safety first (oh, and we made it to jamaica!)

soooo, we're here! Whoopee! Things are going well as we've begun our PST. Geez, what to say and where to begin. as you might imagine the amount of information we've learned within the last 48 hours has been endless. so instead of sharing every little detail. we'll just choose a topic and go with it...the topic for this evening: safety.

now, back home, when us PCVs shared with our friends and family that we were assigned to jamaica, there seemed to be a common theme that many of us heard in response. something like, "sounds like a 2 year vacation to me." okay, yes, the island and people are beautiful. however, poverty, crime, and many other social issues are a very real and present reality in jamiaca. so much so that although jamaica is not a very challenging post physically (i.e. most volunteers have electricity, running water, and even internet), however, it is considered to be a very demanding post psychologically. i'm sure we'll get further into some of these details later. however, we can address one of things that we've been drilled on since we got here: safety.

unfortunately, jamaica has one of the highest murder rates of anywhere in the world. crime is relatively abundant, and needs to be taken very seriously on island. we met with the safety and security officer from the american embassy today, and he informed us that all american embassies throughout the world are labeled with a safety/threat level: low, medium, high, and critical. surprising to many people, jamaica is listed as "critical". jamaica falls into the same category as mexico city, jakarta, and ethiopia.

okay, so moms and dads out there, stop freaking out. we're okay. we'll be okay. peace corps has been serving in jamaica for almost 50 years and no one has been seriously hurt. the VERY large majority of these crimes are done by jamaicans to jamaicans, and foreigners are not targeted. however, serving a group of people with this kind of social situation can be tricky at best. one of the many reasons that makes jamaican culture and norms so incredibly complex.