Well, it's been four houses, three birthdays, two years, and one more item crossed off my bucket list. It's also been an experience, that's for sure. I don't think I'll be able to fully reflect until I'm off the rock (less than 24 hours from now, snap). Looking forward, now I have to find new ways to challenge myself and grow.

About four years ago, I made a resolution to only regret things that I've done, and not things that I wish I did. While the past two years haven't been perfect, and while I had plenty of nights where I really questioned just what the hell I was doing here, I'm glad I took the plunge. Peace Corps is by now means perfect, but I felt it offered me an opportunity to create my own experience, challenges, opportunities, and rewards. Reading through some of my old journals, I see that I'm a different person than when I left, and I'm glad for that. I've always been of the mind that I should be more concerned with where I'm going than where I am, and I'm happy to see my progress.

I guess I learned some stuff here too. I learned that during a four day storm you can dry your clothes in the oven if you're really careful, and that beans and textured vegetable protein are friends to your wallet. I also learned that boarding a plane or signing a contact isn't enough to change who you are. Wherever you go, there you are. Along the same lines, I learned that the idea that tough times build character is bs. Tough times reveal character. Then it's up to you to decide where to go from there. Building character, growing as a person, takes place incrementally over many nights, it takes an infinite amount of commitments and an endless supply of resolve, and even then requires the continual reevaluation of yourself to ensure you're heading in the right direction. When the tough times come again, then you'll be able to see if you succeeded. Someday soon I'll find out where I stand.

One of the benefits of the Peace Corps is that you get to share the experience with dozens of other people who have that similar mental defect that caused them to leave everything they had for two years of stress and dejection and cockroaches. You also quickly find nationals with the same fire inside that makes them show up at 6 in the morning for community work days or stay up to 2 in the morning organizing teaching resources. Some of the people I met here I couldn't comprehend how they manage to do what they do for an hour, but they manage to wake up every day with determination that leaves me in awe. To everyone I worked with these past two years, Peace Corps or Jamaican; it was an honor to work with you all. The experience would have been worth it just to say I served with you.

But enough of this heavy crap. Often overlooked is just how fun Peace Corps can be. Watching two goats butt heads for half an hour, joining in with a whole minibus singing Michael Jackson, watching an 80 year old woman dance in the street during carnival, or chasing the most adorable lizards out of your kitchen are all entertaining as hell. Always remember to keep it Irie.

Walk good.

-Craigery

Silly goat, you're looking for apartment "B-AAAAAA"

The fast-paced limited-spaced Peace Corps workstation.

Clothes dryer

Hehe

The Jamaican Sears' Catalog

It got a little chilly this winter

The staff prepares to grade the students' delicious final projects

Umbrellas are essential for any type of weather

Gotta be stylin' even if you're just holding a pineapple

My security system

Christmas shopping under the stars (and tarps)

Every workshop should come with a cannon

I'm smiling because I picked enough apples for 60 bottles of wine

Pint-sized kitty

Portland vending machine

Two Michiganders happy to be somewhere else in February

Hehe again

The tropical heat from the painting must be getting to us

The rare combination of cute and badass

Jamaica is a smaller island than you'd think

Hammocks: traps for lazy people

Goodnight Port Antonio, and goodnight Jamaica.

Merry Christmas from Jamaica To Di Wurld!

Just like every Christmas, this one has been pretty crazy leading up to it. I've been really busy getting lesson plans ready for my project starting in January, and working on my wine (We've bottled 5 gallons and have another 6 at the school fermenting, and I have 8 at my apartment. That's 106 bottles total!

A few weeks ago we bottled our banana wine. It came out just a bit sweet, so it makes a great dessert wine once it's chilled. Fly down for a sample!

Today has so far been spent catching up on some housework, then a little shopping in town. The local homeless shelter houses a few dozen residents, and fellow volunteer Jerry and I are going to help out tomorrow cooking Christmas dinner.

The shelter's fearless guard dogs are ready to strike at any moment.

The homemade Christmas tree Jerry made for the homeless shelter.

No snow this year, but the stupid rain wouldn't stop until last week. I was running out of clothes, but thankfully they're all dry now.

Adrian looking festive holding an adorable likkle boy. Adrian works at the internet cafe we like to call "Peace Corps North Regional Headquarters."

Outside the cafe, kids wait to meet Santa

Jerry and I making ox tail soup and pierogi. No farmer's cheese, so we had to make do with goat's cheese, and goats are awesome, so why not? They turned out pretty damn good, and that means I get to have a little Polish Christmas of my own.

The town square with it's Christmas tree. Tonight, this whole place will be filled with people for Grand Market, an annual event where people do last minute Christmas shopping / sell some of their old things / party until late, late, late into the night. I'd like to stop by and try to pick up a gallon stainless steel stockpot (my Christmas present to myself, for my winemaking).

Thanks for the cheese, goats!

Merry Christmas to everyone from the rock. I'll be thinking of you all.

Blouse and skirt, things have been crazy for the past few months. That's how I like it, so really I can't complain. But this is an internet blog, and that's what people do.

Right after my last entry in September, we got an incredible amount of rain from Tropical Storm Nicole. The rains knocked out power in Port Antonio for a few days, so I got to spend my evenings reading and writing by candlelight. I almost felt like a "real" Peace Corps volunteer!

I've never seen the gully in my yard that high, but it would need to swell more than that to threaten my apartment. Here it just annoyed the chickens.

Red Stripe bottles make good candleholders.

Then, right before leaving for Kingston, I was able to bottle the first batch of wine made at my school! The wine was made with nothing but mangoes, sugar, water, papaya peel, limes, and raisins. It turned out like a dry Riesling with a hint of the tropics. I considered it a huge success, and while I'm sorry to say that there is no more (I used the few gallons we brewed as samples to businesses to promote the shcool), I believe it did it's job in raising the overall enthusiasm for the school.

Me and Mrs. P filling old rum bottles with mango wine

Somehow, the rains and wine did not stop my plans to go FOREIGN! (leaving the island, in this case back home to Detroit). I spent a few weeks back home to catch up with family and friends, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of then senator JFK challenging students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to serve their country overseas for two years (the name Peace Corps didn't come until later). There I met with many returned volunteers, and the current director of the Peace Corps Aaron Williams.

50 years ago to the minute, the spark for the Peace Corps was struck here on the steps of the Michigan Union on State and South University.

Some students show their gratitude

Me and my boss one step away from Obama.

Every time I walk past this thing I need to spin it. They say the president of the university wakes up every morning at 5 and spins it to power the campus.

My old Jamaican cook shop experience before I even knew that cow foot is edible (and tasty)

I think this picture sums of my experience at home well. The old gang out on a field trip to Eastern Market in Detroit, with a dumpster fire in the background.

Home was great, but a little exhausting. This was the longest time I spent away from home, about a year, and you want to get completely caught up with everything that's happened. By the time I flew back to Jamaica, I was welcomed by a musty house and a few dozen lizards, roaches, and spiders. I barely had enough energy to sweep them outside before I crashed for the night.

But then I was back in the swing of things. The world doesn't stop when you're on vacation, and my work was waiting patiently for me to return. Most important of that work was a grant application that I was to complete with my supervisor. This grant would expand our facilities in the school, so I would have better equipment to teach my agro-processing lessons. Just last week I heard that we were awarded our grant, which means yet more work for me to do! Yay!

Now, for a tangent about grants and Peace Corps (with unrelated pretty pictures in-between to keep things from getting boring). Every volunteer has a different opinion on how effective grants are in development, what the volunteer's role should be in that, what the long term effects of grants are, and every volunteer will want to express his or her view. These views run the gambit from "I want to see my organization receive as much grant funding as is available to help their cause" to "I want my organization to become self sufficient and never need to apply for another grant" to some combination of the two.

Students at my school making homemade black currant soda. We made the soda for a charity gala the students helped in catering to promote the school. Oh, and it was very tasty.

There's a lot of talk about the theory of development, and how our current model is not working. A (very brief, biased, and probably flawed) summary of the current model from an economic perspective would be that international development work and charity, like other industries, is a business, and there are suppliers and consumers. The product being exchanged is a sense of accomplishment for assisting where others have failed, or more simply, assistance. Lending a hand. Help. There are players who want to help (wealthy donors, foreign aid offices, churches, companies seeking a better image, etc.) These are the consumers. They want to spend their resources (mainly money, or other resources such as food or medical care) to help the poor or those in need of some type of assistance. Now where there is a consumer and a demand, the market will produce suppliers who wish to meet that demand. Here are where the NGOs come into play.

And here are my products. From left to right: Ribena soda, ginger soda, sorrel sauce, banana wine, and star fruit wine. Yum.

NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) are a staple of international development. They are intended to bridge the gap between the donor and the recipient, and are tasked with identifying the needs and providing assistance. Some NGOs are focused on promoting healthy living, such as through better nutritional information or through HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Others seek to help promote food security, so in the event of a volatile market the country will have the means to reduce the pressure of rising import costs and keep a large portion of their population employed. Some NGOs receive their own funding, but many are supported with grants.

And Jamaican children are supported by photographs

Billions of dollars are spent globally in international development, and like any industry, there is the potential for fraud, abuse, and other unethical behavior. Unfortunately I have seen unscrupulous spending myself, however it is my opinion that the very idea of Peace Corps isn't to look at a broken system or a struggling organization and silently shake your head. The system exists because there are people who see poverty and want to help and donate their time and money and resources, but don't have the means to distribute it themselves, so they seek others to assist them with this.

Much like how my students assist me in reading the density of our starfruit wine.

The staff at the Peace Corps like to promote volunteers as "facilitators", and that role is what I strive to achieve. When you walk into a school and teach for 2 years, or share a skillset, even if you do a fantastic job, your work will end when you leave. I try my best to listen to the demand and help guide the energy in the most productive direction. It was not my intention to be an "agro-processing specialist" in Jamaica, but that is my current job title. When I walked into the small office at the Michigan Union 3 years ago to apply for the Peace Corps, I told my recruiter "I don't care where I go, but I want to be doing engineering work. I do not want to work in a school." For my first year, I got exactly what I asked for. I was designing schools, developing quality control checks for construction of houses for families in need, planning water systems and helping other volunteers with engineering consultations. But there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head. I felt that when I left, there wasn't going to be anybody to take over my work. I was working closely with my coworkers to make sure they knew what I was doing and how I was doing it, but my projects were my idea, so all the enthusiasm was with me. I couldn't even fully understand this sense of uneasiness until I found my new assignment (at a school. Fate is hilarious.)

Now, I work with staff and students who are excited and eager to learn on their own. I have students asking me for equipment and instructions so they can replicate the food preservation methods at home, and students who are able to explain what I'm doing just by understanding the principles of fermentation or carbonation. In my opinion, the incentive is two-fold. There is the direct economic incentive; if these value-added products can be produced cheaply, they could be readily sold at a profit. But there is also an overlooked, and in my view more powerful incentive; the desire to create, to craft, and to be one's own boss. It is what attracted me to brewing in the first place, and what keeps me interested in my other hobbies such as writing and cooking. I think Jamaicans have this desire in abundance, and it is really the only way to ensure that a project is sustained long after you leave, which is the ultimate goal of Peace Corps. If I leave the skills behind to turn a bumper crop of mangoes or bananas into something new, I succeeded in my Peace Corps goals and will have a good story for future job interviews. If I leave inspiring a few people to become enthusiastic about taking economic and creative control of their own future, then, shit, that's all I really wanted to accomplish. What will I do with the rest of my life?

I mean, who wouldn't look at cinnamon, pimentos, limes, raisins, and 25lbs of bananas and think "Let's turn that into wine!"

Similar views are also presented in The Ugly American, which almost seems to be an idealized roadmap for the Peace Corps 2 years before Kennedy's speech. On a broader scale, there is argument that even aid spent with the best of intentions can still foster a culture of dependency, and stifle private business development that is the real hope for long-term development. This is the school of thought of Dambisa Moyo in Dead Aid, chronicling the failure of the $1,000,000,000,000 (trillian, no extra zeros there) spent in Africa over the last 50 years. This is a powerful argument that deserves serious attention from the politicians and world leaders, and it also inspired me to pursue further education to understand global economics. I'm still not exactly sure what direction I want to go in life, but I know what excites me, and what I can get passionate about. We will not right ourselves with our current outlook on the world, and we can't get an answer if we're afraid to ask the hard questions. I believe our very survival depends on having the courage to change our beliefs when we cannot reconcile them with the evidence at hand.

Sorry, I kind of got off track there. This is both my soapbox and my means for understanding myself and how I've been changing here. "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Oh, and who knew that beans were such a cheap, easy, and tasty dish? The local favorite here is "Rice and Peas", where "Peas" are kidney beans, and the rice is cooked with coconut milk. It's good, but I ate it just about every day for a year, and I like a little variety in my food. Lately I've been cooking black beans in my pressure cooker with bacon, onion, garlic, habanero peppers, served over white rice. I could eat that for dinner every day for a month before I got sick of it. Then today I found out it's really easy to make your own refried beans as well. Man, is there anything this food can't do?

So back to the grant. This project will help my school and me experiment with different agro-processing methods to develop an easy to follow, affordable instruction guide to anyone who wants to get into the business (I already have some of the website up). Now I'm usually very skeptical about business schemes, but I still haven't found a reason why this shouldn't work. When we bottled our mango wine, I ran the numbers to see how much it cost in time and ingredients to produce one bottle of wine. On a unit scale, it cost about $60J (about $0.75 U.S) and 15 minutes of labor to produce one 750ml bottle of wine. I believe the conditions are right for a new market to develop, one that could keep nearly 100% of the profits in the community. Back when I served on the committee that allocated these grants, we discussed the depressing state of affairs where so much grant money is misallocated, and came to the conclusion that we would do our best to award grants to be spent as investments, not gifts. I believe this grant will be an investment in Port Antonio's economic future.

I have less than 6 months left in my service and will most likely be gone before the first bottle of wine or jar of preserves is sold, but that is just fine with me. This is not my country and I am not its citizen, so it should not be up to me what direction the people of Portland choose to go with the resources I aim to provide. But I'm confident that a few people here are excited enough to continue the idea that some form of it will exist long after I leave. There is still much work to do, but my work is cut out for me. All I need to do is work myself out of a job.

Now, it's time to cook up those beans. To play us out, here's a shot of Port Antonio from the Errol Flynn Marina. Goodnight Port Antonio.

Quick update with a few pictures of some recent winemaking activities I've been working on with the food preparation students.

Here are two of the students watching some yeast hydrate. Much of the wine currently made here is made using standard bread yeast, as it is the only type of yeast easily available in Jamaica. To help make better, consistent wine, I hope to import cheap but specialized yeast strains for better wine, like the ones we are using here.

Here I am with food prep student Damian. We're topping off a batch of banana wine, adding some cool water so the mixture will not be so hot as to kill the yeast (below 104 degrees). Little things like this are just simple instructions to follow, but I've been finding the students are getting increasingly curious as to the reasons behind this and other small aspects of winemaking. I do my best to answer as many questions as I can, and will be reading some more to help myself understand the microbiology and chemistry of winemaking, but frequently I am forced to answer "well, I don't know, but we can go online right now and find out!" I think even this is one of those "good problems", because I'm subtly introducing the students to the concept of independent research to answer their questions, and this will be necessary for future food preservation techniques, especially once I leave.

Pineapple and Passion Fruit Chutney. It was amazing and incredibly simple to make. I'm running into another problem where everything I make to research different food preservation recipes is immediately "sampled" to death, and before I can even ask what people thought of it to improve the recipe it's all gone.

But enough of work, time for some shopping.

Here's a small shop by another volunteer's house. Because lots of these shops carry their items behind the counter to hold more inventory, the customer cannot always see what is for sale. I think this is a nifty solution to that problem. Of course the common method of walking in, shouting "Oy, yu av marina fi sell?" (Do you have any sleeveless undershirts for sale?) is still the method I use, as I find it's most effective.

Lots of the department and wholesale stores get inventory directly from China, which leads to some interesting items. My pressure cooker has instructions in very broken English, so I must remember to "keep safety cap topside for prevent dangerous". Here we have a cool communist executive day planner.

My market. Every Saturday it is jam packed with vendors, locals, and a few Peace Corps volunteers. I guess it might have at one brief moment been open air, but the maze of tarps quickly formed a nice canopy to keep you and the produce from drying out too quickly in the sun.

Mobile carts are the preferred way to go for many venders who only stay for a day or two a week.

Gratuitous adorable picture of Joline, who is showing me her latest artwork. Later she tricked me into helping her make an "O" for her after the yarn began to unravel, and I spent a good 15 minutes working on it just to have her tell me I didn't do a good job. (The "O" was for a 4 letter word beginning with "L". She was amazed when I correctly guessed the word. Again, adorable.

And now it's time for goodnight, Portland. I still need to find a good place away from mosquitoes to set up my hammock in my new apartment. Life is just about 90% perfect right now, and that might just push it a little higher.

(Or: How to get things done in Jamaica)

So I think I'm getting my rhythm here. A quick recap of today's events in town (which may seem like a long and pointless story), and how they relate to my Peace Corps experience as a whole.

Smoke from brush fires cast a dusk fog over Port Antonio yesterday.

I went into town today to get a whole heap of things done, but also to purchase and use one important item: a 5/8" drill bit. Something that looks like this:

I need this drill bit for my winemaking. When making wine, the yeast consumes the sugar from the fruit and extra sugar you add to the must (a name for unfermented wine). The yeast also expels alcohol and carbon dioxide. For cost and other reasons, I brew in plastic buckets, similar to paint buckets with lids. We want the alcohol to stay in the bucket, but we want the CO2 to escape so the pressure doesn't build up inside the bucket. We can't simply leave the bucket uncovered either, because oxygen will spoil the wine, so we drill a small hole, put a rubber bung in, and then then place an airlock in the bung.

Bung and airlock.

This allows CO2 to escape without letting oxygen back in, and is how nearly all wine and beer is made around the world. Generally speaking, this is not the way wine is made in Jamaica, as everyone has their own methods and traditions, but I'm here to try to make winemaking professional, efficient, sterile, and more cost effective. At fist, I had the airlock fixed to the bucket through a small drill hole with masking tape which was failing to provide an airtight seal. Now, to put the airlock on the wine bucket correctly, I need a drill bit to insert the bung. Yesterday I bought a 3/4" wood bit from the hardware store, but after I drilled the hole I realized it was too large and the bung will not be able to form an airtight seal. Luckily I was able to return it, saving me the $350J I spent.

Not an airtight seal.

So today, I set out to buy a 5/8" drill bit. However, this is an item that isn't commonly used, and as a result it is an item that is not commonly stocked in Jamaican hardware stores. Another thing about Jamaican hardware stores, or at least most of them, is that you cannot simply walk up and find what you're looking for. The first hardware store I went to had a wall with steel cage separating you from the staff and the hardware, and three lines. One to tell them what you're buying, one to pick up your hardware, and a third to pay for it. I waited in line 10 minutes in the first, only to have the woman tell me she didn't know if they had it and to wait in the second line to see. 5 minutes later a man came up and I told him I needed a 5/8" drill bit. Or, specifically, I said "Excuse, do you have a five eighths drill bit?" To which he replied "Me nuh undastand." A Jamaican next to me translated, and said "You have wan five eight drill bit?" This was understood and the clerk went to search for it while I stood thoroughly confused as to why I wasn't understood the fist time. While he looked for the bit, I had to repeatedly say which size I was looking for. "you wan 3/16 inch?" "Nuh, Mi a look fi five eight bit, 3/16 kyan work!" "Wi av 5/32 bit" "Nuh, you av 5/8?" Eventually the clerk sort of wandered off and started talking to another customer. I interrupted him and asked "So, you don't have the bit?" "Nuh, wi no av it." I left frustrated.

By this time I was almost late for a meeting with my new supervisor and a Peace Corps staff, so I left without going to any of the other stores. The meeting went well, and before I left my supervisor asked me how the wine was coming, so I explained how I needed the drill bit. She asked what stores I went to, and I told her the two I visited, and she rattled off three other stores and their phone numbers from memory (this woman is so connected to the town and businesses she could probably tell me what the mayor's favorite ice cream flavor is). On my way out, her husband asked me what I was looking for and I explained. He called downstairs where a contractor was putting up grills (security bars over windows and doors) to see if he had a drill bit I could borrow, but he didn't.

I walked to the first store she mentioned, and found a 1/2" machine bit. When I compared it to the bung, I realized it would work, however the machine bit had a 1/2" shaft as well, which would probably be too wide for the drill I was planning on using. A wood router bit would be better suited for the job since the shaft is smaller and would easily fit into any drill, but still I bought the bit since it was this difficult to find anything that would work.

Sure enough when I got back the bit was too large for the drill. I remembered seeing a drill press by one of the metalworkers on the main road, and took the bit and the bucket lid to see if I could use the press just for the one hole. On my way to the shop I ran into my landlady's son, who introduced me to the blacksmith and asked on my behalf if he could drill a hole in the bucket lid for me. 15 seconds later I had my lid with the right size hole, huzzah! I talk to my landlady's son, and he tells me how great a guy the blacksmith is and what good work he does. Then I remembered that Jerry, another volunteer, needed to find a welding machine he could use for his students in the welding and fiberglass repair course, so I started talking to the blacksmith. The conversation went something like this:

"Thanks again for letting me use the drill press. I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, and I notice you have a welder. There's another volunteer who is teaching some students, and I was wondering if they could use your welder?"

"No, no, no, I'm too busy! I can't manage that."

"Yeah yeah, mi hear you. Hey, those grills you make look really nice, if I need you fi mek up somtin can I come back so?"

"Yeah mon! Anytime!"

Now, I didn't fully realize what happened in that conversation until afterwords, but that short bit of dialogue really encompassed the difficulty of volunteer work in Jamaica. Before we talked, the blacksmith did me a seemingly small favor that ended up saving me a whole mess of a headache, and he did it for free. This is rare, and I knew I just found a great resource I want to keep on good terms with for the time that I'm here. I pushed a bit too far however when I asked for his help with the welding students. Anytime I walk past his shop, he is working. This means any time he spends working with students would be time and money he is losing, so I should have known what his response would have been before I asked him. When I was walking back with my supervisor's son, he told me "He's a good guy, but he knows whenever people ask for help with things like this it keeps growing and growing, and it's a big headache and he looses a lot of money."

This also relates to an interesting phenomenon: there is no tipping in Jamaica, or at least there isn't outside of the tourist and uptown Kingston establishments. When you seek services, you are given a set price, but it shouldn't be more. The flipside of this is that everything has a price, including things which in America would be assumed included in the price. A Jamaican comedian we listened to during training had a bit where "You know here you can see a shop, and it has a sign that say 'Chicken sandwich $200, with bread $250. With Chicken $350." With the blacksmith, I wanted to ensure that he knows I am not expecting him to do everything for free, so I made sure he knew I appreciated his help and would be coming back soon (I have a bike that I would like a basket made for). After I said this, he perked up, aware that I wasn't just expecting freebies from him.

On the way back to the school I was stopped by the contractor working on the grills, who wanted to know if I got what I was looking for. I held up the bucket lid with the hole drilled in it, to which he replied simply "Yeah mon!" I like that even though he didn't know who I was or what I was doing, he was happy that I got what I was looking for. I had a similar exchange with the lady who runs the shop upstairs, happy that I got what I was looking for but probably just humoring me when I explained to her why it was so important.

By the time I got upstairs to the school I was drenched in sweat, having walked back and forth in town all day. But, I was able to put the lid on the bucket with the fermenting wine and attached the airlock, making that batch of wine safe from being contaminated by flies or bacteria. Anyone looking at that bucket before with the airlock attached with masking tape and the same bucket after with the right size drill hole and bung would probably not notice or care about the effort that went into getting that damn hole put there, or the importance of that damn hole and airtight seal, or what the whole experience says about life here, but hopefully now just a few more will.

So overall, I needed to drill a hole, a relatively simple operation. In the process I got frustrated with a security-crazy customer-unfriendly store (which many Jamaicans deal with on a daily basis), used local knowledge and resources to find what I need (but not necessarily what I went out to find initially), explored the interrelationships between volunteerism, capitalism, and altruism, and enjoyed a bit of local camaraderie for my small success towards my goal of creating attainable small business ventures for Jamaican farmers and prospective winemakers. Honestly, this was one of my most successful days, and if I can keep this up who knows what I'll be able to accomplish with my counterparts.

It's been a wild couple of months...so I'll do my best to summarize how I went from engineering in Spanish Town to making wine in Port Antonio.

It all started with Hurricane Dudus. Because of the events around Kingston, Peace Corps felt it was best to move me out of my community in Portmore and away from the corporate area completely (this includes Kingston, Portmore, and Spanish Town, where I spent nearly all of the last year and a half). I got the call at 9:00 a.m. and was out the door by noon. I haven't been back since, but I was able to call all my community members and tell them I'll come back to visit as soon as I am able.

While talking to staff in the months leading up to my move, I mentioned that I'm interested in winemaking and "agro-processing"; preserving fruits and produce by making jams, dried fruit, salsa, and other products. Some of the Peace Corps staff knew of an opportunity to do this in historic Port Antonio, Portland, on the North-East corner of the island, about 2 hours through the mountains from Kingston. Soon after I was headed to my new home.

Port Antonio, or "Porty" as the busdrivers will yell, is the capital of Portland Parish, and a beautiful little town with a marina and a few resorts along the North coast road. Compared to my previous site, it's tiny, wet, green, lush, and overall just amazing. My first few months here were spent setting up my assignment, working out what I hope to accomplish with this "agro-processing" idea. I was paired up with Mrs. Smart, who runs a nationally certified vocational school and offers courses in nursing, hospitality, and food preparation. Already having a full kitchen facility and experience in food education, it was a great fit, and I was off to work.

After talking with Mrs. Smart and many local farmers, produce sellers, and businessmen, we developed a framework around teaching simple food preservation techniques that are easily accessible to farmers or any interested person. Using common fruits such as mangoes, pineapple, guava, and others, the supply cost for the preserves should be minimal. For example; during mango season, there are literally thousands of mangoes rotting on the ground. "Stringy" or "Common" mangoes, while sweet, are very fibrous and not attractive to the produce market. However, if they were fermented, the fibers should settle or float out to be discarded. To test this theory, I used some leftover winemaking equipment to start a two gallon batch of mango wine at the school. Mrs. Smart helped, along with her husband and son.

I also ordered some additional equipment to test and further refine my winemaking skills and to adapt them to my new tropical climate. My hope is to test all different kinds of mangoes, pineapples, guava, and other fruits, setting up dozens of fermentations to determine which combination of fruits and additives will yield the best wine. After enough testing we will develop recipe and training guides and eventually start up our own agro-processing training school. Winemaking will be just one avenue, in addition to preserves and fruit drying, which I will also be experimenting with to develop local recipes and training guides. The ingredients and equipment that cannot be found easily on the island we will import and package into "wine kits" to sell to farmers at an affordable price that will include everything needed to start several batches of wine yielding hundreds of bottles. Anyone interested in making wine will be able to come to the school for training, recipes, and equipment.

The last few months have been some of the most intense in my life. I moved and re-moved, traveled all over the island for meetings and trainings, and had to adjust myself to an entire new community. Luckily I have the benefit of a Peace Corps staff that was helpful and understanding, Jamaicans who are welcoming and friendly, and a few other volunteers who are just great to have nearby. I will miss my former coworkers at Food For the Poor, however I am still in contact with them and hope to continue working with them in an auxiliary role.

Every day here is a new face, a new sight, new smells, new sounds. What comes next for me, I am excited to say I have no idea.

Let me start out by saying, with everything in the news recently, I and my fellow peace corps volunteers are safe. If you have any concerns you can reach me over email, but for now I feel the need to write or do something to keep from going stir crazy, so without further ado here is a brief glimpse into life in Spanish Town.

My agency built many houses in the neighborhoods surrounding its office. Eventually the zinc in many of them became rotted, so we hired one of our contractors to replace it. I was helping in the project management and reporting, so here are some photos from the area.

Here is Burton "Johnny Cool", who did an excellent job on the repairs.

The railroad which once linked Jamaica now is mainly just used to move chemicals to the industrial plant here in Spanish Town. It also now serves as a footpath through the communities of Ellerslie Pen and Palls Pen. There's a goat in there too, because there are goats everywhere in Spanish Town.

The Rio Cobre was once a huge river coming through St. Catherine and Spanish Town. Now most of it is diverted to gullies which irrigate farmland. This one travels through Ellerslie Pen and next to the bus park.

Many of the yards here are quite narrow and you have to walk sideways to go through.

I follow my coworker Junior through another narrow corridor of zinc.

A few schools with a grill and dominoes table in front.

A fence built with an old Pepsi billboard

A few of our houses with their new roofs.

A street corner with shop to buy phone credit.

And my ride back to Portmore. The goat waited with me for the taxi to fill up but decided to stay home in Spanish Town. I'm sure I'll see her again.

Most of my last year in Jamaica has been spent in what is called the "Corporate Area", mainly comprised of Kingston, Spanish Town (the old capital), and Portmore (somewhat between the two, and my site.) In total, the corporate area occupies just a small corner of the island but is host to about 1.5 million, or half of the inhabitants. Here are some pictures from Kingston, with Spanish Town and Portmore soon to follow.

Here we are in Parade, the heart of downtown. Located here is the largest transportation hub on the island, and also the largest market. There are probably hundreds of carts like this one being pushed around, selling anything from oranges to rice to bootlegged DVDs.

This is from another large Kingston transportation hub, Half-Way Tree. This happens to be some of my favorite graffiti, as it is both political and confusing. Also, just yesterday, while getting a taxi, I asked the driver if he went to Half-Way Tree. "Nah mon, mi go WHOLE tree."

More cool graffiti, this time from crossroads, a bus stop between Half-Way Tree and Parade.

Me at the Peace Corps office, admiring my boss and minutes away from getting that foppish mullet chopped off.

Next up: Spanish Town.

Got a new camera! And while unloading all the old pics, I found a few to toss up here.

My old street with a plane landing in Kingston.

Fellow PCV Angela with some gigantic potatoes, or yams, I'm not sure which.

The site of an old bridge that was washed out, I believe in hurricane Dean.

While on a trip to look at sites for the new bridge, some kids who were swimming demanded that I take their picture. Seems to happen with kids that whenever they see me with a camera they demand I take their picture, and get excited as all hell when I show it to them on the screen afterwards.

Me legging it to take a look at a spring catchment up in Jambos Pond

The catchment. The water naturally flows out of the mountain side, and is blocked in to channel it into pipes, which go down and feed the community. This particular one is enough for the community, but because there's a mountainside it needs to hop over the community will be installing a pump and additional piping to get to more homes.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) Chris, with Mike and Toni, two awesome people who got me hooked up with internet, and are my winemaking partners. We currently have a 3-gallon batch of passion fruit wine brewing now.

Their cat eyes Angela suspiciously...

PCVs Angela and Sara overlooking Mike and Toni's future house. From this view on a clear day you can see the Caribbean to the North and South, and also the Blue Mountain peak, the highest point in the Caribbean.

Me striking a pose. Someone with photoshop skills add some lens flairs and maybe an eagle in the background and this would be the most perfect picture of me yet.

Out with a coworker and some PCVs checking the foundation for a Food For the Poor house. The recipient applies for the house with a letter of support from their church or community group, and then builds a foundation. We then send our contractor with a container of material to build a house. Here we're checking the dimensions, in this rather artistic shot that fellow PCV Thinh took.

Another shot by Thinh. I love how it can be downpouring and sunny at the same time here.

Action shot!

Almost ran right into this little guy. Then the same thing happened again a few hours later when I was picking some peppers. Amazingly I've come to grow affectionate for spiders here, but I guess I'll take sides with anything at war with the mosquitoes.

Jerk & Flirt 2k9.

Coworker and some of his community trying to jump start a car. It didn't work, but they had fun.

And the first shot of 2k10, the sun setting in Portmore just a few hours ago tonight. It's a new year, with new days, new nights, new friends, and new experiences. In less than two months, there will be a new group of volunteers on the island, group 81. If I could have one wish it would be that the year leaves with no regrets.

Whole heap of things to talk about over the past few months. And because I’m lazy, I’ll let the photos do most of the talking. First, a few of my site in Portmore: A scene of Kingston, viewed from Portmore (Waterford specifically, I think.) Those are the docks I ride past on the coasta into town. The gullies don’t drain properly and as a result all the litter (that isn’t burned) is collected in the stagnant water, where algae and mosquitoes thrive. One of my secondary projects is trying to work with a recycling program to set up more recycling points in the city, and also to make presentations about the harmful effects of littering and burning of plastic and rubbish. Here’s a view of my pad. I appear to be journaling at the moment. Oh, those potatoes on top of the fridge? I forgot about them for like a week, and they turned into brown mushy water. My bedroom. The keyboard you see set me back almost my entire settling in allowance, but since I could not bring my accordion down it was an essential purchase. And now, GOATS!! NUFF GOATS! GOATS AND BABY GOATS! (kids!) Fellow PCV Matt inoculating some goats. The injections are antibiotics, which prevent the goats from getting worms, making them healthy so when the time is right they can be turned into delicious, delicious curried mutton. The inoculations are part of a project by my agency, Food for the Poor, where we aid in the goat rearing at a local prison in Spanish Town. Matt’s done this before, but this was my first time. I was a little hesitant my first few goes, and one of the goats bucked and bent the needle in half. Later on I was shaking a bit, but was able to prick, inject the full 10cc of antibiotics, and release the goats in about 5 seconds, which I hope the goats appreciated.

A somewhat disturbing portrait of me. There’s just something sinister about someone smiling behind shades dripping in sweat and holding a loaded syringe in latex gloved hands. This one I just thought looked cool. It’s a close-up of the zinc roof on the model double unit house at the Food for the Poor office. I took it as part of a quality control guide for inspecting the houses in the field after construction.That's all for now. Next on my agenda is trying to join a local reggae group and become the "token white guy" on the keyboard. Wish me luck!

Quick update, just some pretty pictures and brief descriptions.

Long Bay, Portland, on the North coast of the island. We were celebrating another volunteer's birthday. Here are some of us on the beach (we're the white ones)

Gavin and I decide to strike some poses.

It took hours of special effects to get the hair to stand up just right for the "wistfully gazing across the sea on a Friday afternoon" look I was going for.

A moonlit stroll on the beach. I set my camera to a long exposure time to use the moonlight to light up the shot, I think it turned out really nice.

Another one from that night, although the flash of light behind the clouds was a bolt of lightning.

Now a few work pictures.

A rainwater catchment and the open storage cistern. We're looking to design and construct a covering for it to keep garbage and animals out, as well as a safety measure to keep children away.The water is held in the cistern, then piped across the road and down to the communities below. Here a woman fills some water jugs. In the rural communities with no piped water, families may make several trips a day to the "water shop."

While investigating a water distribution system on the other side of the island, a group of schoolchildren were walking home. We couldn't drive much faster than a walking pace because of the roads, but it was a long walk and the pikni dem (children) definitely appreciated the ride.

Warning: personal reflections below. I promise it leads somewhere, but feel free to skip to the pictures if you'd like. I probably would.

Been a while since I've had time to write. Things have been a bit hectic lately, and there's been too much to get into details over - suffice to say it's a strange feeling consistently waking up and not knowing what city or country you're in. But I've started to get adjusted to the chaos - so to speak. For a long time I've been seeking order, familiarity. There was nothing more comfortable than to know that when I left the cereal on the table it would be waiting for me when I came home, or when I came to the office I would be welcomed by a long list of repetitive tasks to complete in a predesignated and non deviating fashion, and I could pick up the next day from where I left off. I actually really enjoyed my first temp job the summer after my freshmen year at college, where all I did was copy and paste excel spreadsheets for 40 hours a week, for 10 weeks. There is something to those routines, you get a feeling that life can be broken down into simple reactions. A closed system, no outside variables. You set the gears, wind the spring, and let it go. There's never any extremes, and you can expect the expected.

However, there's something horribly wrong with spending days and years never straying outside of your comfort zone. There's just too much more to life than existing. I used to be afraid of failure, of being dissapointed, of being hurt, but at least that's feeling something. I could feel myself growing numb to life, and I knew I needed a change. Maybe some time abroad could help this suburban white boy with the experiences he knows he needs but is still terrified of. Of course, it's not as easy as that. Everyone always says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (or, as I heard yesterday, "it takes small bites to eat an elephant"), but the real struggle is the day to day - the second and the third and the six thousand four hundred and ninth step, where you don't have the anticipation of the journey or the excitement of the finish, just the frustrating grind of the middle. And even then, it's not just one journey with one destination. It's a universe of hundreds of dimensions you travel in. You're losing ground in one direction and gaining ground in the other, but you might be focused on a third where you're standing still. It's impossible to keep a running narative of all the ways you're evolving but you still try because we feel we must make sense of it all. Before I tried to manage this by cutting out all the variables I could and was left with a simple routine that I could manage, at the cost of real experience, and in a way, my humanity. That chaos that is real life was terrifying, and I knew it would be a long struggle to get used to it - the true chaos and not my false order.

It's been about a decade since I read this exert from Vonnegut, but it's been swelling in the back of my head all these years. I only read it once, but I could almost recite it verbatum:

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Ok, I said this was going somewhere so I guess I should finally segway into it.

Last weekend I went to the Ocho Rios Jazz festival (held of course in Kingston, Treasure Beach, and Ocho Rios - each about 100 km away from each other. Makes sense.) I wasn't feeling well in the morning and was debating blowing it off, but I kicked myself enough to get going, and I'm glad I did. The photo above was from the first night, there were about a dozen volunteers at the bar ($80 draft Red Stripe, hells yes.) There were a few group pictures taken, I'll try to get those from the other PCVs.

The next morning we woke up and headed downtown to the Burger King for breakfast (yeah, I know, but you get coffee AND orange juice with your sandwich and hash browns, so it's hard to beat.) From there we headed to Dunn's River Falls. We left early to try to miss any tourist or cruise ship groups, and aside from a row with staff over whether we should pay for the locker when we brought our own lock, it was pretty incredible. The water was just a bit chilly, but you adjust surprisingly fast to it. It felt great to put your back against the falls and let the water smash into you, a lot like a deep tissue massage. I could stand at a 30 degree angle backwards and the water pounding my back would keep me upright.

Afterwards we headed towards a more private river down the road. Here we are still dry, just overlooking this:

Let me explain something briefly. I cannot swim, and I am not comfortable in water. I was fine at Dunn's River Falls because it never got above my waist. When I'm in a pool, I'll stay in the shallow end, and I can swim (well, frantically dogpaddle) from one point to the next, and then make a beeline for the edge and hold on with both hands. When I'm underwater, I panick and try to breathe through my nose and will be blowing water out of my lungs for the next half hour.

To top it all off, this water was crystal clear. When I was in it I could see straight down to my feet, and in the middle I could not see the bottom. That was scary. And this, this was terrifying:

After jumping in, of course I paniked and water shot straight up my nose. Then I flailed until I got to the rocks and held on for life, shaking the whole time. My expectation would be that after the jump I would relax and be able to move around easier, but that did not happen at all. After jumping in here a few times, we moved up the river and then swam down a few hundred feet going over a few small falls. Every time I had to swim in water I couldn't stand in, I was terrifyed and needed to be coaxed (Thank you Matt, Melissa, Ang, and Chris for putting up with my wussiness.) And now I finally relate back to my introspective ramblings at the beginning of this entry. The easiest part was that first jump - everything after that was harder and harder. The chaos of not having a rock to stand on will always be frightening to me, but I can get used to it, like I'm getting used to the heat and the cockroaches. I didn't have any regrets that day, which is all I could ask for.

Sunday we went to a beach a few miles away for the last day of the jazz fest. I met one of the promotors the first night and was able to get a Peace Corps free entry, and was able to see these guys from Poland for the second time in the weekend:

They played a great set, complete with duelin' accordions, a rockin stand-up bass, and an insane fiddler. (They have free mp3s at their website here) When they got to their slower traditional songs I had a horrible longing for being back in Hamtramck, eating pierogi and drinking Zyvidek in Polish Village, but I settled for a red stripe and some chicken foot soup. I met up with Judy, another PCV in the minubus back to Spanish Town. We drove through some light rain, and I listened to some Iron & Wine while looking out at the mountains. I was home soon enough, ready for the next unexpected turn of events, and whatever's after that.

Quick story about an accident on the road yesterday,

A group of us are heading back from MoBay (Montego Bay) yesterday evening, winding around the hills near Ewarton. Some of the people in the car were talking about the road conditions and how accidents can cause 5-10 hour detours around the mountains. Shortly thereafter 5 cars in front of us a flatbed tractor-trailer is approaching a hairpin turn. A sedan wants to pass the semi right at the turn so it speeds up right at the corner, turns too fast, and flips, landing on its roof.

A few of us get out of the car and walk over to see. Nobody is hurt, and a few drivers start to give their opinion on this particular driver's mental state. A crowd soon gathers around the car, and in one motion flips it upright. The trailer is motioned to backup up the hill to give room to move the car, and the cars behind it backup to allow him room. With the space cleared by the trailer, the uprighted car is maneuvered into a nearby driveway, and the road is clear. All the gawkers (myself included) are forced to run back to their cars to keep the traffic flowing.

All of this - from when the car flipped to when traffic started to flow again - couldn't have taken more than 5 minutes. I was mentally preparing myself for a late return home when the group flipped the car, and I stood amazed while the car was flipped and moved in less time it takes some people I know to parallel park. The driver was of course extremely lucky - if the car had flipped a hundred yards earlier or later it would have fallen off the precipice.

As of Friday, May 15th I'm no longer a trainee and am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!

The swearing in ceremony was held at the U.S. embassy, and we weren't allowed to bring cameras in, so I don't have any photos from the ceremony. Here's some pictures from the weeks leading up to it.

A few weeks ago fellow trainees Matt and Judy accompanied me on a SPA (Small Projects Assistance) site at Ewarton high school. The SPA projects are funded through US AID with grants written by Peace Corps Volunteers. We were visiting the project of a volunteer who completed service and left the island.

The project was a greenhouse built with the local farmers group with the intention of educating community members on the benefits of greenhouse farming. Because the greenhouse was constructed on the grounds of the high school, the agriculture students do much of the work. They also do other fun things like butchering and plucking the chickens for the school lunch. I have photos of that, but figured most people wouldn't like to see them.

This is the high school in the distance with some corn stalks in the front. As of yet all the only corn I've seen in the country was imported U.S. sweet corn (and very expensive.) There's a lot of trade economics that I'm not fully aware of, but the end result is a strange scenario where 75% of the food Jamaicans eat is imported, and you have weird circumstances like how powdered milk from New Zealand is so cheap it makes it impossible to have large-scale dairy production and cattle farmers dump their milk.

This is the front of my office. I would probably have to stand on the other side of the by-pass to get a shot of the entire office and both warehouses. It's really big. When I'm not on the road with coworkers I'll come here and help around the office. Exactly what that means, I'm still working out. I'm still working out what priorities I will be focusing on and how my skills would be best utilized. If anyone wants action pictures of me updating Access databases let me know, otherwise I'll continue with pictures of worksites and the country, like the ones below:

This is a typical country water supply. Many of the smaller communities are too small to have municipal water piped around mountains to their homes, so they may use something like the rainwater catchment here. This particular system is about 80 years old and catches rainwater that falls into the holding tank on the right where some of the workers are sitting on. From there it is piped into the pumphouse on the left which will eventually house 4 standpipes for people to fill water tanks, and for the rest to be pumped to a school located around the corner.

The view from the top. There are some cracks in the cement and the blocks along the edge that are in need of repair, which is were Food for the Poor comes in. FFP supplies the community with funds for the cement and labor to do the repairs.

Some of the workers posed for me for this one. It was fairly steep and I had to walk really slow. I tried to ask if they used a specific water/cement ratio when they were mixing the concrete, but I should have learned by now that cement work is more of an art than a science here. However, I've seen the photos from afterwards and the repairs seem to be holding up quite well.

Since I love showing off ridiculous photos of myself, here's one of me losing a sack race at the FFP beach outing in Runaway beach. I was close and tried to dive for the finish, but was a bit behind, and landed hard on the sand (which wasn't that forgiving.) I also embarassed myself playing dominoes by passing when I could have played, and later by locking up the board, both times causing my partner and I to lose.

Last week back at the Mayfair in Kingston, the last time group 80 will all be together until our Close of Service seminar 2 years from now. (Actually most of us will see each other a week and a half from now at the quarterly meeting, but still.)

Our farewell barbeque at the Powell residential building in Kingston. Everyone chipped in and I made a few other volunteers and I made a menu of cheeseburgers, vegeburgers, hotdogs, baked potatoes, chips and mango salsa, and brownies. That is the same bandana that I wore while flipping burgers at the hideaway over 5 years ago back at Michigan. We also had some cane, but no machette to cut them with, so we had to make due with the brownies and cake that Ann our Safety and Security Coordinator brought for us. Which was delicious.

The next morning we were sworn in as volunteers and had more cake. I'm incredibly relieved that training is over and both excited and terrifyed at the idea of being out on my own. Wish me luck, and thanks for all your support!

Went out with some Food for the Poor (FFP) employees this week for site visits, one to an ornamental fish farm and one to a fishing village. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera to the farm and only have a few pictures from the fishing village. My coworker took photos from the farm, so hopefully sometime next week I’ll have pictures of coi and angel fish, and of me struggling with a net to catch some goldfish.

FFP assists 17 fishing villages across the island, providing fishermen with boats, motors, lifejackets, and safety and mechanical training in exchange for contributions to the community they are based in and a commitment to safety.

Here is one of the FFP boats (all painted yellow and blue.) The fishermen can go an hour or so out to sea to catch fish, which are then sold to venders and then sold across the island. All the other boats were at sea, this being the first calm day in the past week. Of course it didn’t stay that way for long, and was raining pretty hard on the way back to Spanish Town. My coworker told me the rainy season should last a few months, and then hurricane season begins. Awesome.

These black rhino tanks are ubiquitous across the island. Where there is no piped water, the tanks are filled with rainwater harvested from roofs or from concrete-lined gullies, or purchased and shipped in trucks. Where there is piped water, it is frequently unreliable, and the tanks provide storage for the inevitable shutoffs. They also provide pressure for times of high usage, such as in the morning when or just after work. This tank is currently filled with trucked water, but will soon be connected to the municipal water system. Unfortunately, they are also teethed (stolen) frequently, hence the need for the locked cage.

Don’t ask me why, but I’m still fascinated by these little guys. I have vague memories of going to Disneyland when I was 5 or 6 and being more entertained by the lizards than anything else (all the rides terrified me. Even the teacups. Yeah.) Also, they eat bugs and mosquitoes, so I don’t mind finding them in my room.

After the visit was over I was dropped off at my host mother’s house on Jefferson street. Being the second largest city in Jamaica, we have the luxury of occasionally having street signs, most of our potholes filled, and pretty consistent running water and electricity. I’ll take some more pictures of my community, but after I become more integrated and don’t look like a tourist or a C.I.A. agent.

Here’s how I’ve been spending most of my evenings lately, doing peace corps homework and catching up on some reading. My veranda is very nice for this.

Bonus picture I grabbed of facebook. Here’s what the inside of a typical coasta (Toyota “Coaster” bus) looks in Jamaica, although usually there would be far fewer “whiteys,” and Jamaicans can usually fit 5 or more people in each of those rows. There are chairs that fold down in the aisle, which is great for packing in people but not so great when you’re in the back and your stop comes up. Each bus is unique to the Jriva (Driver) and will be covered in decals, and will sometimes sport dvd players, shag carpeting, and air conditioning inside. On the ride home from Kingston on Wednesday, I heard a reggae version of “Tracy Chapmen – Fast Car.” That, and a reggae version of “Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’” have been the strangest covers I’ve heard yet here, although I’ve been assured that I’m sure to hear just about every type of music covered and sampled hundreds of times over. Now if I can only find some good accordion playing…

The Peace Corps has three sectors in Jamaica; Youth as Promised, Environment, and Community Environmental Health. I will be serving in the Health and Sanitation sector, also abbreviated "WatSan" (Water and Sanitation.) Our stated purpose is to ensure "Jamaicans will create a healthier populace committed to action and move towards higher standards of community health by strengthening their knowledge and capacity to reduce incidences of lifestyle, water, environmental and sanitation related diseases." Our stated goals are "Goal 1; Community Health: Community members will improve their overall health practices. Goal 2; Water: Community members will improve their access to and use of appropriate water resources for good health. Goal 3; Sanitation: Community members will improve and adopt appropriate sanitation practices and infrastructure for good health." The majority of our training has been in our sector groups, and I have some pictures to share from a field trip we took to Port Royal (Home of legeondary pirate Captain Morgan, and filming location of Pirates of the Caribbean and Dr. No)

But first, a Jamaican birthday tradition.

I arrived in Jamaica on Wednesday, March 18th, one week before my birthday. During training, when some of the Jamaicans discovered my birthday was coming up, I heard whispered “Ooooo, and you never had a birthday in Jamaica have you? Ooooo…” I had a vague feeling that some sort of prank was afoot. The day before, I called my friend Tex to have him update my facebook page, since I didn’t have internet access. I asked him if he knew anything about Jamaican birthday traditions, and he googled it. But like a true friend, didn’t tell me what to expect, and just let me know that I’ll be surprised.

I don’t have any photos of the flouring in action, however here are some of the aftermath.

So the tradition is that on a birthday, in addition sometimes to receiving cake, Jamaicans try to make you a cake. To that end something like half a dozen Jamaican children followed me around the corner of the block pelting me with bags of flour. When they got me pretty good on my shirt (which I had worn for the first time that night, and had on for about 15 minutes before the flouring), I thought they were finished. But they snuck up behind me and got me right in the side of the face, so it covered my glasses. The woman in the second photo was my host mother while I was training, and was in cahoots with the wicked children for the whole thing. But she gave me a smirinov ice and some pepsi for my birthday, and helped wash the flour off my shirt. Thanks Dawn!

After talking to my host brother, I found out apparently I got off easy, as many times they’ll flour someone in the morning so everyone they see knows it’s their birthday. Also, sometimes they use water so it sticks better. However, there were three more birthdays that week, and nobody else got floured. The girls tried to start a new tradition of throwing flowers on the person instead of bags of flour. We’ll see if it takes off.

Here is the Health sector of Peace Corps Jamaica Group 80 on the beach after a delicious lunch of fried festival and terrifying-looking fish (they had TEETH man, that’s not right.) The guys decided to strike a cheerleader pose. We then went to visit a local school that had a Peace Corps volunteer in the past. All the kids were let out early so the school could prepare for the big standardized test the following day. The whole courtyard had some really great paintings of the water cycle, different types of teeth, and other random informative things. Here’re a couple pictures I took.

All in all, a very nice birthday. Hopefully just one of three I’ll have here.

Hello everyone,

I apologize for the lack of updates recently. I’ve been in Jamaica for just under four weeks, and with all the lectures and moving and training and meeting hundreds of people, the last month has been a little bit of a blur. Also, I still haven’t quite decided on what type of format I want this journal to be written. I was originally hoping to use a photo-essay style, however I won’t be taking any pictures until I am more familiar with my surroundings and get to know my coworkers and community members to a point where we are both comfortable with it. I considered writing strictly about work, but that would mean I wouldn’t have anything to write about until after I’m sworn-in in May. In addition, it seems that the line between work and personal lives becomes blurred as the contacts and progress you make in the community become just as valuable as that in the office. I haven’t really considered a journal revolving around my personal life because I’m generally a boring person, and while hopefully this changes soon, it probably won’t for at least the first few entries and you would be forced to read about my experiences burning pasta sauce while being distracted watching House (which was how I spent my Thursday night.)

The only option left would be for me to go for a stream of consciousness affair, where due to the meandering method I use to recall events – complete with more tangents than a wikipedia article – will allow me to touch on all the aspects of my experience I’d like to convey with whoever chooses to read. If sections of my narrative appear missing or something appears in need of clarification, please just ask. I may have become so familiar and accustomed to the matter that I neglected to explain it, or maybe a kitten walked past my door and I lost my train of thought. Oh man, there’re stray kittens everywhere! This little brown and orange one was nibbling on a piece of salt fish under the awning hiding from the rain after work on Tuesday and it was so adorable. Lots of stray dogs and goats too, however they are very loud and wake me up at night, so are therefore less cute.

Oh yeah, um, so I’ll try to sort everything out into somewhat of a cohesive narrative for each entry, but I cannot promise anything. I may even get a little too personal and will be temped to edit some entries. When talking with some volunteers about how we planned on keeping in touch with our friends and family, I mentioned I planned to do so mainly through my online journal, and another volunteer warned against baring my personal life through the internet. This is a concern of mine, however a greater concern for me is to be able to express myself and what I’m feeling, especially now that I’m thousands of miles away from friends and family. My past method of communication began with me combing through details of a story I wished to tell, and removing any that reveal too much of myself, and consequently made the experience I was trying to relate as dull as a police blotter. Therefore it has been my resolution recently to only regret the things I’ve done, not those that I’ve failed to do. Dreams of mice and men, etc. Hopefully in this way my entries will be at least someone relevant and informative to my intended audience: my family, friends, coworkers, classmates, friends of friends, potential future Peace Corps volunteers, and anyone else interested.

Any and all questions, criticisms, requests, etc. are welcome.

Hey everyone,

I'll write a full introduction at a later date, however I have a few pictures to post while I'm here.

Peace Corps Jamaica group #80

Me enjoying my first Red Stripe in country

Keep the home fires burning, I'll share some stories soon.

-Craigery