Back to Jam-Rock

After an amazing and dizzying 19 days in the states, I have made it safely back to Jamaica. Being home was fantastic – I saw almost all of the friends and family that I wanted to see, made it across 5 states, ate more food than I thought was possible and was colder than I had been in 10 months.

Being home was, strangely, not too strange at all. I expected a lot more in terms of reverse culture shock, but didn't experience much after the first few days. Though I must say that the one thing that I wasn't ever able to get over was supermarkets. There are pretty modern supermarkets in Negril, but the scope of American supermarkets is just astounding. And the idea that you can get fresh strawberries, pineapple, bananas, and any other fruit you want in New York in the middle of winter just floored me. In Jamaica, there is plenty of diversity in the fruits that are available, but once they are out of season, they are out of season, period. You have to wait a whole nother year before they are back. But in America, you can pretty much get anything you want any time you want. The convenience of American life may have it's issues (is it really worth flying bananas in from South America just so I can satisfy a craving?), but overall it is pretty fantastic. I had gotten used to a much simpler lifestyle here, and I knew that I would be returning to it, but for a few weeks it was wonderful to over indulge in American culture. (read: mostly American food).

As much as I enjoyed being home, being back has been, for the most part, wonderful. I won't ever be able to see Jamaica as home, but I really do like it here. It took me a long time to feel comfortable here, but after a while, something about this island just kind of grabs you. I have just about 16 months left of my Peace Corps service, and I am very much looking forward to it. There is so much I still want to do, professionally and personally that I am just hoping 16 months will be enough time. If the past 10 months have been any indication, the next 16 are going to fly by at record speed. I still can't believe I've been here almost a year already...it has been, without a doubt, the quickest 10 months of my life.

One of the things I missed most about Jamaica while I was home was the vibrancy of the place. There's a feeling here – in the music, in the food, in the language and the laughter – that somehow feels more alive, more real. I didn't realize how dependent I had gotten on that feeling, and it feels fulfilling to be back around that sort of energy. I can see why Jamaicans always end up coming home, even after 10, 20 or 30 years spent abroad, and why they are always so content when they do.

Before I go, I want to share two things with you all (all 4 of you...). First, is NEPT's brand new website (full disclosure – I had nothing to do with the making of this site): www.nept.wordpress.com. Keep up to date with what we are up to and check out our newest newsletter! (Which I did have a whole lot to do with).

And lastly, a picture from a recent concert. There's an annual reggae concert here called Rebel Salute that's an all night affair – about 20 artists preforming from 9pm Saturday until about 9 am on Sunday. A whole bunch of us went, and it was a great night. The artists were great, the crowd was enthusiastic but respectful of each other, and the whole event was really well put together and well ran. One of my favorite artists, Tarrus Riley (check him out, seriously – he's awesome) preformed at sun up and it was an unreal way to spend sunrise. We were all exhausted, but it was more than worth it. I'm already excited to go back next year and do it all again - hopefully with Alicia! But here's a picture of the crowd and the stage an the sun coming up behind the mountains that I took from the back of the venue:

Home for the holidays!

Yes, that’s right! By the time most of you read this, I’ll either be en route to JFK or home already in snowy, wonderful New York! It’s been 9 months since I’ve been in the states, so to say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement. I have almost 3 weeks in the states, so plenty of time to get my fill of good old America. I’m excited for family, friends, food (lots of it!) and just being home in general. Jamaican Christmases are apparently a lot of fun, so I’ll be a little bummed to miss that. But the joy of a two year assignment is that I’ll still be here next year to experience it… and maybe I’ll even have some visitors to share it with (hint, hint!).

Nothing else too exciting to report from this end really. Happy holidays to everyone, and hopefully I’ll be seeing some of you soon!

Reggae (Half) Marathon

To continue with the trend of an exciting few weeks, I finished out this week with a half marathon on Saturday. It’s something that I had been thinking about doing since I got here and heard about it in March, something I decided on doing early in the summer, and something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off. But despite a few ups and downs in my training, and with the help of a few good friends, I successfully ran 13.1 miles on Saturday!

The race itself was really cool – especially the start. Since it gets so hot in Jamaica (yes, even in December), the race started at 5:15 in the morning so that most people could be finished before it got too hot in the late morning. The sun doesn’t even come up until 6:15/6:30, so the first hour or so was spent running in the dark. The whole theme of the race was Reggae/ Rasta culture, and so there were drummers at the starting line, and the road was lined with torches for the first half mile or so. It gave the start of the run a really cool atmosphere, and it helped that it was almost a full moon, with bright stars and no clouds. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like running with almost 1,000 people in the dark, and all I can really say is that it was really, really cool. And even after the sun came up, they had reggae playing at different points along the course to keep us all going. Luckily we finished before it got too hot out – there were some people still running at 11 and I have no idea how they managed. And they had fresh coconuts, bananas, Red Stripe and other goodies for us at the finish line that definitely helped ease the pain of the 13 miles. There were also a handful of PCVs who volunteered to hand out water, and they were pretty well spaced out along the course, which really helped. It’s amazing how much a friendly face (or, in this case 5) can to do boost your morale when you’re running for 2+ hours.

There was also a pasta party the night before and an after party the night of the race, so it was an eventful and exhausting weekend. Sadly, the headliner for the after party (reggae star Etana) double booked herself and didn’t actually end up performing, but there were a bunch of volunteers who went and we all still managed to have a good time anyway.

A few people have already been asking me if I’m going to run it again, or if I’m going to be upgrading to a full marathon anytime soon. My first reaction to that has so far been “Jesus, can’t I wait until my legs don’t feel like bricks before I think about running again?!” But next year is the 10^th anniversary of the Reggae Marathon, and so I think it would be cool to run it again. However, I don’t think I’ll be running the full marathon. I do understand why it’s appealing, but honestly, the idea of running for 4+ hours is just not something that interests me in the least.

Oh, my time? 2 hours, 25 minutes. My friend Jess and I ran together the whole time (sorry, Alicia!) and we were able to finish before any of the full marathoners did, and out of about 400 people who finished the half (men and women), we came in at about 215 and 216. Not too shabby, huh?

Jess and I approaching the finish line (I only look happy because of the endorphins...)

We did it! (Thanks to Emily for the pictures!)

A Peace Corps Thanksgiving

A few weeks ago I realized that in my 23 years, I have never spent a single Thanksgiving away from my family. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (lots of cooking/baking + lots of eating + family – the pressure of gift giving = a very happy Melissa), and so the thought of spending it away from my family kind of had me down for a while. I knew that joining Peace Corps would mean giving up certain traditions and missing out on certain things, but this wasn’t one that I had wanted to sacrifice.

Luckily it wasn’t something that I had to sacrifice entirely. There is a married volunteer couple who live on the other side of Negril who graciously opened up their house to 30+ volunteers and community members for a Thanksgiving pot-luck this past weekend. Some people pulled out all the stops with what they brought – some highlights were a particularly memorable mac and cheese dish, a pumpkin pie made from scratch (a.k.a. no canned pumpkin), and onion pie – yup. A pie filled with onions. I was so full afterwards that it hurt to move for a few hours - no joke. Most of the volunteers were out here for the whole weekend, and it was really nice to see everyone again and catch up and hang out. You really do form a pretty unique bond with the other volunteers you serve with, but it’s pretty rare that we get to spend so much time together, and so it was a good chance to relax and catch up.

I do realize that it’s been more than two months since my last update. I’m not sure if anyone besides my mom will be reading this (hi, Mom!), but for those who are, I guess I should give you a quick update on things. And I will do my very best to try and update more frequently in the future, I promise.

Work has been going really, really well, especially in the last few weeks. It was a little slow to get started, but for some reason about 2 weeks ago, everything just sort of came together. There’s a lot of little things I’ve been working on that have been keeping me busy, but there are a few major things that I’ll outline for you.

Green Key- Green Key is an international certification program for hotels who comply with a pretty strict set of environmental standards. It’s a sister program to something that NEPT (my agency) took on a few years ago – a similar certification for beaches called Blue Flag, and is run by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE). I’ve been tasked with starting and running the program for the next year and a half, and it’s a little bit of an overwhelming process – there’s a steering committee that needs to be formed, international criteria that has to be specialized to Jamaica, hotels to recruit, an international agency that I have to liaise with and more. This is yet another example of how PC is nothing like I expected it to be. I was all ready to be living in a hut, teaching kids English on a black board in the middle of nowhere, but that’s not at all what my reality has turned out to be. This is not something that I’m at all qualified to do, but it’s something that has already taught me a whole lot, and the program is actually going really well. My goal is to have 5 – 7 hotels signed on for the program by the end of the month, and we already have 2 committed with 4 more in the works, so it looks like it won’t be a challenge for me to meet my goal at all. There’s still a lot of work to be done with the program, but I’m really proud of the progress that’s been made so far, and I’m excited to continue working towards getting these 6, and hopefully a few more, Green Key certified sometime in 2010.

Farmer education – the other main project I’m working on is something that’s totally different, but a lot more “Peace Corps-esque”. We’ve been working with farmers in a few communities in the Negril area to educate the farmers about environmentally friendly farming techniques, and although I know nothing about farming, I’ve sort of been tasked with running this project through February/March. This involves putting together a lot of workshops and organizing site visits to farmers in these areas and putting together a lot of logistics. This also involves working with a lot of different people from several different organizations in the area, and that can be a bit frustrating at times, but it always seems to work itself out in the end somehow. The farmers really seem to appreciate what we’re trying to do and are really receptive to us, and going out and spending the day in the fields or sitting and interacting with them in the workshops is always a highlight of my week.

Community Composting – as a tangent to that project, I’m in the early stages of planning a community compost pile with one of the farming communities we are working with. This would be a large scale compost pile, with about 15 – 20 farmers contributing their organic waste. The goal of the project is to cut costs for the farmers by providing them with an alternative to the chemical fertilizers that they use which are incredibly expensive. It will also give them a great place to dispose of their organic waste that tend to get tossed in with the rest of the trash, burned or just thrown in the bush. This project would require us building a simple structure to cover the pile, as well as several workshops and training sessions with the farmers to educate them about composting and how to do it. Again, I know nothing about composting, but I know how to facilitate something like this, which I’ve learned is almost more important. I know who to call for different aspects of the knowledge that I lack, and I’m quickly learning how to put all those pieces together, and hopefully that will be enough to make a successful project. It’ll definitely keep me busy for a little while though, and I’m really excited to keep up this relationship that I’ve built up with one of these communities that we’ve been working with.

So those are the three main things that are keeping me busy lately. I’m just about 7 months into my service, and I feel like I’m just starting to get some real traction with my projects here, and now I see why the two year commitment is so important. If I were planning on leaving in 5 months, I’m pretty certain that my projects would not be where I wanted them to be. To be honest, I’m also not sure I’d be where I’d want myself to be. Without getting too deep, I’ve been able to grow and mature a lot through the work I’ve been doing here. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m not qualified to be doing a lot of the things I’m doing, but I’m still doing them, and I think I’m doing them pretty well for the most part. A lot the things I’ve been working on would have been really intimidating for me before this experience, but for once I’m not letting my fears and insecurities get in the way. I know that for this process to be successful, I need to really see these projects through successfully, and to tackle whatever comes after them. That’s something I’m fully committed to, but something that’s going to take me longer than 5 months. For that reason, I’m really thankful that I get the opportunity to be here for 2 years.

Well, I think that’s enough introspection for now. Again, sorry for the lack of posts in the past two months, and I promise it won’t be another two months until I post again!

"I love farming, I just love it."

I’m standing on a farm in the hills of northwestern Jamaica, and I take a minute to pause and look around. Behind me is thick bush and undoubtedly hundreds of ants waiting to eat my feet should I cross their path. To my left there is a marl road that will, with some patience and a little bit of skill on the part of the driver, take me back to the coast and the landscape I’ve become accustomed to. In front of me is a small, small farm brimming with dasheen and callaloo that look too fresh for words. I look to my right, and there is an old woman walking down the path towards us. Her back is hunched and her clothes hang loose on her body, but she walks with an air of grace and confidence that defies her age.

When she reaches us, she stops to chat. The farm we are looking at is her sister’s, and she has a farm about the same size further down the path. We ask her how long she has been farming, and she replies enthusiastically:

“I’m 83 years old, and I’ve been farming since I was a girl. I love farming, I love it. I just love farming.”

She tells us she works in her farm every day, and the well-used machete in her hands can attest to that. She repeats what seems to be her mantra, I just love farming over and over again. She says that she takes joy in her work and is proud of what she does, “without us farmers, what would we all eat?” she asks us.

Her sister is in her late 60’s, and also still farming. Her mother is over 100 years old, and although she doesn’t farm so much anymore, she’s still alive and alive and well.

We were only able to spend a few minutes with this 83 year old woman and her sister, but it was an experience that has stayed with me since. Seeing these women was truly inspiring and humbling. I can only imagine the things they have seen in their time – the joys, the hardships, the hellos and goodbyes. But they are still here, still happy, and still doing what they love.

A good day.

Once a month, NEPT (my agency) organizes beach clean-ups. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a service event where we spend a few hours picking up trash from the beach. The clean up for August was scheduled for just 3 weeks after I started with them, and happened to fall on a day where my supervisor would be across the island for the entirety of the week leading up to the clean-up. This meant that I would be in charge of making sure the clean-up happened and happened smoothly. I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull it off, but knew I had to find a way to make it a success. Oh, and did I mention that we had practically no budget for the event?

The week before she left, my supervisor and I talked about what I would need to do to pull the event off. I wrote donation requests, sent emails, called people, and even Facebook-ed to advertise the event, organize the logistics and get prepared. I did all of this not knowing if it was going to be anyone but me at the beach that day cleaning up, or any need for us on that part of the beach, since I hadn’t seen the actual site yet.

The day of the event (last Friday), I was really nervous - were people going to come? Was there going to be work for them? Would we have enough supplies? Would someone pass out from the heat? But the day was fantastic. We had 20 participants - including 13 of the most motivated students I've met here, and 3 other PCVs. Together we picked up 50 huge bags of garbage - so many that we had to beg one of the nearby hotels for additional bags because we ran out of the supply we brought after only about an hour. We got a lot of "good jobs" from people on the beach, and it looked amazing when we were done. On top of all that, one of the participants was so impressed by one of the students that she hired him on the spot to work in her hotel. Everyone went home feeling productive, motivated, exhausted and even asking when they could come back and work more.

The whole day was a really great motivator. Working with an amazing group of students like that was refreshing – there’s a lot of apathy in the youth here, so it was nice to see another side. They’re a group that NEPT is going to continue to have a relationship with, so I’m hoping I’ll get to know some of them better. A lot of times with service programs like Peace Corps, the results of your work are intangible and difficult, if not impossible, to see. So a project like this one was fantastic – just take a look at the before and after pictures:

A shot of the area before

And after - what a difference, huh?

I did have a lot of help and guidance putting the clean-up together, but I was certainly the lead person for the event, and had done most of the background work myself. It felt amazing to have a successful day, and has given me the confidence to tackle an even bigger project in the near future, including our next beach clean-up in September.

The whole group with our 50 (!) bags of trash.

There are more pictures online: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=101129&id=636823325&l=bba5148742

PS - Gavin - I hope that was exciting enough for you, you jerk.

Part I - Independence?

This past weekend marked a major holiday here – Jamaica’s Independence Day. The holiday is actually August 6, but the celebrations lasted into this weekend. I’m still not sure if there’s a Jamaican equivalent to fireworks – or any major tradition to mark the holiday, but there is definitely has been a festive atmosphere here, and people are enjoying themselves and the remainder of the summer. (As a side note, how is it already the second week of August? It’s amazing how time flies...)

Jamaica gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962, 47 years ago. It’s interesting living in a country where a good portion of the population can remember such a dramatic event. The transition from colonial rule to self rule here was peaceful, and I’ve actually been surprised at how rarely the subject comes up – I’ve almost never heard a Jamaican talk about that day 47 years ago, and I’m not entirely sure why. The country has gone through a lot of ups and downs since gaining independence, and Jamaica definitely still has a long way to go. But if you think about it, 47 years after we declared our independence, we had already ratified a new constitution, fought a few wars, still had slaves and had yet to fight our own Civil War. So, in comparison, Jamaica’s really not doing too badly.

While I’m writing all of this, I can’t help but think of a conversation I had in a taxi a little over a week ago. (A quick note about Jamaican taxis – they run just like buses do in the states, only with compact cars – there are set routes and prices, and passengers get in or out wherever they want to along the route.) I got into a taxi, and the driver and passenger were having a conversation about the current state of Jamaican politics and what can and should be done about it. At one point, the driver made a comment about how Jamaica has been independent for almost 50 years, and its government officers should know how to behave by now. A valid point, indeed, but I did consider comforting him with the fact that 233 years after our own independence, American officials are still working out a lot of those same kinks. I held my tongue though, and am glad I did, as the other passenger made what I think to be a more interesting point. He said that although Jamaica is independent on paper, he really doesn’t consider it to be an independent nation - it’s not a country that can stand on its own two feet, and really never has. There has been so much aid poured into this country in so many different ways, and I can’t even imagine where the country would be without it. Perhaps if things had been different from the start, this would not be the case. But after almost 5 decades, such a culture of dependency has evolved that even now, there is a deeply held feeling among many Jamaicans that instead of just doing work themselves, they should just wait for someone else to come along and do it for them – politicians, missionaries, aid workers, etc.

It would be unfair to lay the blame for this attitude fully on the shoulders of Jamaicans. Development work is a tricky thing. The whole idea of development is (or should be) that a “development professional” work for a period of time on a specific problem in a specific area, and work towards making themselves obsolete. If a project is successful, it should eventually be run entirely by nationals of the developing country, with no outside help needed to keep it running. But there’s a problem with this for the development professional – true success would mean that she or he would no longer have a job. And yes, they could just move on after the project is successful and sustainable, but that would mean starting a whole new project in a whole new country – a whole lot of work. And a lot of development workers work on a contract – once a project is done, they need to find a new contract. So in a lot of ways, it actually doesn’t pay for development workers to be too efficient. Modern development work started almost 60 years ago, after World War II, and I can’t help but think that if people had really tried to make development sustainable from the start, I wouldn’t need to be here right now, and the world would be a different place. When you think about how far we’ve come in other aspects of life in the past 60 years, it boggles the mind to think that we can’t assist in making a country like Jamaica independent in the truest sense of the word. This cycle of dependency that has been created and is still being encouraged is no accident.

I know this is a somewhat controversial and cynical position to hold, and one that does not shed a very good light on development as a whole. But it’s a side of the truth that’s important to know, and important to see – especially as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s so easy to get fed up with the “give-me” attitude that so many Jamaicans have, but when that attitude is put into perspective, it helps. And Jamaica is by no means alone in any of this. Developing counties around the world are remarkably similar in this way. So many countries that started out as colonies have never grown out of the colonial mind-set that their problems are someone else’s responsibility to fix.

Granted, development and its history are a lot more complicated than what I’ve explained here. There’s a lot more to it, and there are an endless amount of books on the subject. And there are a huge number of development projects have been sustainable on a large scale and over a long time, so development can work, and it can be sustainable and successful. But that’s easy to forget sometimes.

So it’s tough to say whether Jamaica is really independent or not. In some terms, there really isn’t any country that’s fully independent, is there? As the recent economic downturn has shown, we are all connected a lot more than we thought. Jamaica is in a lot of financial trouble, and starting next month, will be borrowing from International Monetary Fund (IMF) again to help get itself through the next year. Many Jamaicans don’t think this is the best plan, and I am inclined to agree with them. There’s a lot more to say on this topic, but I’m going to save that for a post a little later in the week – this one is already long enough.

I’m not sure what would make a country fully independent, or if Jamaica is there yet. But it has been an interesting point to think about it this past holiday weekend.