Home Sweet Home

Wagwaan my yute!

I know its been awhile since my last post and I'm sorry for that. I was hoping to get internet back at the Mayfair Hotel in Kingston after my site orientation a couple weeks ago, but the wireless at the hotel wasn't working. There was a little room outside of the hotel office that had a couple ethernet lines in it, but with 28 other PC trainees and the rest of the hotel guests, it was nearly impossible to hook up.

Regardless, I'm settled in to my new home now and have internet all the time. I have a PC issued USB modem that gets me Edge (2G) speed. For any Iphone users out there, its about as fast as the first Iphone, but it gets the job done.

For the next two years, this is my house!  I know from this angle it may not look like much, but it is actually very comfortable. Like most houses in Jamaica, it is under construction so the left side is not livable. Building loans and the whole credit/finance thing never really caught on here so a family might take 10-15, maybe even 30 years to build a house. They just do a little work here and there when the money comes in. But the right side under the water tank has two bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen is downstairs and looks out onto the two Ackee trees you see behind the house as well as our fowl coop.  As far as amenities are concerned, again not bad at all. This house is on of 17 houses in Bellevue (population roughly 1500 I think) with running water. It isn't drinkable, so we have to fetch water from the spring below our house every few days, but its clean enough to bathe in and wash clothes in etc... 

Bellevue, Portland is on the North Eastern part of the island . If you find Port Antonio on the map (again, North East coast) and follow the Rio Grande river south up into the Blue Mountain range, you'll run into Bellevue. Its about right smack dab in the middle of the parish, 10 miles from the North coast. When you all get a chance to visit me, you'll want to fly into Kingston. From there its about a 3 to 4 hour journey home assuming you don't get a flat tire along the way, which for me has been about 50% of the time.  It feels kind of remote up here but Port Antonio is the closest developed city area and can pretty much provide anything I need. Furthermore, there are a handful of volunteers working down there, so I have people to visit.

Oh, sorry... whats that? the view? yeah, its pretty good....

While I was hanging my laundry on the roof this last weekend I had one of those moments. I dunno, I guess as I looked out on the view it really started to hit me that, yes, this is home, and I think I could get used to it. The pics don't do it justice of course but if you look at the dip in the ridge in the pic above you can see the horizon. You can also see a bend in the Rio Grande River right in the center of the pic above.  Portland is known for its rainfall but as you can see, this day was perfect.

Below is the view from my bedroom window...

This is my brother Rick taking bananas to market... The building to the right is the school, where I will (hopefully) be doing some ag/environmental education. The library is also my "office", where I am currently working.

The view from the front of the school...

The front of the school. Most schools in Jamaica are made from these pre fab buildings. I think uncle D asked about the red tank on Facebook. It is the water catch because the school has no running water. The students, or "pickney dem" as we say here, use a pit latrine which most of them are used to.

This is my host brother Rick roasting breadfruit for breakfast. The picture was taken from the kitchen door of the house. Over real flame is the traditional and preferred way to do it...

More view...

The fowl coop... Rik Dog (my buddy serving with the PC in Rwanda) was asking me about what kind of food I can afford on my PC budget. He doesn't get a whole lot of protein over there. I'm pretty lucky here because my family raises broiler hens to sell and eat themselves. The way we have the meal thing worked our right now is that I throw them some cash for two meals a day and then I'm on my own for lunch. So, as a result, I get fresh chicken on the regular. Also, the advantages of living on a farm is that most things you eat come right from your back yard, and they are plentiful. Its a beautiful thing, really.

This is my host mom, Cate. In Patois you actually throw a "y" in there so it sounds more like "Kyate". Im working on it. I cant remember what exactly it was she was cooking but chances are it was awesome... 

I have a brief story about cooking...  During our training we had a handful of "emotional wellness" sessions designed to keep us sane and healthy during service. I know, it sounds really touchy feely, and some of it definitely was but most of it was really helpful. We talked a lot about finding our "stabilizers" which are those things, people, rituals, places or whatevers that in a weird way center you and establish some form of individuality.  For example, a few of my stabilizers would be music, Karen Tussing, and my french press coffee maker (in no specific order, mind you).  Turns out, another stabilizer of mine is cooking, which unfortunately due to the structure of training and the Jamaican culture, has been stripped away from me during the last 10 weeks or so.  When I moved up to Bellevue, I knew that somehow, I had to be let back into the kitchen. So when Cate and I sat down for dinner together on my first night we got to talking... I told her "Cate, I really love to cook and wouldn't mind cooking for myself and the family every once in a while." Like all Jamaican moms, she gave me a very puzzled/curious and almost defensive look as if to say "whitey, there is no way you are touching my kitchen." Of course she didn't actually say it, but her eyes said enough.... Strike one...

I wasn't going to give up though. I needed to cook. My emotional well being depended on it. So when Sunday rolled around Cate and I were doing our usual morning ritual and she was expressing her indecision on what to make for Sunday supper. She just couldn't decide. So in a mocking tone she looked up and asked "do you want to make it?" Before she had a chance to laugh at herself I said "Yes! yes I will make it Cate, I will make our Sunday supper."  I think out of laziness and the desire to be entertained for the evening, she agreed. And there, laid before me, was my shot at the kitchen. 

Time to decide on a menu. Seeing as we raise chicken I knew that was going to be a given. But how was I going to prepare it? I started looking around the cupboard for anything that looked familiar. Believe it or not, way in the back, was a bottle of BBQ sauce from England or someplace. I asked Cate where she got it and how old it was. She didn't really know the answer to either question but she thought it belonged to one of her sons and that he had left it there after a trip back from the UK. SCORE. I probably live in the only house in Portland that has BBQ sauce. Luck was on my side. I gave it a little taste and decided and it wasn't bad so BBQ chicken was going to be the main course.  It just so happened that on my walk the night before, one of the girls that works at the shop here gave me about 2 lbs of okra. Up until this point I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with 2 lbs of okra. Problem solved. Side dish 1 was going to be fried okra.  I figured just in case my family hated fried okra and bbq chicken I better enlist my brother Rick to make some classic Jamaican rice and peas so that nobody went hungry.  At one point, Rick tried to convince me that black people didn't eat fried okra and that to make such a thing would be crazy. Boy, did I get a kick out of that!  The dinner was hit, and I am now trusted in the kitchen. I am officially stabilized. 

Before I sign off I gotta tell you about my day yesterday. Not to sound sappy but it was kind of a dream day for me. I spent 8 hours in the Jamaican bush picking coffee.  Those of you that know my interest in this area can understand. I think I get some of it from sister. But for those of you that don't know, I wrote a thesis on coffee supply chains and coffee production in developing nations. I've spent hours reading and writing about it, but yesterday, I got to LIVE it.... 

This is Dawnette, Me and Cate after a long day's work. Dawnette is an executive member of the farmers group I work with and so is Cate. We had some great quality time and good conversation. I picked about half the coffee they did but they still said I "work good" and that I would be welcome back anytime. Pretty sure we have another pick scheduled for next week and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be there.

This is my host dad Lebert floating the day's pick.

And lastly, this is me and Shontoya checking out what I picked that day. Shontoya is related to me somehow but I can't exactly figure it out yet. And yes, in 8 hours I was only able to pick 1 five gallon bucket of coffee. It is seriously tough work. *Warning* Geek out time...
The coffee truck came by today and paid $750J ($8.75 US) for that bucket. If I had been a contracted laborer, I would have only seen a fraction of that.  To add some perspective, a bag of fertilizer cost $5,000J which means that a farmer working at my pace would have to pick 6.5 days worth of coffee, just to buy a bag of fertilizer. Oh yeah, then he has to feed his family. Sip on that next time you roll up to the Starbucks drive through.
This tells me two things: We (the farmers group) need to get away from synthetic fertilizers as much as we can. Believe it or not this is going to be a tough sell. It also tells me that farmers need more leverage in the market. The questions is, how? Holler at me if you have any ideas...

As always, thanks for reading. I love and miss you all...