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.