Monday, April 12^th, 2010

Greetings,

Hellshire (the first community I was living in) was a really nice town to start our service. The housing layout was pretty crowded with very little yard space but it meant that all of the volunteers were in close walking distance. This afforded us a lot of opportunity to hang out outside of training. 

Before training and on the weekends a few of us loved partaking in a morning exercise routine. I get up around 5:45 am 3+ days a week and meet some other volunteers. From there, we take a (≈) mile jog down to the beach for a sunrise swim before running back up the hill. I have seen more sunrises in the last few weeks than I have in the last few years. In the evenings I either hang out with my host family or organize a few friends to play domino's (the national game of Jamaica). There is a lot more strategy than I ever realized and I am getting good at it.

There are some definite issues though. Jamaica has been in a major drought for the last 8 months, possibly contributed to by the El Nino year. The water is shut off often and has been particularly bad lately. We arrived in Hellshire on Saturday March 20^th, and the next day the water was shut off for the whole community. Usually it is turned back on in a day or two but instead was off until Thursday morning. This happened again the next Sunday for another 4 days. Easter weekend it stayed on until the Tuesday after. When the water is out some homes have a tank on the roof that feeds directly into the plumbing. Others, like my host family, have water stored in (50 gal?) containers in the backyard. My host family had three for general use and one for cooking and drinking water. This made bathing interesting. We would fill up a plastic tub and carry it into the bathroom to take 'bucket' showers. If you wanted to wash your hands someone had to pour the water for you and the toilet tank needed to be hand filled every time it was used.

Another issue is the discarding of garbage. Garbage collected in the home is usually burned and garbage out of the home (beverages or wrappers of food consumed while walking/traveling) is usually dropped on the ground. Everywhere you walk there is a lot of garbage on the ground in this community. The only reason why the beach is clean is because the owners of bars/restaurants there clean up the sand in front of their lots each morning. It is sad to see such a beautiful place so filthy with garbage. This is not the case in all communities but it is definitely a prevalent problem.

Another oddity, which is not so much a problem but more of a cultural difference, is how direct, blunt and vocal Jamaicans are. A Jamaican who wants to get another persons attention will often call them by their distinguishing features. For example, a heavy person will be called 'Fatty' or 'Fluffy', white person called 'Whitey', light skinned black person called 'Brownin', a person of Asian decent called 'Mr. Chin', dread locks called 'Locks' and so on. These names are not intended to be offensive but general descriptors for the purpose of getting your attention.

On a positive note, there is a major trend of having fruit trees and other edible plants as a part of the landscaping in most yards. Mangoes, plantains, bananas, bread fruit, jack fruit and oranges are just a few of the fruits readily available. Not only is it wonderful having fresh fruit all of the time but it is a great money saver too.

I hope this letter paints a more well rounded picture of life in Jamaica than the last.

TTFN

~Greg