A Few Of My Favorite Things

Jamaicans are an egocentric people when it comes to their beloved Island paradise. Often when I tell people how long I’ve been here, the response is “Yuh LOVE Jamaica, don’t?” and who could say no to that bright eyed face beaming with pride? Of course because I’m American I must love the sun and the food and the music, and how lucky am I to be visiting for so long!?

Well, I decidedly do NOT love the sun and the heat, and I am very open about that, proclaiming proudly that I am a creature of the North! I love temperatures below 70! I love snow! I love scarves and boots and mittens; fireplaces, down comforters and sledding! I really hate sweating when I’ve done nothing but walk from here to there.

The food I’ll miss when I’m gone. Same with the repetitive reggae beats and the aggressive dancehall lyrics.

As a PCV, you learn quickly what makes you inherently happy and you learn to exploit these things for everything you've got. For me those things are music and nature.

So even though I just dissed Jamaican music a little, my favorite thing about Jamaicans is the freedom with which they sing, dance or do both. I suspect that from birth, Jamaicans are brought up around music. The typical church experience involves about 2 hours of joyous singing and one hour of loud preaching. My boyfriend’s 8 month old niece carries a rattle that resembles a tambourine to church every sunday and will soon learn to shake it in rhythm like the adults. The gospel songs sung in church are also simple and easy to harmonize to, and members of the congregation often do so on their own accord. The offbeat is always emphasized by clapping, tambourine (that people carry with them) one keyboard and a drum set. For a child to grow up surrounded by that chorus is certainly a gift.

In Jamaica it is common to see people walking down the road singing out loud, it is normal to sing gospel songs at the top of your lungs in the morning and nothing makes me happier on a long bus ride than when a well known song comes on the radio and half the bus starts to sing.

Singing for me has always been a form of release and a point of pride, so it’s no surprise that I have embraced this part of Jamaica wholeheartedly. I can often be caught singing along to the radio in a taxi, out loud with my headphones in or just walking down the road, giving form to that melody stuck in my head. Seeing others do the same brings a smile to my face and likewise, a song to my heart.

My nex' favorite thing about Jamaica: Nature, is actually related to my least favorite thing: Weather.

My pride and joy this past year has been my compost heap, a pile that was once vegetable scraps and is now a towering testament of beautiful and rich soil.

Granted, it doesn’t look like much on the outside… but take a closer look…

The combination of the rain season and the constant heat in Jamaica allows even the coolest compost pile to decompose quickly and efficiently, and my pile would probably not have broken down as well in America
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My favorite byproduct of my compost pile, besides the compost, is all of the seedlings I've dug out of it in the last few months. Now, a real, quality compost SHOULD NOT have seeds in it, obviously. If you plant a sweet pepper plant using your compost and you get a pumpkin instead you’ll understand why. But I have a decidedly UN-green thumb for an ag volunteer and when I turned my compost to find ackee, mango, pumpkin, pear (avocado) and even passion fruit seeds all germinating so beautifully, I couldn't deny new life; so I collected a few winners and replanted them in containers closer to my house.

(L-R, top-bottom: passion fruit, avocado (2), mango, ackee (2))

If I were a farmer, I've decided that I’d grow dairy animals or fruit trees...or both. Unfortunately, 100% of my favorite fruits and trees in Jamaica are tropical in nature and could never prosper in Northern America.

The ecosystem is what matters the most to me and compost is a concentrated study on ecology as well as the basis of a healthy man-made ecosystem. My pile has inspired and supported several school lessons, and countless home projects. So, when I’m feeling homesick and sad, you’ll find me with my fork and my bucket, turning my pile, saving some seedlings and singing a song.

In Loving Memory

In Loving Memory,

Poppy

September 2012- October 2013

When Evrick first met Poppy, she was a pudgy ball of puppy skin laying in my arms as we swung in my hammock, and his reaction was a mixture of confusion and disgust. “A wuh dat dutty daag deh?”

 

 

But who can say no to either of these faces?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn’t take long for her to grow on him. And I taught him how to teach her “sit” and “lay”. No one could romp with Poppy like Evrick, and no one, not even me, was happier to see him walk up the hill to our gate at the end of the day.

 

 

 

 

She was my family, and she was the most entertaining member of our yard.

  

She was my princess, the first dog I raised on my own from a puppy.

She proved to my community that the white girl knows how to pick a good breed.

She kept herself immaculately clean and never once refused a meal of vegetarian leftovers.

And she’s still the only dog in Jamaica I’ve ever seen eat mangos.

Inside of Poppy was a creature grown of affection
Not indifference
And it showed in every joyous footstep
Every ecstatic OW-ROO ROO ROO!
And manic tail wag that screamed
I'M SO GLAD YOU CAME HOME TO ME!

After 15 hours of fighting the brutal sickness that is parvo virus, Poppy found her peace and let go. We are devastated by her departure, but grateful that her suffering has come to an end.

My beautiful Poppy flower, you were taken too soon, and too gracelessly.

For that, for the pain you endured, I am truly and forever sorry.

I will always remember you hunting for lizards in the brush, galloping across the yard like a racehorse, the sound of your voice and the feeling of your head on my knee.

You pounced into my life and left paw prints in my heart, and while I may leave you, laying peacefully under the grapefruit tree, you, my flawless companion, will never leave me.

Aligning the Stars

Speak your mind,

Even if your voice shakes.

- Maggie Smith

I bet you’re all wondering what exactly it is that I DO here besides cooking ackee, saving my dog from poisoning and going to parties. I really don’t do any of those things with any sort of regularity… nor to I do “work” in the traditional sense (with any sort of regularity). To be truthful, regularity is not a “thing” in my life here, unless it’s the feeling of “what to doo, what to doo” which is quite predictable.

Often in Jamaica it feels like the only person who has any respect for the time you give, is you. And sometimes, to get work done, the stars simply must align. One cannot attempt to do community development work alone, but unfortunately with the aforementioned time discrepancy, this is often how it feels. Like you alone are trying, and failing, over and over again, because the events or activities you scheduled keep falling through, and the community you need to get work done is just not available. There are plenty of reasons for the stars to not align: rain, power outages, school year induced poverty, death, sickness, understaffed schools. These are my foes.

And so, I have gone weeks, months even, with only a faint shred of “progress” and hardly enough activity to quell my eager mind. And even though it is my foes and not exactly my people who are dropping the ball, I retreat to the comfort of my own mind, my own yard and inadvertently shut the door. This is when I entertain myself with blogs about ackee.

After weeks of feeling peripheral and useless, I look up and realize what a terribly deep depression-hole I’ve dug myself with only me, my brain and some self-pity. Oh good lord girl, “Get up, Stand up!”

Suddenly the stars are aligned once more and my weekly planner is finally filled with opportunity! The 4H club meets for the first time and we start the raised bed school garden I’d been attempting for the entire month before. A funding opportunity approaches the farmers group and now I have a proposal to write so that our demonstration plot can finally be decked out with a tool shed, real fencing, a water irrigation and harvest system and a shade house. Yes this is solitary work. But it’s work and I’ll take it.

Because I’m finally coming to the school for 4H, I schedule weekly class time with some other teachers. Of course this happens the week before mid-term break, so I haven't actually HAD a class yet. But the seed lesson is planned and ready, because of all the free space my days have to offer.

Finally, FINALLY, I ran a successful farmers meeting in Shady Grove, the farthest and hardest to reach district in Beeston Spring. I’ve had this demographic pinpointed for months, but it’s a tricky one to approach since it’s mostly young men my own age who are either just as intimidated by me as I am of them, or not intimidated at all and therefore quite openly distracted by my boobies and poom-poom, in a casual setting. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t get guidance, just the opposite: most people farm in this district, and no one is making a living. In a meeting setting, I felt more confident that I could address these men in a professional and respectable manner.

After the meeting, everyone went home with home-made organic bug spray in empty soda bottles, which I demonstrated how to make, cooking show style. Attentive and interested questions were asked and I hope some inspiration was imparted. The meeting proved to me that there are still people in Beeston Spring who are motivated and willing to participate in order to better their lives.

I found the opening quote on the internet yesterday after the Shady Grove meeting and a very stressful 24 hours, and I thought it rang startlingly true. When the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it’s nearly impossible to stand up and speak up, especially being the proud little creature I am, I hate to seek help, or admit that I need it. When you’re feeling let down by the people who should be supporting you, that’s when it’s time to square your shoulders, slow your breathing and say something. I can’t stress that enough. If passion is what drives you, only the first few words will shake.

All About Ackee

Riggle me dis, riggle me dat, guess me dis riggle or perhaps not:

mi fada ha tree (3) picknie an alla dem wear black hats, what are they?…

 

 

 

          

            Ackee!

 

 

 

 

The main ingredient in Jamaica’s national dish, ackee and saltfish, is this strange looking fruit called ackee. On the tree you may mistake it for a bright red apple, but  the young fruits actually contain a poisonous gas that is only released when the pod naturally breaks open, like in the picture above. The liquid inside the young pods that creates the gas is used as a topical cure for ringworm and other skin parasites. Another Jamaican riddle warns: “those that don’t smile will kill me”.

Buying Ackee

It is worth a warning not to buy ackee that has already been taken from the pod. You never know what higgler’s 9 year old son bagged them and it’s possible that the pods didn’t open properly. In that case you’re eating poison and you’d best have some bizzy tea on hand. I tend to get my ackee from community members, not big market places. I know the trees the fruit comes from and I trust the farmers who hand them to me.

Preparing Ackee

Once the pod is open however, ackee is a great money maker and belly filler. I was once afraid to handle ackee, not quite understanding how the whole “poison thing” worked, but after months of observing others, I’m confident enough to prepare it on my own.

To prepare ackee you need very few materials:

1. a bowl or pot

2. compost pile or garbage

3. Pointed knife or fingernail

The raw ackee fruit itself should be pale or bright yellow and firm- it should almost feel like cartilage. A bad ackee is mushy and smells kind of like tuna fish. Just because one ackee in a pod is bad doesn’t mean the others are.

First, pull the fruit from the pod. This step should be easy, just open the pod wide and pull the yellow part out. You may notice that the fruit is attached to the pod by a little reddish vein- kind of like the ackee’s navel string. You’ll want to remove this from the fruit, but first you must remove the shiny black seed from the top.

Some ackee fruits have nice big seeds that easily twist and pop off, but others have tiny little seeds almost buried in the fruit. The little guys may need persuasion with your knife tip. I also have no qualms about breaking the ackee right down the middle out of laziness, although a real Jamaican wouldn’t stand for that nonsense.

 

  The final step to clean your ackee is to remove the “navel string”. Often when you pull the fruit from the pod, that part of the pod gets stuck in the folds of the fruit. Ackee has a very unique texture profile and a piece of the pod in your cooking will be apparent SO, if you’re an old Jamaican mother or grandmother, you would use your fingernail to scrape the inside of the ackee clean. Do NOT do this if you are wearing nail polish or you’re cooking for your Jamaican boyfriend (especially if he’s watching)… hygiene is very important to men eating their woman’s cooking.

If you’re cooking for your Jamaican boyfriend and you have painted nails, use your knife tip and simply run it through the crease inside the ackee fruit.

 

 

You should be able to see that the ackee on the bottom still has the string in it and the other two have been cleaned out

 

 

 

At this point, you’ve cleaned your first ackee! Now keep going. Put the clean guy in your pot or bowl and the pod into your compost. If your compost doesn’t get very hot, you will get baby ackee trees popping up so use discretion when disposing of seeds (I don’t know anyone who would argue with getting ackee seedlings- they make good money)

Storing Ackee

Usually I clean my ackee in the morning and then cook them for dinner. Raw Ackee needs air otherwise they will turn to mush so leave them in a shallow bowl with a paper or cloth towel over them. Keep them at room temperature, not the refrigerator, and keep them dry. If you don’t want to eat the ackee right away it’s best to prepare it, boil it, strain it, add some vegetable oil and freeze it in an airtight bag.

Cooking Ackee

Ackee is really nice to eat with meats such as fish or ham (or bacon), it is a mild taste and takes on the flavour of the food it is cooked with. Cooked ackee has a similar consistency (not taste) to lightly scrambled eggs. As a vegetarian, I cook it with sweet pepper, onion, garlic and other chopped veggies over rice or pasta. It’s also nice with Jamaican curry (remember to burn Jamaican curry first). Fresh tomato will make the ackee go sour so steer clear of that  combination.

Rinse ackee well in tap water. Heat water and don’t add the ackee until the water is a rolling boil- cold water makes ackee go bad. Let the ackee boil for about 6 minutes or until soft. Drain and add to your meal. Since it is already cooked, I usually add it last but still give it time to absorb the juices from the other veggies. 

Want some nutrition info? http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20121009/lead/lead92.html

2 Parties and a Funeral

I’m in the passenger side of a 20 year old pickup truck following an old washed out road. To my left is a hillside; the right is a deep gully, both sides are overgrown with an assortment of jungle flora, creating a dark shadowy canopy above us. “Mi mudda did bury deh so” the farmer driving points out the window on the gully side. “Yuh see eet?”

Through the vines, ferns, tree roots and fallen branches that thickly cover the forest floor, I spied a sliver of grey stone which could have simply been a rock. I nodded to show that I’d seen it and he went on to tell me about the land his family has in the area, and who is buried where.

In rural Jamaica it is common for family members to be buried in their own yards. Since houses are handed down along with the land, many old homes have generations of headstones, some washed away and mossy, others new and glossy. Some are surrounded by rusting iron gates, others are practically part of the landscape, covered by vines or hidden by tall grass. Chances are though, most of those graves were dug by a large group of people who loved and respected the deceased.

While the Jamaican bereavement process is often criticized for being overly extravagant, costly and prolonged, it is an integral part of the tradition in rural communities. When a community member dies, an average of 3 events usually take place: A 9 night or a wake, the grave digging and the funeral/burial. The 9 night (9 nights after death) or wake is usually a huge party that can involve drumming and traditional songs but often ends with a DJ and late night winding; The funeral is the time to mourn, to wail openly in church and send the deceased into heaven. The grave digging however is my favorite.

The grave digging takes place the day or a few days before the funeral, and provides an opportunity for people to contribute labour out of respect for the deceased. Using only shovels and pick-axes, the men dig out the grave. Cinder blocks are then carefully stacked and bound with cement, which is being mixed by hand: one man sifting sand and adding cement, one adding water and one mixing with a shovel. The man with the shovel then fills a bucket and the bucket is handed down to the mason in the grave who is artfully building the grave walls.

This labour is done free of charge, though many involved are skilled workers. Styrofoam cups of chicken foot soup or goat head soup (mannish water) is carried out on trays by the women and served to all present, starting with elders and workers, ending with children. Shortly after the soup, curry chicken with rice follows in the same fashion and rum is always being passed around. This food is always provided for free by the family of the deceased.

These are some pictures I took at Evricks grandfather’s grave digging in July

The cement mixing station next to the blue water drum

You can see some cousins mixing cement behind my o'l’ friend, who is posing on the grave of another family member

Miss Ki-Ki and I debating if chicken foot or goat soup is best

As with almost every other Jamaican event, there are more people than jobs, but with such hard labour for so much time, most men come dressed to work and willingly jump in when another taps out. Those not working find shade and a seat, or opt to join the “instruction team”, watching and directing the work of those involved. Those without jobs sit or stand around talking, eating, drinking, watching the work and of course, laughing: the true essence of every Jamaican party.

Poison, Pets and the Miracle of Bush Tea

One thing I love about my community is the widespread knowledge of “bush remedies” and where they can be found in the area. Much of my community utilizes bush remedies on a regular basis for themselves and for their children since it’s cheap, easy to find and culturally engrained. Usually these plant remedies can be made into two forms, boiled into a tea or ground to a poultice for external use. My adopted culture is also very suspicious of people like politicians, bankers or doctors, so bush medicine can be a good way to avoid the Jamaican public healthcare system. Here are some "bushes" and their uses.

Bizzy Tea is one of the more commonly used remedies. If you have young children or animals, you’re going to want bizzy around. My dog, Poppy has walked into the house two of three times foaming at the mouth which stopped abruptly once we gave her bizzy tea.

I remember distinctly the first time I interacted with bizzy. Walking to Salem School very early in service I passed by an enthusiastic old farmer who excitedly procured from a black scandal bag a grubby handful of the strange fruit. He explained how to dry it, grate it and boil it into a tea to cure “poison”. I remember taking a few, wiping the dirt from them and taking a picture, which I think is in this blog if you look far back enough. I recently found out that Bizzy is a plant commonly used in Africa also known as Kola Nut. I bet you know it.

Rural Jamaican language doesn’t utilize traditional American descriptors, so descriptions of illness often sounds like this: “Mi get paison” (I got poison) “Mi haa cold inna mi troat” (I have a cold in my throat) or “Mi foot sick”. It also bears mentioning that the “foot” can be the descriptor for anything from the hip to the toe, the “hand” from shoulder to finger, so that leaves a lot of room for error when deducing the problem. Phlegm is also referred to as “the cold”.

So in this vague manner I slowly became aware of the common practice of goat owners poisoning dogs who are constantly harassing (read: eating) their livestock. I’ve known a few dogs who were reportedly poisoned and killed for the very same offence.

In my mind full of buttercups and daisies, I assumed that the goats’ fur was powdered with something toxic to ingest, obviously and blissfully not thinking it through. I only learned that the practice is to set poisoned bait after my dog threw up by the glow of our candlelit dinner (the power was out). It was impressive and terrifying how quickly things went downhill after that. Her pupils dilated, her legs unsteady, stomach clenched and bladder…loose. After a few minutes of dimly lit confusion we realized that bizzy was our only hope.

It was a difficult night as we watched something we loved so much suffer, not knowing how bad it really was or if she’d make it in the end. She ran away at one point and came back an hour 1/2 later with dirt on her nose prompting Evrick to remember that an addition to the bizzy remedy for dogs was soil. I think it has something to do with soaking up what’s inside (I’d be interested to know the science if anyone out there does). We force fed her more bizzy and she struggled away and back into the bush where we could hear her growling and whimpering but it was hard to tell if the noise was from the pain or something else. I didn’t think we could do anything more at this point and the prospect of searching for my dying pet in the bush was terrifying to me, so I chose to go to my bed, but I didn’t sleep.

Around 4am I heard a loud and deliberate whine outside the veranda and Poppy bounced into the house looking about 50% better than we’d last seen her. She still avoided the bizzy and I did not relax enough to sleep until I heard her lapping from her bowl, 5am. It’s now 4pm and she’s almost 100%. We now realize that the growling and crying was the noise she makes when she digs holes, which she was doing last night to eat dirt.

I won’t speak about the person who laid the poison or why it was done. I am too exhausted and thankful to explore the limits of the human soul but would rather chalk it up to Lady Misfortune. But I was glad to learn today that setting poison for dogs is not a cultural quirk that is widely accepted, that even though people keep a comfortable distance from their dogs here, it doesn’t mean they don’t care for them or love them. I’ve heard stories similar to mine since I began relaying my incident and I’ve also heard worse. One woman asked how I treated the poison and when I said I used bizzy she gave me an approving nod and said, “It’s a lucky thing you had some in your house!”

Indeed my friend, I’ll be bringing a suitcase full to foreign!

Happiness Loves Company Too

My community is a truly pleasant place to be most mornings. It’s cool and breezy and people are fresh and greeting each other. The Jamaican greeting is very important. You may not get a please or thank you but you will always get a “good morning” or a “wa gwaan”, or an “arright” (alright) with a nod in passing. Acknowledging people’s presence is of utmost importance here and following that guideline is a good way to make friends.

On one of these mornings last week I left the gate happily chatting with Evrick and we came upon a neighbor brushing her teeth outside. We greeted her in the usual way and she sang back “good morning”

However.

Without skipping a beat her tone changed to a harsh, angry shout “Bwoi! TOP ‘crape ee bed afore me ‘tab yuh inna yuh yie wi de toot brush!”

I was caught by surprise as we continued to walk through this outburst. Was she talking to Evrick? someone inside? I looked at Evrick who was shaking his head and asked, “who’s eyes are she stabbing out with a toothbrush?” He pointed out that her son had been moving something inside and it was making noise. I hadn’t heard this but, ok, she’s telling her son to stop moving the bed or she’ll stab him in the eye with a toothbrush. Reasonable.

This is not an isolated incident or an uncommon one and it probably has a lot to do with the combination of rural poverty, overexposure to violence in the media and a combative cultural history. Over the last week, I allowed myself to become very bothered by the words spoken around me. After my last week of camp, hearing children repeat the words their parents use on them to their peers, my heart was hurting. In my enthusiastic and positive America Bubble, I was taught that strong words have meaning, and to use them gently. Strong words spoken with force are things to flinch at, not say to your children, but it gets said and it perpetuates a culture of zero personal efficacy or empowerment. It’s normal to ask a child to read something and hear several children chime in “miss im cyaan read” (miss he can’t read) or to hear in conversation “Cho man ya idiat?” (whatever man, are you an idiot?), but sadder still is the prevalence of statements such as “Shuttup, mi a go beat yuh…”, or “yuh nuh good fi nutten” or “mi a go ‘tab yuh inna yuh mout…” and even “Mi a go kill yuh…”. Many children I’ve spoken to acknowledge that they don’t like being spoken to that way, but a child berated by an adult is going to retaliate on their peers in the only way they’ve been taught, with violence and angry words. Misery certainly loves company.

Many families here are not so angry and violent, however, anger tends to be louder than peace… go figure.

As I tried to write tactfully about the observations I was making several times, without being judgmental and emotional, and failed miserably. So I decided to pause for inspiration. This came in the form of an Organic Agriculture workshop at the Belmont Fishing Beach.

It was the first farming workshop that I had the pleasure of enjoying with Evrick, and I knew almost every participant in the workshop personally. These gatherings are always an opportunity to be surrounded by completely likeminded people, rejuvenating the spirit and exercising the mind. The workshop was focused on marketing as small organic farmers, and it took place in a large open gazeebo shaded by trees and 20 feet from the ocean. The breeze was constant even though the sun was hot and a hard rush of rain cooled the place down towards the end. For the first time in a while I was hearing new information at a local farming workshop, people were asking questions and knowledge was being shared. I was glad to see my community farmers interest and participation and impressed by their positivity.

My group rode back up the hill sitting along the sides of a pickup truck, laughing and joking as the vehicle hit every pothole and ascended sharply steep hillsides.

I returned home with an inspired Evrick and we continued talking about the possibilities for what we had learned taking place in Jamaica. Sitting on the veranda with him I felt that familiar glow of happiness in my soul and knew that I could write once again.

So I suppose I now understand why it took me a while to write this post. I can’t be accepting of difficult behaviors until I can understand the behavior and not let it overwhelm me. Also, I can’t feel satisfied with a blog unless it has a happy ending, which I suppose means that as long as I blog, I’ll be searching for happy endings. So if I ever stop and get real miserable, remind me to start again my friends.

Finally, here is my conclusion: Yes, misery will always love company, but happiness loves company too, it’s just not as demanding about it.