School Garden: A dat wi did wan long time.

GG uses his machete to dig a hole for a schotch bonnet pepper sucker.

The school has talked about starting a garden for a long time. This past week it finally began! Community members brought tools, knowledge, and expertise. The school brought the seed and fertilizer, and the students brought the labor and their questions. So far we've cleared some land, started a compost heap, and planted hot pepper, coco, sweet pepper, plantain, and flowers. We'll use the produce in the school kitchen and if there is left over food we'll send it home with the children that might need it. We've been having a lot of fun even in the rain. I just hope they start listening to my pleading "Please don't run with the machete!!"

Fitzroy shows the students how to protect the sweet pepper nursery from the rain with banana leaves.

Too much information

The view from the school yard yesterday afternoon. This is only half of the rainbow!

I'm still having a wonderful time in Westphalia. I've started learning more about the people who live there: how they act, what they like, and all the familial relations. In some cases, too much. A past principle threatened me with a gun after I wouldn't help him embezzle funds. These are my children but that one was an accident with a prostitute. His mother went to jail for throwing her baby into a pit latrine. I caught those third graders having sex the other day. She stole from him and blamed it on the other guy. My stepfather is trying to sleep with me. Look at his stomach (lifts up his shirt) he just had surgery! That boy steals my crops all the time! I don't know why after seeing me for a month people approach me with all this information. Is it because I'm white? A peace corps volunteer? Would tell these things to any stranger who visits the community? This happened a bit when I was in Negril, but its much more frequent here.

I never really know what to say or how to react. Sometimes I just change the subject. A teacher at the school told me she never acts the information that she hears because she doesn't know it is true. If a child is legitimately confiding in me shouldn't I at least investigate? How would that affect my reputation and my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer? How would I even go about doing anything if there aren't any local authorities in the community? For now I'm listening, forgetting some information, and being as supportive as I can without involving other people.

Smiling faces after eating birthday cake and ice cream.

Put the fun back in funeral!

I recently went to my first Jamaican funeral with Mr. Campbell, or as his friends call him "Youn." He is the president of the farmer's group in Westphalia. His son-in-law's father who lived in the neighboring community of Resource had died at 80 in late September.

Most people in Westphalia will dress up for church but wear their "slippers" (flip flops). They carry ther shoes in a scandal bag (plastic bag) to change into once they get to the event so that they don't get mud on their shoes from the dirt roads. So, off I went dressed in my Sunday best, shoes in my right hand, umbrella in my left. We both made sure to carry our umbrellas, as the frost was thick when we left the house. (Frost = fog in Westphalia.) Even though we both "wouldn't mind if the rain never fall" it did.

It is a long journey from Westphalia to Resource which can be made a little shorter by taking a shortcut. After asking several farmers we found the shortcut and started down the little trail. Everything was fine until the rain started. The steep dirt track turned into a slip and slide. Before I knew it I was doing a backbend with both my hands on the ground behind me. In trying to save my dress from getting dirty, (I wouldn't want to perpetuate the stereotype that white people are dirty.) I had sacrificed my thumb. I wrapped Mr. Campbell's sweat rag around my thumb and grasped my umbrella tightly to stop the bleeding. We stumbled the rest of the way to Resource managing to arrive relatively clean. We arrived at the grave site and a little old man promptly grabbed my hand and started rubbing it on his belly slurring something uninteligible. I later found out that he was the brother of Sadpha, the deceased. Despite the rain, the church was full. (Jamaicans don't usually go out in the rain.) Sadpha had seventeen children and it was very obvious throughout the service that he was well loved and a great defender of his children. I was surprised to see more smiles than tear, people dancing and clapping along with the songs, and a genuine feeling of celebration in the air. As we climbed the hill back to the gravesite, Mr. Campbell explained to me, "Me don't like look pon no dead. Me don't believe so much inna dead. Nobody nuh nutten when dem dead. Dead don't matta. Yuh only a somebody afore yuh dead."

We arrived back at the gravesite where Sadpha's closest friends could be made out through a haze of ganja smoke, struggling to walk straight, and liberally pouring more rum. A crowd gathered around the sepulchre as the paulbearers slid the casket in and started to lay the final concrete blocks around it. A strong alto strain cut through the fog, "If you miss me...Don't come searching." Harmonies from the rest of the crowd filled out the song. "And if you don't see me. remember I'm gone." I started to think, why are American funerals so sad anyway? Mr. Campbell said it well. A person is only a person when she is alive. Death doesn't matter as much as life.

Back at Site

Community members repair the road with tires and stones. They've already repaired this road once before in this way only to have it wash out again.

I got back to Westphalia last Monday. Peace Corps drove me as far as they could, about half way. We were surprised to see that the road had completely collapsed: classic case of the Jamaican understatement - American literalness clash. "I don't really sure about the fish" means "We don't have any fish today." "Do you like cats?" means "Ten cats live at your new home. Are you ok with that?" "Mi soon come" means "I might not get there for an hour." AND "The road block" means "The road has completely collapsed." (Ok, so maybe "soon come" should be in another category along with "When I come back" and "Just a minute." These phrases are great because they are vague. You can use them anytime! They can mean exactly what they sound like, the opposite of what they sound like, or anything in between.)

School children wave at the helicopter of food sent by the OPDEM (Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management)

Lorna, who lives in Westphalia walked down to Mavis Bank, filled her backpack with Ackee, and was hopefully trying to hitch a ride back up.

After walking around the collapsed road, calling every community member I knew, and waiting for a few hours, I managed to charter a taxi up the hill. The ride was bumpy, but the driver was very good. There were two turns that made me hold my breath. The rains had washed out much of the dirt below the road. I understood why the driver had refused to take more than one. A few pounds more and we would end up in the river! The car took me as far as it could go: still about an hour's walk from home. I lugged my bags with the help of my new community members, feeling silly that I collected so many books at the Peace Corps Conference.

Helping distribute the food from the helicopter made me realize that I NEVER EVER want to be a disaster relief worker. Westphalia is a farming community so people had plenty of food despite the road and rains. Still, everyone was quarreling, machetes were waving, and children and old people were being shoved around. It made the soup kitchen look like a well rehearsed ballet.

Today, I ventured out of the community to work on a water project with Adam, a fellow PCV in Clarendon. The road had been filled in by community members with tires, stones, and dirt. It's great that the road is passable now, but everyone says that a better solution is needed. This is the second time that the road has collapsed there. The first time they repaired the road in the same way so the next heavy rain will wash out the road again. Power was restored on the 5th.

The past two weeks in Westphalia have been WONDERFUL. I've been visiting the school, hauling water from the river, learning to pick coffee, caring for the 9 puppies in my yard, and introducing my family to Pad Thai. We had our first community meeting last night which over 60 people attended. The community members have big dreams for piped water, smooth roads, a community center, and more employment opportunities. I have my personal dreams of riding my hypothetical donkey named Clementine, raising chickens in the back yard (we're building the coop Saturday with a neighbor!), and wielding a machete like a pro throughout every footpath in the Blue and John Crow Mountains.

Girls in grades 2-5 at Westphalia All Age School. First and third from the left are part of my host family.

Landslides at my new site

The Peace Corps Jamaica country director called me in early August to informed me that my safety and security had been compromised. While Negril is a wonderful spot with a relaxed atmosphere, sunny climate, and low crime rate there is an active sex tourism industry. Part of my work with NEPT involved implementing the Blue Flag Programme at the various resorts to try to encourage eco-tourism as an alternative to sex tourism. The typical sex tourist in Negril is a white woman who finds a dread-locked companion in a union commonly termed "rent-a-rasta." Sexual harassment is present all over the island and is something that you deal with whether you are American, Jamaican, male, or female. However, Negril's sex tourism industry naturally fosters harassment of white females in Negril. While I thought I was handling most situations fairly well, Peace Corps told me that I was no longer safe in Negril and that I had to move.

Due to the situation, I was faced with an opportunity that most Peace Corps Volunteers never get to experience: choosing my own site. My ideal Peace Corps service would be in a small rural area with a strong sense of community. The people would be motivated and hard-working but might lack the formal education or resources required for self-advocacy. I took out my Jamaica road map, looking for towns that were located at the end of a road. I knew that a town at a road's end was sure to be rural. Generally, communities at the end of a road in Jamaica have very little crime because the way into the town is also the way out. I started reading newspaper articles, ministry reports, and lonely planet entries about all the towns I could find. In my search I came across Westphalia. Located in northeastern St. Andrew near Blue Mountain Peak, it has the highest elevation and lowest literacy rate in all of Jamaica. I paid a preliminary visit where I fell in love with the beautiful views and cool weather. I wanted to go there; but did they want me?

The highest settled local community in Jamaica, Westphalia is nestled under Cinchona Botanical Gardens and looks up at Blue Mountain Peak.

Peace Corps called a community meeting to discuss what a Peace Corps Volunteer is, what she does, and to ask if the community would be interested. Though the meeting was held on a afternoon in the middle of the week when most of the community would be working at the farms, 45 people attended and unanimously agreed that they wanted me to live there. As an older Rastafarian farmer said "People better than money."

I moved there last Friday and stayed there over the weekend before having to leave for a Peace Corps conference on the north coast in Ocho Rios on Monday. The first two days at site were wonderful. I didn't get hit on once. The harmonies at church were IN TUNE. My host family is SUPER nice, and I already got an "I love you" hug. An I love you hug is the name I've given to when an older Jamaican woman wraps her arms around you and says "I love you." When kids at the soup kitchen want an I love you hug, they usually say, "hug me up." I'm living with a host family: Miss Bev, her two daughters who are my age, her 17 year old son, her last daughter who is 7 and her 4 grandchildren 3, 5, 5, and 7. My living conditions have gone from air conditioning, hot water, and a grocery store to a pit latrine, bucket baths, and no internet. I'm happy about living simply and falling asleep to donkeys braying instead of loud reggae music. I'm a little homesick for my friends in Negril and the sense of community I had there, but I'm sure it won't take long to get that in Westphalia....once I get back up there...

Jamaica has been in a tropical depression since Tuesday with heavy rains falling on much of the island. There have been flash floods, power outages, and landslides. The power in Westphalia has been gone since Wednesday. The hillsides are very steep and prone to landslides. The road to Westphalia has been blocked in several places, and the bridge over the Yallahs river, just past Mavis Bank is flooded. Luckily everyone in Westphalia community is safe and healthy. They are staying in their houses until the rains stop. There is another system reported to hit Jamaica next week. If it hasn't reached by Monday I think I will try to take the bus to Mavis Bank and walk from there. Most of the people in the area are subsistence farmers. No one will know what state the crops are in until the rain stops. I imagine there will be plenty of work to do by the time I get back!

Blue Mountain coffee in the foreground and the Blue Mountains in the background.