Goat dem mi seh

Whole heap of things to talk about over the past few months. And because I’m lazy, I’ll let the photos do most of the talking.

First, a few of my site in Portmore:

A scene of Kingston, viewed from Portmore (Waterford specifically, I think.) Those are the docks I ride past on the coasta into town.

The gullies don’t drain properly and as a result all the litter (that isn’t burned) is collected in the stagnant water, where algae and mosquitoes thrive. One of my secondary projects is trying to work with a recycling program to set up more recycling points in the city, and also to make presentations about the harmful effects of littering and burning of plastic and rubbish.

Here’s a view of my pad. I appear to be journaling at the moment. Oh, those potatoes on top of the fridge? I forgot about them for like a week, and they turned into brown mushy water.

My bedroom. The keyboard you see set me back almost my entire settling in allowance, but since I could not bring my accordion down it was an essential purchase.

And now, GOATS!!

NUFF GOATS!

GOATS AND BABY GOATS! (kids!)

Fellow PCV Matt inoculating some goats. The injections are antibiotics, which prevent the goats from getting worms, making them healthy so when the time is right they can be turned into delicious, delicious curried mutton.

The inoculations are part of a project by my agency, Food for the Poor, where we aid in the goat rearing at a local prison in Spanish Town.

Matt’s done this before, but this was my first time. I was a little hesitant my first few goes, and one of the goats bucked and bent the needle in half. Later on I was shaking a bit, but was able to prick, inject the full 10cc of antibiotics, and release the goats in about 5 seconds, which I hope the goats appreciated.

A somewhat disturbing portrait of me. There’s just something sinister about someone smiling behind shades dripping in sweat and holding a loaded syringe in latex gloved hands.

This one I just thought looked cool. It’s a close-up of the zinc roof on the model double unit house at the Food for the Poor office. I took it as part of a quality control guide for inspecting the houses in the field after construction.

That's all for now. Next on my agenda is trying to join a local reggae group and become the "token white guy" on the keyboard. Wish me luck!

Long Bay Birthday

Quick update, just some pretty pictures and brief descriptions.

Long Bay, Portland, on the North coast of the island. We were celebrating another volunteer's birthday. Here are some of us on the beach (we're the white ones)

Gavin and I decide to strike some poses.

It took hours of special effects to get the hair to stand up just right for the "wistfully gazing across the sea on a Friday afternoon" look I was going for.

A moonlit stroll on the beach. I set my camera to a long exposure time to use the moonlight to light up the shot, I think it turned out really nice.

Another one from that night, although the flash of light behind the clouds was a bolt of lightning.

Now a few work pictures.

A rainwater catchment and the open storage cistern. We're looking to design and construct a covering for it to keep garbage and animals out, as well as a safety measure to keep children away.The water is held in the cistern, then piped across the road and down to the communities below. Here a woman fills some water jugs. In the rural communities with no piped water, families may make several trips a day to the "water shop."

While investigating a water distribution system on the other side of the island, a group of schoolchildren were walking home. We couldn't drive much faster than a walking pace because of the roads, but it was a long walk and the pikni dem (children) definitely appreciated the ride.

Breakfast of Champions

Warning: personal reflections below. I promise it leads somewhere, but feel free to skip to the pictures if you'd like. I probably would.

Been a while since I've had time to write. Things have been a bit hectic lately, and there's been too much to get into details over - suffice to say it's a strange feeling consistently waking up and not knowing what city or country you're in. But I've started to get adjusted to the chaos - so to speak. For a long time I've been seeking order, familiarity. There was nothing more comfortable than to know that when I left the cereal on the table it would be waiting for me when I came home, or when I came to the office I would be welcomed by a long list of repetitive tasks to complete in a predesignated and non deviating fashion, and I could pick up the next day from where I left off. I actually really enjoyed my first temp job the summer after my freshmen year at college, where all I did was copy and paste excel spreadsheets for 40 hours a week, for 10 weeks. There is something to those routines, you get a feeling that life can be broken down into simple reactions. A closed system, no outside variables. You set the gears, wind the spring, and let it go. There's never any extremes, and you can expect the expected.

However, there's something horribly wrong with spending days and years never straying outside of your comfort zone. There's just too much more to life than existing. I used to be afraid of failure, of being dissapointed, of being hurt, but at least that's feeling something. I could feel myself growing numb to life, and I knew I needed a change. Maybe some time abroad could help this suburban white boy with the experiences he knows he needs but is still terrified of. Of course, it's not as easy as that. Everyone always says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (or, as I heard yesterday, "it takes small bites to eat an elephant"), but the real struggle is the day to day - the second and the third and the six thousand four hundred and ninth step, where you don't have the anticipation of the journey or the excitement of the finish, just the frustrating grind of the middle. And even then, it's not just one journey with one destination. It's a universe of hundreds of dimensions you travel in. You're losing ground in one direction and gaining ground in the other, but you might be focused on a third where you're standing still. It's impossible to keep a running narative of all the ways you're evolving but you still try because we feel we must make sense of it all. Before I tried to manage this by cutting out all the variables I could and was left with a simple routine that I could manage, at the cost of real experience, and in a way, my humanity. That chaos that is real life was terrifying, and I knew it would be a long struggle to get used to it - the true chaos and not my false order.

It's been about a decade since I read this exert from Vonnegut, but it's been swelling in the back of my head all these years. I only read it once, but I could almost recite it verbatum:

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Ok, I said this was going somewhere so I guess I should finally segway into it.


Last weekend I went to the Ocho Rios Jazz festival (held of course in Kingston, Treasure Beach, and Ocho Rios - each about 100 km away from each other. Makes sense.) I wasn't feeling well in the morning and was debating blowing it off, but I kicked myself enough to get going, and I'm glad I did. The photo above was from the first night, there were about a dozen volunteers at the bar ($80 draft Red Stripe, hells yes.) There were a few group pictures taken, I'll try to get those from the other PCVs.

The next morning we woke up and headed downtown to the Burger King for breakfast (yeah, I know, but you get coffee AND orange juice with your sandwich and hash browns, so it's hard to beat.) From there we headed to Dunn's River Falls. We left early to try to miss any tourist or cruise ship groups, and aside from a row with staff over whether we should pay for the locker when we brought our own lock, it was pretty incredible. The water was just a bit chilly, but you adjust surprisingly fast to it. It felt great to put your back against the falls and let the water smash into you, a lot like a deep tissue massage. I could stand at a 30 degree angle backwards and the water pounding my back would keep me upright.


Afterwards we headed towards a more private river down the road. Here we are still dry, just overlooking this:

Let me explain something briefly. I cannot swim, and I am not comfortable in water. I was fine at Dunn's River Falls because it never got above my waist. When I'm in a pool, I'll stay in the shallow end, and I can swim (well, frantically dogpaddle) from one point to the next, and then make a beeline for the edge and hold on with both hands. When I'm underwater, I panick and try to breathe through my nose and will be blowing water out of my lungs for the next half hour.

To top it all off, this water was crystal clear. When I was in it I could see straight down to my feet, and in the middle I could not see the bottom. That was scary. And this, this was terrifying:

After jumping in, of course I paniked and water shot straight up my nose. Then I flailed until I got to the rocks and held on for life, shaking the whole time. My expectation would be that after the jump I would relax and be able to move around easier, but that did not happen at all. After jumping in here a few times, we moved up the river and then swam down a few hundred feet going over a few small falls. Every time I had to swim in water I couldn't stand in, I was terrifyed and needed to be coaxed (Thank you Matt, Melissa, Ang, and Chris for putting up with my wussiness.) And now I finally relate back to my introspective ramblings at the beginning of this entry. The easiest part was that first jump - everything after that was harder and harder. The chaos of not having a rock to stand on will always be frightening to me, but I can get used to it, like I'm getting used to the heat and the cockroaches. I didn't have any regrets that day, which is all I could ask for.

Sunday we went to a beach a few miles away for the last day of the jazz fest. I met one of the promotors the first night and was able to get a Peace Corps free entry, and was able to see these guys from Poland for the second time in the weekend:

They played a great set, complete with duelin' accordions, a rockin stand-up bass, and an insane fiddler. (They have free mp3s at their website here) When they got to their slower traditional songs I had a horrible longing for being back in Hamtramck, eating pierogi and drinking Zyvidek in Polish Village, but I settled for a red stripe and some chicken foot soup. I met up with Judy, another PCV in the minubus back to Spanish Town. We drove through some light rain, and I listened to some Iron & Wine while looking out at the mountains. I was home soon enough, ready for the next unexpected turn of events, and whatever's after that.

No Problem

Quick story about an accident on the road yesterday,

A group of us are heading back from MoBay (Montego Bay) yesterday evening, winding around the hills near Ewarton. Some of the people in the car were talking about the road conditions and how accidents can cause 5-10 hour detours around the mountains. Shortly thereafter 5 cars in front of us a flatbed tractor-trailer is approaching a hairpin turn. A sedan wants to pass the semi right at the turn so it speeds up right at the corner, turns too fast, and flips, landing on its roof.

A few of us get out of the car and walk over to see. Nobody is hurt, and a few drivers start to give their opinion on this particular driver's mental state. A crowd soon gathers around the car, and in one motion flips it upright. The trailer is motioned to backup up the hill to give room to move the car, and the cars behind it backup to allow him room. With the space cleared by the trailer, the uprighted car is maneuvered into a nearby driveway, and the road is clear. All the gawkers (myself included) are forced to run back to their cars to keep the traffic flowing.

All of this - from when the car flipped to when traffic started to flow again - couldn't have taken more than 5 minutes. I was mentally preparing myself for a late return home when the group flipped the car, and I stood amazed while the car was flipped and moved in less time it takes some people I know to parallel park. The driver was of course extremely lucky - if the car had flipped a hundred yards earlier or later it would have fallen off the precipice.

PCT to PCV

As of Friday, May 15th I'm no longer a trainee and am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!

The swearing in ceremony was held at the U.S. embassy, and we weren't allowed to bring cameras in, so I don't have any photos from the ceremony. Here's some pictures from the weeks leading up to it.

A few weeks ago fellow trainees Matt and Judy accompanied me on a SPA (Small Projects Assistance) site at Ewarton high school. The SPA projects are funded through US AID with grants written by Peace Corps Volunteers. We were visiting the project of a volunteer who completed service and left the island.

The project was a greenhouse built with the local farmers group with the intention of educating community members on the benefits of greenhouse farming. Because the greenhouse was constructed on the grounds of the high school, the agriculture students do much of the work. They also do other fun things like butchering and plucking the chickens for the school lunch. I have photos of that, but figured most people wouldn't like to see them.

This is the high school in the distance with some corn stalks in the front. As of yet all the only corn I've seen in the country was imported U.S. sweet corn (and very expensive.) There's a lot of trade economics that I'm not fully aware of, but the end result is a strange scenario where 75% of the food Jamaicans eat is imported, and you have weird circumstances like how powdered milk from New Zealand is so cheap it makes it impossible to have large-scale dairy production and cattle farmers dump their milk.


This is the front of my office. I would probably have to stand on the other side of the by-pass to get a shot of the entire office and both warehouses. It's really big. When I'm not on the road with coworkers I'll come here and help around the office. Exactly what that means, I'm still working out. I'm still working out what priorities I will be focusing on and how my skills would be best utilized. If anyone wants action pictures of me updating Access databases let me know, otherwise I'll continue with pictures of worksites and the country, like the ones below:

This is a typical country water supply. Many of the smaller communities are too small to have municipal water piped around mountains to their homes, so they may use something like the rainwater catchment here. This particular system is about 80 years old and catches rainwater that falls into the holding tank on the right where some of the workers are sitting on. From there it is piped into the pumphouse on the left which will eventually house 4 standpipes for people to fill water tanks, and for the rest to be pumped to a school located around the corner.

The view from the top. There are some cracks in the cement and the blocks along the edge that are in need of repair, which is were Food for the Poor comes in. FFP supplies the community with funds for the cement and labor to do the repairs.


Some of the workers posed for me for this one. It was fairly steep and I had to walk really slow. I tried to ask if they used a specific water/cement ratio when they were mixing the concrete, but I should have learned by now that cement work is more of an art than a science here. However, I've seen the photos from afterwards and the repairs seem to be holding up quite well.

Since I love showing off ridiculous photos of myself, here's one of me losing a sack race at the FFP beach outing in Runaway beach. I was close and tried to dive for the finish, but was a bit behind, and landed hard on the sand (which wasn't that forgiving.) I also embarassed myself playing dominoes by passing when I could have played, and later by locking up the board, both times causing my partner and I to lose.

Last week back at the Mayfair in Kingston, the last time group 80 will all be together until our Close of Service seminar 2 years from now. (Actually most of us will see each other a week and a half from now at the quarterly meeting, but still.)

Our farewell barbeque at the Powell residential building in Kingston. Everyone chipped in and I made a few other volunteers and I made a menu of cheeseburgers, vegeburgers, hotdogs, baked potatoes, chips and mango salsa, and brownies. That is the same bandana that I wore while flipping burgers at the hideaway over 5 years ago back at Michigan. We also had some cane, but no machette to cut them with, so we had to make due with the brownies and cake that Ann our Safety and Security Coordinator brought for us. Which was delicious.

The next morning we were sworn in as volunteers and had more cake. I'm incredibly relieved that training is over and both excited and terrifyed at the idea of being out on my own. Wish me luck, and thanks for all your support!

Fish and More Fish

Went out with some Food for the Poor (FFP) employees this week for site visits, one to an ornamental fish farm and one to a fishing village. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera to the farm and only have a few pictures from the fishing village. My coworker took photos from the farm, so hopefully sometime next week I’ll have pictures of coi and angel fish, and of me struggling with a net to catch some goldfish.

FFP assists 17 fishing villages across the island, providing fishermen with boats, motors, lifejackets, and safety and mechanical training in exchange for contributions to the community they are based in and a commitment to safety.


Here is one of the FFP boats (all painted yellow and blue.) The fishermen can go an hour or so out to sea to catch fish, which are then sold to venders and then sold across the island. All the other boats were at sea, this being the first calm day in the past week. Of course it didn’t stay that way for long, and was raining pretty hard on the way back to Spanish Town. My coworker told me the rainy season should last a few months, and then hurricane season begins. Awesome.


These black rhino tanks are ubiquitous across the island. Where there is no piped water, the tanks are filled with rainwater harvested from roofs or from concrete-lined gullies, or purchased and shipped in trucks. Where there is piped water, it is frequently unreliable, and the tanks provide storage for the inevitable shutoffs. They also provide pressure for times of high usage, such as in the morning when or just after work. This tank is currently filled with trucked water, but will soon be connected to the municipal water system. Unfortunately, they are also teethed (stolen) frequently, hence the need for the locked cage.


Don’t ask me why, but I’m still fascinated by these little guys. I have vague memories of going to Disneyland when I was 5 or 6 and being more entertained by the lizards than anything else (all the rides terrified me. Even the teacups. Yeah.) Also, they eat bugs and mosquitoes, so I don’t mind finding them in my room.


After the visit was over I was dropped off at my host mother’s house on Jefferson street. Being the second largest city in Jamaica, we have the luxury of occasionally having street signs, most of our potholes filled, and pretty consistent running water and electricity. I’ll take some more pictures of my community, but after I become more integrated and don’t look like a tourist or a C.I.A. agent.


Here’s how I’ve been spending most of my evenings lately, doing peace corps homework and catching up on some reading. My veranda is very nice for this.


Bonus picture I grabbed of facebook. Here’s what the inside of a typical coasta (Toyota “Coaster” bus) looks in Jamaica, although usually there would be far fewer “whiteys,” and Jamaicans can usually fit 5 or more people in each of those rows. There are chairs that fold down in the aisle, which is great for packing in people but not so great when you’re in the back and your stop comes up. Each bus is unique to the Jriva (Driver) and will be covered in decals, and will sometimes sport dvd players, shag carpeting, and air conditioning inside. On the ride home from Kingston on Wednesday, I heard a reggae version of “Tracy Chapmen – Fast Car.” That, and a reggae version of “Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’” have been the strangest covers I’ve heard yet here, although I’ve been assured that I’m sure to hear just about every type of music covered and sampled hundreds of times over. Now if I can only find some good accordion playing…

Jamaican Birthday

The Peace Corps has three sectors in Jamaica; Youth as Promised, Environment, and Community Environmental Health. I will be serving in the Health and Sanitation sector, also abbreviated "WatSan" (Water and Sanitation.) Our stated purpose is to ensure "Jamaicans will create a healthier populace committed to action and move towards higher standards of community health by strengthening their knowledge and capacity to reduce incidences of lifestyle, water, environmental and sanitation related diseases." Our stated goals are "Goal 1; Community Health: Community members will improve their overall health practices. Goal 2; Water: Community members will improve their access to and use of appropriate water resources for good health. Goal 3; Sanitation: Community members will improve and adopt appropriate sanitation practices and infrastructure for good health." The majority of our training has been in our sector groups, and I have some pictures to share from a field trip we took to Port Royal (Home of legeondary pirate Captain Morgan, and filming location of Pirates of the Caribbean and Dr. No)

But first, a Jamaican birthday tradition.

I arrived in Jamaica on Wednesday, March 18^th, one week before my birthday. During training, when some of the Jamaicans discovered my birthday was coming up, I heard whispered “Ooooo, and you never had a birthday in Jamaica have you? Ooooo…” I had a vague feeling that some sort of prank was afoot. The day before, I called my friend Tex to have him update my facebook page, since I didn’t have internet access. I asked him if he knew anything about Jamaican birthday traditions, and he googled it. But like a true friend, didn’t tell me what to expect, and just let me know that I’ll be surprised.

I don’t have any photos of the flouring in action, however here are some of the aftermath.

So the tradition is that on a birthday, in addition sometimes to receiving cake, Jamaicans try to make you a cake. To that end something like half a dozen Jamaican children followed me around the corner of the block pelting me with bags of flour. When they got me pretty good on my shirt (which I had worn for the first time that night, and had on for about 15 minutes before the flouring), I thought they were finished. But they snuck up behind me and got me right in the side of the face, so it covered my glasses. The woman in the second photo was my host mother while I was training, and was in cahoots with the wicked children for the whole thing. But she gave me a smirinov ice and some pepsi for my birthday, and helped wash the flour off my shirt. Thanks Dawn!

After talking to my host brother, I found out apparently I got off easy, as many times they’ll flour someone in the morning so everyone they see knows it’s their birthday. Also, sometimes they use water so it sticks better. However, there were three more birthdays that week, and nobody else got floured. The girls tried to start a new tradition of throwing flowers on the person instead of bags of flour. We’ll see if it takes off.

Here is the Health sector of Peace Corps Jamaica Group 80 on the beach after a delicious lunch of fried festival and terrifying-looking fish (they had TEETH man, that’s not right.) The guys decided to strike a cheerleader pose.

We then went to visit a local school that had a Peace Corps volunteer in the past. All the kids were let out early so the school could prepare for the big standardized test the following day. The whole courtyard had some really great paintings of the water cycle, different types of teeth, and other random informative things. Here’re a couple pictures I took.

All in all, a very nice birthday. Hopefully just one of three I’ll have here.

Format and Style

Hello everyone,

I apologize for the lack of updates recently. I’ve been in Jamaica for just under four weeks, and with all the lectures and moving and training and meeting hundreds of people, the last month has been a little bit of a blur. Also, I still haven’t quite decided on what type of format I want this journal to be written. I was originally hoping to use a photo-essay style, however I won’t be taking any pictures until I am more familiar with my surroundings and get to know my coworkers and community members to a point where we are both comfortable with it. I considered writing strictly about work, but that would mean I wouldn’t have anything to write about until after I’m sworn-in in May. In addition, it seems that the line between work and personal lives becomes blurred as the contacts and progress you make in the community become just as valuable as that in the office. I haven’t really considered a journal revolving around my personal life because I’m generally a boring person, and while hopefully this changes soon, it probably won’t for at least the first few entries and you would be forced to read about my experiences burning pasta sauce while being distracted watching House (which was how I spent my Thursday night.)

The only option left would be for me to go for a stream of consciousness affair, where due to the meandering method I use to recall events – complete with more tangents than a wikipedia article – will allow me to touch on all the aspects of my experience I’d like to convey with whoever chooses to read. If sections of my narrative appear missing or something appears in need of clarification, please just ask. I may have become so familiar and accustomed to the matter that I neglected to explain it, or maybe a kitten walked past my door and I lost my train of thought. Oh man, there’re stray kittens everywhere! This little brown and orange one was nibbling on a piece of salt fish under the awning hiding from the rain after work on Tuesday and it was so adorable. Lots of stray dogs and goats too, however they are very loud and wake me up at night, so are therefore less cute.

Oh yeah, um, so I’ll try to sort everything out into somewhat of a cohesive narrative for each entry, but I cannot promise anything. When talking with some volunteers about how we planned on keeping in touch with our friends and family, I mentioned I planned to do so mainly through my online journal, and another volunteer warned against baring my personal life through the internet. This is a concern of mine, however a greater concern for me is to be able to express myself and what I’m feeling, especially now that I’m thousands of miles away from friends and family. My usual method of communication began with me combing through details of a story I wished to tell, and removing any that reveal too much of myself, and consequently made the experience I was trying to relate as dull as a police blotter. Therefore it has been my resolution recently to only regret the things I’ve done, not those that I’ve failed to do. Dreams of mice and men, etc. Hopefully in this way my entries will be at least someone relevant and informative to my intended audience: my family, friends, coworkers, classmates, friends of friends, potential future Peace Corps volunteers, and anyone else interested.

Any and all questions, criticisms, requests, etc. are welcome.

More Excited than a Green Snake in a Suger Cane Field

Hey everyone,

I'll write a full introduction at a later date, however I have a few pictures to post while I'm here.

Peace Corps Jamaica group #80

Me enjoying my first Red Stripe in country

Keep the home fires burning, I'll share some stories soon.

-Craigery