relayed all this to me, I took a walk down to the bar to see what happened. The bar was a completely open bar, with a big thatched roof, lots of tables and chairs a big circular bar and thick, wood bar benches. Well, the tables and chairs were all gone, the flags, posters and signs on the wall had been taken, the alcohol was long gone and the bar itself was being taken apart by 2 Jamaicans who are planning on using the wood in their house. One of the bar employees was trying to sell off the equipment that was left – huge gas tanks, industrial stoves, etc. He has no idea what’s going to happen to the land or the property, and said he didn’t have enough money to try and take it over. (He did ask if I wanted to invest some of my money and go into a partnership with him. Thanks, but no thanks.) It’s a prime spot right on the beach and a good amount of property, so I can’t imagine it’ll stay vacant for long. I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, it looks like we’ll have to find a new spot for bananagrams. There’s never a dull moment in Jamaica…

Last week was actually a pretty big deal for me and the rest of my Peace Corps training class (big up Group 80!) It has officially been a year since we started our Peace Corps service. It has been, by far, the fastest year of my life. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that I’ve been here for a year, and neither can most of the people that I talk to about. Now, I could get all deep and emotional about this, but instead I’m going to steal and idea from Sara Ray. She’s a fellow GW alum and a fellow PCV serving in Macadonia. For her one year anniversary, she wrote about the day she had arriving in PC and the day she had one year from that. I really liked the idea, so I’m going to do the same. March 17th/ 18th, 2009: I woke up around 4 am on the 17th for my trek to JFK. My mom and I got my 3 big bags in the car, and pulled out of the driveway in the dark. I wasn’t really sure what to think, or what to do with myself. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to keep all my expectations in check and just make it on to the plane. And after a sad goodbye and an anxious wait, I was in the air on my way to Miami for staging. I don’t really remember much of the plane ride, but the next memory I have is standing on the sidewalk in Miami waiting for the shuttle to the hotel. There was an older man standing about 50 feet down, and I decided to go out on a limb and ask if he was with Peace Corps. He was. We rode together to the hotel to meet the rest of our training class, making small talk along the way. Here was the first of many expectations I had to adjust – I assumed that almost all of the volunteers would be young, like me, but in actuality, half of my training class is 50+. We got to the hotel, I got to my room to freshen up, rest and regroup. After about an hour, I timidly went downstairs for lunch, registration and “staging”. Like most orientations, staging sucked. It was boring, involved a lot of paperwork and felt never ending (thankfully it was only a few hours). While sitting in a room listening to headquarters staff drone on, I remember thinking how unfair it was to make us sit through this – I just wanted to get to Jamaica already, and this extended layover was not much fun. I did have a good time getting to know the people in my training class though, and after walking around Miami a little bit and having a couple pints of Sam Adams in the hotel bar (it was St. Patty’s day after all), we headed up to bed. I was nervous, and didn’t know what to expect. The people in my training class were nice, but was everyone just on their best behavior? Would I like Jamaica? Would I be good at whatever job I was placed into? Would I fail miserably and come running home after a few weeks? I went to bed with all these thoughts swirling, but thankfully was able to get a decent night’s sleep once, enjoying my last night state side. I woke up on the 18th a bit confused. Was this actually happening? I had waited so long to get to here – it had been over a year since I had turned in my application, and about 6 months since I had received my invitation to serve in Jamaica. It was a little surreal that today was actually the day I was going to Jamaica. Again, much of the day is a blur, and I only remember flashes. Being in the lobby at 7:30, bleary eyed and wading through everyone’s luggage to sign in. Walking through the airport with a new friend trying to find breakfast. Taking group pictures in the airport. Figuring out who was sitting next to each other for the flight. One distinct memory I have is sitting next to a big Jamaican woman on the plane who tried to convert me to Christianity, and I remember thinking “If the typical Jamaican is anything like this woman, this is gonna be a rough two years.” (Thankfully, she is one of only a few who have tried to “save” me.) After about 90 minutes, Jamaica was suddenly underneath us and we got our first glimpse at the rolling hills and lush, green landscape. All of the fear and apprehension I felt was suddenly gone. I was giddy. I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing. I kept thinking “We’re here! We’re here!”. We were greeted at the airport by Peace Corps staff and current volunteers, took some pictures and loaded into buses for our drive to the Peace Corps office. There were current volunteers with us, and we all kept harassing them with questions. I was amazed at how much they knew about Jamaica, and how easily they were able to rattle off facts from food to geography to politics to language to sports and more. It was overwhelming. I tried to take in as much of the information and scenery as I could, but suddenly we were at the Peace Corps office. There were snacks and tables after tables of information and forms to fill out - information on medical issues, safety, phones, money and other various things were thrown at us faster than we were able to absorb it. After a few talks, lots of welcomes and a tour of the Peace Corps office (which I still find a bit confusing), we were taken to our hotel to rest for the night. We had a few Red Stripes (what else?), had some dinner, chatted for a bit with each other and with current volunteers before retiring. It had been an exhausting few days, and I went to sleep with my head spinning. I was a little nervous, a little overwhelmed, but mostly I remember being excited and content. I was finally starting this adventure that I had waited so long for. March 17th/18th 2010: I had been a bit tired lately, so I decided to sleep in a little bit on the 17th, and so didn’t get out of bed until about 7. It was the second day of a two day workshop I was attending in Mandeville – a town high in the hills in central Jamaica. Mandeville is very cool this time of year, and I’m sure the unusual feeling of sleeping comfortably under two blankets (albeit light ones) factored into my decision to stay in bed. Eventually I got up, took a freezing shower, and headed off to breakfast. The workshop was focused on the first draft of a Protected Areas Management Plan that the Jamaican government had recently put together. They had put this whole plan together and failed to consult the NGOs at all. It is the NGOs that work and often manage these protected areas – whether officially or not, and so the input from these groups should be seen as vital in putting this plan together. It was a small workshop – only about 10 of us from different NGOs who had come together to put together a response to the draft. We had spent the first day talking about our reactions to the draft, and this day was spent talking about next steps. There was talk of how to approach the national committees, and of putting together an organized network of NGOs. It was a small group, but it was an interesting mix of Americans, Jamaicans and even a Swiss man to spice it up. Some had been involved in the environmental movement here for decades and some (like me) were very new to the scene. It was fascinating to be a part of, and by the end of the day I was seriously thinking about extending my service for the first time since I had landed in country a year before. The workshop ended by about 3, and I drove back with a co-worker and a friend of his. It was about a 3 hour ride, and we spent it chatting, resting, listening to music and enjoying the scenery. I remember my first car ride alone with Jamaicans as awkward and a bit forced. In contrast, this ride home was easy, light and mostly enjoyable. I finished the day off with a patty (Jamaican empanada or calzone), and went home to catch up on some emails and some work (yes, work!). I was back to my normal wake up time of 6:30, went for a run, ate some breakfast and rode my bike into work by about 8:30. I had planned a workshop with a partner agency that day for some farmers, so I spent about an hour getting myself ready, printing out agendas and making a few calls. We had never set an exact time for the workshop (just “in the morning”), and at the beginning of my service that would have been a huge stressor. But by now, I’ve learned to just roll with it. We made it to our venue – a local church – by about 9:45 and were ready to go by 10:15 or so. Our partner for the workshop had promised 40 farmers, however none were there when we were ready to go. Again, this is something that would have had me very stressed out a few months ago, but instead I just waited patiently, went over my presentation and made small talk with some of the people around me. However, I did set a cut off time for my patience – 11:30. But as luck would have it, at about 11:15 farmers started to trickle in. by 11:30, we had about 25 farmers and were ready to go. Like almost all events I’ve been a part of in Jamaica, this one got started much later than I thought it would. But once it got going it was a really good event. The farmers were receptive and engaged, and the four presentations (including one from yours truly on biodiversity) went over really well. We were through by about 3:00, and I headed back into the office for an hour or two of wok, emails and gchatting (I had had a productive morning, after all!). I headed home at about 5:30 and spent the rest of the evening reading, cooking and watching an episode or two of Entourage – my latest obsession. I went to bed at my typical time of about 9:45, and I slept well that night – it had been a good day, and a good anniversary.

The good news is that we have a plan. The bad news is that it’s a really expensive plan, it’s a lot of work and it will take a long time. But there’s a plan, so let’s focus on that. What this plan involves was the focus of a two hour meeting last week, and there’s a lot to it. But, essentially, it can be boiled down into two main components. The first is an emergency fire plan that would allow us to quickly locate and put out fires. This is a short term solution that is designed to tide us over until we reach the second part of plan. This is a program to rehydrate the morass and get it back to something resembling its original state. The fire emergency plan has several components to it. We will need to build fire towers at strategic points throughout the morass so that we can pinpoint the exact location of fires when the break out. We also need to buy vehicles that can go into the swamp and get around to get to the fires (swamp buggies were an idea that was thrown out there, and I’m really hoping I’ll still be around in time to take a ride in a swamp buggy). A lot of these fires are in places that are simply inaccessible, and so the fire department has to wait until it gets to an area that it can access, which is likely close to houses or businesses, opening up a whole nother lever of danger. We are also going to work with the fire department and the local communities to educate them about fires in the morass and what can be done about it. A lot of people just don’t understand the dangers of the morass burning, and don’t know how or why these fires start. Hopefully through quick action to stop fires, and public education we can lower the impact and amount of fires while we work on part two… Part 2 is a lot more complicated. It involves rehydrating the morass and restoring it so that it can become something of a healthy and functional wetland. The most effective way to do that would be to just dam up the canals that were built 50 years ago, but since that’s not going happen, we have another plan. One thing that complicates rehydrating the morass (well, there are several things, but anyway…) is that there are actually 1,000’s of small canals in the morass that were put in for farming or other drainage. So while the water runs out of 2 major canals, it will also run out of these smaller ones. And we know these are out there, but we’re not sure exactly where because there are no good GIS maps of the morass. This also means that we don’t know exactly where the hot spots are (no pun intended…) for the fire. So we’re not sure exactly where the most strategic place is to pump the water into. We’re going to generate those maps, but that takes time. We’re hoping to have them done by next summer so that we can start implementing this rehydration plan as soon as possible. The other main complication is what water to use. There is a large sewage treatment plant nearby the morass that could be used, but in the current state, the water is not treated beyond the initial level. Raw sewage needs at least 2, if not 3, treatment phases before it can be safely put back into any system. No one can seem to answer the questions of why the plant is so dysfunctional, or if/when it will be functional. Using treated effluent would be ideal for this project, but we are not sure if that is going to be possible, and I’m not sure what the backup plan is for this. Overall, rehydrating the morass will mean a lot of monitoring, and long term management of the system as a whole. It’s a lot to take on, but it’s vital to the health of Negril and Jamaica. The good news is that there is a lot of support for this project. We are working with an American wetland scientist to design the whole plan, and we had over 40 people from 30 agencies present at the meeting we put together to present the plan. Everyone was supportive, and that’s a huge plus. Hopefully that support will be more than just lip service support, but only time will tell on that one. We are looking to have a lot of this project grant funded, and are also looking into ideas for the project to sustain itself over time, such as an environmental tax paid by hotel guests or a trust set up for the morass. We are finalizing the grant for the first phase though, and hopefully I’ll be able to give you more positive updates on this soon.For me, this whole situation has made clear something that I’ve thought for a while. Nature is pretty amazing, and has developed ways of making systems work which are far more complex and interconnected than we can imagine. If these systems are left alone, they can work for decades and centuries without a problem. But when people come in and think they can outsmart nature, they pretty much always end up just fucking things up. And once you do that, there’s really no turning back. Inevitably the impact is going to be larger than you had imagined, especially in the long term. And trying to put these systems back into something resembling their natural state is time consuming, nearly impossible, and extremely expensive. I’m not totally against human expansion, but we need to recognize that there are some spaces that we just need to stay out of, and we need to start being smarter about our growth as societies. We need to figure out ways to work with nature and stop trying to defeat it all the time. Because when we play that game, nature always seems to win in the long run. There's a quote similar to this from one of my favorite books, We Wish to Inform You. The book is about the Rwandan genocide (depressing topic, but wonderful and wonderfully written book), and in the intro, the author talks about a conversation that he had with a pygmy in a bar in Rwanda while doing research. It doesn't fit as well as I had hoped into this post but it took me about 30 minutes to find, so I wanted to share it anyway:“Humanity’s struggle to conquer nature," the pygmy said fondly. “It is the only hope. It is the only way for peace and reconciliation—all humanity one against nature.”He sat back in his chair, with his arms crossed over his chest, and went silent.After a while, I said, “But humanity is a part of nature, too.”“Exactly,” the pygmy said. “This is exactly the problem.”

So, here’s the thing about a wetland…for the most part, it needs be wet. There are some wetlands that dry out seasonally, but then they fill up with water again. But here’s the other thing about wetlands…they are usually in between dry lands and coasts. Meaning they are in prime development areas. But you can’t build in a wetland, and even if you could, no one would want to live in a wetland (or morass as it’s called here). So what do people do? They drain wetlands and swamps to build cities. This happens all over the world all the time, and it’s pretty much always a bad idea.As a bit of background, a large portion of Negril used to be a wetland. The Negril Great Morass still occupies a large chunk of land to the east of Negril, but it’s drying out rapidly. The soil in the Negril Great Morass is peat – decayed plant matter that has formed a spongy, very absorbent and very nutrient rich soil. The soil can literally hold 3 times its weight in water. However, when the peat is dry, it becomes a very flammable. So much so that the Royal Palm Reserve, a part of the Negril Great Morass that my agency manages, was originally developed by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica for them to complete a feasibility study on harvesting the peat for fuel. When the morass is healthy and functioning well, the soil is so wet that when you walk on it, you feel like you’re walking on a sponge. But because of the way Negril was developed, as well as some other environmental degradation that has happened in and around the morass, it is not healthy and functioning well – it is dry and getting drier.There are a few reasons for this, but mainly, the drying is a result of the development of Negril in the late 1950’s, early 60’s. The developers decided they wanted to drain the morass to allow for more land to be built on. Their plan to do this was simple – dig out two canals on the north and south side of Negril, and since water naturally takes the easiest route available, it would drain out the canals into the ocean instead of getting filtered slowly and naturally through the peat soil of the morass. Their plan worked wonderfully – so much so that over 50 years later, the canal on the south side of the town is a full, permanent river about 15 feet wide that is constantly flowing. This is causing the morass to continue to dry out at a rapid rate – something that is dangerous for many reasons, one of which the residents and visitors of Negril saw today.Small fires are a relatively common site in Negril, and around Jamaica in general. People tend to burn their trash (a horrible practice that deserves a post of its own, but I’ll stay on topic for now), and burn their fields to clear them (a lot of people farm in the fertile soil of the morass). Sometimes fires happen as a result of accidents or carelessness, and once in a while that happen as a result of natural causes like lightening. But more important than how they happen is simply that they happen. And sometimes, like this week, they happen in a big way. I was driving to a nearby town with some friends Sunday night, and we saw a big fire burning in the fields in the morass, and decided it was probably either a sugar cane or ganja field that someone decided to clear by burning, or an accidental fire. Either way, it was definitely man-made. We could see the orange glow of the flame all the way in Negril, at least 10 – 15 miles away. The fire was still burning today, and it burnt all day. It might still be burning for all I know.What I do know is that it burned a huge section of the morass. All day there were huge clouds of smoke floating over Negril, and there was ash falling from the sky at several different times. It was a little apocalyptic and disturbing to say the least. For a large part of the day, the fire was in a section of the morass that is inaccessible to vehicles, and so the fire department couldn’t get close enough to try and put it out. Eventually it came a little closer to the road, so they were able to get to a part of it.The really scary part is that even if they do get the visible parts of the fire out, it’s unlikely that they’ll get all of it out. The dried out peat tends to burn and smolder, and unless it is inundated with water, it will burn for months. That’s not an exaggeration – we’ve tracked fires in the morass that have literally burned for over 6 months. So it looks like today was only the start of some major damage to the already threatened morass.I hate telling stories like this without some sort of hopeful solution at the end. And I’ll have that for all of you, just not today. NEPT, my agency, has been working on a strategic plan to re-wet the morass and restore it to a level of health that will prevent these fires from happening in the future. We’re working with consultants and experts to develop these plans, and we are actually having a meeting about their plans later this week. So please stay tuned for Part II in a few days – I’m looking forward to hearing about what we can do to help the morass, and I’ll be sure to update when I do.

Smoke from the fire billowing across the road - this was taken from my office parking lot in the center of town.

When I was a kid, I was always jealous of those kids who were able to have pool parties or parties at Splash Down (the local water park) for their birthdays. Being that my birthday is in February, I never really had that option. But! Then I moved to Jamaica, where it’s summer all year round. So this year, I was finally able to have my summer birthday. It was sunny, warm and wonderful all day just as I had always hoped. And my dogs were even quite in the morning, meaning I wasn’t woken up at 5:45 by them barking their heads off! (Something that happens more often than not.) I was flooded with emails, calls, texts, Facebook posts and even a few cards throughout the day, and each one of them definitely made my day a little bit better. I even had a HUGE piece of cake at work, and managed to make it most of the day without getting “flowered” (it’s a Jamaican tradition that on your birthday, everyone throws flower on you…sometimes after spraying you with beer).After work I went with a few friends to go cliff jumping. Negril is a seaside town, and there are 2 sides to it – the beach side, where I live, has a 7 mile long, white, sandy beach that is great for relaxing and leisurely beach days. The other half is several miles of jagged rocks and cliffs jutting out into the water. There are many, many points along here to jump off the cliffs into water, most being at least 20 feet up, if not more. Like I said, I’ve never had a summer birthday before, and I was excited to take advantage of finally having one. A few good friends agreed to join me on this excursion, and we decided to go to the “lighthouse” at Negril Escape, a very Peace Corps-friendly hotel whose manager we work with on a pretty regular basis. We all know how much I like clichés, and we all know what they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words. So let me shut up and just show you a picture of my friend, Eric jumping off the lighthouse:After a few jumps, we headed out to a local spot for some great jerk chicken, another piece of cake (it was by birthday, after all) and another Red Stripe or two before heading home for the night. And yes, my friends did manage to flower me right at the end of the night with the help of a local store owner. A few days later, some volunteers and I volunteered at a local community event – Donkey Races! It’s a fundraiser put on by the Negril Rotary, and it was a fantastic day. It’s just what it sounds like – donkeys racing around a circular track. And yes, there were jockeys. There were several heats and several rounds, and I got to see many donkey races throughout the day. Each one was more entertaining than the last was. Some of the donkeys just sprinted around the track, some bucked their riders off, some refused to move, some turned around and went backwards and some just walked and took their sweet time. We all helped out throughout the day and definitely took the time to enjoy watching the races. Again, this is something that needs to be seen to be believed, so please watch this video to get an idea of the day:

I’ve also posted some recent pictures online, and here’s the link if you’d like to check them out:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2309230&id=5301199&l=14096fe197

For those loyal readers of my blog, you may remember an entry I had back in September (October?) where I talked about farmers and farming and what not. We've been back to visit those same farmers a few times since then, and on our last visit, I started seriously thinking about how amazing the whole cycle of farming is. I should also add that I had just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food (which I highly recommend), and I'm sure that has something to do with it too.

I don't think many of us, especially Americans, really take the time to think about where our food comes from. We see an enormous bounty in every supermarket we go into, and a lot of people don't take a second to realize all of the work that has gone into getting each of those pieces of produce onto those shelves. I thought I had an idea about what farmers went through, but after visiting farms here and talking with farmers, I realized that I had only a tiny, tiny grasp of all the work. So I wanted to tell you all a little bit about what the farmers here go through. I'm sure for the big industrial farms in the states, it's different, but I have a feeling that for small, family farms in America, it's pretty similar.

What I'm learning by visiting all these farmers is the vast amount of work that goes into farming even a half acre of land. You have to clear the land, prepare it for planting, create some kind of water system, acquire the seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Once all of that is in order, you have to work 7 days a week, every day of the year to keep up with the weeds and pests, and with the needs of the plants. These farmers are out there from early in the morning, and work right through the day. And in the Jamaican sun and heat, that takes an enormous amount of energy. Just walking around on these farms for a few hours exhausts me, and I am doing no hard work at all. And these farmers have to be there every day, putting in several hours a day. If they are not, the weeds take it over, the pests will eat it, or as in one unfortunate case, someone will come along and steal their crop. And the farmers here usually don't have any tools – just a well used machete in most cases.

Most of the people we meet have been farming their whole life, and the store of knowledge that each one has is incredible. That's the other thing about farming that amazes me – you can't necessarily just use the same method that works for one crop on your next crop. Each crop you plant has to be planted at a certain time, a certain way and has unique needs. And each pest that might come to feast on your crops needs to be dealt with in a certain way – whether organically or with chemicals. Hearing them talk about all of this is dizzying. Farmers here often plant peppers, tomatoes, root crops and calallo (similar to spinach) on a small plot of land, but each of those crops need to be planted and worked in a different way. They need different amounts of water, different nutrients, and different levels of attention. Like I said, dizzying.

Then there's reaping it. How farmers know exactly when their produce is ready is still beyond me, but somehow they do. Then they have to get it from their farm to market. Many of the farmers we have talked to have said this is the worst part about their job – they can't usually find a fair price for their crops. Many of the farmers here sell their crops to a higgler, or middle man (“miggle man” in Patwa), and they are kind of forced to take whatever price he gives them, knowing he's gonna mark it up like crazy. They can't sell directly to the hotel, and can't always get to the market themselves, so they are kind of stuck. Even getting the produce out to the road is hard sometimes – farmers have to farm where there is land, and sometimes that's in the middle of the bush. So it's a lot of hard labor just to get things to a road where a truck can pick it up. Again, it's dizzying just to think about.

Despite how intelligent these farmers usually are, they are often uneducated in a traditional sense. Many are near illiterate, and I don't think we've met one who understand the economics of running a business, which is what farming is for them. No one has really taught them bookkeeping or accounting, and they usually have no idea if they are turning a profit – they only know if they have money in their pockets today or not, and they usually don't have much of that. It saddens me how much society over looks the farmers. Without farmers, we would be in some deep trouble. And there aren't a whole lot of young farmers out there either. Understandably, the youth don't usually want to be out in the fields doing hard work all day. When you really look at it, farming is a noble profession, but it's not usually seen as such.

I've thought about it, and I don't think I'd last 2 weeks as a farmer. But I'm glad there are people out there doing it, and I'm glad I've gotten to know just a few of them.

After an amazing and dizzying 19 days in the states, I have made it safely back to Jamaica. Being home was fantastic – I saw almost all of the friends and family that I wanted to see, made it across 5 states, ate more food than I thought was possible and was colder than I had been in 10 months.

Being home was, strangely, not too strange at all. I expected a lot more in terms of reverse culture shock, but didn't experience much after the first few days. Though I must say that the one thing that I wasn't ever able to get over was supermarkets. There are pretty modern supermarkets in Negril, but the scope of American supermarkets is just astounding. And the idea that you can get fresh strawberries, pineapple, bananas, and any other fruit you want in New York in the middle of winter just floored me. In Jamaica, there is plenty of diversity in the fruits that are available, but once they are out of season, they are out of season, period. You have to wait a whole nother year before they are back. But in America, you can pretty much get anything you want any time you want. The convenience of American life may have it's issues (is it really worth flying bananas in from South America just so I can satisfy a craving?), but overall it is pretty fantastic. I had gotten used to a much simpler lifestyle here, and I knew that I would be returning to it, but for a few weeks it was wonderful to over indulge in American culture. (read: mostly American food).

As much as I enjoyed being home, being back has been, for the most part, wonderful. I won't ever be able to see Jamaica as home, but I really do like it here. It took me a long time to feel comfortable here, but after a while, something about this island just kind of grabs you. I have just about 16 months left of my Peace Corps service, and I am very much looking forward to it. There is so much I still want to do, professionally and personally that I am just hoping 16 months will be enough time. If the past 10 months have been any indication, the next 16 are going to fly by at record speed. I still can't believe I've been here almost a year already...it has been, without a doubt, the quickest 10 months of my life.

One of the things I missed most about Jamaica while I was home was the vibrancy of the place. There's a feeling here – in the music, in the food, in the language and the laughter – that somehow feels more alive, more real. I didn't realize how dependent I had gotten on that feeling, and it feels fulfilling to be back around that sort of energy. I can see why Jamaicans always end up coming home, even after 10, 20 or 30 years spent abroad, and why they are always so content when they do.

Before I go, I want to share two things with you all (all 4 of you...). First, is NEPT's brand new website (full disclosure – I had nothing to do with the making of this site): www.nept.wordpress.com. Keep up to date with what we are up to and check out our newest newsletter! (Which I did have a whole lot to do with).

And lastly, a picture from a recent concert. There's an annual reggae concert here called Rebel Salute that's an all night affair – about 20 artists preforming from 9pm Saturday until about 9 am on Sunday. A whole bunch of us went, and it was a great night. The artists were great, the crowd was enthusiastic but respectful of each other, and the whole event was really well put together and well ran. One of my favorite artists, Tarrus Riley (check him out, seriously – he's awesome) preformed at sun up and it was an unreal way to spend sunrise. We were all exhausted, but it was more than worth it. I'm already excited to go back next year and do it all again - hopefully with Alicia! But here's a picture of the crowd and the stage an the sun coming up behind the mountains that I took from the back of the venue:

Yes, that’s right! By the time most of you read this, I’ll either be en route to JFK or home already in snowy, wonderful New York! It’s been 9 months since I’ve been in the states, so to say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement. I have almost 3 weeks in the states, so plenty of time to get my fill of good old America. I’m excited for family, friends, food (lots of it!) and just being home in general. Jamaican Christmases are apparently a lot of fun, so I’ll be a little bummed to miss that. But the joy of a two year assignment is that I’ll still be here next year to experience it… and maybe I’ll even have some visitors to share it with (hint, hint!). Nothing else too exciting to report from this end really. Happy holidays to everyone, and hopefully I’ll be seeing some of you soon!

To continue with the trend of an exciting few weeks, I finished out this week with a half marathon on Saturday. It’s something that I had been thinking about doing since I got here and heard about it in March, something I decided on doing early in the summer, and something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off. But despite a few ups and downs in my training, and with the help of a few good friends, I successfully ran 13.1 miles on Saturday!The race itself was really cool – especially the start. Since it gets so hot in Jamaica (yes, even in December), the race started at 5:15 in the morning so that most people could be finished before it got too hot in the late morning. The sun doesn’t even come up until 6:15/6:30, so the first hour or so was spent running in the dark. The whole theme of the race was Reggae/ Rasta culture, and so there were drummers at the starting line, and the road was lined with torches for the first half mile or so. It gave the start of the run a really cool atmosphere, and it helped that it was almost a full moon, with bright stars and no clouds. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like running with almost 1,000 people in the dark, and all I can really say is that it was really, really cool. And even after the sun came up, they had reggae playing at different points along the course to keep us all going. Luckily we finished before it got too hot out – there were some people still running at 11 and I have no idea how they managed. And they had fresh coconuts, bananas, Red Stripe and other goodies for us at the finish line that definitely helped ease the pain of the 13 miles. There were also a handful of PCVs who volunteered to hand out water, and they were pretty well spaced out along the course, which really helped. It’s amazing how much a friendly face (or, in this case 5) can to do boost your morale when you’re running for 2+ hours.There was also a pasta party the night before and an after party the night of the race, so it was an eventful and exhausting weekend. Sadly, the headliner for the after party (reggae star Etana) double booked herself and didn’t actually end up performing, but there were a bunch of volunteers who went and we all still managed to have a good time anyway.A few people have already been asking me if I’m going to run it again, or if I’m going to be upgrading to a full marathon anytime soon. My first reaction to that has so far been “Jesus, can’t I wait until my legs don’t feel like bricks before I think about running again?!” But next year is the 10th anniversary of the Reggae Marathon, and so I think it would be cool to run it again. However, I don’t think I’ll be running the full marathon. I do understand why it’s appealing, but honestly, the idea of running for 4+ hours is just not something that interests me in the least.Oh, my time? 2 hours, 25 minutes. My friend Jess and I ran together the whole time (sorry, Alicia!) and we were able to finish before any of the full marathoners did, and out of about 400 people who finished the half (men and women), we came in at about 215 and 216. Not too shabby, huh?

Jess and I approaching the finish line (I only look happy because of the endorphins...)

We did it! (Thanks to Emily for the pictures!)

A few weeks ago I realized that in my 23 years, I have never spent a single Thanksgiving away from my family. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (lots of cooking/baking + lots of eating + family – the pressure of gift giving = a very happy Melissa), and so the thought of spending it away from my family kind of had me down for a while. I knew that joining Peace Corps would mean giving up certain traditions and missing out on certain things, but this wasn’t one that I had wanted to sacrifice. Luckily it wasn’t something that I had to sacrifice entirely. There is a married volunteer couple who live on the other side of Negril who graciously opened up their house to 30+ volunteers and community members for a Thanksgiving pot-luck this past weekend. Some people pulled out all the stops with what they brought – some highlights were a particularly memorable mac and cheese dish, a pumpkin pie made from scratch (a.k.a. no canned pumpkin), and onion pie – yup. A pie filled with onions. I was so full afterwards that it hurt to move for a few hours - no joke. Most of the volunteers were out here for the whole weekend, and it was really nice to see everyone again and catch up and hang out. You really do form a pretty unique bond with the other volunteers you serve with, but it’s pretty rare that we get to spend so much time together, and so it was a good chance to relax and catch up. I do realize that it’s been more than two months since my last update. I’m not sure if anyone besides my mom will be reading this (hi, Mom!), but for those who are, I guess I should give you a quick update on things. And I will do my very best to try and update more frequently in the future, I promise. Work has been going really, really well, especially in the last few weeks. It was a little slow to get started, but for some reason about 2 weeks ago, everything just sort of came together. There’s a lot of little things I’ve been working on that have been keeping me busy, but there are a few major things that I’ll outline for you. Green Key- Green Key is an international certification program for hotels who comply with a pretty strict set of environmental standards. It’s a sister program to something that NEPT (my agency) took on a few years ago – a similar certification for beaches called Blue Flag, and is run by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE). I’ve been tasked with starting and running the program for the next year and a half, and it’s a little bit of an overwhelming process – there’s a steering committee that needs to be formed, international criteria that has to be specialized to Jamaica, hotels to recruit, an international agency that I have to liaise with and more. This is yet another example of how PC is nothing like I expected it to be. I was all ready to be living in a hut, teaching kids English on a black board in the middle of nowhere, but that’s not at all what my reality has turned out to be. This is not something that I’m at all qualified to do, but it’s something that has already taught me a whole lot, and the program is actually going really well. My goal is to have 5 – 7 hotels signed on for the program by the end of the month, and we already have 2 committed with 4 more in the works, so it looks like it won’t be a challenge for me to meet my goal at all. There’s still a lot of work to be done with the program, but I’m really proud of the progress that’s been made so far, and I’m excited to continue working towards getting these 6, and hopefully a few more, Green Key certified sometime in 2010. Farmer education – the other main project I’m working on is something that’s totally different, but a lot more “Peace Corps-esque”. We’ve been working with farmers in a few communities in the Negril area to educate the farmers about environmentally friendly farming techniques, and although I know nothing about farming, I’ve sort of been tasked with running this project through February/March. This involves putting together a lot of workshops and organizing site visits to farmers in these areas and putting together a lot of logistics. This also involves working with a lot of different people from several different organizations in the area, and that can be a bit frustrating at times, but it always seems to work itself out in the end somehow. The farmers really seem to appreciate what we’re trying to do and are really receptive to us, and going out and spending the day in the fields or sitting and interacting with them in the workshops is always a highlight of my week. Community Composting – as a tangent to that project, I’m in the early stages of planning a community compost pile with one of the farming communities we are working with. This would be a large scale compost pile, with about 15 – 20 farmers contributing their organic waste. The goal of the project is to cut costs for the farmers by providing them with an alternative to the chemical fertilizers that they use which are incredibly expensive. It will also give them a great place to dispose of their organic waste that tend to get tossed in with the rest of the trash, burned or just thrown in the bush. This project would require us building a simple structure to cover the pile, as well as several workshops and training sessions with the farmers to educate them about composting and how to do it. Again, I know nothing about composting, but I know how to facilitate something like this, which I’ve learned is almost more important. I know who to call for different aspects of the knowledge that I lack, and I’m quickly learning how to put all those pieces together, and hopefully that will be enough to make a successful project. It’ll definitely keep me busy for a little while though, and I’m really excited to keep up this relationship that I’ve built up with one of these communities that we’ve been working with. So those are the three main things that are keeping me busy lately. I’m just about 7 months into my service, and I feel like I’m just starting to get some real traction with my projects here, and now I see why the two year commitment is so important. If I were planning on leaving in 5 months, I’m pretty certain that my projects would not be where I wanted them to be. To be honest, I’m also not sure I’d be where I’d want myself to be. Without getting too deep, I’ve been able to grow and mature a lot through the work I’ve been doing here. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m not qualified to be doing a lot of the things I’m doing, but I’m still doing them, and I think I’m doing them pretty well for the most part. A lot the things I’ve been working on would have been really intimidating for me before this experience, but for once I’m not letting my fears and insecurities get in the way. I know that for this process to be successful, I need to really see these projects through successfully, and to tackle whatever comes after them. That’s something I’m fully committed to, but something that’s going to take me longer than 5 months. For that reason, I’m really thankful that I get the opportunity to be here for 2 years. Well, I think that’s enough introspection for now. Again, sorry for the lack of posts in the past two months, and I promise it won’t be another two months until I post again!

I’m standing on a farm in the hills of northwestern Jamaica, and I take a minute to pause and look around. Behind me is thick bush and undoubtedly hundreds of ants waiting to eat my feet should I cross their path. To my left there is a marl road that will, with some patience and a little bit of skill on the part of the driver, take me back to the coast and the landscape I’ve become accustomed to. In front of me is a small, small farm brimming with dasheen and callaloo that look too fresh for words. I look to my right, and there is an old woman walking down the path towards us. Her back is hunched and her clothes hang loose on her body, but she walks with an air of grace and confidence that defies her age. When she reaches us, she stops to chat. The farm we are looking at is her sister’s, and she has a farm about the same size further down the path. We ask her how long she has been farming, and she replies enthusiastically: “I’m 83 years old, and I’ve been farming since I was a girl. I love farming, I love it. I just love farming.” She tells us she works in her farm every day, and the well-used machete in her hands can attest to that. She repeats what seems to be her mantra, I just love farming over and over again. She says that she takes joy in her work and is proud of what she does, “without us farmers, what would we all eat?” she asks us. Her sister is in her late 60’s, and also still farming. Her mother is over 100 years old, and although she doesn’t farm so much anymore, she’s still alive and alive and well. We were only able to spend a few minutes with this 83 year old woman and her sister, but it was an experience that has stayed with me since. Seeing these women was truly inspiring and humbling. I can only imagine the things they have seen in their time – the joys, the hardships, the hellos and goodbyes. But they are still here, still happy, and still doing what they love.

Once a month, NEPT (my agency) organizes beach clean-ups. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a service event where we spend a few hours picking up trash from the beach. The clean up for August was scheduled for just 3 weeks after I started with them, and happened to fall on a day where my supervisor would be across the island for the entirety of the week leading up to the clean-up. This meant that I would be in charge of making sure the clean-up happened and happened smoothly. I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull it off, but knew I had to find a way to make it a success. Oh, and did I mention that we had practically no budget for the event?The week before she left, my supervisor and I talked about what I would need to do to pull the event off. I wrote donation requests, sent emails, called people, and even Facebook-ed to advertise the event, organize the logistics and get prepared. I did all of this not knowing if it was going to be anyone but me at the beach that day cleaning up, or any need for us on that part of the beach, since I hadn’t seen the actual site yet.The day of the event (last Friday), I was really nervous - were people going to come? Was there going to be work for them? Would we have enough supplies? Would someone pass out from the heat? But the day was fantastic. We had 20 participants - including 13 of the most motivated students I've met here, and 3 other PCVs. Together we picked up 50 huge bags of garbage - so many that we had to beg one of the nearby hotels for additional bags because we ran out of the supply we brought after only about an hour. We got a lot of "good jobs" from people on the beach, and it looked amazing when we were done. On top of all that, one of the participants was so impressed by one of the students that she hired him on the spot to work in her hotel. Everyone went home feeling productive, motivated, exhausted and even asking when they could come back and work more.The whole day was a really great motivator. Working with an amazing group of students like that was refreshing – there’s a lot of apathy in the youth here, so it was nice to see another side. They’re a group that NEPT is going to continue to have a relationship with, so I’m hoping I’ll get to know some of them better. A lot of times with service programs like Peace Corps, the results of your work are intangible and difficult, if not impossible, to see. So a project like this one was fantastic – just take a look at the before and after pictures:A shot of the area before

And after - what a difference, huh?I did have a lot of help and guidance putting the clean-up together, but I was certainly the lead person for the event, and had done most of the background work myself. It felt amazing to have a successful day, and has given me the confidence to tackle an even bigger project in the near future, including our next beach clean-up in September.The whole group with our 50 (!) bags of trash.There are more pictures online: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=101129&id=636823325&l=bba5148742PS - Gavin - I hope that was exciting enough for you, you jerk.

This past weekend marked a major holiday here – Jamaica’s Independence Day. The holiday is actually August 6, but the celebrations lasted into this weekend. I’m still not sure if there’s a Jamaican equivalent to fireworks – or any major tradition to mark the holiday, but there is definitely has been a festive atmosphere here, and people are enjoying themselves and the remainder of the summer. (As a side note, how is it already the second week of August? It’s amazing how time flies...) Jamaica gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962, 47 years ago. It’s interesting living in a country where a good portion of the population can remember such a dramatic event. The transition from colonial rule to self rule here was peaceful, and I’ve actually been surprised at how rarely the subject comes up – I’ve almost never heard a Jamaican talk about that day 47 years ago, and I’m not entirely sure why. The country has gone through a lot of ups and downs since gaining independence, and Jamaica definitely still has a long way to go. But if you think about it, 47 years after we declared our independence, we had already ratified a new constitution, fought a few wars, still had slaves and had yet to fight our own Civil War. So, in comparison, Jamaica’s really not doing too badly. While I’m writing all of this, I can’t help but think of a conversation I had in a taxi a little over a week ago. (A quick note about Jamaican taxis – they run just like buses do in the states, only with compact cars – there are set routes and prices, and passengers get in or out wherever they want to along the route.) I got into a taxi, and the driver and passenger were having a conversation about the current state of Jamaican politics and what can and should be done about it. At one point, the driver made a comment about how Jamaica has been independent for almost 50 years, and its government officers should know how to behave by now. A valid point, indeed, but I did consider comforting him with the fact that 233 years after our own independence, American officials are still working out a lot of those same kinks. I held my tongue though, and am glad I did, as the other passenger made what I think to be a more interesting point. He said that although Jamaica is independent on paper, he really doesn’t consider it to be an independent nation - it’s not a country that can stand on its own two feet, and really never has. There has been so much aid poured into this country in so many different ways, and I can’t even imagine where the country would be without it. Perhaps if things had been different from the start, this would not be the case. But after almost 5 decades, such a culture of dependency has evolved that even now, there is a deeply held feeling among many Jamaicans that instead of just doing work themselves, they should just wait for someone else to come along and do it for them – politicians, missionaries, aid workers, etc. It would be unfair to lay the blame for this attitude fully on the shoulders of Jamaicans. Development work is a tricky thing. The whole idea of development is (or should be) that a “development professional” work for a period of time on a specific problem in a specific area, and work towards making themselves obsolete. If a project is successful, it should eventually be run entirely by nationals of the developing country, with no outside help needed to keep it running. But there’s a problem with this for the development professional – true success would mean that she or he would no longer have a job. And yes, they could just move on after the project is successful and sustainable, but that would mean starting a whole new project in a whole new country – a whole lot of work. And a lot of development workers work on a contract – once a project is done, they need to find a new contract. So in a lot of ways, it actually doesn’t pay for development workers to be too efficient. Modern development work started almost 60 years ago, after World War II, and I can’t help but think that if people had really tried to make development sustainable from the start, I wouldn’t need to be here right now, and the world would be a different place. When you think about how far we’ve come in other aspects of life in the past 60 years, it boggles the mind to think that we can’t assist in making a country like Jamaica independent in the truest sense of the word. This cycle of dependency that has been created and is still being encouraged is no accident. I know this is a somewhat controversial and cynical position to hold, and one that does not shed a very good light on development as a whole. But it’s a side of the truth that’s important to know, and important to see – especially as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s so easy to get fed up with the “give-me” attitude that so many Jamaicans have, but when that attitude is put into perspective, it helps. And Jamaica is by no means alone in any of this. Developing counties around the world are remarkably similar in this way. So many countries that started out as colonies have never grown out of the colonial mind-set that their problems are someone else’s responsibility to fix. Granted, development and its history are a lot more complicated than what I’ve explained here. There’s a lot more to it, and there are an endless amount of books on the subject. And there are a huge number of development projects have been sustainable on a large scale and over a long time, so development can work, and it can be sustainable and successful. But that’s easy to forget sometimes. So it’s tough to say whether Jamaica is really independent or not. In some terms, there really isn’t any country that’s fully independent, is there? As the recent economic downturn has shown, we are all connected a lot more than we thought. Jamaica is in a lot of financial trouble, and starting next month, will be borrowing from International Monetary Fund (IMF) again to help get itself through the next year. Many Jamaicans don’t think this is the best plan, and I am inclined to agree with them. There’s a lot more to say on this topic, but I’m going to save that for a post a little later in the week – this one is already long enough. I’m not sure what would make a country fully independent, or if Jamaica is there yet. But it has been an interesting point to think about it this past holiday weekend.

As if getting hit by a car wouldn’t make for an exciting enough month, there has been a lot more going on in the past few weeks. Most notably, as of this week, I am now longer working with WHROMP in Ocho Rios. Tomorrow I will move out to Negril to start a new job with a new agency. There are a lot of reasons that things didn’t work out with my old agency, but in the end, what it came down to were a series of unspoken expectations, miscommunications and frustrations on both sides. There was a lack of communication, and in the end, it just wasn’t really a good match, so the decision was made to move me to another site. I am upset that things didn’t work out with WHROMP, and that I didn’t get more of a chance to work with them, but this move really is the best for both parties. On a more positive note, I’m really excited for my new placement. I’ll be working with NEPT – the Negril Environmental Protection Trust. They’re an environmental NGO that work with a lot of different groups – farmers, hotels, schools, etc. They are also in charge of managing the Royal Palm Reserve – a protected area on the outskirts of Negril that is pretty much a 300+ acre forest. I’m not 100% sure what I’ll be working on yet, but I do have something of an idea, and the work is pretty varied. One of my projects will be to work on their Clean Fields Campaign, which works to promote best practice farming techniques within the Parish. I’ll also be working to promote the Royal Palm Reserve to the local communities as well as tourists in the area. My other major project will be to implement a program through the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), either with hotels in the area or with schools (the decision about which program we will implement has yet to be made). And I’m sure there will be a lot of other things that pop up for me to work on as well, as there always are in Peace Corps. Each of those three major projects could all be full time projects, and yes, it is a little overwhelming. But I’ve learned a lot over the past 2 months, and I feel a lot more confident about this placement than my last one. The way my experience at WHROMP played out has taught me a lot about what it takes to be a volunteer. Mainly, it takes the courage to just jump in and work through a project. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever done it before, if you think you are qualified, or if you think you know what you’re doing. The trick is to seek guidance where you can and be willing to go it alone if you don’t get that guidance. Either way, you do the absolute best that you can do with the resources you have at hand and work from there. One of the many reasons that things didn’t work out with WHROMP was that I was too scared to just jump in and get things moving - I was far too afraid of failure. And while that fear does still linger on my shoulder, it’s not something that I will let dictate my actions in this new placement. I’ve been given another chance to prove myself at NEPT, and it’s not something that I intend to waste. Like I said before, it does upset me that things didn’t work out with WHROMP. I think they are a great organization and they do a lot of much needed work in the area. I spent a few days really analyzing why things went the way they did, and was able to take a lot of good lessons from it. But now I am ready to take those lessons, move on and start work in Negril at NEPT. I think this is a much better placement for me and I now feel a lot more confident that I’ll be able to handle whatever challenges the next 22 months might bring.

I actually debated for several days whether or not I should share this story with all of you, but ultimately, I decided in favor of sharing it. My reason for this is twofold – for one, it is one of the more exciting things that has happened to me in the past few weeks, but it is also something that will define at least part of my experience here for a number of reasons, and as such, I figured it’s something that I should be sharing. So, here it goes. About two weeks ago, I was traveling through a town about 45 minutes south of Ocho Rios (where I live) called Brown’s Town. I was on my way to a meeting and after paying my taxi fare I decided to ask for directions at a shop across the way instead of just wandering around to look for the building. What I remember is this: crossing halfway onto a median/island and waving good morning to some men who were on the sidewalk. I was heading across the next street to the shops, and the next thing I remember is being in the back of a police car holding a handkerchief to my forehead and talking to the police men who were sitting in the front seat, where I was told that I had been hit by a car. (Now, let me pause here to save you all the suspense: I am fine. I was more or less fine from the beginning. I have a cut on my forehead and a few bruises, but nothing major – I actually got really lucky.) I still don’t remember the accident, so I can’t really be sure what happened. What I’ve been able to put together from what the cops told me is that I was hit by a car, who drove off before anyone was able to get his plate number. I’m not sure how I was hit, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t head on – I think I just got bumped hard enough to knock me down. A taxi man in the area took me to the police station, where I was moved into a police car and driven to the closest hospital (about 25 miles away). I’m still not sure how long I was out, or if I was fully unconscious or just blacked out during this time, but I think it was about 20 – 30 minutes. It was a little weird to wake up in the back of a police car, but I was still so out of it that it didn’t really phase me at the time. I was trying to piece it all together while trying to answer the officer’s questions, which was a difficult task at that point. Once I got to the hospital, I was taken care of really fast. I guess that’s one perk of an open head wound – doctors tend to pay attention to you pretty quick. I was cleaned up, stitched up, given facial x-rays, prescribed pain killers and antibiotics and sent on my way. Overall, I wasn’t too impressed with the hospital, and I am a little concerned that they let me go without more of a neurological check-up (they didn’t even talk to me about symptoms of a concussion or what to do if I have one), and they were definitely doing the bare minimum they had to before they could let me go…my doctor didn’t even tell me when I could get the stitches out or how often to change the dressing. I am really lucky that I was able to rely on Peace Corps for more thorough medical care, and am a little uncomfortable with their standard of care for the general public. I was lucky – I didn’t have any internal bleeding or a bad concussion. But I very easily could have, and if I had been suffering from either of these things, the hospital would have let me walk out their doors with no one the wiser. A scary thought indeed. But once again, I had Peace Corps to fall back on, and this is where the story takes a much needed positive turn. While waiting at the hospital I called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer…we love acronyms in PC) to let her know what had happened. There are 2 PCMOs on staff and they are in charge of making sure that the 75 volunteers on the island stay healthy. We go to them with any medical issues, and they take care of us – either by seeing and treating us themselves or by setting us up with a doctor in our areas to see. In my case, there wasn’t any time to consult with them before seeing a doctor, so I called afterwards. The PCMO decided that she wanted to see me in person, and informed me that she would be coming up to Ocho Rios later that afternoon to check me out. I was a little floored by this – it meant an extra 3 hours of travelling tacked onto the end of her day for just a 10 minute visit. But I know by now not to question Peace Corps staff when it comes to medical or safety issues. So I made my way home and waited for her to arrive. I was still a little out of it, and I remember walking around my house unsure as to what to do. I knew what I had to do – clean up myself and my house a little, take a shower, call my mother, unpack my bag from the day, etc. But actually sitting down to do these things was another story. Except for calling my mother, of course. That I did right when I got home, and for the record, she took it well. There was a little bit of freaking out on her side, but that’s to be expected and she did a good job of keeping a calm front for me, which was helpful. I’m sure Courtney could tell you a different story about how she reacted, but I was glad that she was more or less calm when she talked to me. When the PCMO got to my house, she decided to take me back down to Kingston, for two main reasons. The first being that I live by myself and the other being that I had lost consciousness and probably had a concussion. So I packed for a few days, took a quick shower and rode back down to Kingston with her to stay at the Country Director’s (CD) house – more on this to come a little later. I saw a private doctor the next day, and got a CAT scan, both of which confirmed that am healthy and that my brain is in tip-top shape (despite what some of you may think…) I spent the next day and a half in the Peace Corps Office, which was really nice. The office staff is great and volunteers are constantly coming and going, so I got to see a lot of people (and had to relive my story countless times, thanks to a very unambiguous band-aid on my forehead). There’s also internet, books and TV, so I had plenty to keep myself busy when there weren’t volunteers around. The PC office is a really nice and homey place, and somewhere I feel really comfortable spending time so it was a good place for me to be. I was in a good amount of pain the 2 days after the accident, but nothing that was unexpected – some headaches and body aches. On the third day, I was feeling relatively good, and day by day I’ve gotten a lot better. I still have a few bruises left over, and I got the stitches out this past Monday, which was almost more painful than getting them in. I have a nice scar on my forehead, but luckily my hair covers most of it, and I’m hoping it’ll fade over the next few months. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but I do feel like I got really lucky. Thankfully, I didn’t have any broken bones – I can’t even imagine what being in cast in the middle of the summer would be like here. I’d much rather a cut on my head and a few days worth of a headache. And I had a lot of valuable items in my bag – ipod, camera, phone and cash to name a few, and all of those things made it with me to the hospital. In a country known for pick-pockets and petty theft, that is a miracle in and of itself. Even my sunglasses which must have come off my head made it home with me. And Peace Corps took amazing care of me, so that’s definitely comforting to know. As a side note, there is one funny anecdote from the situation. The accident happened on the Monday after July 4th. I had spent the weekend with other volunteers in a house on the south coast of the island grilling and just hanging out. The meeting I had was on the way back from there to my town, so I had my backpack with all my stuff from the weekend still with me. And besides clothes and a camera, this also included a bottle of rum that I hadn’t finished (because this is Jamaica after all)…a glass bottle. As it turns out, glass isn’t the strongest material in the world, and at some point the bottle broke in my bag, soaking everything and causing my bag (and by extension me) to reek of rum for the rest of the day. And it didn’t help that I was so out of it from hitting my head that I was talking, walking and acting like I was drunk. For the record, this all happened at 10:30 on a Monday...and yes, the police did ask me if I had been drinking. I wasn’t really sure why they asked that at first, but once I started smelling the rum, it all made sense. Oh, and just a small note on our Country Director (CD) – she is phenomenal. I stayed at her house (which is a really, really nice house), for 2 nights and she was so warm and welcoming. We had a long conversation about PC and concerns I have been having about my site and she gave me a lot of fantastic advice and is just so patient. I felt comfortable being entirely open and honest with her despite the fact that she is technically my boss. Apparently the last two country directors have not been so fantastic, so I feel really lucky to have her around and to have gotten the chance to talk to her on an individual level, despite the reason for that opportunity. I’ll end it on that positive note. Let me say once again that I am fine and healthy and the only lasting effect of the accident will be a small scar on my forehead. Peace Corps took amazing care of me, and I don’t feel unsafe here…it’s something that could have happened anywhere. It wasn’t the best experience to have had here, but hey, at least I get a good story out of it, right?

I realize that I’ve been delinquent in updating my blog, but I didn’t realize it had been almost a month. My apologies. There are a few reasons I’ve not written in a couple weeks, and it mostly boils down to feeling like I don’t have a lot to write. Work has still been going really slow, but like I said last time, I have faith it will change soon. But until then, I’ll spare you any more stories about work…they would all pretty much be me sitting in an office anyway, so not too different from what I did back in the states. But I have been able to keep myself busy during non-work hours, which has been good for my sanity. I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and a lot of running. I’m training for a half-marathon in December, so I have to stay fit! It’s in Negril, and a bunch of volunteers are either running in it or volunteering, so I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve also been getting a lot of visitors lately (one of the perks of being in Ocho Rios). This weekend a handful of people came up for the Ocho Rios Jazz Festival… which, despite the name, was not really a festival, and not really in Ocho Rios. There was a free concert on Friday afternoon, as well as a concert we were able to get into for free on Sunday (thanks to some smooth talking by Craig, a fellow volunteer). But we managed to keep ourselves busy for the rest of the weekend. Saturday was a full day – Dunn’s River Falls in the morning, and Blue Hole in the afternoon. Blue Hole is one of the most beautiful/ fun spots I’ve been to in Jamaica yet (see link to pictures below), and luckily, it’s only about 30 minutes from where I live. So I feel as though I’ll be going up there a whole lot this summer. And, since it’s a spot on the White River (the same river my organization works to protect), I can count trips up there as research trips, right? That’s about all I have for today. Like I said, not much to update on right now. Hopefully I’ll have some exciting stories to tell you all in the next few weeks, so stay tuned… More pictures for those who are interested: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2258074&id=5301199&l=b22a586126

As I am quickly learning, patience is one of the most important skills a Peace Corps Volunteer can have. Unfortunately for me, patience is not one of my stronger qualities. Something I’ve been told by countless Volunteers, both here and around the world, is that things can take a few months to get started once you actually get to site. There are a lot of reasons for this – adjusting to any new job is difficult, people may be skeptical of you, people are sometimes too busy to help you out or aren’t too sure what to make of you. But no matter what the reason, it can be pretty frustrating. There’s a really fine line between being pro-active enough to ensure that you’re not bored and being pushy and turning people off. So you end up just biding your time until things start to slowly roll your way. Then, with a little initiative, some hard work and a bit of luck, you can start to get things done. The odd thing is that I know there’s a lot for me to do. I just don’t know where to start or how to get things going. I’m definitely still in an adjustment period, and am still learning how things work here – both within my organization and in Jamaica in general. And you have to start out slowly, and start out with something you know you can do well, and finding that is hard sometimes. There seems to be a lot of projects in the works, so it’s just a matter of me figuring out where I can fit in and be most useful. Some of the things I’m excited about working on in the near future include: -          Working with coastal fishermen and hotels to create a fish sanctuary -         Sponsoring a beach clean-up day as part of the International Coastal Cleanup in September -          Starting/strengthening local school environmental clubs and school gardens -          Partnering with government ministries to alleviate the squatter problem in Ocho Rios -          Starting a bird-watching tour in the area -          Working with a particular farmer’s group in the hills on environmental education  So it’s not that there’s a lack of work for me to be doing. Just a lack of direction. And I’m still so new that I don’t feel like I even know where to start by myself. But I do feel like things will pick up a little bit soon, and I’ve talked to a few volunteers who were able to give me some solid advice on where to start and how to make sure things are successful. All in all, I’m optimistic that things will start happening, one way or the other. And it’s not just my organization that moves so slowly. In Jamaica, as well as in many developing countries around the world, things move a little slower. Most people here have what’s called the “soon come” attitude. The phrase soon come can be used in any number of situations, and can either be a handy tool or an incredibly frustrating thing to hear depending on the context. When someone says, “I’ll soon come back,” that person could be back in 5 minutes or 5 hours. Or, when someone says “The meeting soon finish”, or “Me soon call you”, you really have no idea what time frame they are talking about. And trying to get Jamaicans to set a solid time is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands – you might think you’re getting close, but it’s really never going to happen. Trying to get things done in a culture like this is difficult, especially from an American perspective. I’ve already set in several meetings where it was decided that a certain action should be taken, and instead of hammering out the things that need to be done and delegating these tasks, people talk about setting up another meeting to find a good time for people to meet to talk about what needs to be done. It seems like a very inefficient system at times, but things to get done here, just a little differently then I’m used to.   I’ve had a few other things going on to keep my busy though. I moved into a new housing situation this weekend. I now have my own flat on an older couple’s property and it’s been so nice. I have my own kitchen, and there’s a bathroom, bedroom and little living room – more than enough space for me. I’m closer to work, closer to Ocho Rios, and really happy there. I’ve also been seeing other volunteers a lot lately – there was a birthday party last weekend, a 2 day Peace Corps conference this weekend, and a lot of other events coming up in the next few months. There are a lot of concerts and music festivals in Jamaica in the summer, and a lot of festivals in general. They are a great reason to travel, see more of the island and see friends in different parts of the island.   So there’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months, both with work and personal things. I’m still a little overwhelmed at the idea of living here for 2 years, but I’m trying to take it one week at a time. And I have a feeling that 2 years will be over before I know it, so I’m doing my best to enjoy it while I’m here!

How many times have we all heard this? Growing up in America, I was taught not to look behind me, but ahead. Why do you need to look back anyway, what’s done is done and that’s all there is to it, right? But I’ve started to realize more and more that looking to the past can be useful. Your past experiences, and the lessons that you’ve learned throughout your life are what keeps you grounded. And now more than ever, I need all the help I can get in staying grounded. As of Friday, May 15th, my Peace Corps Training came to an end, and my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) officially began. After a week in Kingston spent doing some final reviews and evaluations, myself and the other 32 members of my training class were sworn in as volunteers at an official ceremony at the US embassy here in Kingston. Unfortunately, since it was at the embassy, we weren’t allowed to take cameras inside, so I have no pictures of the actual ceremony. A PC staff member did take some official pictures, but I haven’t gotten them yet (as they say in Jamaica, they will soon come…but that could mean anytime between tomorrow and next year). I do have some pictures of the rest of my two months here, and I’ll post a link to my facebook album at the bottom (and yes, you can use this link if you aren’t a member of facebook). But the ceremony was very official, and our oath (the same one they take in the military) was administered by the acting ambassador. Being done with training is actually a little overwhelming. Since arriving here, finishing training has been a milestone I’ve been looking forward to, and something tangible. I had tasks to complete, a time frame to complete them in and in two months I would be done. Two months is an amount of time that I can wrap my head around – it’s something that isn’t too overwhelming and something that I can see the end of. Now, I’m looking at two years, and not too many milestones laid out for me. I am still very excited about my work here, and not regretting my decision to join in the least, but it’s just a lot to take in all at once, and it’s a feeling that has kind of caught me by surprise. I’ve never really liked to think about time in large chunks like this, and now I’m kind of forced to do so. But maybe that’s good for me, maybe it’ll teach me a new life skill. It’s very easy for me to get overwhelmed with the prospect of living here for two years, with my job, and with this life that I have chosen for the near future. But that’s where I’ve learned to look back and reflect on the experiences that have brought me here. I’ve done difficult things before, and I’ve made it through. Like everyone else, I’ve been overwhelmed by life before, but if I’ve figured it out in the past, why should now be any different, right? I just need to remind myself to breathe, and remind myself of the things that have brought me here, and what they’ve taught me. I think a healthy dose of reflection on the past is a very good thing. To throw out another old cliché, the past is prologue, and so without looking to the back, you won’t really have a very good idea of where you’re going or why you’re going there. All that being said, I’ve also been trying to focus on the future, specifically the very near future, and on my work here with WHROMP. We had a long meeting today that was surprisingly productive. There were a few projects proposed that I will be helping out with, and I think that I will be a lot busier in the near future (meaning I’ll have less time to gchat…sorry guys). The projects cover a pretty big range – mangrove re-planting, re-introducing sail fishing (as opposed to using gas engines), working with schools, beach clean-ups, bird watching tours, and more. I’m by no means an expert in any of these things, so it’ll be interesting to see what I can bring to the table. But those are the details that will only work themselves out with time. Until then, I’m going to keep learning whatever I can and finding ways to make myself useful here. And most importantly, I’m going to remind myself to breathe. As promised, some pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2249473&id=5301199&l=3ae318f61b

By far, one of the best things about learning about a new culture is getting to try all the new foods. Jamaica has no shortage of unique foods, and trust me, I’ve done my fair share of sampling in the past 6 weeks. So I thought it would be fun to give you all an idea of what I’ve been eating lately. Jerk – Probably the most famous Jamaican dish and it’s usually chicken or pork (though the pork probably isn’t the best idea right now…). To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed by this one. Not because it’s not delicious, because trust me, it is. It’s just not that different then other slow cooked, smoked chicken I’ve had. But, like I said, it is tasty. The spice level really varies with the cook – sometimes it’s not hot at all, and other times it is smokin’ hot. What makes it jerk is the spices, and that’s where the variation comes in. Serious jerk chefs usually make their own blend and use that to season the meat. After the meat is spiced, it is slow cooked in a grill and becomes really tender. It’s usually served with festival – little sweet breadsticks that go really well with the chicken, especially if it’s a little spicy. The most interesting thing about jerk is where you usually find it. Besides the “jerk centers” around towns, there are usually a few people in each neighborhood who cook jerk chicken and pork on weekend nights at the end of their driveway. In Hellshire, this became a community event, with people eating and chatting with their neighbors. It’s not as much of an event in my community here, although I did meet Colin this past weekend, who sold me some delicious jerk chicken and festival – a huge portion that I had trouble finishing for only J$290! (That would be just over US$3.00) Ackee and Salt-fish – This would be the national dish of Jamaica. (Yeah, I didn’t know countries had national dishes either. I guess America’s would be a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a coke?) Ackee is a red fruit that grows all over the place in Jamaica – on the tree it looks a little like a red pepper. It is poisonous until it opens on its own on the tree, when the middle can be taken out and cooked. It looks a lot like scrambled eggs when it is all cooked up, but doesn’t really taste at all like eggs. I’m not actually sure what it tastes like… the salt fish I had it with was so amazingly salty and fishy that I really couldn’t taste anything else. I think salt fish is cod, although I’m not really sure. Like I said, it is really, really salty. So much so that it actually doesn’t have to be refrigerated or kept cold. The whole dish just tastes salty and fishy and is obviously not my favorite. Apparently salt fish grows on you, but in order for that to happen, I’ll have to eat it a few more times…something that I don’t really see happening.  But when I try the ackee sans salt fish, I’ll let you know what I think. Rice & Peas – can accompany pretty much any Jamaican dish, and I’ve already found myself craving it lately. The rice is usually prepared with a little coconut milk, giving it a slightly sweet taste. And mixed in are beans (beans are known as peas here) – usually red kidney beans, but sometimes a few other varieties. Like I said, this is a side with almost every meal, and the portion of rice is usually about the size of my head. I have no idea how Jamaicans eat so much rice and aren’t all 300 lbs., but they can seriously put it away. It’s impressive. Stewed chicken – I think this is my favorite dish so far. The chicken is stewed in a pot for a while with just a slightly sweet sauce and its own juices – no oil or anything needed. As a result, the flavor of the sauce really comes out, but doesn’t overpower the flavor of the chicken. I feel like when people in America cook with sauces, we tend to just throw the sauce on there and that is kind of all you can taste. But when you can actually taste the meat, it’s just delicious. Jamaicans eat any part of the chicken, and the breast is actually most people’s least favorite part. People think I’m a little weird when I ask for it, but I can deal with that. It is usually served with a heaping side of rice & peas and/or what Jamaicans call food… Food – a general term for starchy vegetables served as sides. This usually consist of yam (there are over a dozen different kinds of yams here…), potatoes (sweet, Irish, etc), and boiled green bananas. That’s right – unripened bananas are boiled and eaten here. They are surprisingly tasteless and turn an unappetizing grey color when cooked. They’re not exactly my favorite. There are also dumplings – little pods of water and flour that are not near as tasty as what I know of as dumplings. All of these items are usually placed in one pot and boiled, usually with no spices or anything added. For a culture that puts so much flavor into their meat, it’s shocking that they wouldn’t think to add even a little salt to this mix. It would definitely go a long way. But alas, no culture is perfect, right? And yes, food is used both in context, as well as in the way we would use the word. And yes, this does get really confusing. I never thought I would hear someone ask, “You want some food with your chicken?”  As a side note, Usain Bolt, the current fastest man in the world, is from the parish bordering mine, Trelawney. That parish is actually also home to several other of Jamaica’s best sprinters. Trelawney is also where most of the yam in Jamaica is grown, and it’s said that all the yam is what makes them so fast. Personally, I’d say it’s the combination of luck and hard work, but you know, that’s just me.  Patties – These are similar to a calzone or an empanada. It’s pretty much just ground up meat in a fried dough. The most common type is beef, although you can also get chicken, fish, veggie, and beef & cheese. They are surprisingly good, and pretty cheap. They are awful for you, and I’m pretty sure the meat would be somewhere around grade D in the states, but it’s best not to think about this when you’re eating them. They make a really good fast, cheap lunch and like most things that will give you a heart attack, are pretty tasty. Bun & Cheese – definitely the most processed meal on this list. Thankfully, it’s usually only eaten around Easter – it’s definitely one of those things you can only eat a few times a year. The bun in this combo is a spiced muffin type of thing that’s sweet and a little sticky. It’s cut in half and served sandwich style with Tastee Cheese inside. The best way to describe Tastee Cheese is to think of a solid version of cheez-whiz – the “cheese” that comes in a can like whipped cream. The cheese comes in a can and doesn’t need to be refrigerated until it’s opened. I was a little hesitant of the combination at first, but it’s actually surprisingly delicious. But, like I said, something you really only want once or twice a year. I think eating it any more often than that would kill you.   There are a few Jamaican delicacies I have yet to try including oxtail, pig tail, chicken foot (usually cooked in a soup), conch, fish head and manish water (goat head soup...). Gah. Two pages in and I haven’t even touched on all the fruit yet! Well, that’ll have to be another entry on another day. I could keep talking for days about food, but I think I’ll spare you all.  *this entry is dedicated to Lindsay Giesen, mostly because she’s probably already trying to figure out how to make all of these things back in DC.  

I only have 23 days until I am sworn in and officially start my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)! Some days it feels as though I’ve only been here a few days, and others it feels like I’ve been here a year already. Things are still going really well, but the days can be pretty jam packed, and I have been taking in a whole lot of information lately. Training is definitely exhausting – that’s something that other PCVs have told me before, and while I didn’t doubt in the least, I also didn’t fully understand how true it is until now. But it is all important stuff, so I'm willing to push through it.

I spent the last two weeks in Ochi with WHROMP (pronounced wee-romp), and am now back in Hellshire for this week with the rest of the group to process the experience and get some more training as a larger group. By far the best thing about this week is seeing the rest of my training class. I really like my group, and it’s really nice to hear about everyone’s site and what everyone will be doing while they’re here. In general, people seem really happy with everything. Everyone has their own unique challenges, and no one’s site is anywhere close to perfect, myself included. But people seem to be adjusting well, and I think once we get through training, start doing some work and get a little more freedom, people will be a lot happier.

We’ll all be going back to our sites this weekend, and will be there for another two weeks. Then we’ll have one final week of training in Kingston, complete with an official swearing in ceremony.

After that, it’s back to our sites to start our two year journey as Peace Corps Volunteers.

I don't really have too much else to say now, and need to get going anyway. But some people have been asking me what types of things I would appreciate being sent to me, and so I’ve decided to put together a little list, should you feel so inclined. No pressure, but who doesn't love a care package??

- Letters!

- Books (fiction, non-fiction, political, I'll really read anything at this point)

- Movies or music

- Magazines (Food magazines or current events/political ones are personal favorites)

- Food (non-perishable or non-melty stuff is probably best.)

- Yoga DVDs (A fellow trainee taught us some this morning and I really liked it!)

- Things to do in my room/house that don’t involve going outside after dark

- Really, anything else you can think of!

Expectations are a funny thing. As much as I tried to come into this experience with none at all, a few had slipped in – some that I was conscious of and others that I was not. When I decided to join Peace Corps, and even when I got invited to serve in Jamaica, I was preparing myself for any situation – living with no running water or power, being the only American for a hundred miles, working in a school, working in an office, not having access to internet, eating food I was entirely unfamiliar with, etc. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, so I had no idea what to expect. As it turns out, my situation is not at all what I had prepared myself for – not at all what I expected.

I’m living and working in a small city on the north coast of the island called Ocho Rios (Ochi for short). My house here is really nice – running water, electricity, a washing machine and very close to a supermarket that sells Ben & Jerry’s, good wheat bread, cheerios, peanut butter and a selection of beer that includes more than just Red Stripe and Heineken (and yes, that is about all it takes to make me happy). There are about 4 produce stands between my house and office and I’ve already gotten the low down on who has the best prices. Within the next few weeks, I will have hot water and internet at my house on top of all the other amenities. I’m living with a married couple – a Jamaican man and a Canadian woman who has been here for about 20 years. They are both really nice, and the woman has been giving me all sorts of tips and tricks for living in Jamaica (especially as a white woman) and in Ochi. And she cooked me a great Jamaican meal my first night – curry chicken, rice and beans, and stewed beef.

I’m working with an organization called the White River Watershed and Ocho Rios Marine Park Association (WHROMP). The White River runs for 15 miles from the mountains into the ocean, and dumps right into the Ocho Rios Marine Park. Activities in the White River’s watershed range from agriculture to tourism to mining to fishing and much more. WHROMP is working all over the watershed in 9 different “clusters” of communities over 25,000 acres to promote responsible use of the watershed. The watershed supports countless communities all over Jamaica, either directly or indirectly. And as I said, the river dumps directly into the marine park, with its beaches and coral reefs. So any negative effect on the watershed will have the same effect in the coastal communities and in the ocean.

From what I have gathered from Alex, my supervisor at WHROMP, the organization (or disorganization as he calls it) is still in the very early stages and needs a lot of work on the organizational/management side of things. And that’s where I come in. They have a lot of interest and a lot of motivated people, but need some focus and someone with an outsider’s view to come in and sort things out. So it’s a very exciting time in the organization, and a very important time as well. I was placed with WHROMP because of the watershed work that I did with the SCA a few summers ago in California, but I think that the work I did with GW Students for Fair Trade/United Students for Fair Trade (GWSFT/USFT) will be even more useful, and I’m excited to get to use and expand those skills. I’ll be working with a lot of different communities in a lot of different areas – anything from hotels here in Ochi to rural farmers in the hills. It’s going to be a lot of really hard work, and I can already see how frustrating it’s going to be at times, but I can’t even express how excited I am. The opportunity to help shape an organization from the beginning is more than I ever expected and something I feel confident I can make a difference with. It’s going to be a slow process, but I guess that’s why I have 2 years, right?

Alex took me around a small section of the river the other day, and it’s absolutely beautiful. The water is crystal clear with a sandy bed that looks almost like the sea. Just this one small section of the river supports so many different activities: fishing, agriculture, tourism, hydro-electric power, livestock, and more I’m sure I missed. Here’s a picture of the river under a bridge that was built by the Spaniards, probably in the early 1600’s – now it’s mainly a tourist attraction with companies offering tube rides starting from the bridge.

On a side note, Alex has a really interesting back story. He’s of British and Irish descent and has done everything from farming to metal work to environmental consulting, and often times it’s a mix of those 3 things and more. He has 4 children, 2 of whom I met and seem really nice as well. It’s funny, I actually look more like I could be his daughter then the two I met – his wife is Indian and they both look a lot like her. We already had one woman ask if I was Alex's wife or his daughter (yes, both of these from the same woman). For now, we’re going with the latter. But growing up as a white Jamaican, he’s had a lot of unique experiences relating to biases some black Jamaicans have against white Jamaicans. He’s already shared a lot of his story with me, and he’s had some really interesting and varied experiences that I’m excited to hear more about over the next 2 years.

So there are parts of my placement that were very unexpected. Namely living in an urban area, working and living so closely with other white people and being so close to other volunteers – there are at least 10 others within an hour of me. I guess I just have to adjust my expectations a bit and take everything for what it is, not what I thought it might be. I am very excited about everything, and can really see myself being happy in the whole situation for the next two years. I’m sure there will be challenges along the way and I’m sure there will be times I’ll want to throw my hands up and go home, but for now I’m really looking forward to this whole experience and can’t wait to see where it takes me.

(For a bit of context, this was written on March 23rd) Greetings from Hellshire, Jamaica! I’ve been in country for just under a week, and I am still really, really liking it here. I feel like I really lucked out with this placement – the staff seems pretty on top of their game, the people in my training class are great, and on a whole, Jamaicans are really warm and friendly. And, they cook a mean baked chicken. We’ve spent the past 4 days in a community called Hellshire, about 45 minutes west of Kingston. The group of 36 of us sort of took over this neighborhood...there are at least 2 of us on every block and no one is more than 5 minutes away from anyone else. It’s a really nice way to ease into Jamaican culture and to prep for the home stays we have coming up in April, where we’ll most likely be the only American in our community. The whole town has really embraced us, and we all feel safe and comfortable here. Although it’s barely been a week since I left the states, I feel like I already have so much to talk about! For now, I’ll stick to the highlights, and I think I’ll start with my family. I have a mom and dad, and a sister. There are a few more children, but they no longer live at home. My mom is really sweet and has definitely made me feel welcome- from day one she was introducing me to people as her new daughter. She’s really easy to talk to, and seems really happy.  She’s always singing something – usually connected to whatever she’s doing/thinking at the moment, i.e. – “I have to wash the pot”, “I need to buy some carrots”. I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about hearing someone singing for no particular reason that makes me smile. I also really like my sister - she’s 14, and is really sweet as well. She wants to be a pediatrician when she grows up, and she spends a lot of time studying. She gets up at 4:30 every morning to get to school on time and seems really dedicated. She also loves Miley Cirus, so we bonded over that a few nights ago. She bakes and cooks a lot as well, so I think we’re going to plan a night to bake something together, which will be a lot of fun.  My dad is definitely the quietest of the 3, but I really like him too. He’s a deacon at the church that we go to as well (yes, I did go to church yesterday…) and works night shifts as a security guard in Kingston. I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to him too much, but I’m hoping that will change in the next few days. We’ve spent the past few days in class learning Patois (it’s a really cool language to listen to, and fascinating from a linguistics viewpoint), learning about Jamaica, about PC policies and about our particular sectors – mine being environment. The classes are pretty boring, and the lectures are really long and usually run over. Classes are from 8 am – 6 pm, so we are all pretty exhausted at the end of the day. But our pace will slow down a lot once we are done with training, which will be really nice. But from stories I’ve heard from other volunteers, it sounds like our training is pretty painless over all, so I’m trying to focus on that. And I really like my host family and training class, so that makes it easy as well. In about 10 days, we are going to be getting our site assignments, so I’ll be finding out exactly what I’ll be doing and where. I’m really anxious about that – there’s a lot riding on it, and they really didn’t consult us as much as I thought they would. They pretty much had all the sites planned out before we got to Jamaica, and are using the first few weeks to make sure their placements are right. It’s a little frustrating that they aren’t telling us, but I guess that’s where flexibility and patience comes in, huh? Until we find out, I’m just trying to enjoy the time with my family and fellow trainees. There are a couple things I don’t have space to get into here, so look for another post soon! I do want to tell you all about my first Jamaican church service, as well as a little more about Patois and Jamaican culture. Oh – and I have had so much delicious food to talk about too! But, it’s getting a little late for me, so I’m going to save all of those things for another entry. Until then… 

I know I've only been in Jamaica for about 36 hours, but I'm absolutely loving it so far. They've kept us pretty busy so far, and there's been a whole lot of information thrown at us in the past few days. I won't bore you all with the details of safety and security, medical stuff and PC policies, but there's a whole lot of information to take in. If only for the policies and paperwork alone, there is absolutely no doubt that PC is a government agency. 

On the bright side, the policy lectures have been the only boring part so far. My training class is great, and the staff all seem really excited and really positive. I'm sure I'll have frustrations with some of the people around me soon enough, but for now I'm just enjoying all the excitement floating around on all sides. There's nothing too substantive to update on now, seeing as I've only been here for a day or two. But yes, I am safe and I am enjoying myself. Thank you all so much for the messages of good luck and all the terribly nice emails and letters. They really have meant a lot to me. 

Tomorrow night we are heading into our first home-stay, and will be there for the next 2 weeks. The Internet connection there will be spotty, so I won't be too quick in responding, but feel free to keep the emails coming! 

And as promised, I have some updated contact information. The old address will still work, so no worries if you sent something to the old one, it will just take a lot longer. So use this one in the future:

Melissa Dentchc/o Peace Corps Country Director, Leila Webster8 Worthington AveKingston 5Jamaica, West Indies 

Phone Number: 876-488-0542

876 is the country code, and I will post more information on the best ways to call after I test out some methods with people back in the states. 

I'll try to update again soon, but I miss you all and hope you are all doing well!

As most of you know, I will be leaving for for Jamacia on Tuesday (3/17) to join the Peace Corps. I'm flying to Miami, where I'll meet the rest of my training class and have a bit of an orientation about Peace Corps. On Wednesday (3/18), I will fly to Jamaica with my training class - about 30 or so people. From there, we'll have about 2 months of training in the language (Patios - a creole), technical skills and Jamaican culture. Then, on May 16th, I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) and begin my two years of service. I won't know my exact placement or job until a few weeks into training, and I'll be sure to keep you updated on all of those details. 

A lot of people have been asking me lately how I'm feeling - excited? nervous? scared? anxious? The answer is all of the above, and more. The best way that I can describe it is that I feel like I'm about to jump of a cliff. Now, keep in mind I like that sort of thing - cliff jumping, roller coasters, etc - I'm one of those people who likes the rush that it brings. But it's an action that is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, an action that is fun precisely because it is so scary. For the past few weeks, with all the goodbyes, and packing and what not, I feel like I've been getting a running start on the jump - and there definitely has been a small part of me screaming to stop and turn around. But as with any leap, you just have to let your momentum push you forward, and commit to it, knowing you will be happy you did in the end. And once you do jump, you can start to relax - there's nothing you can do to change course now, so you might as well enjoy the ride, right? Eventually, you land in the water, swim to the surface and enjoy the afterglow that comes when you push yourself despite all of your fears and doubts.  

I know that the next few years, and specifically the next few months, will be a huge challenge, but it's one that I know I'm up to and one that I have been looking forward to for a long, long time. It definitely helps to know that I have an amazing support network in the states. I have some amazing friends and family, and you all have been so supportive and so wonderful - especially lately. I am very lucky to have you all, and I owe you all a huge thank you.  

And finally, for those of you who have asked, some contact information. My address is below - it's the address for the main Peace Corps office in Jamaica. I will have a more specific address when I get to my site in a few months, and I'll be sure to send that along when I get it as well. But for now, feel free to send letters or packages to:

Melissa DentchPeace Corps8 Worthington AveKingston 5Jamaica Email: mdentch@gmail.com

I realized the other day that it has been a long time since my last post, and I apologize for that. I have been super busy and have not had a lot of time to write. I will write a longer entry (or 2) when I get back to the states though to get you all updated on the last month of my stay in Kenya. But for now, just know that ISP went very well, the paper, the presentation and just the experience in general was amazing. It was really hard to leave Kisumu, and I am hoping that I will get to go back sometime soon. But we'll see if that happens...

Speaking of my return, I guess I should let you all know what the deal with that is. I am flying out tomorrow (Saturday) night, getting into NYC on Sunday evening around 6. So starting on Monday I will be fully accessible by American standards! My cell phone should be back on in the first few days when I am back, and I will be back to my old obsessive email habits.

And, I think I should also let you all know what my plans are for this summer, since several of you have asked. I am working with an organization called the Student Conservation Association (SCA). They place students in national parks around the country doing various conservation efforts. I am going to be in California working in the Inyo National Forest, about 150 miles north of LA. I will be working with 5 other college kids and 1 team leader, doing reforestation to prevent off road vehicles from going off their designated trails and ruining the surrounding environment. I will be camping for most of the summer, which I think will be really really fun. It will be an adventure for sure, but one that I am really looking forward to. I fly out to start my job on May 29, leaving only about 8 days in Fishkill...

I definitely have a lot of mixed emotions about coming back home. I am really excited, but also really sad to be leaving. And I'm not really sure yet what's gonna hit me in terms of reverse culture shock, but I'm sure it will be an interesting experience, and I'll let you all know how it goes.

Just as a disclaimer, this entry might be a little bit of a downer. It’s not that I have started to get depressed or overly homesick or anything, but there are a lot of things about living in Kenya and Kisumu that get me down sometimes, and I wanted to share them with all of you. I’ve said several times how much I like Kisumu, and this is true. It’s a great little city and it’s got a great atmosphere – most of the time. But like every other area of Kenya, it has its own set of problems and issues. The poverty here is very different than the poverty in Nairobi, and while I did have some exposure to the extreme poverty there, for the most part I wasn’t around the poorest of the poor. In Nairobi, my house was in a pretty good neighborhood, and yet it was only about a 5 minute walk from Kibera slum. That kind of poverty is really overwhelming and in your face, but at least it presents itself all at once. So it may knock you over the first time, but after that you can start to accept it and get on with things and you know what to expect next time. In Kisumu, it’s a little different. The poverty here reveals itself a little slower, and doesn’t really give you a chance to fully digest it right away. Just when you think you have started to get a handle on it, you see something else that knocks you right back off your feet. The first thing I noticed about the poverty here was the street kids. As the name suggests, these are kids that have no home. Most are males, and are either orphans, or have been abandoned by their families for various reasons. In America, these kids would have foster homes, orphanages or other places to go, and while these places may not be the best, they are better than the streets. I’ve seen kids as young as 6 or 7 and it’s heartbreaking every time I see them, no matter what age. They all huff glue and turpentine, since being high and passing out is easier then feeling lonely, hungry, cold and depressed. Many of them walk around high all day and just stare at people with glazed over eyes. If they are sober enough when they see me to realize that they are looking at a Mzungu (a white person), they usually ask me for money or food, or say some incomprehensible insult. I have a policy of not giving out money to anyone, and usually do not have any food on me, so I just walk by them. That is one of the most heart breaking parts. I want to help all of them, but I know they will just use the money to get high, and that’s not helpful. There are a few rehabilitation programs for them, but no where near enough. One of the guys that my roommate works with used to be a street kid, and actually went to one of these homes. Now he has a wife and a baby and is helping to run a youth football league here that is helping a lot of kids (much like MYSA from a few weeks ago). So there is some hope, but it’s hard to see that when I have to walk by a group of 5 street kids on my way out of the grocery store who are just waiting for handouts. Many of these kids spend their whole lives on the streets. And when they get older, their adult life is no better than their childhood (if you can even call it a childhood) was. I see many of these grown men walking around downtown. Their clothes are just as tattered as their young counterparts and I have yet to see either one of these grown men or a street kid with a pair of shoes or sandals. Their hair is disheveled, and they carry the few possessions they have in old bags over their shoulders. There are no programs that I know of for these older people, they just seem to be forgotten about. They will also ask me for money just like the younger kids. I had a banana that I tried to give to one of them, but he told me that he didn’t want it and asked me if I had any money. I wonder what that money would have gone to… Many of them are not even lucky enough to have clothing at all. Some walk around wrapped in plastic bags, and my friends have even seen people walking around in just a T-shirt. These people have no where to sleep but the streets, and it is not uncommon to come across several of them either downtown or a little bit further out, where I work. They sleep at any time of the day and are usually passed out from some kind of drug or drink. I was eating lunch at a small café near where I work, and I saw a woman just lying on the side of the road, passed out. No one was paying her any mind, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was even alive. A few minutes later I saw her head move, so that fear passed. This is not an uncommon sight here – people passed out anywhere they can find some grass and some shade. Some on cardboard, others just sprawled out where ever they happen to fall over. It’s so hard to walk by these people every day and not do anything – but what can I do? I know that is kind of a cop-out, but I can’t give them money, I can’t start any kind of program, and while I may be able to give a few of them food, that won’t even make a dent in the larger problem. So it’s been hard. Another thing that has been getting to me is the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. I talked about this a few entries ago when I talked about the village I stayed in, but it’s worth mentioning again. While HIV is big a huge fact of life in the US, I haven’t really been too exposed to it. But here it is a constant fact of life. The prevalence rates in this area are probably over 30%, the highest in Kenya. It’s really sobering to be sitting in a room and suddenly wonder how many of these people are infected with HIV/AIDS. And it’s not if anyone is infected, but rather how many. And there are programs where people can get free treatment, but there are never enough drugs. Another issue with this is that the drugs need to be taken with food, something that is a big issue for many people. So they stop taking the drugs or take them irregularly, which can have larger consequences of drug resistance, spreading the disease, etc. So curbing the affects of HIV/AIDS will take a lot more than just free drug programs, abstinence only education and charity. It’s an overwhelming problem, as are most issues in development. Like I said, I do really like it here, both Kenya and Kisumu. But there are some facts of life that I haven’t (and hopefully never will) get used to. And so while most of the time I am optimistic about the future of these places and have great experiences here, I would not be giving you all a fair portrayal of my time here and my experiences if I did not share the hard aspects as well as the good ones. While there have been a lot hard things about living here, it’s the hard stuff that you learn the most from, right? And I can say with confidence that my good experiences in Kenya have outweighed the bad, and even the bad ones were not a total loss, since I have learned so much from them – both as a human being and as a development student. So don’t let this entry get you down, once I finish school, I’ll be back here to change a few things!

It’s been about 2 weeks in Kisumu, and I still really like it here. It’s a much more manageable city then Nairobi – you can walk around the whole downtown in less than an hour and after only about 2 days, I knew my way around (and I’m awful with directions – I still get lost in DC sometimes…). My 3 roommates and I usually cook dinner about 4 nights a week, usually some sort of carb (pasta, rice, bread, etc) and fresh veggies cooked in various ways. And I was talking before about how cheap it is – all the veggies for a meal for 4 usually don’t cost us more than $3. And fruit is also just as cheap, and so good and fresh. Even going out to dinner doesn’t cost us too much – if we pay $6 for a full meal, we are seriously splurging. What am I going to do when I get back to the states and I can’t get a whole meal for under a $1?! I’m not looking forward to it… And just to give you a taste, here is the view of the sunset over Lake Victoria from our balcony:

And my ISP is also going great. I am working with the Kisumu Innovation Center of Kenya (KICK), and they have been great so far. They have about 30 artisans working for them making handi-crafts that they export to the US, Canada, Australia and a few European countries. They have basically taken me on as an intern, and part of my time is spent doing various odd jobs for them, like sorting through products to make sure they are of good quality, taking pictures of products, etc. But my major project is doing Artisan Profiles of most the artisans. The manager and I made up sort of a questionnaire and I get to go around to the artisans and interview them. I’ve done almost 20 so far, and it’s been so interesting. They are all really open to talking to me, something that I was worried about, being that I am a white American female. These profiles serve a dual purpose – I am using them as raw data for my ISP and KICK is working on making a website (don’t worry, I’ll post the link when it’s done) and a section of that is going to be the profiles of all the artisans so that buyers can see them. Pretty cool, huh? It’s really comforting to know that the work I’m doing is not only benefiting me, but that KICK will also get something out of it.

As far as what I am getting from the artisans, that has been the most interesting part so far. Thankfully, they all speak English, and most speak very well, so I don’t need a translator. They are all really smart and all have a lot of talent. Many of them come up with the products themselves and then bring to KICK who help them to perfect the product. KICK then markets them to these companies like Ten Thousand Villages, Oxfam, and other smaller ones that (hopefully) buy them. For example, one of the guys I was talking to today harvests and dries hyacinth, a plant that is taking over Lake Victoria, and uses it to make paper, frames and books that are absolutely beautiful. And he does the whole process himself – getting the plant from the river, drying it, making the paper and then making the final product. A lot of them also train women they know to make various things to market and sell. One of the questions that I ask them is what KICK can do to help improve their lives, and everyone so far has said the same thing – more orders. The way it works is that KICK gets an order from a company, finds an artisan that can fill it and pays him/her 50% upfront. Then, upon completion of the order, the artisan gets the remaining 50% (this is pretty standard practice in the Fair Trade world). So if there are no orders, than an artisan does not work and does not get paid. Many of them also work doing other things, so there is some income when they don’t have orders from KICK, but many of them have said that they prefer working for KICK because the wage is better. The second most common answer to the question of what KICK can do to help them is more training. Some of them want training in painting, wire work, and even computer design or management training. The bottom line is that they all just want work. They want to do everything they can so that they will get more orders from KICK and continue working for them.

One of the most interesting questions that I ask them is whether or not they know a lot about Fair Trade. About half know at least a basic idea, which is good. But there are some that do not know anything about it at all and some also give me a very elementary definition, mostly using the words fair and trade in the definition. Something like, “Yes, yes I know. It is when the people who are trading the products do so in a very fair manner.” And then when I follow up asking them if they would like to know more about it, every single person has given me an emphatic yes. Even though they don’t really know what Fair Trade means, they can see that with KICK they are treated better, paid better, are given more artistic license, and perhaps most importantly, can support their various family members through school, with food, medicine or other necessities. Many have told me that with KICK they were able to save money to go back to secondary school (which is not, and has never been, free in Kenya), send their children or siblings to school, pay their rent, and one even told me that he makes enough money to “spoil” his nephew – which most likely means that he can buy him clothing and shoes that aren’t tattered and food that is more than just the bare essentials. So even though they don’t understand what Fair Trade means, they know that it is helping them, and understandably, they all want to know more about why it is helping them. I talked with Isaac, the manager of the company, about doing a mini workshop on Fair Trade for the artisans, and so we are planning to do it next week. It’ll be a little daunting giving a lecture on Fair Trade to the artisans (I’ve never even given one to other students), but I think it will be a really interesting learning experience and I am especially looking forward to the Q&A session afterwards – it’ll be interesting to see what kind of questions they ask and what they want to know more about.

All in all, it has been very encouraging to hear their answers. From their hunger for work, to the benefits they have seen through Fair Trade to their creativity it has been a great experience. I was really worried that I would find the opposite – that Fair Trade is just a name that doesn’t actually make much of a difference. But luckily, that has not been the case. Working here has been a great inspiration for me, and I’m so excited to take the inspiration and momentum back to GW and GWSFT next year!

I know that last time I said I would talk more about KICK and my ISP, but I'm putting that on hold until next time so that I can share with you all my wonderful weekend...

I took a break from ISP and had one of the coolest experiences yet in Kenya. As some of you might know, Barack Obama is Kenyan. His father was born and raised here, in an area about an hour or 2 from Kisumu. His grandmother still lives in that village, and this weekend 3 others in the group and I got to meet her. Yes, you read that right. We met Obama's grandmother. It was so awesome. She is about 85 and still alive and kicking. She still does all the work in her farm, takes care of her household and is totally still there mentally. She speaks Duhluo (the Luo language) and Kiswahili, but no English. We showed up at her house completely unannounced, yet she still welcomed us in and spoke with us for about 2 hours. She talked to us about Obama’s father, about him and also asked us about ourselves. Our translators were SIT’s home-stay coordinator who lives a few villages away and a friend of his who is principal of a local school. We thought that they knew her and had worked it out, but this was actually not the case. And when we apologized to her for just showing up, she said that since we were the Senator’s guests, that we were welcome at any time. And since Obama and his father have the same name (which isn’t uncommon in Luo culture), he was always referred to as “the Senator”, which we all thought was kind of funny.

She told us about Barack (the father) and how he was always so smart and had such determination, and how Obama has the same characteristics. He wasn’t that close to his real father, who died in the late 70’s. Oh, I also saw his (the father’s) grave, along with the grandfather’s – they are buried on the family compound. But he is pretty close to the family. The first time he came to Kenya was for his father’s funeral and he has been back multiple times since. He also flew his grandmother to D.C. for his inauguration into the Senate. I was not aware that he had been so many times, and had kind of thought that his last trip was just a political ploy. But it was good to hear that this was not the case. The first time he was here was as an undergrad (I think), and he stayed for about a week. He is in pretty regular communication with a cousin here, who then gives the news to his grandmother and the rest of the family. He has visited pretty regularly since then, and even took his wife to meet them before they were married. The grandmother told us that before he makes and really important decisions, i.e. running for the senate or for the presidency, he consults them. From what she was saying, he sounds like a great guy with a good head on his shoulders. And yes, I know that this is how any grandparent would talk about their grandchild, but it seemed really genuine from her.

She had pictures of the whole family around the sitting room, and many included Obama. One of them was him on his first trip here helping her to carry her vegetables to the market. There were other more formal family pictures, as well as an “Obama for Senate” sign that he had signed for her. There were also other family members, his father, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The house itself was really nice – well built with electricity. The chairs and couches were really nice and there was even a TV. I got the impression that the family has always been relatively well off, by rural Kenyan standards at least. It seems like they are a family that has always been really hard workers and really determined to get what they want. Despite all this, it struck me how self-less this woman was. Apparently, she told Obama that he should do whatever he can to help the people of Kenya – not just her area. The main things that she kept talking about were development (I got the sense that she meant in terms of infrastructure – roads, communication, schools, etc) and medicine. The 4 of us are studying different things – mal-nutrition, medicine, politics and trade, and she told each of us that she wanted us to come back when we graduated to help the people in the area. She also wants me to come back and help her improve her business of selling vegetables. An offer I would have gladly taken her up on, but once again, school gets in the way. Oh well, maybe next year. By then maybe we’ll go from being the Senator’s guests to the President’s guests. One can only hope…

It was a pretty surreal experience. She told us that the US Ambassador was coming on Monday, and I couldn’t help but wonder what this woman’s life will be like if Obama does actually make it into the White House. Picturing her walking around the White House made us all laugh a little bit – an old African woman who has lived her whole life on her farm in Kenya getting waited on hand and foot by White House Staff. It would be pretty awesome, I think. I know the primaries are still a long way out, but after our talk with her, I think I have finally decided where my loyalties are this election…

The rest of the weekend was pretty good as well. We stayed for 2 days with home-stay coordinator, and it was an interesting experience to say the least. He has 2 women, about 20-ish years old, which is actually pretty typical here actually. I was a little upset at how they were treated – they were definitely treated as the hired help. And since they are women, they are treated a little worse. Nothing terrible, but their hard work was not appreciated at all, and they are definitely taken for granted. Unfortunately, that is also not uncommon here. Men are definitely superior, and that has been one of the hard things to get used to. Seeing the way they treated these women was just another reminder of that that I could have done with out. The house itself was also interesting. It was a very nice house, but there were some major design flaws. Like not having screens on the windows and having fluorescent lights. Oh, and just in case that didn’t let in enough bugs, they would also leave the front door wide open in the evening. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many bugs in one place in my life. And above the walls of the rooms, the ceilings were completely open throughout the house. So when the house help decided to turn the radio on (loudly) at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday, it might as well have been right next to my bed. Oh, and as if all that wasn’t enough, there were about 792 rats running around on the rafters above our heads. I was waiting for one to fall on us all weekend. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Staying in the house was definitely an interesting experience…

Despite all this, we did have fun. On Saturday night, our host arranged for a traditional Luo musician to come and perform for us. He played an instrument that is kind of like a guitar, but has 8 strings and is played in a sitting position, with the instrument on the ground. He sang mostly in Luo, but had a few songs in Kiswahili, with some English thrown in for good measure. He sang about Kisumu, Obama, women, and Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda who was a really great guy (ok, so sarcasm doesn’t really work in this medium – but speaking of him, you should all see The Last King of Scotland). Because of course, why wouldn’t you sing about an oppressive, tyrannical dictator who killed thousands of his own people? There were also a lot of friends and family in the room, and they all thought all of his songs were so funny. But the humor of Amin, getting a woman pregnant then leaving and getting drunk all the time was kind of lost on us 4 Americans. I don’t know, but Kenyan humor is something I still don’t fully understand. But other than his choice of topics, it was a pretty cool show and he was kind of (ok, really) drunk of Kenyan moonshine, so if nothing else, we could always laugh at him.

Like I said, there were about 20 other friends and family members in the room, and for some reason I had a really harsh realization during the performance. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these people were infected with HIV/AIDS. The area we were in has by far the highest HIV rate in Kenya. This is largely due to a highway that runs through the village that is the main route for transporting oil from the coast of Kenya to the inner African countries. As a result of all the truckers, prostitution in the area has skyrocketed, and with it the HIV rate. That coupled with the extreme poverty in the area (for a variety of reasons), and we were told that the rate in the area was 65%. I think that estimate is a little steep, but it’s probably around 40% or so. So with 20 people in the room, that means that anywhere from 5 to 10 people in that room probably had HIV. It was a sad thought, and I’m not really sure what brought it on. I obviously don’t know for sure if anyone in the room was infected at all, but just the possibility was enough to shock me and bring my mood down a little bit.

And on that note, I’ll wrap up. Sorry to leave on such a morbid note, but I promise, my next entry will be much happier!

...ISP that is. But for now, let me catch you up on what I have been doing for the past week or so...

Last time I left off, I had gotten back to Nairobi from Tanzania. After the trip, we had about 4 days in Nairobi before leaving for ISP . These days were not very exciting, so I'll spare you all the boring details. I spent most of it writing a final paper, getting ready for ISP and getting some last minute details in order. Like I said, not too exciting, so we'll just skip right on to Kisumu...

Jen, Kelsey, Monica and I left for Kisumu on the 8:30 am bus on the 12th. Normally, the bus takes about 6 hours, but for several reasons, this one took longer. The first reason for this was getting stopped by the police. There are a lot of police check points on the roads, so this wasn't that big of a deal. But after about 15 minutes of not moving, people started getting a little rowdy. Normally you barely even stop for these check points. So we looked out our window to see our attendant surrounded by about 5 or 6 cops who were yelling at him and hitting him. We were a little freaked out and not really too sure how to react. The people on the bus seemed upset (for obvious reasons), but not too worried so we just sat there and waited. Some one told us that they were stopped for not having the right uniforms or something, but in reality they just wanted all the money they had collected that morning as a bribe. This is really common here - the police are pretty corrupt and if will often pull people over on bogus charges just to get some money from them. Pretty awesome, huh? After a few minutes, the attendant got into the back of the police car and they drove away. Our driver was still out there on his phone, but thankfully, they didn't arrest him. So he got back on the bus and we drove off as if nothing happened. Pretty crazy start to the trip, huh?

Then, about halfway through the trip, another cop got on the bus and we got a little worried again. But he was actually a good cop. Apparently, one of the women we picked up at a later stop didn't want to pay and was causing a big fuss. So the cop got on and told the woman that she had to pay just like everyone else and stayed there while she did. Nice change from the last cop we encountered. Other than those 2 incidents, the ride was pretty normal. There was a lot of truck traffic, so that added to the time as well. Oh, and another interesting thing about the ride was how many trucks we passed. There are no highways here, only 2 lane roads going both directions. But if the car/truck/bus in front of you is going slow, you can pass them. At any time. So there were a few close calls with on-coming traffic and a few passes around blind curves that kind of freaked us out a little, but I guess thats just the norm here. And we made it safely, so i guess it all worked out.

Pretty much, Kisumu is great and we have a really sweet set up. We are pretty much in a suite - 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a big balcony that, all of which can be completely closed off by a door that we can lock. One of the rooms is huge, so not only do we have 2 beds in there, but we also have a sitting area with a couch/extra bed, a coffee table, chairs and a TV. And all for 600/= a night (about $8.50). The balcony is also a great people watching spot, and I find myself just looking out onto the streets a lot, which can bring up a lot of mixed emotions. But its also a great way to pass the time. All in all, I love the apartment/hotel - and I actually have an area where I can unpack! I have been living out of my bags since February, so you can imagine how nice it was to finally put them to the side, even if it is only for a few weeks. My roommates and I have cooked for the past two nights, which is also really nice. Although depending on what you're getting and cooking, its almost actually cheaper to eat out sometimes, which is pretty ironic. But even cooking for ourselves is cheap - we made a stir fry last night, and for all 4 of us, the veggies were only about $1.50 - crazy, right?

And all the staff at the hotel are so friendly - they all love us and are really happy to have us. And some of them ask the most bizarre questions. Like today when I told one of them that I was from the States. His next question was "oh, so you know Madison Square Garden?" I said yes, I do know it. And his response was "Oh, so then you know the wrestlers? So they really shed blood there?". Wrestling is pretty big here, so that wasn't too weird to be asking about that, but it was still kind of funny. And I didn't even get into the whole wrestling is fake thing, because it just wouldn't have been worth either of our times to try and figure that one out. Oh, and another funny thing about Kenya (and Kenyans) is that they have no real concept of nationalities outside of Africa. I mean, they understand what it means to be British or American, but I could tell someone that I was from France, and they wouldn't question it, despite the huge American accent. I'm pretty sure I could even tell someone I was from Argentina and they would buy it. I'll have to test out that theory and let you know though...

Anyway, getting back on track, the manager at the hotel is our favorite. Her name is Diana, and she is so nice. Like I had said, we got there on a Thursday afternoon, and on Friday afternoon, she had us over to meet her (almost) 3 year old son and husband. Her son was so cute, and pretty well behaved, despite a strong mischievous streak. And her husband is also very nice - he talked a lot about America and the differences between the 2 countries - a very common topic of conversation for us. But she comes up to our room to say hi on almost a daily basis and always takes care of us. She is even going to show us how to make chapati (an amazing traditional Kenyan food) soon, so that's something to look forward to.

But other than that, we have spent the last few days just getting settled here. We all started work on our projects today, and I am looking forward to seeing how all of our projects develop over the next few weeks. Its a lot to take on, but something that should be good for me/us. Next time, I'll go into more detail about my project and the work that I am doing, but for now I think I'll cut it off here. Hope all is well with all of you - and keep the emails and the comments coming - I may not always respond, but that doesn't mean that I don't love reading them!

So to continue with where I left off, we got back to UAACC on the afternoon of the 4th and just relaxed, showered and did some laundry until dinner. We didn’t have anything planned after dinner, so after some technical difficulties, some of us watched the first half of Malcolm X while others headed to bed. While we were watching the movie, UAACC’s band Warriors from the East started practicing, and they provided an interesting background to the movie. They are a reggae band that is absolutely amazing. I guess I should stop here to explain that most of the staff at UAACC is Rastafarian, and so the fact that they were playing reggae was not a huge surprise. I was a little shocked to see so many Rasta’s in Tanzania, but that might also just have been a result of where we were staying. Either way, they had this amazing band that served as an interesting background to the movie. After we turned the music off, Karen (another girl in the group) and I decided to go and watch the band rehearse for a little while. They weren’t very hard to find, and were on the roof of one of the buildings in the compound. They loved the fact that we wanted watch, and even gave us instruments to play. Ok, so they might have just been tambourines but whatever. We were still a vital part of the rehearsal. Sitting on the roof was a little surreal. I kept having to remind myself where I was – in Tanzania at an amazing center surrounded by an incredible band who was pretty much giving us a private concert on a roof at about 11 at night – all less than 12 hours after having been in Maasai land for an amazing few days. Like I said, surreal to say the least. I really wanted to stay awake to see the end of their rehearsal, but as I was literally falling asleep in the chair (while playing the tambourine), I decided to head to bed.

The next morning was a typical African morning. We had planned to see some of the programs that UAACC has, but the woman who was supposed to show us around wasn’t there since it was Easter (Easter’s like a week long holiday here – I don’t really understand it.). So we ended up just hanging out all morning and talking, journaling, reading, etc. It was a little frustrating to not be doing anything, but kind of nice at the same time.

After lunch, we piled in the vans and went to an orphanage for some community service work. There was a little confusion as to what we were actually supposed to be doing, but things got worked out and we spent a few hours there painting doors, cleaning walls and floors and playing with some of the kids. They didn’t really tell us much about what the orphanage was all about, but I guess that’s not really too important, huh?

We headed back to UAACC for dinner, and afterwards had a discussion with the center’s HIV/AIDS education group that was fascinating. They first put on a skit for us that we didn’t really understand (it was in Kiswahili). Then we got to have a discussion with them which started out by us asking them a little bit more about what they do and how they get the messages out to the community, etc. They also asked us about how the disease is viewed in the states and how sex ed works. From there it got a little interesting…some of the questions they asked were:

-How can a condom protect against HIV since it was invented before the disease was an issue?

-Where did HIV come from?- Something about salt being able to escape through condoms and how this was possible (I think a large part of this one was lost in translation – we still don’t really get it)

-And my favorite – something about how when women wear skimpy clothes they are bound to get HIV because men can’t control themselves.

It was a little disheartening to hear some of their questions – I had kind of assumed a certain amount of knowledge about HIV/AIDS from them since they are the ones educating the community about it. But I guess that was a bad assumption on my part.

The next day we had planned on going to the International War Crimes Tribunal where we were going to see the trails regarding the Rwandan genocide. I was really excited to see it, but when we got off the bus, we were informed that it was closed for the day since it was Good Friday (damn Easter ruining our plans again). Apparently someone had checked if it was going to be open and was given the wrong information. So we changed our schedule around a little bit and were given the morning to explore the town of Arusha. I was really disappointed, but it was actually an awesome morning. I went with 2 friends from the program to an ice cream parlor, and then to a book store. After that we decided that we didn’t really want to shop anymore so we just walked around a little bit.

After a few minutes we found a park that led us to a playground – this was kind of shocking since playgrounds aren’t really something that you find all over the place in Africa. But we decided to take advantage of it and played around a little bit. I was a little upset to be wearing a skirt – not really conducive to playground-ing. But I still managed to make it work. A little while after we got there, we were joined by 3 young kids who were so cute – probably ranging from 5 – 8. We ended up playing with them for a few hours. The best part was that they didn’t ever ask us for anything. They were just so happy to be playing with us that that was all they wanted. And when we did by them some cookies, they split them equally between each other with out even a hesitation. Pretty great kids, huh? I kind of wanted to take one home with me, but I’m not sure how the officials at the airport would feel about me smuggling a kid back to the states…

We meet up with the rest of the group and spent the afternoon at a snake park – a little random, but interesting I guess. Snakes aren’t really my thing, and neither are zoos, but it was still pretty cool.

This was our last night with UAACC, which was pretty sad. We all really loved it there! But it was kind of cool, because the band that I was talking about was having their kick off concert for their East Africa tour that night. So we all went as an SIT sponsored event! It was a pretty cool show – like I said before, the band was awesome and has such great energy. The private roof-top show was definitely a lot cooler, but seeing them perform live for a bigger audience was also pretty sweet. It was a great show and a great conclusion to an amazing trip. I wish we could have spent more time there, but the next day it was an early morning wake up to drive back to Nairobi and all the pressures of SIT – papers, discussions and in a few days ISP (!).

As I thought, I'm breaking up this trip again. So with out further adu, here it is, part one:

We are staying at a place called the UAACC (United African Alliance Community Center) near a city called Arusha. It was started by Pete and Charlotte O'Neal. They are both Americans who were members of the Black Panther party in the middle of its prime. Pete started the chapter in Kansas City. He is here in Africa living in exile and hasn't been in the states since the 60's. The reason for this is the result of an interview he gave in which he said he wanted to storm into congress to take someone's head. And when the interviewer asked if hem meant that literally, he said yes, I do. About 3 weeks after this, he was brought up on charges of transferring a gun across state lines and was facing 15 years in jail. So instead of doing that, he moved to Africa - first to Algeria then to Tanzania. He has mellowed out a lot since his Panther days and while he still has the same ideas and beliefs, he realizes that there are more productive ways to attaining them. So he started the UAACC which does a lot of community development programs and education type things. He also started a clean water project where he helped install a water pump near the village so the families could have clean water close by. Its a pretty amazing place - a large compound with about 20 people living on it and room for about 20 students as well. They have students here all the time serving as interns and pretty much always have student groups around for one reason or another. Everyone is so amazingly welcoming and open that we all feel right at home. Its been great to just talk to everyone here, from Pete to the volunteers to the people who work here - they are all just such interesting people. And the food is fantastic (very American), we have free internet and a crazy amount of movies to pick from in our down time as well as a basketball court. I kind of fell like we're at summer camp, but its definitely the coolest summer camp ever.

The first day we were here we went on a safari through the Ngorongoro crater - its a collapsed volcano that has grown over with brush and is about 12 miles wide. There are all different types of animals in there and even a lake! Between driving there, getting over the crater wall, driving around inside it and getting back, we were there the whole day. We got to see monkeys, elephants, zebras, wildebeests, lions, hippos, random birds, ostriches, and a few other that I can't remember right now. The whole day was pretty cool, but the coolest part was at lunch. Our academic director (AD) had told us to be careful because there were eagles around who might steal your food. I didn't really take it too seriously, so I was just eating and talking like normal. Then all of a sudden this thing flew in front of me and before I knew what had happened, my food was gone. An eagle had stolen it right out of my hand! The only mark he left was a little scratch on my finger - its amazing how precise they are. I'm kind of hoping the scratch will scar because I think that can beat most scar stories hands down.

The next morning we had a dancing workshop at UAACC and learned a traditional African dance. It was a lot of fun despite how ridiculous we all looked. After lunch they let the nearby residents come in and they had a traditional dance show that also featured us doing our dance. I'm not sure how well that went over, but it was fun at least. We also had to do some kind of American cultural thing, and despite the hard time we all had agreeing on something, that went over really well.

As if all that wasn't cool enough, the next few days were so much cooler. We left for Maasai land on the 2nd, and staying with them was one of the coolest things I've ever done. We drove about an hour and picked up Ngoingoi, our Maasai guide on the side of the road. We turned off the road at a seemingly random spot and drove for about 10 minutes. How he knew where to go we had no idea - there were no paths or road that we could see but despite that we were still making turns and headed in a definite direction. We got to our campsite and spent the rest of the day setting up and getting familiar with the area. We toured Ngoingoi's Boma (compound), met his family - his 2 wives, siblings, son and parents and got to see their houses within the compound. After that, we went for a walk to gather herbs for tea and then helped them prepare the tea. I really wanted to like it, but it pretty much just tasted like dirt to me. But at least I tried it, right? Later that night, we had a chance to talk to some Maasai elders who told us (through 2 translators - one from Maa to Swahili and then from Swahili to English) a story about hunting lions and how every group of warriors has to kill at least one lion. First they cut off the tail while it is sleeping and then they run after it and kill it b spear. And the first guy to hit it with his spear becomes a huge celebrity and may have upwards of 10 girlfriends, some of whom he "might happen to sleep with" as we were told. They also asked us a bunch of questions - mostly focusing on animals and what kind of animals we have. They were surprised to hear that there were any wild animals, because according to them there is no place in America where we haven't built over the wild - aren't the stereotypes funny?

The next day was really amazing - we woke up really early to see the sunrise over Kilimanjaro. Jealous? Don't be - we didn't see anything. It was super cloudy and by the time we got to where we were going, the sun had already risen. So yes, it was really cool, but not as cool as I had hoped. After that, we helped milk goats before breakfast, and definitely got shown up by the Maasai in the milking department...

And then it got even better. After breakfast, we went to Orpul - a sacred site where the warriors go to sacrifice animals (goats and cattle). What did we do here you might ask? That's right - we helped the warriors sacrifice a goat. It was absolutely crazy. And in Maasai culture, the blood is one of the most sacred parts of an animal, so of course they can't slit the throat like in most cultures. So they hold it down and suffocate it. That's right. It was a little weird to watch, but they do it with so much respect for the animal that its hard to find it totally disturbing. Then we got to help them skin and butcher it. And they use every part and are so precise about it all. Some of it they eat raw (the heart, the blood, the liver) some they roast and everything else the boil in a soup, which is actually pretty gross (shocker, huh?). The whole process took about 2-3 hours and it was so awesome, and kind of gross all at the same time. We also got to hang out with the warriors and take pictures with them - which they loved. They loved wearing or hats and sunglasses and using our cameras - and it was really cool to see someone in full Maasai garb using a camera and wearing sunglasses (google them and you'll understand why).

After the goat sacrifice, we spent the afternoon going to their grazing lands, playing traditional Maasai games and learning more about them in general. We also got to dance with them that night, which was so intense. Their dancing involves a lot of jumping and chanting, and the only light around was from the full moon. Probably the best dance party I've ever been to. Oh, and as if that wasn't cool enough, they walked us back to our campsite too - we definitely felt pretty baller having the Maasai escort us back.

The next day was our last day with the Maasai. Another huge part of their culture is beading - everyone has beads and they are all really symbolic. So we got to sit with some of the women and bead with them all morning and learn (again, through 2 translators) what all the beading meant. It was fun to spend time with the women, we really hadn't gotten too much of a chance to do that before this. And watching them make all the intricate jewelry they wear was so awesome (again, google it and you'll understand).

Sadly, we had to leave Maasai Land after that. We spent a few more days at UAACC, but I'll save those days for the next blog entry - its getting kind of late and this one is already pretty long...

Two entries in one week - lucky you! I am posting again so soon because we have another trip coming up. It is called the educational tour, and there are two options. Some people in the group are going to Uganda, while the other part of the group is going to Tanzania. I am heading to Tanzania tomorrow, and am so excited. Among some of the things we are going to do is spend a few days with Pete O'Neil, a founder of the Black Panthers who now lives in exile there with his wife, spend three days with the Maasai learning about their culture, mainly dancing and bead work, we are going to the War Crimes tribunals and to the spot where humanity is thought to have begun. So you can see why I'm excited - I'm sure there will be at least on long entry when I get back - so get ready for that.

I have been in Nairobi for about a week, and have been very busy. I've been doing a lot of work to prepare for ISP, as well as some assignments and papers for SIT. We also had some amazing visits to different organizations in Nairobi that I wanted to share:

UN Habitat

This is the UN's branch for urban housing development, and since they are based in Nairobi, they do a lot of work on slum development. The city of Nairobi is home to two of the biggest slums in Africa - Kibera and Mathere. We met with one of the people from the Office of the Director, an American named Chris Winters. He was actually a former SIT Kenya alum and a former Academic Director for the program. He gave us some words of advice about our ISP which I think was helpful for all of us. Then he gave us a brief background on UN Habitat and what they do. After about 20 minutes on that, he opened it up to questions and stayed with us for about another half hour. It was absolutely one of the best lectures I have ever had. He was amazingly smart and competent, and actually talked about the reality of the situation, and not just policy. One of the major complaints about the lectures so far has been that the people just talk about the government policy and not what is actually happening in reality. So this was a great change. He also went on a few rants about how development theories need to change and was just so eloquent about it. I was a little shocked to hear a UN guy speaking so freely, and he even said "I love talking to students this way because I could never say any of this to diplomats". He gave us all a lot of new insights, and after the hour talk with him, my brain was definitely in shock - it was a lot to take in. Another encouraging thing about the lecture was that I understood the vast majority of it and followed all of it. He used a lot of jargon and talked really fast about some semi-complex stuff. I'm not sure if I would have understood half as much of what he was saying last year. That made me feel good - as much as I dislike my classes at GW and the American academic system in general, I guess I am learning something!

MYSA

The Mathare Youth Sports Association. This is an amazing NGO that works in the slum in Mathare. Their main focus is sports as a mode of development, and they are doing an awesome job at it. It was started by a Norwegian man, but is now completely run by young people form Mathare. In order to be a member of MYSA, you have to be either playing on or coaching a team, and the teams start as young as 8. Once you are a member, you have full access to all their resources and information, of which there is a lot. They have a library with 2 computers, an HIV/AIDS resource center, peer counseling for HIV/AIDS or anything else you may need, and they also offer scholarships for various things. Every team has to participate in a community service activity at least once a year to try and help clean up the slum a little bit. If they don't participate, they can't qualify for the MYSA league tournament no matter how many games they have won. They also do a lot of leadership development and the people that were taking us around for the day were all about 20 years old and had been involved in MYSA for at least 8 years. One of the women even got a scholarship for high school through MYSA and said that she wouldn't have been able to go with out it. There were two main highlights form this trip: one was getting a tour of the slum. I have seen pictures and videos before, but it is still always a shock to see it in real life. All the garbage everywhere, dirty water running throughout and kids playing in all the muck and garbage. The saddest part for me was that I realized that most of the young kids probably have no concept that that's not what a childhood is supposed to be like. They don't understand that most kids in the world don't play on garbage all the time and that they have houses with running water and electricity. The other thing that really struck me that you don't get in the pictures is the smell. It was really bad, and I couldn't imagine being around it all the time. I'm sure you get used to it after a while, but again, no one should have to get used to living in that kind of environment. I am very glad that I saw it and got a chance to walk through, but it was something that was really hard for me to do.To lighten the mood after the slum tour, they brought us back to the MYSA headquarters where their dance troupe, Haba na Haba (Step by Step) did one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen. They started off with traditional dances and music that was great and a lot of fun to watch. There were both boys and girls doing it, I would say from ages 8 to 13. Then the acrobatics group came out and blew us all away. These kids (all male) were between 11 and 15 and were probably some of the strongest people I have ever seen. They did all these amazing flips and jumps and stunts for about 15 minutes. And to top it all off, they were doing it all on a concrete floor. No mats, no padding or anything. None of us could believe that they were doing this for real. They would just jump around and make these crazy pyramid like formations like it was nothing. Since again, I would never be able to describe it in words, here's another pic:Football

The day after the MYSA visit, we got treated by SIT to a football match! It was the Harambe Stars (the Kenyan National team) vs. the Swaziland national team. It was a qualifying game for the Africa Cup being held in Ghana in 2008, and Kenya won! They still have many more games before they get there, but this is a good step. The score was 2-0. Everyone was getting really into it, and all the Kenyans were yelling in Swahili, which we all really enjoyed. The stadium was pretty small and nothing fancy at all,and had a capacity of about 30,000. But add all the people who sneak in and sit wherever they can (on the grass, on the stairs, etc) and there were at least 35,000. It was a really fun afternoon adn made me realize how much I like football! I will definitely have to go to some games back in DC (anyone want to join me?!) Another cool thing about this game was that it was the first official game for Kenya in about 6 months. FIFA banned Kenya from football for 6 months due to government corruption and interference in the league. But the ban was lifted about 3 weeks ago, and this was the first game since then. And to make it better, we won! So it was kind of historic as well, which is a cool little side note.Maasai Market

The Maasai are a very famous tribe in eastern Africa, and are known for their beadwork and cloth. Every tuesday, there is a market in city center where they just come in with all of their stuff - everything from bead work to fabric to paintings to clothing, and baskets and handi -crafts. For you DC folk, think Eastern Market but about 300 times better. And the best part is that no price is set. They expect you to negotiate, so you can get some crazy good deals. And its also a great place to practice Swahili - and they'll give you better deals if you talk to them in Swahili. Espcially if you go at the end of the day when they are packing up. I got a lot of cool stuff, and after I got home just spread it out on my bed and stared at it for a while. I got braelets, head scarfs, and lots of other fun stuff. Its an amazing market that I'm really going to miss when I get back to the states.

That about sums up my fun activities in Nairobi. Like I said, I am leaving for Tanzania tomorrow, so I may not be able to post until after I get back. But save your energies for that, because I'm sure it'll be a long one.

So I love Kisumu. It's a great little city/big town and where I am going to be spending about a month. It actually reminds me a lot of Poughkeepsie - same general size and the same atmosphere as well. I had a really good meeting with the organization I want to work with too - Kick Trading. They are a Fair Trade company who work with a lot of artisans in the area making things from recycled materials. I will leave my description of their projects, history, etc for a later entry when I actually have worked with them a little bit and know what I'm talking about. But I do want to share the story of my first days working with Kick.

I showed up on Monday morning about 11am, completely unannounced. This actually, is not rare in Kenya. It's not considered rude to just show up at an office and ask for a meeting. And it's actually a little more efficient this way. If you schedule a meeting, the other person might not show up, might be late or might forget about it. But this way, you are in the office and they kind of have no choice but to deal with you. Anyway, like I was saying, I show up and meet with the 3 main office staff members and tell them about why I am here and what I want to do. And they were so awesome, and totally open to having me work with them. But the asked me if I could come back at about 3, because they were busy setting up for a meeting. They told me that there was a group if buyers from Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) coming at 3, and if I wanted, I could sit in on the meeting. For those of you that don't know, TTV is a big Fair Trade store with stores all over the US and Canada. They're a big name in FT, so needless to say, I was a little excited about the meeting. So I headed out of the office and over to the Kiwanis compound for a few hours...

Perhaps I should talk about why and how I ended up at the Kiwanis Compund. Leah, the S.I.T. coordinator for western Kenya, is a member and has some official position in the local Kiwanis club (she might even be the president). The compund is around the corner from Kick, and while she was taking me to the Kick office, we stopped by to say hi and so that I could meet the people at the compound. They were all very nice. She told me about a feeding program they do for about 50 school kids who can't afford lunch, and said that I should come over to help out after my meeting with Kick. I agreed, and actually looked forward to it. So, when I had about 4 hours to kill before my meeting, I went there. It is an amazing place. They have a small resturaunt, the feeding program, as well as a reduced price lunch for about 50 other kids, a small micro-credit program for women, weekend activities (extra classes, music lessons, etc), and are looking to start a nursery school in the next year or 2. As if all that wasn't amazing enugh, they are also working on a project to make re-useable sanitary napkins for girls. There are a lot of problems here with girls missing school for a week during their periods becuase they can't afford pads or tampons, you can imagine how much this puts the girls back. So they are working on prototypes now, and are looking to have them ready and to sell for about 30 shillings (about $0.50). They are also looking to get the idea to an organization who can mass produce them for cheap, because as my tour guide, Rachel, said, they don't want to keep this a secret - they want as many girls as possible to be able to use them. I was really impressed by the whole compound and its definitely somewhere that I am planning on spending a decent amount of time at during ISP. There are 2 foriegn volunteers there - one American and one Canadian, and they and the rest of the staff was so welcoming and nice. Working there will be a great break from the stress of ISP.

So after helping out there for a few hours, I went back to Kick to find that the buyers were stck in Kisii (About 2 hours away), and wouldn't actually be in the office until 8:30 the next morning. I asked if I could come back then, and they were very happy that I was able to come back. I got up very early the next morning, to give myself some time to get lost. But, incredibly, I made it there without a hitch. I got there about 8, and helped them set up chai and cookies for the group, and got to know the staff a little better. The group showed up at 8:30, and at that point had a short breifing about Kick and a Q&A session. It was great for me because a lot of my questions were answered as well. Then we took a tour of the area where most of the artisans do their carving - and it was really interesting. The buyers were all really interested in taking pictures and talking with the artisans, and I couldn't help but think about how voyeristic the whole thing was. I think that that's going to be an issue that I have a lot of problems with during ISP - am I just here to study these people or is what I'm doing actually going to benifit someone? Anyway, all the people were really nice and really interested in what I was doing. One woman even wants me to email her my paper at the end! They were touring Kenya and Uganda on a learning tour - to visit the places where their products come from. One of the women I was talking to said that after these tours, the sales of products from that area of the world always increase, sometimes enough to pay for the trip itself. I learned a lot from the meeting, and was really happy that both parties allowed me to be there - it was a really encouraging first day. After the TTV people drove away, I worked out some of the details with the Kick staff, and as I was leaving, Issac (the manager), told me that when I came back he'd have some work for me to do - this made me even more excited. I don't want this to be just a one way exchange - I want them to be able to get as much from me as I am going to get from them, and his comment showed that he agreed with that, despite us never having talked about it. So between Kick and Kiwanis, it looks like I am going to be very busy during ISP! Just the way I wanted it!

I realize that I got so excited about talking about my meeting and ISP, that I left out another very crucial part of the weekend that I want to share before wrapping up. We got there on a saturday afternoon, and since offices were closed the next day, we did a little site seeing. We went to the Kakamega rainforest about 1.5 hours north of Kisumu. We had some troubles getting in - the security guard was a major bitch and wouldn't give us the student price since we didn't have a letter from our institution to verfiy we were students. So instead of paying the $3 student price, we had to pay the $20 tourist price. We were not happy about this to say the least. But we all payed and agreed to let it go and enjoy the forest. We walked around for about 3 or 4 hours, first to a little water fall, and then up a huge hill to the top of a viewing point - it was amazing. Just green for miles and miles. It was a really tough climb (we didn't actually know there was a real path until after coming down, so we just hiked up the side of the mountain...harder, but much cooler), and we were all dripping by the end, but it was so worth it. And since what they say about a picture being worth 1,000 words is true, here you go:

With that, I'll close out my Kisumu adventure, at least for now. I am heading back there in about 3 weeks, so there will be a lot more detail to come about Kisumu, Kick, my ISP and I'm sure lots of other things as well. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for all the comments - I love reading them!

That's a question a lot of you asked me before coming here, and I know that when I answered you, I was very vague. That was largely due to the fact that I myself didn't really know exactly what I was getting into. That's just how S.I.T. (School for International Training), and most things in developing countries works. You just have to kind of jump in and go with the flow. But now that I've been for just over a month, I can give you a much better idea of what I have been doing, and what I will be doing for the next 2 months.

In Nairobi, we have classes. Lots of them. There are 2 lectures in the morning, and then one in the afternoon, a total of about 6 hours everyday. The classes are either Swahili, development, public health, cultural stuff orfield study prep. They are usually pretty interesting, aside from the health lectures. I'm not sure why, but the people they bring in to lecture to us on the health side are all just really bland. And since it is a different person every time, they end up covering a lot of the same topics. So it's a little frustrating, but when I start getting bored in lecture, I just think to myself "this lecture may suck, but I'm in Kenya, so it could be worse".

Other than the lectures, we also spend a good amount of time traveling. The travel is why i picked this program - we don't spend all of our time in the classroom, but a lot of it out in the country. And if you've read the last two entries, you should understand why I say this is my favorite part. Going to Bodo/Mombasa was amazing to say the least, and we have more travel coming up. On Saturday, about 10 of us are going toKisumu , in western Kenya near Lake Victoria to prepare for our Independent Study Projects (more to come on that later) and staying until Tuesday. It's supposed to be an amazing area, and I'm really excited to go. I'm surethere'll be a size-able entry about it when I get back next week.

After that, we are back in Nairobi for a few more days of lecture and then we are going on a 10 day trip to Tanzania. And this one should rival Bodo. We are going on safari, spending 3 days with theMaasai learning about their culture first hand, spending some time with one of the founders of the Black Panthers who is living in exile in Tanzania with his wife, and going to the War Crimes Tribunal, among other things. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. Again, I'm sure there will be at least one very long entry after I get back from this trip.

After Tanzania, we have about a week in Nairobi before we start our Independent Study Project (ISP). What this is is pretty much a thesis. We can pick any topic relating to development or public health that interests us, and we spend a month (from April 12 until May 12) researching it and writing a 30 - 40 page paper about it. Then we come back together as a group to each give a half hour presentation on our topic to the rest of the group. For my ISP, I am planning to look at Fair Trade as a method of development - does it actually do anything for the people? I am going to Kisumu because there are several Fair Trade organizations there for me to study and it gets me out of Nairobi (I'm not the biggest fan of this city). Most of my research is going to come from first hand interviews with the people producing the crafts, books, and NGO's like Oxfam. It's exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing - working with real people regarding their development, not learning about it in a classroom. I know that's not very specific, but I should have a better idea about what my ISP will look like next week after I get back.

As far as other topics go, they are really broad and I'm really interested to hear the presentations at the end of May. In case you're curious, some of the topics are:

-Why a Luo (a certian tribe) can't be president of Kenya

-Human rights abuses in prisons

-women and development (there are a few on this)

-there are several regarding HIV/AIDS in different ways

-the effect of university research on rural agriculture

-Swahili language and development

-how soccer can help development

-there are also a few regarding the situation of refugees

-there are several on health - malaria research, infectious diseases, and malnutrition

There are a lot more, but that's just a very short list. People are traveling all over Kenya to do their research, and it should be really interesting to see what they come up with. Everyone's topic has changed at least 3 times, and just seeing that process has been so interesting. So it'll be really exciting to see how they all end up in May.

ISP ends in May, as does the program. I'm still not sure what I'm doing after the program ends, so I won't even start to get into that yet. But I hope that clarifies why I'm here for a lot of people and what I'm doing. It's been so much better then I ever thought so far, and it should only get better from here!

So last time I pretty much set the scene for my week in Bodo. So now let me get into the specifics of what I did and how I spent my time.

Sunay was our first full day there, and they took us swimming in the Indian ocean. Bodo is on the water, but on a little bay type area, so we took a boat about 15 minutes out to a sandbar off the coast of an island called Funzi Island (it;s a big tourist island, so you might be able to google it and find pictures and info). It was so beautiful and we were all just so excited to be in Kenya and in the Indian Ocean - it was a pretty sweet experience. The water was so beautiful and it was such an awesome day. We all got pretty sun burnt, despite the bottles of SPF 45 and over we put on. But that's what we get for trying to go swimming on the equator. For the rest of the week, I was pretty much the sunburn expert. People who had never really had bad burns or peeled kept asking me things like "So, does this look normal to you?", "Will this peel?" and "So, how long will I be peeling for?". I think it's the only time that my vast sunburn experience has ever been put to good use. I'm glad to say that although I did get a pretty decent burn, I was not the worst one in the group by far.

For the rest of the week, our days pretty much had the same structure. We spent the mornings learning Swahili, had lunch and spent the afternoons working on a small group research project. Mine was about all the uses for a coconut and the tree. And they do use it for EVERYTHING. But more to come on that later. There were a few days were there was a locals vs. sit student football (soccer) and volleyball games. There were 4 games total, and we got killed in both football games, beat in one of the volleyball games, and despite a valiant attempt by us at the last volleyball game, we still lost. But it was a lot of fun and everyone really enjoyed it.

After class and the various after school activities, we would all go home and spend time with our families, which I loved. My family was awesome at including me in everything, and all I had to do was ask my brother "What is (s)he doing?" and he would explain it to me and then who ever it was would let me try it. I usually failed, but my family was very patient and had a great sense of humor about it all. Most of the things that I "helped" with involved cooking, so I think I should take this opportunity to explain a little bit about Kenyan food.

It is very, very carb based. Atkins would have a heart attack if he came over here (sorry about the bad pun, it wasn't intentional, I promise). I'll describe the food in the village, but its pretty similar in Nairobi too. The main staple of dinner is called Ugali. It is literally just boiled water mixed with corn flour until it comes to a consistancy that resembles mashed potatoes (but no where near as tastey). It is very dry and bland. So to go with it, they make a simple version of vegetable stew that is actually very tastey. It could also be served with cabbage, kale, both of which I really like. Other times it will be chicken - on the bone of course, or fish. Yes, I did eat fish. About 5 times in 8 days. And I realized that I really don't like fish. Before coming here, I hadn't had any fish in about 7 years, so eating it here was a huge step for me. Especially when my mom would just hand me a whole fish that had been boiled, complete with bones, the skin and the head still on it. Yeah, I was a little freaked out by that. But I sucked it up and ate it - I could tell that it was a rarity for them to have, so I didn't want to offend them. But don't get excitied - I do not plan on having fish for a very long time after this program is over. Other then that, we would sometimes have rice in place of the ugali, which was a nice break. For breakfast (aside from the chai of course) was chapati - its almost like a pita without the pocket and a little thinner. Hard to describe, but absolutely amazing. It has quickly become one of my favorite foods. We would also have mandazi in several variations - some were similar to biscuts or donuts or fried dough. They were also very good, although a little sweet for breakfast. And the funny thing is that they use the same spices in the mandazi as they do in the chai, so everything kind of tastes like the tea. But I like it, so it wasn't too bad. Oh, and we ate with our hands. And since it was a Muslim community, only our right hand. It was a little weird to get used to at first, but now I really like it. It was even kind of weird when I came back to Nairobi and all of a sudden had to use silver wear again. And when I tried to explain to my family that it was considered rude to eat with your hands in America they didn't really get it. Ahh, cultural differences. Gotta love them.

Anyway, my mama and sister would always let me help stir the ugali or roll out the chapati or mandazi and it was so awesome. And don't worry, my brother insisted on taking pictures of me doing all of this, so they'll all be up eventually, and I'll post the link when I can. Although, at slow connections that charge by the minute I don't think that's going to be until I get home in May...The kids in my family were so cute about taking pictures. I was a little hesitant to take it out at first, but they LOVED it! They would pose for a picture and then run to surround me and look at the picture I had just taken. They all loved it and I am planning on making them an album to send back to them soon.

Anyway, like I said, it was a Muslim village, so it was very conservative. I made the mistake of letting my knee show one afternoon, and my sister made it appoint to com over and pull my skirt down to cover it. And I wasn't ever able to go out of the house without my head covered by something. Definitely an interesting experience coming from America. But I got over it after a few days and enjoyed how ridiculous we all looked with our mismatching outfits and struggling to keep our head scarves on.

As far as daily life goes, hanging out with my family was definitely the coolest part. Even when they were all speaking in Kidoge or Swahili I enjoyed listening to them and trying to figure out what they were talking about. I'm not sure that they fully understood why I was there, but they were still glad to have me anyway. I was continually amazed by everything - women carrying 5 gallon jugs full of water on their heads, how welcoming everyone was, how resourceful they were, but mostly the kids - especially the young girls. My 7 year old sister would get up everymorning at about 6 to wash the dishes and sweep out the house. No questions asked. Young girls would be carrying babies that were about half their size and e totally comfortable with doing it. They all also know how to cook, clean and pretty much run an entire household by the time they are 10. I just kept thinking about what I was doing when I was about 8. I'm pretty sure I was still eating mud and playing hockey with barbie heads in the basement. And these kids are so responsible. They would play games and have fun, but they also just understand that they need to do all of these other things and get it done. Its amazing. I'm pretty sure my 7 year old sister is more responsible than I am.

They are also so generous. They share everything they have and even gave me presents! They gave me a really cheesy straw hat, straw fans, a little basket, and my favorite - a 5 foot long woven mat that is amazing. It's got these great colors on it - straw, maroon, green and purple and I'm in love with it. Right now its rolled up in the storage room at the SIT office, but I'm really excited to have a chance to use it. Oh, Gaby and Daryn - it is going to be somewhere in the room next year. You'll just have to deal with it.

So, in writing this, I'm realizing that I could go on for days writing about this one week alone. And this is already getting pretty long, so let me just wrap up with one more story. Like I said above, they use coconuts for everything. And as you may know, coconut trees are very very tall. Some were easily over 100 feet tall. So with no machinery or electricity to get them down, you can see the problem that would arise. So to get them down, they have special people who are trained to climb coconut trees. We got to see one of them in action and it was possibly the craziest thing I've ever seen. The get up the tree by using a rope (made from the coconut tree palms) around their feet and literaly jumping/shimme-ing up the tree. They go up so fast - it takes them less then 3 minutes to get up the 100 foot tree. Oh yeah, and did I mention that they carry a machete on their back in their shorts? Yeah, they do. Like I said, crazy. So once they shimme up the 100 foot tree with only a rope and a machete they cut the cocnuts off and they just drop down. Unfortunatly I couldn't see how they manage to do this without falling out of the tree - the palms were in the way and it was really really high. We only saw the coconuts fall and then saw him shimmi back down the tree. Again, in under 3 minutes. Then he cut them up for us and handed them out to all of us. Talk about fresh!

As promised, I'll wrap it up here. I hope the length wasn't too overwhelming for anyone, and I appreciate you reading this far! So until next time...

Sorry for the delay, but this has been a hard entry to write. The week I spent in the village was AMAZING, and trying to put it all into words is a little overwhelming. So since it's taken me a long time to write even this much, I've decided to split this entry into 2 parts. This one has already gotten really long, and you can expect another pretty long one later this week. But for now, here is part 1 of my Mombasa/Bodo saga. I hope you enjoy it.

From Nairobi (which is pretty central in Kenya), we took an overnight train to Mombasa, on the coast. It was a fun train ride and we were all really excited about the next 2 weeks. The best part about the ride was looking out at the sky at night. I think i had my head out the window for at least 2 hours. The night sky is absolutely beautiful. I've never seen so many stars in my life and the moon was shining so brightly. It was absolutely incredible. We got to Mombasa in the morning and spent some time shopping and walking around. I absolutely love Mombasa, but more on that later.

We only spent a few hours in the city before piling back into the van and driving about 2 hours south to the rural village of Bodo. The ride was so pretty, but I ended up sleeping for most of it. We turned down a sand road and drove a few miles into the center of the village. We were all pretty anxious about what we would find there, but all that melted away the second we pulled up. All the kids in the village were there to welcome us, jumping up and down and singing songs. I have to say that it was probably the best welcome I've ever had and it made us all so happy. We went to the pavilion that would be our main meeting/hang out spot for the week, where they had chai and snacks set up for us. After about 45 minutes, we were all introduced to our new families and lead to our homes.

Before I go on, I want to explain a little about Bodo. It's a small Muslim, rural village right on the coast of the Indian Ocean with only a little electricity for the whole village and no running water at all. Most of the men are either fishers, involved in the tourism industry, make random crafts, sell foods (coconuts, rice, meat, eggs, etc) in local markets, or are unemployed. All the women have no "real" job, but work harder then anyone I've ever seen. They clean the house, make the food, take care of the kids and laundry, etc. They are working all the time, it's amazing. And most of the men just sit around - it was a little frustrating to see. But everyone there was so welcoming and so nice - by the second day we all felt at home in Bodo.

My Family

My mama was absolutely amazing. She spoke no English, and I found out later in the week that she usually didn't even speak Swahili, but rather Kidoge, her tribal language. It was kind of a relief when I found that out. I realized that the reason I didn't understand what she was saying wasn't because my Swahili was that bad, but actually because she wasn't speaking Swahili at all. I found out throughout the week that she's a midwife, and that she also helped to start a women's group in Bodo that's similar to a micro-credit organization. Whenever she said anything, it got done - even the chickens and goats listened to her. Sometimes she would just look at me, say "Ahh, Bodo!" and start laughing. She knew that I barely understood a word she was saying, but she would still just start talking to me and asking me questions anyway, and then either laugh and walk away or nod and walk away depending on my answer. There were a few tricky situations where I agreed to do something (like, for example, agree that I was tired and wanted to sleep) when what I thought I was agreeing to was something else (like a shower or to help her cook). But luckily everything would always get resolved.

The rest of my family was awesome as well. I had a 21 year old brother who spoke perfect English and was my tour guide/interpreter the whole weekend. He would ask me questions about America - like do we have monkeys or elephants, and generally about how things work there. It was so funny that so much of the stuff we take as common knowledge just isn't here. Like the fact that Barack Obama is the senator from Illinois, not the senator of the US. Or when he asked me about men having more than 1 wife. It was an eye opening experience to say the least. It's not that he was stupid at all, but rather that they stuff that we take for granted they just aren't taught. But having him around made me really conscience of gender roles in the area. I wasn't sure exactly how to act around him, and was kind of afraid I would somehow be married to him by the end of the week. But luckily, that didn't end up happening. I just kind of felt like I was on an awkward date with him the whole time. But I am very thankful he was around and so helpful. I also had a 15 year old nephew who spoke pretty good English as well. He liked to teach me Swahili, and he taught me the names of the planets (useful, I know), body parts, days of the week, and other random things. My favorite was when I asked him to teach me future tense and he taught me how to say "future tense" in Swahili. Not exactly what I wanted...

Other then that, I had 2 sisters, one who was very pregnant and should be having the child any day, and another sister who was only around for a few days before going back to her village 30 kilometers away. I also had a bunch of Aunts, Uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins. In villages like Bodo, everyone is related somehow. Either by blood or by some other way. For example, if a father dies, his children become his brother's children. It makes for some very confusing explanations of family ties, especially coming from an American perspective. But I loved my family - I loved having people walking in and out all the time. And they were so good about including me in what they were doing and being patient with me. But more to come on that later.

For the first few days, my family would just stare at me sometimes. I can't really blame them. They also laughed at me. A lot. Again, I can't really blame them. But it was in a very good natured way, and I was also laughing at myself most of the time, so I was really ok with it all.

My House

My house was very nice - a thatched roof, mud walls on the outside (that makes them cooler as the air can flow through) and concrete walls on the inside. There was extra space between the walls and the ceiling to provide for air circulation, but it also helped with noise circulation. Everyone pretty much heard everything that went on. There were several times when I heard my family practice saying my name in the morning, or heard my mom cooking, etc. It was really nice though - I liked hearing it all.

There were 3 rooms, and I shared one with my Mama. I did have my own bed, which was more then some people could say. I was happy about that. I didn't really see the other 2 rooms though. Straight down about a 15 foot hallway from the front door was the backyard area. This was where the living room, kitchen, bathroom and shower all were (and I use all those terms very loosely). The bathroom was about the size of a cubical with a hole in the ground, the shower was a little bigger and was just a bucket on the ground. There was no real "door" to the shower, so it was a little awkward. But after about 2 days and about 314 liters of sweat dripping off of me, I got used to it. The kitchen was a little bigger and was just a fire pit with rocks they used to balance the pots on. It was pretty cool to see how much they were able to cook on that one pit. Our living room was just a big open outdoor space between the house, kitchen, bathroom and shower. We used that space to eat, have chai, talk, hang out, whatever. We spent a lot of time outside, especially at night which I loved. All the stars in the sky were so amazing and I could have spent hours just looking up at them. I felt so comfortable in the house and I really do think that I could have stayed there for a lot longer. I'm not really sure what it was - but there was just something there, and I felt so much at home.

So with that, I'll wrap up part one. Like I said, I'll update again as soon as I can about the things I did, family life etc. I hope you enjoyed reading about it, and thanks again to everyone for all the comments. It makes me really happy to know that you are along for the ride with me!

Once again, I have nothing specific to report, and actually need to get going in like 5 minutes, but I just wanted to let all my loyal readers (I know there are so many of you out there) know that I may not be posting for a week or two.

We are traveling to Mombasa today (it's about a 14 hour train ride, right on the coast) and going to spend about a week in a rural village, Bodo. I am very excited, and a little nervous - there is no running water or electricty. And definitely no internet. So if you don't hear from me for a little while, this is why. I'm sure I will be posting an uber-long entry about my adventures when I get back, so save your energy for that. Don't worry, I have my malaria medicine, bug spray, head lamp and my journal all ready to go!

So in the past few days, I have been getting settled in a little more. The family and I are warming up to each other, and while it might not be the best home stay situation, it's not a bad one. The past few days have been pretty standard - get up at 6:30-7 (yes, I am out of bed by about 7 every day), leave for school at 7:45-ish, then have class all day. It can be Swahili, lectures on a variety of topics, or as we did today, Swahili love songs. Yes, we had a class where we sang Swahili songs. All of you who wondered why I decided on SIT, that's why. Cause singing is a legitimate form of education. Then I spend some time after school with friends, go home about 6:30, eat around 8:30, and am in bed by about 9:30 either writing or sleeping.

So, since there has been no big news to report in the last few days, I thought I'd take this opportunity to fill you in on some interesting details of Kenyan culture. So here they are:

-Kenyans love chai (tea) and drink it at least twice a day. But, they boil the milk in with the water which is a little weird. Good for killing bacteria in unpasteurized milk, bad for those of us who use milk to cool their tea down.

- Obama is HUGE here. There are always news reports and articles about him. They love calling him "Kenyan-American" as opposed to "African-American"

- Tribal heritage is also hugely important. People stereotype every one based on their tribe. I even heard someone say that since Obama is a Lou, he could never be a good leader.

- Times are more guidelines then anything else. Even if you have a set time for something, the person will show up late, if at all. Oh, and there's technically no Swahili word for "busy"

- People here never really get awkward. If they have nothing to say, they just kind of sit there. Anyone who has spent more then 10 minutes with me knows who bizarre of a concept this is.

- Nairobi is home to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. People here are almost proud of that fact in a really weird way.

- The school kids here know one English phrase - "How are you?" and they all yell it to us in a chorus from the edge of their schoolyards as we pass on the way to school. Answering them in Swahili really throws them and is pretty fun.

- Almost half the population here is Muslim and I can even hear the call to prayer from my house. And no one here is gay. It's just not talked about. Being in a such a heavily Muslim and homophobic area is something that I find very foreign coming from the states and GW in particular.

- They all speak at least 3 languages - their tribal language, Swahili and English. Many of them even know more then that.

- There are no real sidewalks here - only a dirt path if you're lucky. My feet are going to be dirty for the next 3 months, and I'm actually pretty ok with it.

Alright, that's all I have for now, but I'm sure there'll be more to come in the near future. Hope you enjoyed it!

Ok, first off, a disclaimer. This keyboard (like most over here) are really hard to type on, so please don't judge my grammar. Oh, and this is going to be a very long post. I may not post again for a few days, so feel free to read a little and come back. I won't be offended. Ok, on to the post!

Thanks to everyone for the comments and the bday wishes - it means a lot to me! I may not have time to get back to all of you personally, but know that I appreciate it and miss and love you all.

So, to catch you up on my life since the last post, we have officially moved into Nairobi. We spent the last few days of orientation at another convent/hostel that was very nice. The next few days were nothing too special, although very busy. A lot of group time, talks about safety, what diseases we're going to get, homestay families, etc. We did get to take some tours of Nairobi and see the SIT office, so that was awesome. The office is a house that they converted - our main classroom is the entry hall/living room, with the upstairs rooms being offices or smaller classrooms.

On our first afternoon off, a small group of us went to Toi (pronounced toy) market, where they sell everything imaginable (this is the one you were talking about Christina!). It was overwhelming and kind of smelly but so stereotypically African. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures for fear that they would be taken - sadly, that seems to be a theme here. But it was everything you would think a market should be - smelly, crowded, full of stuff and a maze. It was kind of overwhelming, but I'm really glad I went.

The next day - the 9th, after a very interesting lecture about the tribes and their initiation rituals (I won't go into detail here, but let me know if you are interested - they are fascinating). And then a small group of us got to go to an orphanage for mostly HIV orphans - to say they were cute is a little bit of an understatement. I got to feed one of them, Liz, and she (ok, I'll be honest, we) made a bit of a mess. But she seemed happy. Then we got to play with them and they all seemed so happy. In a way, I was also happy for them. I know that they have a really hard life ahead of them, but right now they just seem so happy and content. They are fed, clothed, played with, and taken care of. Part of me couldn't help but thinking that they are the lucky ones. We left after they went down for a nap and went back to our hostel for lunch.

After a short health lecture, a group who had already gone to the orphanage went to a local pub - The Three Wheels. It is a very "authentic" pub, and we were the only wzungus (white people) there. Pretty cool. After a few Tuskers (which only cost about $1.50 and are twice the size of a normal beer), we went back for dinner, and the guard let us out for a night out on the town! Most of the group went, and it was an awesome bday eve celebration. I didn't do the whole 21 shots, or even close, but I did have several Tuskers and a huge shot of gin. Yes, shot. Straight. It was pretty gross. But then again, it was my birthday. We heard that there was a live band next door, so we went to check it out. There was indeed a live band and a dance floor! We all started dancing and it was so much fun. The guys in my group are awesome and were definitely looking out for us- it made me feel really safe, and it that way - and only that way - it reminded me of Apex (I miss you guys!).

They closed at about 11, so we went home after that. I did stay up until midnight, but not much later- I had been up since 6:30! But it was a great bday eve and I went to bed excited to meet my homestay family.

The next morning, we ate, packed and headed over to SIT for some more Swahili. The language is pretty simple and I think I am starting to catch on. They ordered pizza for lunch and we had a cake for my bday! It was very yummy and American. After lunch, we started leaving for our homestays in shifts. I was with the last group, and we all sat around, nerves flying trying to prepare ourselves.

At about 6, I arrived. My family is Mama Steph, her daughter Steph (people are called the name of their first child here- her name is actually Ann), Mama Steph's sister whose name I can't remember. Steph and Mama Steph are quite, but we spent a little while talking. It had been raining, and so the power went out. We spent a lot of time just sitting quietly by the kerosene lamp. I started feeling very homesick and wondered if I could actually live with this family. The power came back on eventually and that helped so much. We turned the TV on and ate a very yummy dinner of chicken stew and coconut rice. At about 10:00, I started falling asleep and headed to bed. I didn't let myself think too much, knowing I would just start crying. I actually slept pretty well.

I woke up at about 6:30 this morning, and since I knew the family didn't get up til about 8 or 9, tried to go back to sleep. But unfortunately, I could not. That's when I got really homesick and had my worst moment so far. I tried listening to music, going back to sleep, but nothing worked. Then I started writing in my journal, and that did help. It was a distraction at least. Mama Steph had said that Sunday was a "slow day", and knowing that the group had nothing planned, I was not looking forward to it. But at about 9, after catching up on my journal and collecting myself, I faced my fear.

I am happy to say that it was so much better then I expected. Mama Steph and Steph are still pretty quite, but they are getting more talkative. I ate some breakfast, relaxed and little bit as my fears subsided. I spent some time working on Swahili, and reorganizing my backpack and other stuff, which was very necessary. My spirits soared when I heard Mama Steph's sister turn on the shower - I have running water! While this is not abnormal, it's not exactly guaranteed either. Needless to say, I was relieved. Then I watched a little more TV with the family, did a little more Swahili and decided to try my hand at my laundry. I washed my clothes by hand (yes mom, by hand!) and hung them out to dry. Steph and her friends were definitely laughing at me a little bit, but in a good natured kind of way. I would have laughed at me too. I'm a pretty awkward person when it comes to these things. Or most things in general.

Then we ate lunch and watched some more TV. They have a really interesting mix of programs here - Scrubs, ER, a Spanish soap opera dubbed in English, Kenyan news. Its really interesting. It was raining again, but thankfully, the power held up. I worked on a little more Swahili until Libby, another girl in my program who is only 2 houses down came over and we walked to an internet cafe.

I am getting more comfortable in my home and think that I will be ok there. It might not be the best home, but they are nice and there is running water, so I can't really complain either. I am going through an adjustment time and it is hard, but have no fear. It'll pass and I'll be ok.

If you have read this far, thank you- I appreciate it!

That's one of about 4 phrases I have learned in Swahilli so far. It means "I'm a student, I have no money." I think it will be the phrase I come to use the most...comes in very handy when bargining at markets and with beggars and other such things. We have our first official class tomorrow nad I'm very excited, and just a little (ok, maybe a lot) nervous.

It's hard to believe I've only been here about 3 days and I have done so much. They are definetly keeping us busy. So I'll give you just a short overview here.

The plane ride was good, just long. There was a 12 hour ride to Dubai and then a 5 hour trip to Kenyatta National Airport, where we got our visas and meet the SIT staff. After packing all our luggage into one small van and outrselves into another, we headed off towards our orientation site on the outskirts of Nairobi. Not 5 minutes out of the airport we saw giraffes grazing! It was such an awesome welcome. Some os us have a theory that they are planted there for tourists, but they were cool nonetheless. We got to our site at about 6 and spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other and eating dinner. The food here is good - pretty bland and very basic meat and potatoes. But it will get me by.

We spent the next two days at this site - it was some sort of combo of a hostel and convent that was very nice and even had hot showers! We took a bus tour of Nairobi, which, although it was kind of superficial. it was still good. On the second day we were split into groups and dropped off at different places around the city. I got to go to Kenyatta National Hospital, which was intense. there were so many people everywhere just waiting, and it was by no means sanitary. We got to see their HIV/AIDS center, which is doing some awesome work, as well as there Family Planning center. It was cool to be in smaller groups in the city and I really enjoyed it.

After that, we went to the Giraffe Center where I got to kiss a giraffe! They are HUGE! And so friendly. They even all knew their own names and would come when they were called. It was really cool. And defintely a good stress reliever after the hospital. Other then that. we have just been havng hte basic safety talks you would expect and a lot of group together time. It's a little intense...But we move into our homestay families on Saturday, so that should help in that area. I am very excited and nercous to meet my family...should be an intersting experience.

As for the adjustments, I think I am doing well so far. There have been a few "what the hell am I doing here?" moments, but I think that's to be expected. I am a little homesick, but they have been keeping us way too busy to really get into that. It has been hard adjusting to the lack of technology (especially when it comes to communication) and the cold showers. Also, the idea that I will be here for another 3 months seems a little overwhelming now that I am actually here. But as I said, I think that's all pretty normal.

Ok, I am going to cut myself off now before this gets too long. But I think I should be able to get online again soon so hopefully there will be another update! Thanks for reading!

There are about 1,000 other things I should be doing at this moment - packing, laundry, running errands, cleaning, etc. In light of all those productive choices, I am here. writing the first entry to my blog. Anyone who knows me at all should not be surprised. I keep going back and forth thinking "I'm not leaving for another 2 days, I have plenty of time!" and "Oh no! How am I going to get everything done in the next few days?". I figure it'll all work out and I'll be ok in the end, so at this moment I'm not really too stressed. But talk to me in a few hours and see where I'm at then...

I never really thought of myself as a blogger, but this seemed like a good reason to start one. Throughout the next four months I'll post here when I can. I'll do my best to keep it iteresting, brief and entertaining. But for now, thanks for reading and hopefully the next time I post will be from Keyna!