Coconut bowls...

Serving as a volunteer, anywhere, means that you are constantly giving and serving. In Peace Corps life there is sometimes a need to work on small, simple projects that are not related to Peace Corps work: projects that are non-stressful, fulfill a personal need or are therapeutic. Over the past couple of months I have started work on a coconut cup and bowl project.



Based on their age, there are a couple of different types of coconuts: jelly coconuts and dry coconuts. Jelly coconuts are the young, green ones that have lots of the sweet coconut water in them, but almost none of the coconut meat that people grate and use in candies, to make coconut milk, etc. The dry coconuts are the ones that we as Americans are more familiar with, they are what we think of as a coconut, with a fibrous, brown, hard outer shell. Once they are cracked open they a have a little coconut water in them but are mostly meat. After the meat is pried out of them, the hard, woody shell can be used to make nice cups and bowls.

Generally people just chop them with a machete or bash them against a rock to get to the meat out the dry coconuts, but if a person, like me, wants to make something nice out of the complete shell and not just the shattered fragments then a little more care needs to be taken with them. A stiff, fine-tooth handsaw works nicely to cut off the tops exactly where you want the rim of your cup or bowl to be. Next, the meat of the coconut needs to be carefully extracted without cracking the rim of the shell. Once the meat is out I take a wire brush and remove all the excess woody material on the outside of the shell, which also save s me a ton of time in the next step… sand papering. Just like any other piece of wood a coconut shell needs to be sand papered smooth before applying any type of finish.


The final trick in making coconut cups and bowls is in making some kind of pedestal that allow the round-bottomed cup or bowl to stand upright. I have yet to perfect this, but in the attached pictures you’ll see where I’m going with it.

Matt

Uncle 'T'

One of the reasons that we’ve been MIA this past month is that one of our closest friends here in Accompong died a week ago. We’ve referenced Tony before, but for those who don’t recall, Tony was the other American living in Accompong. He’s been here roughly 8 years, running a humble eco lodge called Baboo’s Garden. His death wasn’t out of the blue, as he found out definitively 3 weeks prior that his cancer had returned, and there was a lesion on his liver. Tony suspected this and he hadn’t been feeling 100% for months.

As far as our lives here in Accompong, Tony was much like family, and I’m pretty sure he’d say the same about us. As such, we’ve been the primary people ‘sorting out his business’ over the last few weeks, alongside Dowdy his closest Jamaican friend. Tony was a close friend to the previous two Peace Corps volunteers who have been most recently in Accompong and they considered him family as well. Tony’s place has been a refuge of sorts to many Peace Corps volunteers over the years not just those, like us, who have lived in Accompong.


Although it’s sad that Tony passed, the hardest part for us has been ‘sorting out his business’, alongside cultural differences with death. Although we have had loved ones die before, neither of us have been the point person to call the hearse, pick up cremation ashes, and sort out death certificates –not to mention figuring out what debts need to be paid, what money might be available, and what’s to happen with his ‘stuff’, his business notwithstanding. (We do have to give a shout out to Coby, Tony’s sister, who traveled down to Jamaica the week before he died and helped us to get much of this in order. She’s been an amazing support through all of this. )

It’s been difficult responding to the handful of people who claim that Tony owes them this or that. Or the people who are trying to interfere with Dowdy’s right to Baboo’s Garden and the land it sits upon. It was also difficult to have 50 people arrive up at Tony’s within 2 hours of us finding out he passed, many to pay their respects, some because they were curious, and yet another handful to see what they could gain from Tony’s death themselves –even if that just meant ‘a likkle breakfast’.

The good news is that timing couldn’t be better, as Culture Camp is over, and school has yet to start back up again. And it has been nice to just be ‘human’ in this community for a little while, rather than the unending role of Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s nice that most people in town seem to understand our loss and the stress of the situation, even if they didn’t really know either us or Tony, and as a result have given us some much-needed space for a little while.

There’s no doubt that things will never be the same around here with Tony gone. He was quite the character, and extremely generous with us...I’m sure there are many things that we’ll never forget about our PC experience, and Uncle T happens to be one of them.

Culture Camp

Part of the reason that we’ve been putting off this blogpost is because Culture Camp was such a big project, it’s difficult to summarize…

In a nutshell, working alongside the Junior Council, we put on a 2 week summer camp that revolved around cultural preservation of Accompong Maroons. Here’re some key facts to help better understand the camp:

-Indigenous groups worldwide are seeing their unique cultures and traditions disappear within two generations, largely due to globalization and influences of Western culture. Experiencing this firsthand in Alaska, we also see this in Accompong.

-Many experts believe that this loss of identity is much of the cause of the rampant social ills found in many of these indigenous communities.

-In attempt to revitalize Native culture and traditions in Alaska, culture camps are practiced throughout the state, bringing younger generations and older generations together in a structured format to teach and share skills, knowledge, and traditions that otherwise would be lost.

-We decided to do this here in Accompong.

-We had roughly 60 students attend ages 9-20.

-All classes taught were focused on Maroon culture: Traditional Drum Building, Traditional Cooking, Ambush, Abeng Making and Blowing, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Drumming, and Traditional Singing and Dancing.

-All classes were taught by community experts and elders from Accompong.

-A history lesson was also taught each morning by local elders.

-Seeing an 83 year old man show a 15 year old teenage boy how to build a traditional drum is emotionally moving.

-Watching an elderly woman lead a traditional song and dance with a group of high school students of whom most likely never would have paid attention to her otherwise, who probably were ignorant to the wealth of knowledge only she knows… this can bring tears to your eyes.

-Witnessing some of the youths in our community pick up and learn skills that not even their parents can do is powerful.

-Reviving a lost culture, reclaiming a unique identity, empowering a people –even if for just a small moment in time- is one of the greatest things we’ve been a part of since stepping off the plane in Kingston.