hodgepodge

We couldn't decide what to write because there's so many new things going on every day that it's hard to capture it all. At some point things will stop being new, different, and exciting and will turn to old, ordinary, and boring, and then we'll really struggle to know what to write about....

Anyway, back to my original point, we figured we'd just give you a slideshow of images that touches on a few insights into our life in Accompong:



pic 1-6: Dowdy. To use his own words, he's “a likkle rastaman”. Dowdy's our closest Jamaicann friend, our homie, our bredren. Dowdy's like family to us already. Dowdy's great...until we get annoyed enough with each other that we need a break, you know, just like all good friends do.

Pic 7-9: 40-legger. Big bug. You DO NOT want to get stung by this bug. We've yet to get the exact straight facts, but we've heard everything from this bug can kill you, you'll lose a limb, it feels similar to a gunshot wound, it'll paralyze you, all the way to the only way to deal with the pain is to get drunk off of rum for 3 days (and apparently doctors will confirm this). Well, as you can tell by the pictures, one crawled right into our house, into our bedroom, right before we were getting ready to go to bed. Matt had to hit it about 20 times with his shoe to kill it. We now shove a doormat underneath the door every night.

Pic 10-16: Cocoa. This is one of Matt's new little pet projects. He's trying to make chocolate from scratch, scratch meaning harvesting the cocoa pods from the trees, pulling out the cocoa seeds, fermenting them, etc. You know, how Matt likes to do most things: why build a house of other materials when you can bring in the lumber for your house on your own back? Why buy beer from the store when you can brew it yourself? And buy a boat when you can build it with your own two hands?
It is not uncommon for Jamaicans to make their our chocolate, many people in Accompong do this. However, Matt is attempting to introduce the fermentation process; apparently this is what makes good chocolate great. Or at least that's what his research says.

Pic 17-18: Roba. Roba's another one of our good friends here in Accompong, except that Roba's 64. So he's more of a mentor than a buddy we invite over for movies, although he'd probably be game for that too. Roba and Matt have spent a lot of time hiking around. Roba's humoring Matt's interest in the cocoa project. The two of them have been working on it together. Roba's in great shape too; the other day he was climbing around in one of the cocoa trees like an 8 year old boy. He also helped to put up our hammock. Roba also farms coffee trees, and he and Matt have worked out an agreement on future coffee beans. Some of you can expect fresh roasted coffee beans for Christmas.

Pic: 19-28: Baboo's Garden. This is Tony's place. Tony is an American that now lives in Accompong. He's also part of our new family. I'm sure we'll share more about him later. Baboo's Garden is a primitive Eco-lodge. We hang out here a lot, partly because this is where Tony and Dowdy live, and partly because it's a great place to hang out.

Pic 29-32: Lucy. Lucy's our new goat. Matt will share more about her in another post.

Pic 33: Friends. From left to right: Sammi, Ikamellia, me, Chris. Sammi and Chris are volunteers who are also stationed in our parish. Some more new additions to the Emslie family. They're the closest to where we're located, and by default we'll be spending lots of time with them. Lucky for us, they're pretty cool people. Ikamellia (also known as Kam) is our closest Jamaican female friend. Dowdy and Kam are like brother and sister to us. I'm sure you'll hear more about her later as well.

Pic 34-37: Grasscut. This is Bill cutting our grass with a machete. Enough said.