The Land of Milk and Honey

Life at site is super busy right now, as we’re right in the middle of summer Culture Camp. We’ll tell you more about that later, but as for now, we thought we’d share a little about our trip home last month. Here was our rough itinerary:

June 1- Matt flies to Buffalo, NY to spend time with his family. (Matt had an extra 3 weeks, as Julie took 3 weeks for Africa in April.)
June 17- Matt hits the road with his mom to do a little East coast road trip.
June 20-Julie flies in to Portland, Maine to meet up with Matt and Judy.
June 21/22- We spend roughly 24 hours checking out Unity, ME, where we hope to ‘settle down’ post-PC.
June 23- We’re all back in Buffalo to spend a couple days chilling out there.
June 25- We fly to Chicago to spend a week with Julie’s family.

It’s hard to know what to share, what all of you might be interested in. I’m sure if we really tried hard we could come up with some insightful parallels, or ironic symbolism. We could probably talk about the paved, flat roads; how for our whole trip, we didn’t get begged once, or harassed, or stared at; that everybody seems to follow the rules and that there seems to be a system for everything; how people were so nice; how we ate like kings (and got fat too! The first thing Julie heard stepping out of the airport, from one of our close Jamaican friends was, “Julie, you put on a whole heap a weight!”) ; how life is so easy, and comfortable and convenient –you want anything in the world, you just hop in your car and go get it; to have intellectual conversations; how we didn’t have to think about Jamaica, or site, or the poor, and the cumbersome and difficult task daily to give them opportunity for a better life. But, to be honest, our brains are fried, especially with Culture Camp, so consider yourselves lucky to be getting even a blogpost. So let’s just summarize with this:

As far as vacations go, our trip back home was AMAZING. It was hard to leave….so thanks to all our friends and family who gave us the break we needed.

Cockpit Country

Maybe some of you are waiting for us to blog about our recent trip back to the States… and that will come in time. (We’re currently swamped with our summer Culture Camp which takes place during the next two weeks.) However, we wanted to do a quick, but important blogpost for our friend Bart.

Bart, a former PCV, is still in Jamaica trying to continue on the work he was doing as a PCV, but on his own funds. He’s currently undertaken a video documentary project that highlights Cockpit Country, which is a beautiful and unique part of Jamaica that includes our community, Accompong. I could tell you all about it, but Bart does a much better job on his website, which also includes a video explaining what he’s trying to do.

Why are we telling you about this?
#1: Cockpit Country is currently where we call home, and the preservation of the land and the people who live here is so important.
#2: Because Bart is staying on his own funds, he’s asking for financial support from others to help him stay in Jamaica and finish this project.

So we’re asking all of you, to please, at the very least, click on this link and spend 1 minute checking out this website.

Should I Stay or Should I Go

This past month we lost 2 more Volunteers from the original 38 who arrived March of last year. This brings the total number of Volunteers in Group 81 down to 27. That leaves about 70% of us left, with about 40% of our service left to go. I recently read that on average 1/3 of PCVs will not finish their service.

Every PCV has said it over and over, “Peace Corps is hard.” This can be seen in the 2/3 of applicants who will not be placed/accepted, by the 1/3 of PCVs who don’t finish their service, and in recognizing the caliber of people who apply to PC in the first place.

We prepared for this. We went through months and months (sometimes years and years) of the application process. We packed up our things. Left good jobs. Left our homes. Said good bye to friends, families, loved ones. We set aside our American lives for 27 months to embark on this PC journey…

I don’t know anybody who joined PC, and thought, “Well, I’ll see how this goes.” Or “I guess I’ll try this for a little while.” They came to finish, and I’m reminded of this energy as Jamaica just received another set of 30 PCTs last week.

It’s always hard to lose other Volunteers. And although we have yet to be in a position where we needed to seriously assess whether we should stay or go, I surely do not envy those who have had to make the difficult choice to go.

Head, shoulders, knees, and TOES!

Rain, rain, rain, rain. It’s been raining non-stop since Saturday morning. Well, maybe not quite non-stop. It stops raining for a few hours every day. Flash flood, mudslide, and tropical cyclone warnings have all been issued this week, serving as a reminder that June 1st marks the official beginning of Hurricane season. Don’t worry, I’m safe and sound in our little, bomb-shelter of a home. Aside from getting stuck at another Volunteer’s site for an extra night due to impassable roads (hardly a punishment), and being cooped up all day, life still goes on, barely. I knew spending all those weeks at our humble Alaskan cabin would someday pay off. If you think you’d go stir crazy being cooped up here for a week, trying spending freeze-up on the Tatonduk River. Weeks in the middle of the Alaskan winter, unable to travel, your nearest neighbor 2 hours away, no internet, no phone, no TV, no electricity. Just you, your husband, 10 dogs :), and a 15 x 25 ft log home. They don’t call it cabin fever for nothing.

Anyway, back to the real reason I’m writing this post. I thought I’d share with you one of my bi-monthly routines. Getting my toenails painted! Now, I don’t wear make-up, nor do I brush my hair (don’t tell anybody), or blow my budget on new clothes, but once every month or two I get my toenails painted here in Jamaica. It’s fun, cheap, and duh, I’m trying to integrate… ALL the women here do it. Plus, this is one of the ways you meet those cool people you’d never meet otherwise, like Scean who does my nails here in Accompong. Just so everyone is clear, Scean hand paints the design. It is not a sticker or some other cheap shortcut. It’s just pure talent. And all for 3 bucks.


(I also decided to throw in some fun hair pics too…seemed applicable.)

A Delicate Balance

As Matt leaves to go home tomorrow for a month (Julie will join him in 3 weeks), we thought we might steal a blogpost idea we got from one of our good friends…

Things we love here (most of the time): Super cheap, efficient, and extensive public transportation system; the feeling of community; the abundance of fruit; beaches; laughter; kids playing in the road barefoot; community members hanging out on their porches, in shops, on the road every night; limited TVs; handwashing; time; walking ½ mile to school and being greeted at least a dozen times along the way; hardly anyone has a car; rain; industriousness; machetes; not having to worry about where our next paycheck will come from; not having to worry about being ‘cool’, because you’ll always be just ‘weird’; appreciating what it means to be a minority; the market; never feeling pressured to ‘keep up with the Jones’’; freedom within our work; the time other people have for you; frankness; overcomed challenges; scenery; everybody knowing our name; other PCVs; PCV media and book exchange.

Things we miss from home: Microbrews; quality dairy products; fresh-baked bread; the ability to shut off; yoga classes; coffee shops; hanging out with friends on the weekends; camping; our dogs; visiting family; freedom; anonymity; deep conversations; fitting in; driving; woodstoves; snow; bonfires; hamburgers; playing games; favorite restaurants; garage sales and thrift stores; wide, open spaces; skiing, mushing, hiking, canoeing; local outdoor music festivals, roadtrips; not being harassed; farmer’s markets; volunteerism; gratitude; used book stores; variety; environmental awareness; recycling; good, quality tools; good, quality craftsmanship; mushrooms; nuts; community art and cultural events; autumn; wool socks.

more hammock pics...

Feel-Good Moments

coming to get us for Book Club

“I think you’ve single-handedly taught the community of Accompong to read,” Matt says nonchalantly from the other room of our tiny home. “Wait, what did you just say?” I reply, immediately putting down my own reading book and walking into the kitchen. “I was just thinking about it tonight at the Internet Café (and Library), and I think you managed to teach Accompong how to read…and not just the kids.”

This is a hard post to write, because I don’t want to sound ‘boasty’-as Jamaicans would say-, but I have to share my excitement over Matt’s laid-back observation. Firstly, I must clarify that Matt was a being a bit extreme; I haven’t taught the whole community, nor have I taught them how to read, but maybe more to enjoy reading.

We’ve talked about Book Club before, and many of the small successes we’ve seen along the way. But never have I had experienced the success of Book Club so completely until I came back from Africa. With me being gone, book club did not keep for 4 weeks. Matt sent me emails while I was away letting me know that he had to repeatedly send 30 disappointed kids on their way, when they came by on Tuesdays. However, the most heartwarming moment came when I was working at the internet cafe/library the Monday after I got back. I was sitting at the administrator desk when a handful of Book Club members came in with books in their hands. They didn't know I was going to be there, because as soon as they saw me, they said, "Julie! Yuh back! We miss yuh when yuh ova farin. Yuh cyaan gwe no weh no mo.' That felt good, sure. BUT what was really exciting is that they then proceeded to check in their library books and go over and pick out another book, while I sat trying to comprehend something that apparently had become run-of-the-mill to everybody else. I pulled out our 'Library Rental Scheme' logbook to write down their new books, and found myself flipping through page after page of Book Club members who had checked out books over the last month. Not only has this not happened before, but from my understanding before we reached Accompong, kids never checked out books from the library. I looked up at Matt dumbfounded, and he says, "Oh yeah, all the kids have been coming in here reading and checking out books the whole time you were gone." –again, like it was no big deal.

And this has continued still. I LOVE that I can walk into the internet cafe/library at any given hour it is open, and children will be in the back corner reading books, or parents will be checking out books with their kids. We often pass grandmothers and aunties perusing through their child’s library book, many times with more excitement than the child –which led Matt to add his “…and not just the kids”-comment.

Things are not always perfect here. And we probably have more ‘feel-bad’ moments than ‘feel-good’ ones. But right now, I’m trying to do what all PCVs probably do when they hit those inevitable roadblocks, and remind myself, that sometimes all that frustration and stress is worth it.

JC members helping at Sports Day