A Day In The Life

This past winter was starkly different from my first winter in Jamaica. Last year the west side of the island was in a drought and we were fighting bush fires caused by a gleaming shard of glass under the suns intense rays. This year we had almost too much rain, and if you ask a farmer, that’s a tough threshold to surpass. Floods occurred and some poorly timed crops were swept away. I hardly complained since I finally own waterproof shoes and I love rain.

Since the start of March though, rain has slowed down to the brief evening shower, which cools down the place but adds nothing to peoples water catchment tanks. This morning I awoke to window panes and unlocked doors slamming in what I rose to realize is a pure and refreshing breeze under an azure blue sky. So I drink my coffee in my hammock and I revel in the sounds of the breeze in the leaves of so many tropical (and therefore finite in my life) plants.

The sugar cane bends willingly to the slightest puff of air, like the tune of lightly falling rain or a gently rolling stream. A reedy, percussive sound joins in as the puff becomes a gust, and the coconut trees join in with a beat. The fragile banana trees are the next song noticed, their big broad-leafed canopies lazily slapping each other and rubbing along leaf ridges so that you can almost, if you close your eyes, hear the sound of a zipper, opening and closing. Of course the mango tree’s trunk likes to creak and the breadfruit trees add their tenor to the star apple’s tiny soprano in the wind. During mango season, the breeze is often accompanied by the thud of warm, sweet fruit and birds quarreling in the canopy. The biggest and scariest thud though, is that of a falling breadfruit on the zinc roof of the CDC office. I jump every time.

If /when the electricity cuts off, I miss the familiar and mashed up sounds of three different radios blasting and echoing in the gulley. But the sounds of  the basic schoolers’ on the adjacent hill carry into my yard so well, I can’t help but laugh at some things 5 year old Jamaicans shout at each other during playtime. Of course we can’t forget that the birds are ever in song, the goats are bleating, roosters are crowing, the cows are mooing and that one. damn. donkey. won’t stop laughing in his fingernails to a blackboard kind of way.

It’s not just the sounds I’ve been noting as my departure nears, but the sights as well. I can walk down my street in the cool breezy hills and, looking straight ahead, the ocean spans out before me, meeting the horizon. At night, when the day has been dry, the tom-toms come out: big clumsy beetles with eyes that glow florescent green and an abdomen that flashes yellow as he flies. Perching in the reeds along the road, it looks as if the land has been overrun by miniature aliens.

Those nights when the stars are out in the millions and we don’t carry a light because the moon is enough, and I carry a sweater but don’t need it, and someone is deep frying chicken in a pot of oil over a wood fire set into a hubcap, and the pimento smoke and fried batter wafts into my nostrils, asking if I’m hungry. Passing the big star apple tree, the patoo (Jamaican Owl) calls in his haunting tone. Meanwhile someone is playing around on virtual DJ, mixing the sounds of old reggae under a top 40 pop song. Someone shouts, but I know they’re shouting a joke and not an insult…something that would have been hard to detect a year ago.

In the morning as I walk to school, trying desperately not to sweat too much, the spring is crowded with mothers washing their clothes, old 5 gallon jugs of what was once cooking oil are being filled with drinking water and lined up by family on the roadside, awaiting the next taxi coming up the hill. Some young men (like my one) don’t always wait and carry that jug all the way up, muscles bulging and sweating through their shirt. People are just coming back from bush at 10am as the sun starts to heat up, rubber water boots clomping against the pavement, dirt covered machete in hand, sometimes leading a donkey with plastic milk crates of reapings slung over its back.

Midday gets quiet: we sit in the shade along the road or retreat inside to avoid the sun. If I’m not busy somewhere, I tend to read or craft. When the school kids come home, one can hear them ascending the hill in a mass, slowly thinning out as the walk becomes longer. I get many visitors with homework questions or quarrels to dissipate and I often have to call them back with a sharp reminder to pick up their sweetie wrappers from my yard. Damn Picknie (mi love dem still).

I could go on, and may at some point, but sometimes a girl wakes up to a perfect lazy day and she just needs to write a little.

Project and Life Updates

Last month I lost my smart phone in a downpour at a reggae music festival. Through the initial shock, I maintained that the phone was carried in a stream of mud and festival litter into the ocean, where a curious crab carried it to safety in its burrow, discovered the camera function, saw itself in the phone and promptly fell in love. I realized about 24 hours later that the most probable scenario involved a stampede of very wet Jamaicans and maybe even a car tire or two. Sigh, Rest in Peace little guy, I miss your internet connectivity every day.

Shortly after this event, I traveled the required distance to seek internet and found that I, your wayward Miniature Musings, have been accepted into a graduate program at the State University of NY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to pursue an MS in environmental and community land planning. So I’ve lost the internet in my pocket, but I no longer have to fret about my future. It’s probably a good thing to purge the internet from my daily life before I’m immersed into the world of smartphones and tablets, which I’m sure has gotten out of hand in the last two years. In fact, on the very day I’m describing, I befriended a young white Jamaican (the classy type), who openly pitied my lack of connection and (chosen) life of poverty. I couldn’t help but marvel at the man’s detachment from the rest of his country, so I chose not to make the point that most of my community members raise children on less than what I live on. I also kind of enjoyed his pity, because for some reason, even without kids, my bank account empties far too rapidly for me to do much more than what is necessary.

Speaking of spending money I don’t really have, one of my favorite people in the world came to visit me and we had an amazing time wandering my community and climbing the Blue Mountain: the tallest peak in Jamaica. Unfortunately though, the Blue Mountain and the one-of-a-kind coffee she produces is a good day’s worth of travel away from me, and then there’s the travel back and food in between. Usually getting out of one’s community, spending time with other volunteers and especially seeing a true blue friend from the other side is worth the subsequent lifestyle of traveling nowhere and eating gifted produce for every meal. Also, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica remind me of the Adirondacks at 6-7,000 feet. Facebook is full of photos so you know we all had a great time.

 Blue Mountain Coffee Beans

Returning from the big mountains to my baby mountains in Westmoreland, I reassumed my duties as PCV and have begun preparing solar drier workshops and composting workshops in anticipation of our CARILED (Canadian aid) funding coming through just under the wire. I am putting together my last 9 weeks worth of applied agriculture lessons and tying up loose ends. My supervisor is also becoming super-woman, handling far more projects than when I arrived.

Finally, Group 83 has been on Island for 2 years! Having just re-read most of my blog entries in celebration, I must say I’m pretty overwhelmed by the journey that is documented. My first months in Jamaica were starkly different to my last few. Many of the “projects” that I excitedly initiated, like the bamboo shade house and community notice board, have been discarded and forgotten while “real” projects such as greenhouses, irrigation, livestock breeding, solar driers and workshops are on track for success. I am an older, wiser and more Jamaican version of the girl who stepped off the plane in Kingston 2 years ago, and I am so proud of my fellow PVC’s for making this journey with me and being a part of the best support system on Island. Respek and bless up Group 83! We are wizened and accomplished individuals!

On the opposite end of perspective, there’s officially a NEW group of newbies on the Island! I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it honestly as I’m nowhere near where they are emotionally. While I remember my own reservations, feelings and unbridled enthusiasm for a challenge, my only advice to them is to LET GO and just BE, which is honestly not great advice. I know this and I’m sorry but group 85, if you’re going to make it in Jamaica, you’ve got to admit that you know nothing about anything here, and let Jamaica be Jamaica because she’s not changing any time soon.

>>> Enjoy the people who enjoy you, especially children. Work with those who want to work; take time off when you need it; save your money for a bad day/ week/ month because that’ll happen a lot; understand that a lot of people will think they understand you, but they won’t; keep in touch with your family and friends abroad because they know you best, but mind it make you homesick; cook like an American when you can afford it, and a Jamaican when you can’t and above all else, don’t let other people’s hang ups bring you down: choose your battles wisely and learn to let go of the things you have no power to change.

I have to remind myself of these wisdom nuggets every day, all day my friends, practice makes perfect.