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.