Tick, Tick, Tick…

…tick, tick, tick, tick…

“…four, months, four, months…”

“…are you ready? are you ready…?”

After ten days, my fabulous and (thanks to Jet Blue) extended on-island family vacation came to a close; my body readjusted to the cold showers, hot rooms, limited diet and overall lack of Beltrani’s- and dust seemed to settle. Through an opaque cloud of silt I heard a clock ticking, and my heart matched the sound: “four months left, are you ready?”, and as the dust cleared, (which took until this Tuesday) I saw the clock. Oh god there it is, that terrifying and oh so alluring countdown to a gigantic open ended question mark.

While January is hardly over, our Close of Service Conference is next week, I have more (planned) vacation the week after, and then I have 4 months to DO WORK and prove to myself, and my people, that I can finish my job well. During those same 4 months I also have to prove to America that I am qualified to be considered for graduate school or a job... the real world.

Yet business proceeds as usual here, slow and steady wins the race and all that. I’m assimilated, this shouldn’t phase me except why can’t anyone else hear that damn ticking???

The “are you ready?” is the worst one. Ready for what? What exactly is “ready”? Am I ready to go home? yes! Am I ready to leave Jamaica? No! What will my work amount to? What am I qualified for? Who is America Me again? She’s looking a little fuzzy from here…

I used to pride myself on my eloquence but now when interacting with Americans (such as the Beltrani clan), I trip over my words and shorten everything to a confusing mixture of English and patwa that’s more English than patwa but not enough patwa to sound like another language. It is SO much faster to say almost anything in patwa so I’m not surprised that my tongue has gotten lazy. Is that a valid excuse in an interview?

As an example of my plight, below are a few phrases I’d rather say in patwa.

Wa’apn- What happened? What’s happening?

Wa’apn to yuh- What happened to you? What’s wrong with you?

wuh yuh se – what did you say?

wuh do yuh- what’s wrong with you?

weh yuh go?- Where are you going?

eeeh?- Really?

gweh!- go away!

cho!- Whatever!

Keep in mind that jamaicans slur their soft sounds together so “wuh yuh se?” sounds more like “wuha se?”…

It’s much more work for one’s mouth to make words with consonants and spaces, and the Jamaican propensity for small talk means that I have far fewer intellectual conversations. As a disclaimer, I am terrible at small talk and I envy those who can pick out details of ones day and converse endlessly about them, which is why I practiced. Now I’m still not very good at small talk, but I’m not that great at big talk either.

So you see how the need to simultaneously consider ones life in a multitude of dimensions and cultures can make a woman a bit anxious.

I am nearing the end of my journey friends and I’m pumping the breaks while squinting my eyes to see what lies at the crossroads.

But I can’t see it. I won’t see it until I reach it.

Am I ready?…. It doesn’t matter, I’m not there yet.