Schools- Part 1

We thought we might take the time to share a little bit about how schools in Jamaica operate and function. First, we thought we might address the overall teaching style. It is quite different than what we are used to in the States. Anthony Winkler, a Jamaican author discusses this in his book Going Home to Teach. We'll paraphrase much of what he says here (while also adding some of our own thoughts in between):

In the Jamaican classroom, the Englishman taught, and as far we can see, Jamaicans still teach, mainly by rote. This pedagogy emphasizes practice and drills lessons into the student's heads until they can rattle them off in their sleep.
As a result, many Jamaican students can recite an uncanny amount of
memorized information. Their ability to commit facts and figures to memory is impressive. However, the idea of actually being able to understand and process the information that has been memorized is usually lacking.

“When I was a child attending school in Jamaica, my head spun from daily drilling in every conceivable subject by tutors trained in England. In English, we parsed hundreds, thousands of sentences without understanding how their parts were related. In arithmetic, we memorized the multiplication tables without being taught that we were learning the short-cut form of addition. In Latin, we swatted and sang out verb conjugations in unison without the faintest glimmer of what they meant. In history, we committed to memory the dates on which Lord This did that without ever being told why he had done it....
The result was that my classmates and I were collectively a bunch of idiot savants. We knew facts and figures but did not understand what they meant. Ask us to recite the principal dates of the Norman invasion of England, and we would sit back and blow you out of your chair with a blast of erudition. Ask us why the Normans invaded England and we would stare at you as if you were demented.”

This along with the common parenting style of “children are to be seen and not heard”, has been a little bit of an adjustment for us. Matt and I both tend to teach our classes in a very interactive fashion, such as calling on students individually or having class discussions, especially when it comes to topics we discuss in our guidance and counseling/life skills classes. We want to know what the students are thinking about such things. Where are they at? What are their thoughts on the subject? However, we've had to really work at developing the students' comfort level to voice their opinion and to process the information, as most classrooms do not encourage students to do this.

Even walking down the street when we stop to chat with the kids, many of them are taken aback by us even speaking to them directly. Most adults walk by without even acknowledging their presence, much less asking them how they are doing.

All the same, the parents in our community have been extremely supportive of us as teachers, or at least in the way that is culturally appropriate here. They let their children know that they are to treat us with the utmost respect. If I were to even mention to a parent that their child spoke out of turn in one of my classes, that child's butt would be sore for weeks. We've even had parents come up to us to make sure we knew that we needn't hesitate to 'beat my child' if they misbehave -even going as far as giving us pointers on which strategy works best (such as yanking on their ear, etc.).

This goes in accordance to the overall culture of the school. Students stand when I walk into a class, and uniformly great me with a “Good morning Miss Emslie.” They stand to speak when they are called on, and they constantly end each sentence with 'Miss'. “No, Miss.” “Yes, Miss.” “21, Miss.” “Tuesday, Miss.” Funny enough, the students are so used to having female teachers, Matt also gets called 'Miss' regularly out of the students' habit. I can sometimes overhear him saying, 'Miss? Do I look like I'm wearing a dress to you?'

But talk to a child directly and ask them about their life, and they become a stuttering ball of mush. Play a game with a child, and people will look at you funny. Just the other day I was interacting with 5 Primary school kids while they played with my hair (a very common practice for us whities. Kids love our hair. 'Soo soft...'). And one of the children's aunties saw me and asked, “Julie, yuh ave any pickney?' And I said, 'No, mam. Nah yet.' (Another mind-boggling thing in our community.) 'Dat's why yuh take a pickney so. Yah nah haffi deal wid dem a yuh yard.'
To Be Continued...

mattamatix

Just within the past week, Matt's life just went from about a 15 mph pace to seemingly 65mph. There are two major contributors to that change... the Accompong Farmer's Cooperative and the Peace Corps Volunteer Advisory Committee.

A couple of years ago JACOM, the group out of Minnesota that has adopted Accompong as a “sister” community of sorts helped to develop a farmers' cooperative group. Over the past couple of years it has made some slow progress, falteringly. A lack of strong central leadership locally is one of a couple of reasons why it hasn't taken off quicker. The idea of a cooperative is somewhat foreign to many of these farmers, so the idea of each man working for himself seems to be the default model. Many of the central figures in the JACOM group were here this past week, and we had a lot of time to sit down and try to formulate a plan for moving forward...

The Farmers' Cooperative at this point is going to focus on two things, starting a chicken hatchery that would supply eggs to the local people who raise chickens. Right now anybody who raises chickens drives the 45 minutes down to Santa Cruz every 3 to 6 weeks to buy chicks. We estimate that there about 20-25 people in Accompong alone who raise chickens on a regular basis, not to mention other nearby communities. If we can set up a hatchery and sell the eggs for the same price that they do in Santa Cruz, and meanwhile save people the hassle of traveling, then it might be the start of a nice profit base for the Farmers' Cooperative. The long term plan is to build a chicken coop and raise our own broilers to sell to the local sausage factory. For now though we'll stick with just the hatchery plan.

The second, and original, mission of the Farmers' Cooperative is to develop a cash crop of high quality coffee for export purposes. JACOM has already done the leg-work back home of setting up a marketing outlet for any coffee that is produced here through the Farmers' Cooperative. The eventual goal is to be growing only certified organic coffee, but that is a couple years off yet. In the next month we have a greenhouse to erect which is to be used for growing coffee trees during their first tender year before they can be transplanted into the field, and seeds to source and buy. In the meantime we are going to try a pilot program of sorts in which the Farmers' Cooperative would become the local coffee buyer and processor. We would buy “cherries”(just picked coffee beans) form local growers, pulp them, ferment them, dry them, and then export them to Minnesota where there they would be roasted, packaged and sold, with most of the profit coming back into the Accompong Farmers' Cooperative.

Peace Corps Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC)... VAC exists in every country that the Peace Corps serves in. Essentially it is the voice of the volunteers to Peace Corps Jamaica staff funneled through an elected executive council... volunteer representation and advocacy. Matt was just elected to be Treasurer of VAC this past week. As a result his level of responsibility and workload just quadrupled. Not so much because he has a lot of funds to manage but more so because each VAC member represents all the volunteers on island. There are a lot of meetings to attend, e-mails to respond to and phone calls to make.

p.s. Because Jamaican's tend to associate 'Matt' with a doormat. Matt's new 'yard name' is mattamatix. (mathematics for all you rocket scientists out there)

cultural differences

We thought we might share a few funny good laughs we've had with Dowdy since being in Accompong. Being in a different culture, we all would expect different colloquialisms and societal norms. Sometimes it can be frustrating when you're misunderstood, and other times it can just be downright funny. For example:

Birthday suit. Apparently birthday suit means something completely different in Jamaica. We realized this the other night when we were celebrating Sammi's (another PCV and good friend) birthday. Dowdy and I were in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and I was pushing Dowdy to move quickly because Sammi would soon arrive, and she shouldn't have to wait for dinner on her birthday night. Apparently we forgot to mention to Dowdy that it was Sammi's birthday, because he responded by saying, “What! It her birtday! Yuh nah tell me! Me haffi go put pon me birtday suit!” Me: “What?! Yuh need a put pon yuh birtday suit? Dowdy, what kind of present are you trying to give Sammi? Man, yuh too faas!” Through further clarification we found that birthday suit in Jamaica means your best outfit. I guess the equivalent to our “sunday best”. Of course, all of us PCVs let Dowdy know what birthday suit means in the States, and we haven't let him forget. We still tease him about his “birthday suit”.

Hood. In the States, hood could be part of a sweatshirt/coat or what covers the engine of a car. So, let's just say you were to walk up to Dowdy sitting in his truck listening to music. You and your husband hear the rhythm, each of you in a silly mood, and when you approach, start to beat out a little rhythm together on the hood of the truck. The next day you reference this incident with Dowdy and say, “That was yesterday. Remember, when Matt and me were beating out one likkle riddim pon yuh hood?” ...And then Dowdy's eyes bug out of his head. He asks you for clarification and soon understands what your trying to say. “Mam, that is not a hood. That is a bonnet. In Jamaica, we say bonnet. You don't want to tell anybody in Jamaica that you beat out a riddim on Dowdy's hood.” And then suddenly you recall from training, that hood means something completely different in Jamaica.

Bonfire. Of course, being in another culture helps you to see all the strange things about your own culture. Just like getting married helps you to see all the strange things about your own family that you thought was normal. “No, you do it this way....” For the 4th of July weekend, us PCVs got together down in Treasure Beach, and since Dowdy's kind of like our honorary PCV, we invited him to come. On Sunday night, some of the PCVs started a bonfire on the beach. I was heading down, and quickly let Dowdy know that there was a bonfire on the beach, and that a bunch of people were down there. Dowdy: “A bonfire?” Me: “Yeah. Like a fire in the sand.” Dowdy: “So a fire? On the beach?” (obviously confused) Me: “Yeah. You know, we just kinda sit around it. ...Like a big fire....we just sit and hang out around it and talk and stuff......Man, it's just something we do.” And then I walked down to the beach, to join all the other Americans sitting on the beach, on an 80 degree night, surrounding the big fire, sitting and talking like it was normal or something. Weird.

what we do

Matt and I are starting to find our place/role in the community although we're sure it'll change regularly. Our actual titles are “Community Developers”, so the possibilities are somewhat endless. We've been spending much of our time at the local school to get to know the children better. School let out July 2, so we really tried to take advantage of the opportunity to get to know the kids in some sort of structured setting.

Otherwise we've been spending much of our time integrating. Peace Corps Jamaica really pushes integration, and thus strongly recommends spending the first 4 months in your community focusing on this. Obviously, many PCVs would love to “hit the ground running”, but this is oftentimes where mistakes and misunderstandings happen. We're trying our best right now to develop relationships with the people, learn the lifestyle, live the lifestyle etc. Thus, we bought a goat, started a garden, hang out in the local shops, learn how to cook the food, go to church, etc. I personally strongly agree with this structure, as we are not here to implement our own ideas, but rather ideas that we come to through community members as we get to know their day-to-day lives.

Still, we both have our little array of projects that we have been working on developing. Some are further along than others. Some are not much more than ideas. Either way, Matt and I had a little family business meeting the other day to organize the different things we were working on. Here's the notes from our meeting. See if you can make sense of it...

Matt:
*Farmer's Co-op
-Greenhouse
-Hatchery
-Coffee
*Agricultural Teacher (@ Primary and Jr. High School) for the next school year
*Water, developing an independent system for the community
Waste Management, none currently exists unless you count throwing everything into the gully or burning it as “management”
*Original Trails of the Maroons (OTM)- Ecotoursim project
Cross Country running program
*Universal Access Fund- Organization that brings computers/internet to communities
*Hugh Kresser- Kingston grant consultant
*Misc. Funding Research
*Refurbishing the broken computers within Accompong
Playing field/parade grounds
Heritage Center/Museum
*Youth Summer Program
-Computer/Literacy
-Culture
-Sports
*Food for the Poor
-Housing
-Pit latrines @ school turned into toilets
-Summer school lunches
*Trail to Flagstaff
*Internet Cafe

Julie:
*Guidance Counselor @ Primary/Jr. High School
*Jamaican Foundation for Lifelong Learning
*Internet Cafe
*Books
-Library Improvement
-Book Club
-Reading Mentors
Drama Club
*Summer Program
-Computers
-Environment
-Culture
-Summer School
Women's Club
Junior Council
Accompong Options for Guests
-Marketing
-Food, Souvenirs, Activities
*HEART
Herbal Garden
*Grad School
*Small Projects Assistance

Some of these projects are already underway, while others might not go beyond being written down once. Some of them are our own little pet projects, while others we collaborate on together. The starred (*) ones are the ones that are farthest along/most viable/what we've been spending most of our time on.

JACOM

We know most of you are probably wondering what exactly we do in Accompong specifically. We're doing lots of different things, but we'll discuss one organization that we have been working with: JACOM or Jamaica Accompong Connection of Minnesota. JACOM is a Christian organization out of Minnesota that was established in 2004. Prior to this, a man named Harald Petersen felt led to build a vocational school in Accompong in the early 1990s. Many others from Minnesota have come alongside him in the process to help with Harald's mission in Accompong, and as a result, JACOM was formed. Since then, JACOM has undertaken a number of different projects in Accompong, and over the years many people have come to visit from Minnesota to help support these projects.

The school was completed and is now called the Petersen Center. It has 3 floors, the upper floor has an apartment, four dorm rooms, and a deck. The main floor has 2 large class rooms, a lunch room, 2 bathrooms, and an office. The lower level has 3 class rooms and a shower room.

As of this past Wednesday, Matt and I helped JACOM to open up an “internet cafe” at the Petesen Center. Come September, JACOM has hopes of opening the Petersen Center as a Lifelong Learning Center (an adult education program) and a HEART (vocational education organization) Training Center. Their long-term plans include having an Excel High School available for students so that teens do not have to travel long distances by taxi in order to attend high school.

Aside from the Center, JACOM has also established a farmer's co-op which is involved in growing organic coffee, a chicken hatchery, and also are in the process of building 3 greenhouses.

Matt and I have found that some of the ideas we had are already underway by JACOM, and we are doing what we can to help JACOM with their plans while also working on our other projects. We feel extremely lucky to have JACOM in Accompong, and it seems to be a nice partnership. As was said in our last blog, a huge problem for many PCVs is a lack of resources, and for JACOM, they struggle by not having someone in Accompong consistently to see some of the projects through. Although we won't be working solely with JACOM, we are excited about the possibilities of working with them.