Hitting the Wall

It’s mid service, and I think a good chunk of Peace Corps Jamaica, Group 83 is feeling what I’ve been calling the “mid service blues”.

For me, it’s the combination of many, many things.

1) I’m on the descending side of a relatively successful project and, looking up for air, I realize how very much more there is to do here. Also having been here for a year, my idealism about the future is also waning. I feel weak with the inability to convey my knowledge to everyone all at once, I feel exhausted knowing that I can invite everyone I know to a meeting and 3 people will show, I am tired of the things that I don’t understand and unsure of the things I do. I’ve been in this relationship with Jamaica for a year now, and we’re at the point where I see her flaws just as well, if not better, than I see her attributes. Best practices are only such when practiced, I will not push when someone else is pushing back.

2) I LIVE ON AN ISLAND. I could get into all the ways that serving in Jamaica is different from serving in another country more remote, but I’ll stick with this for now: I’m not in Africa, surrounded on three sides by other countries, I’m surrounded on all sides by an ocean. Yet I still must travel several hours, take days off, and make accommodations ($ I don’t have) to visit a new place.

3) I just got internet, which is SO great in most regards, but it makes the future easier to see, the present easier to follow and the past a photo album just waiting to make you incapacitated with homesickness.

4) I keep thinking to myself, I hope people are actually easier to deal with back home. But I might also be fabricating this falsely polite and concerned society of people who get along out of a jaded memory of my past as a college student at a forestry school.

These are the reasons I am choosing to disclose, I have to remember that this blog is public, but suffice it to say, I feel hung-over and uninspired. Runners like my mother and my sister would say, I’ve hit “The Wall” and I agree. I actually very much feel like this clip from “Run Fat Boy Run” (I highly recommend watching the whole movie, very funny)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kmzJcC_HN4

So now I have to make myself see through that first brick. What is beckoning me forward?
Well, Mid Service conference is in a week. This is a time when Peace Corps staff puts all of group 83 in a hotel and organizes workshops about subjects such as community development, organizational management, project writing, youth motivation, technology as a tool, funny cultural story time, fails and success discussions and of course some good old fashioned friend time.

After Mid Service conference I’ll be going home for a probably whirlwind visit with family, friends and the countryside I miss so much.

I suppose I have a whole crew of people waving me on through that brick space, telling me to take a deep breath and limp forward. Nothing worth having ever comes easy, I can take that advice from my mother: the marathon runner, my father: the successful doctor and several friends in Jamaica, raising children and working until midnight.

Even if I accomplish nothing else here, I am still running the race and I still intend to finish.

Painting a Path

For the recycling fun day, I had requested a donation of paint from Sandals EarthGuard*, the colors of which now reside on 6 recycling bins set around the community.

A rich red, pale yellow and blue and a deep green.

A day later, that paint was used to re-paint the community welcome sign.

In the past few weeks, these colors have popped up throughout the community:

the artists gate;

the new shop;

And 3 R bar

In the smog that is the politics of community development, in the exhaustion that is motivating the apathetic, in all of the negativity that can come from the masses of this country, this paint to me if proof of good intentions. Well allocated resources passed on by word of mouth and kinship, not politics.

After the fun day, parents came up to me asking (in the demanding fashion second nature to Jamaicans) where the rest of the prizes are and give my child one now, please and thanks. I have to patiently explain that prizes were for exemplary students and winning classes and I get frustrated looks in return.

Persons who have benefitted from the paint have simply stated to me: “we need more!”

I think that this poses an interesting comparison of the effectiveness of donations and community help. A toy is coveted, protected and creates selfish “wanting”. But something like paint, which is only as useful as a person is creative, is passed along until it runs out.

This has prompted me to wonder at my community members- “If you had three pints of paint, what would you do with it?” 

 

*Sandals EarthGuard is the environmental conscience of the Sandals Resorts*

A Metaphor and a Poem

I was in the bakery yesterday and had a small metaphorical epiphany… I had an epiphany due to a metaphor.

It’s a pretty typical bakery set up: long counter opposite the door displaying baked goods, register on one end and you wait for your order on the other. There are a few tables with chairs attached and at either wall to the right or left there are two booths to sit in. The booths to the left don’t fit quite perfectly (to American standards) and the end of the booth allows about a one grown man width between it and the cashiers window. About three people can stand in this narrow hall, shifting after every order to allow the previous customer to proceed down the counter. Now here is where the metaphor points out a quintessential difference between Jamaican and American culture.

Imagine that the time is hot. You have three black plastic bags full of pumpkin, cho-cho, yam and other pretty heavy produce. You’re sweating in a stream down your face, back and chest- nothing new, it’s Jamaica. You walk into the bakery and even though the air conditioning is on, you still sweat. The line is long, almost to the door. You rest your bags on the floor (and people stare because that’s gross here) and rest until your turn. Now you’re next and the woman in front of you has decided to order 17 lbs of bread.

As an American, you see the space between the booth and the register and think, Well, I’ll stand beside the booth and wait for this woman to come out of the cramped space between the wood and hard plastic before I step up to the register myself. It makes sense to us. Americans like their personal space and they respect the sanctity of the line. We also see no correlation between the space between each person on that line and the speed with which it moves. (fit 5 people on a line 20 feet long. It moves just as fast if those same 5 people are standing on a line 10 feet long)

This is the part when you remember (if you haven't realized it already) you’re not in America. From pre school days, American children are taught to walk in a line. It’s a perfected art for us. Jamaican children are taught no such thing and most lines here loosely resemble a mob. At the bakery, Jamaicans want three people standing in that cramped space, even if you’re carrying shopping bags and wearing a backpack, no matter how certain you are that you will be helped next. If I stand next to the booth, 8/10 times the person behind encourages me to move up into the space EVEN THOUGH I’ll still have to scooch out of the way of the previous customer as she moves down the counter, my body running sweat into my eyes, my arms hefting several grocery bags.

Here, my friends, is my metaphor for Jamaica. If you think it’ll be easy, it won’t. If you think it will be orderly, it won’t. If you think things would feel less cramped and chaotic if it was done a different way well, I have news for you bucko- no one cares what you think! So get on “line” and be assertive like every other person here!

 

On that note, I wrote a poem:

When it Rains on Laundry Day

When it rains on laundry day
I do not fuss or pout
Cuz I must admit, the first time round
the suds did not come out.
I dunked and squeezed and dunked and squeezed
Washing them by hand
Until I saw the rain clouds
then I knew that I could stand
So thank you mother nature
for doing what I cannot
For rinsing my panties my jeans and my shirts
Of all of the suds, which got rid of the dirt
And now I implore, before I grow old
Don't rain every day or my clothes dem will mold!