Early Training

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Greetings,

I have been living in a quiet town outside of Kingston (St. Catherine's Parish) since Saturday with my first host family. My host parents are Rainford and Karell, and their three children live with them (Kevin 23, Shantal 18 and Matthew 14). They are very kind, generous and are always concerned about how I am doing. The food is great but a little strange at times, for example, last night I had stewed peas (kidney beans) with spinners (thin dumpling), chicken neck, pig tail and chicken feet (nails removed). As it turns out, I really enjoyed the turkey neck but the chicken feet were a little too 'gummy' for me. On the other hand, they have an exciting array of different fruits and vegetables which I have been thoroughly enjoying. As far as the weather goes, it can be very hot in the sun and the humidity is intense but in the shade or in the evening when the tropical breeze is blowing it is quite nice, which is most of the time. 

 

During the day we, the trainees or non-sworn volunteers, have class in a nearby town. This often entails a 9 to 10 hour day with 3 or 4 components. Most days we start out with a couple hours of patois lessons. The patois is coming along slowly but we have a lot of fun in the process trying to mimic the words and pronunciations. We also have a lot of security briefings/trainings with the Peace Corps (PC) Safety and Security Coordinator as well as a lot of guest security speakers (head of embassy security, local and regional police chiefs...). They have assured us that the far majority of violent crimes are gang on gang related and that foreigners are not targeted for any violent crimes. We do however have to be concerned about being targeted for thefts but they have conveyed many steps and techniques in avoiding this. We also have many sessions discussing the importance of community integration to aid in project potency. This is particularly interesting as we are taught how the norms of Jamaica and the US greatly differ and how important it is that we abide by them if we wish to have the community's backing of our projects.

So for now we are just doing general topics for training. After three weeks of this, we separate into sections (Environment or Youth as Promise) for our hub based training which will become more specialized for our programs/projects. Hub based training will span 4 weeks and we will be with a new host family. During the hub based section there will be reviews of trainee progress with cultural norms and patois. Then there will be a several day shadowing of a current volunteer at their work site. If all of that goes well I will be sworn in for two years and receive my project/site assignment.

How is everyone doing? Please E-mail me with updates and I apologize now if it takes me a couple of weeks to respond, I do not currently have regular internet access.

I hope this letter finds everyone well. TTFN

~Greg

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Greg Jenssen

c/o Country Director,

Leila Webster

US Peace Corps

8 Worthington Avenue

Kingston 5

Jamaica, West Indies