Grand Market

Merry Christmas from Jamaica To Di Wurld!

Just like every Christmas, this one has been pretty crazy leading up to it. I've been really busy getting lesson plans ready for my project starting in January, and working on my wine (We've bottled 5 gallons and have another 6 at the school fermenting, and I have 8 at my apartment. That's 106 bottles total!

A few weeks ago we bottled our banana wine. It came out just a bit sweet, so it makes a great dessert wine once it's chilled. Fly down for a sample!

Today has so far been spent catching up on some housework, then a little shopping in town. The local homeless shelter houses a few dozen residents, and fellow volunteer Jerry and I are going to help out tomorrow cooking Christmas dinner.

The shelter's fearless guard dogs are ready to strike at any moment.

The homemade Christmas tree Jerry made for the homeless shelter.

No snow this year, but the stupid rain wouldn't stop until last week. I was running out of clothes, but thankfully they're all dry now.
Adrian looking festive holding an adorable likkle boy. Adrian works at the internet cafe we like to call "Peace Corps North Regional Headquarters."

Outside the cafe, kids wait to meet Santa

Jerry and I making ox tail soup and pierogi. No farmer's cheese, so we had to make do with goat's cheese, and goats are awesome, so why not? They turned out pretty damn good, and that means I get to have a little Polish Christmas of my own.

The town square with it's Christmas tree. Tonight, this whole place will be filled with people for Grand Market, an annual event where people do last minute Christmas shopping / sell some of their old things / party until late, late, late into the night. I'd like to stop by and try to pick up a gallon stainless steel stockpot (my Christmas present to myself, for my winemaking).

Thanks for the cheese, goats!

Merry Christmas to everyone from the rock. I'll be thinking of you all.

The wine is b-a-n-a-n-a-s

Blouse and skirt, things have been crazy for the past few months. That's how I like it, so really I can't complain. But this is an internet blog, and that's what people do.

Right after my last entry in September, we got an incredible amount of rain from Tropical Storm Nicole. The rains knocked out power in Port Antonio for a few days, so I got to spend my evenings reading and writing by candlelight. I almost felt like a "real" Peace Corps volunteer!

I've never seen the gully in my yard that high, but it would need to swell more than that to threaten my apartment. Here it just annoyed the chickens.

Red Stripe bottles make good candleholders.

Then, right before leaving for Kingston, I was able to bottle the first batch of wine made at my school! The wine was made with nothing but mangoes, sugar, water, papaya peel, limes, and raisins. It turned out like a dry Riesling with a hint of the tropics. I considered it a huge success, and while I'm sorry to say that there is no more (I used the few gallons we brewed as samples to businesses to promote the shcool), I believe it did it's job in raising the overall enthusiasm for the school.

Me and Mrs. P filling old rum bottles with mango wine

Somehow, the rains and wine did not stop my plans to go FOREIGN! (leaving the island, in this case back home to Detroit). I spent a few weeks back home to catch up with family and friends, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of then senator JFK challenging students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to serve their country overseas for two years (the name Peace Corps didn't come until later). There I met with many returned volunteers, and the current director of the Peace Corps Aaron Williams.

50 years ago to the minute, the spark for the Peace Corps was struck here on the steps of the Michigan Union on State and South University.

Some students show their gratitude

Me and my boss one step away from Obama.

Every time I walk past this thing I need to spin it. They say the president of the university wakes up every morning at 5 and spins it to power the campus.

My old Jamaican cook shop experience before I even knew that cow foot is edible (and tasty)

I think this picture sums of my experience at home well. The old gang out on a field trip to Eastern Market in Detroit, with a dumpster fire in the background.

Home was great, but a little exhausting. This was the longest time I spent away from home, about a year, and you want to get completely caught up with everything that's happened. By the time I flew back to Jamaica, I was welcomed by a musty house and a few dozen lizards, roaches, and spiders. I barely had enough energy to sweep them outside before I crashed for the night.

But then I was back in the swing of things. The world doesn't stop when you're on vacation, and my work was waiting patiently for me to return. Most important of that work was a grant application that I was to complete with my supervisor. This grant would expand our facilities in the school, so I would have better equipment to teach my agro-processing lessons. Just last week I heard that we were awarded our grant, which means yet more work for me to do! Yay!

Now, for a tangent about grants and Peace Corps (with unrelated pretty pictures in-between to keep things from getting boring). Every volunteer has a different opinion on how effective grants are in development, what the volunteer's role should be in that, what the long term effects of grants are, and every volunteer will want to express his or her view. These views run the gambit from "I want to see my organization receive as much grant funding as is available to help their cause" to "I want my organization to become self sufficient and never need to apply for another grant" to some combination of the two.

Students at my school making homemade black currant soda. We made the soda for a charity gala the students helped in catering to promote the school. Oh, and it was very tasty.

There's a lot of talk about the theory of development, and how our current model is not working. A (very brief, biased, and probably flawed) summary of the current model from an economic perspective would be that international development work and charity, like other industries, is a business, and there are suppliers and consumers. The product being exchanged is a sense of accomplishment for assisting where others have failed, or more simply, assistance. Lending a hand. Help. There are players who want to help (wealthy donors, foreign aid offices, churches, companies seeking a better image, etc.) These are the consumers. They want to spend their resources (mainly money, or other resources such as food or medical care) to help the poor or those in need of some type of assistance. Now where there is a consumer and a demand, the market will produce suppliers who wish to meet that demand. Here are where the NGOs come into play.

And here are my products. From left to right: Ribena soda, ginger soda, sorrel sauce, banana wine, and star fruit wine. Yum.

NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) are a staple of international development. They are intended to bridge the gap between the donor and the recipient, and are tasked with identifying the needs and providing assistance. Some NGOs are focused on promoting healthy living, such as through better nutritional information or through HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Others seek to help promote food security, so in the event of a volatile market the country will have the means to reduce the pressure of rising import costs and keep a large portion of their population employed. Some NGOs receive their own funding, but many are supported with grants.

And Jamaican children are supported by photographs

Billions of dollars are spent globally in international development, and like any industry, there is the potential for fraud, abuse, and other unethical behavior. Unfortunately I have seen unscrupulous spending myself, however it is my opinion that the very idea of Peace Corps isn't to look at a broken system or a struggling organization and silently shake your head. The system exists because there are people who see poverty and want to help and donate their time and money and resources, but don't have the means to distribute it themselves, so they seek others to assist them with this.

Much like how my students assist me in reading the density of our starfruit wine.

The staff at the Peace Corps like to promote volunteers as "facilitators", and that role is what I strive to achieve. When you walk into a school and teach for 2 years, or share a skillset, even if you do a fantastic job, your work will end when you leave. I try my best to listen to the demand and help guide the energy in the most productive direction. It was not my intention to be an "agro-processing specialist" in Jamaica, but that is my current job title. When I walked into the small office at the Michigan Union 3 years ago to apply for the Peace Corps, I told my recruiter "I don't care where I go, but I want to be doing engineering work. I do not want to work in a school." For my first year, I got exactly what I asked for. I was designing schools, developing quality control checks for construction of houses for families in need, planning water systems and helping other volunteers with engineering consultations. But there was a nagging feeling in the back of my head. I felt that when I left, there wasn't going to be anybody to take over my work. I was working closely with my coworkers to make sure they knew what I was doing and how I was doing it, but my projects were my idea, so all the enthusiasm was with me. I couldn't even fully understand this sense of uneasiness until I found my new assignment (at a school. Fate is hilarious.)

Now, I work with staff and students who are excited and eager to learn on their own. I have students asking me for equipment and instructions so they can replicate the food preservation methods at home, and students who are able to explain what I'm doing just by understanding the principles of fermentation or carbonation. In my opinion, the incentive is two-fold. There is the direct economic incentive; if these value-added products can be produced cheaply, they could be readily sold at a profit. But there is also an overlooked, and in my view more powerful incentive; the desire to create, to craft, and to be one's own boss. It is what attracted me to brewing in the first place, and what keeps me interested in my other hobbies such as writing and cooking. I think Jamaicans have this desire in abundance, and it is really the only way to ensure that a project is sustained long after you leave, which is the ultimate goal of Peace Corps. If I leave the skills behind to turn a bumper crop of mangoes or bananas into something new, I succeeded in my Peace Corps goals and will have a good story for future job interviews. If I leave inspiring a few people to become enthusiastic about taking economic and creative control of their own future, then, shit, that's all I really wanted to accomplish. What will I do with the rest of my life?

I mean, who wouldn't look at cinnamon, pimentos, limes, raisins, and 25lbs of bananas and think "Let's turn that into wine!"

Similar views are also presented in The Ugly American, which almost seems to be an idealized roadmap for the Peace Corps 2 years before Kennedy's speech. On a broader scale, there is argument that even aid spent with the best of intentions can still foster a culture of dependency, and stifle private business development that is the real hope for long-term development. This is the school of thought of Dambisa Moyo in Dead Aid, chronicling the failure of the $1,000,000,000,000 (trillian, no extra zeros there) spent in Africa over the last 50 years. This is a powerful argument that deserves serious attention from the politicians and world leaders, and it also inspired me to pursue further education to understand global economics. I'm still not exactly sure what direction I want to go in life, but I know what excites me, and what I can get passionate about. We will not right ourselves with our current outlook on the world, and we can't get an answer if we're afraid to ask the hard questions. I believe our very survival depends on having the courage to change our beliefs when we cannot reconcile them with the evidence at hand.

Sorry, I kind of got off track there. This is both my soapbox and my means for understanding myself and how I've been changing here. "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Oh, and who knew that beans were such a cheap, easy, and tasty dish? The local favorite here is "Rice and Peas", where "Peas" are kidney beans, and the rice is cooked with coconut milk. It's good, but I ate it just about every day for a year, and I like a little variety in my food. Lately I've been cooking black beans in my pressure cooker with bacon, onion, garlic, habanero peppers, served over white rice. I could eat that for dinner every day for a month before I got sick of it. Then today I found out it's really easy to make your own refried beans as well. Man, is there anything this food can't do?

So back to the grant. This project will help my school and me experiment with different agro-processing methods to develop an easy to follow, affordable instruction guide to anyone who wants to get into the business (I already have some of the website up). Now I'm usually very skeptical about business schemes, but I still haven't found a reason why this shouldn't work. When we bottled our mango wine, I ran the numbers to see how much it cost in time and ingredients to produce one bottle of wine. On a unit scale, it cost about $60J (about $0.75 U.S) and 15 minutes of labor to produce one 750ml bottle of wine. I believe the conditions are right for a new market to develop, one that could keep nearly 100% of the profits in the community. Back when I served on the committee that allocated these grants, we discussed the depressing state of affairs where so much grant money is misallocated, and came to the conclusion that we would do our best to award grants to be spent as investments, not gifts. I believe this grant will be an investment in Port Antonio's economic future.

I have less than 6 months left in my service and will most likely be gone before the first bottle of wine or jar of preserves is sold, but that is just fine with me. This is not my country and I am not its citizen, so it should not be up to me what direction the people of Portland choose to go with the resources I aim to provide. But I'm confident that a few people here are excited enough to continue the idea that some form of it will exist long after I leave. There is still much work to do, but my work is cut out for me. All I need to do is work myself out of a job.

Now, it's time to cook up those beans. To play us out, here's a shot of Port Antonio from the Errol Flynn Marina. Goodnight Port Antonio.

Wineing

Quick update with a few pictures of some recent winemaking activities I've been working on with the food preparation students.

Here are two of the students watching some yeast hydrate. Much of the wine currently made here is made using standard bread yeast, as it is the only type of yeast easily available in Jamaica. To help make better, consistent wine, I hope to import cheap but specialized yeast strains for better wine, like the ones we are using here.

Here I am with food prep student Damian. We're topping off a batch of banana wine, adding some cool water so the mixture will not be so hot as to kill the yeast (below 104 degrees). Little things like this are just simple instructions to follow, but I've been finding the students are getting increasingly curious as to the reasons behind this and other small aspects of winemaking. I do my best to answer as many questions as I can, and will be reading some more to help myself understand the microbiology and chemistry of winemaking, but frequently I am forced to answer "well, I don't know, but we can go online right now and find out!" I think even this is one of those "good problems", because I'm subtly introducing the students to the concept of independent research to answer their questions, and this will be necessary for future food preservation techniques, especially once I leave.

Pineapple and Passion Fruit Chutney. It was amazing and incredibly simple to make. I'm running into another problem where everything I make to research different food preservation recipes is immediately "sampled" to death, and before I can even ask what people thought of it to improve the recipe it's all gone.

But enough of work, time for some shopping.

Here's a small shop by another volunteer's house. Because lots of these shops carry their items behind the counter to hold more inventory, the customer cannot always see what is for sale. I think this is a nifty solution to that problem. Of course the common method of walking in, shouting "Oy, yu av marina fi sell?" (Do you have any sleeveless undershirts for sale?) is still the method I use, as I find it's most effective.

Lots of the department and wholesale stores get inventory directly from China, which leads to some interesting items. My pressure cooker has instructions in very broken English, so I must remember to "keep safety cap topside for prevent dangerous". Here we have a cool communist executive day planner.

My market. Every Saturday it is jam packed with vendors, locals, and a few Peace Corps volunteers. I guess it might have at one brief moment been open air, but the maze of tarps quickly formed a nice canopy to keep you and the produce from drying out too quickly in the sun.

Mobile carts are the preferred way to go for many venders who only stay for a day or two a week.

Gratuitous adorable picture of Joline, who is showing me her latest artwork. Later she tricked me into helping her make an "O" for her after the yarn began to unravel, and I spent a good 15 minutes working on it just to have her tell me I didn't do a good job. (The "O" was for a 4 letter word beginning with "L". She was amazed when I correctly guessed the word. Again, adorable.

And now it's time for goodnight, Portland. I still need to find a good place away from mosquitoes to set up my hammock in my new apartment. Life is just about 90% perfect right now, and that might just push it a little higher.

How fi get tings finish pon di Rock!

(Or: How to get things done in Jamaica)

So I think I'm getting my rhythm here. A quick recap of today's events in town (which may seem like a long and pointless story), and how they relate to my Peace Corps experience as a whole.

Smoke from brush fires cast a dusk fog over Port Antonio yesterday.

I went into town today to get a whole heap of things done, but also to purchase and use one important item: a 5/8" drill bit. Something that looks like this:


I need this drill bit for my winemaking. When making wine, the yeast consumes the sugar from the fruit and extra sugar you add to the must (a name for unfermented wine). The yeast also expels alcohol and carbon dioxide. For cost and other reasons, I brew in plastic buckets, similar to paint buckets with lids. We want the alcohol to stay in the bucket, but we want the CO2 to escape so the pressure doesn't build up inside the bucket. We can't simply leave the bucket uncovered either, because oxygen will spoil the wine, so we drill a small hole, put a rubber bung in, and then then place an airlock in the bung.

Bung and airlock.

This allows CO2 to escape without letting oxygen back in, and is how nearly all wine and beer is made around the world. Generally speaking, this is not the way wine is made in Jamaica, as everyone has their own methods and traditions, but I'm here to try to make winemaking professional, efficient, sterile, and more cost effective. At fist, I had the airlock fixed to the bucket through a small drill hole with masking tape which was failing to provide an airtight seal. Now, to put the airlock on the wine bucket correctly, I need a drill bit to insert the bung. Yesterday I bought a 3/4" wood bit from the hardware store, but after I drilled the hole I realized it was too large and the bung will not be able to form an airtight seal. Luckily I was able to return it, saving me the $350J I spent.

Not an airtight seal.

So today, I set out to buy a 5/8" drill bit. However, this is an item that isn't commonly used, and as a result it is an item that is not commonly stocked in Jamaican hardware stores. Another thing about Jamaican hardware stores, or at least most of them, is that you cannot simply walk up and find what you're looking for. The first hardware store I went to had a wall with steel cage separating you from the staff and the hardware, and three lines. One to tell them what you're buying, one to pick up your hardware, and a third to pay for it. I waited in line 10 minutes in the first, only to have the woman tell me she didn't know if they had it and to wait in the second line to see. 5 minutes later a man came up and I told him I needed a 5/8" drill bit. Or, specifically, I said "Excuse, do you have a five eighths drill bit?" To which he replied "Me nuh undastand." A Jamaican next to me translated, and said "You have wan five eight drill bit?" This was understood and the clerk went to search for it while I stood thoroughly confused as to why I wasn't understood the fist time. While he looked for the bit, I had to repeatedly say which size I was looking for. "you wan 3/16 inch?" "Nuh, Mi a look fi five eight bit, 3/16 kyan work!" "Wi av 5/32 bit" "Nuh, you av 5/8?" Eventually the clerk sort of wandered off and started talking to another customer. I interrupted him and asked "So, you don't have the bit?" "Nuh, wi no av it." I left frustrated.

By this time I was almost late for a meeting with my new supervisor and a Peace Corps staff, so I left without going to any of the other stores. The meeting went well, and before I left my supervisor asked me how the wine was coming, so I explained how I needed the drill bit. She asked what stores I went to, and I told her the two I visited, and she rattled off three other stores and their phone numbers from memory (this woman is so connected to the town and businesses she could probably tell me what the mayor's favorite ice cream flavor is). On my way out, her husband asked me what I was looking for and I explained. He called downstairs where a contractor was putting up grills (security bars over windows and doors) to see if he had a drill bit I could borrow, but he didn't.

I walked to the first store she mentioned, and found a 1/2" machine bit. When I compared it to the bung, I realized it would work, however the machine bit had a 1/2" shaft as well, which would probably be too wide for the drill I was planning on using. A wood router bit would be better suited for the job since the shaft is smaller and would easily fit into any drill, but still I bought the bit since it was this difficult to find anything that would work.

Sure enough when I got back the bit was too large for the drill. I remembered seeing a drill press by one of the metalworkers on the main road, and took the bit and the bucket lid to see if I could use the press just for the one hole. On my way to the shop I ran into my landlady's son, who introduced me to the blacksmith and asked on my behalf if he could drill a hole in the bucket lid for me. 15 seconds later I had my lid with the right size hole, huzzah! I talk to my landlady's son, and he tells me how great a guy the blacksmith is and what good work he does. Then I remembered that Jerry, another volunteer, needed to find a welding machine he could use for his students in the welding and fiberglass repair course, so I started talking to the blacksmith. The conversation went something like this:

"Thanks again for letting me use the drill press. I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, and I notice you have a welder. There's another volunteer who is teaching some students, and I was wondering if they could use your welder?"
"No, no, no, I'm too busy! I can't manage that."
"Yeah yeah, mi hear you. Hey, those grills you make look really nice, if I need you fi mek up somtin can I come back so?"
"Yeah mon! Anytime!"

Now, I didn't fully realize what happened in that conversation until afterwords, but that short bit of dialogue really encompassed the difficulty of volunteer work in Jamaica. Before we talked, the blacksmith did me a seemingly small favor that ended up saving me a whole mess of a headache, and he did it for free. This is rare, and I knew I just found a great resource I want to keep on good terms with for the time that I'm here. I pushed a bit too far however when I asked for his help with the welding students. Anytime I walk past his shop, he is working. This means any time he spends working with students would be time and money he is losing, so I should have known what his response would have been before I asked him. When I was walking back with my supervisor's son, he told me "He's a good guy, but he knows whenever people ask for help with things like this it keeps growing and growing, and it's a big headache and he looses a lot of money."

This also relates to an interesting phenomenon: there is no tipping in Jamaica, or at least there isn't outside of the tourist and uptown Kingston establishments. When you seek services, you are given a set price, but it shouldn't be more. The flipside of this is that everything has a price, including things which in America would be assumed included in the price. A Jamaican comedian we listened to during training had a bit where "You know here you can see a shop, and it has a sign that say 'Chicken sandwich $200, with bread $250. With Chicken $350." With the blacksmith, I wanted to ensure that he knows I am not expecting him to do everything for free, so I made sure he knew I appreciated his help and would be coming back soon (I have a bike that I would like a basket made for). After I said this, he perked up, aware that I wasn't just expecting freebies from him.

On the way back to the school I was stopped by the contractor working on the grills, who wanted to know if I got what I was looking for. I held up the bucket lid with the hole drilled in it, to which he replied simply "Yeah mon!" I like that even though he didn't know who I was or what I was doing, he was happy that I got what I was looking for. I had a similar exchange with the lady who runs the shop upstairs, happy that I got what I was looking for but probably just humoring me when I explained to her why it was so important.

By the time I got upstairs to the school I was drenched in sweat, having walked back and forth in town all day. But, I was able to put the lid on the bucket with the fermenting wine and attached the airlock, making that batch of wine safe from being contaminated by flies or bacteria. Anyone looking at that bucket before with the airlock attached with masking tape and the same bucket after with the right size drill hole and bung would probably not notice or care about the effort that went into getting that damn hole put there, or the importance of that damn hole and airtight seal, or what the whole experience says about life here, but hopefully now just a few more will.

So overall, I needed to drill a hole, a relatively simple operation. In the process I got frustrated with a security-crazy customer-unfriendly store (which many Jamaicans deal with on a daily basis), used local knowledge and resources to find what I need (but not necessarily what I went out to find initially), explored the interrelationships between volunteerism, capitalism, and altruism, and enjoyed a bit of local camaraderie for my small success towards my goal of creating attainable small business ventures for Jamaican farmers and prospective winemakers. Honestly, this was one of my most successful days, and if I can keep this up who knows what I'll be able to accomplish with my counterparts.

Portland: The Other Jamaica

It's been a wild couple of months...so I'll do my best to summarize how I went from engineering in Spanish Town to making wine in Port Antonio.

It all started with Hurricane Dudus. Because of the events around Kingston, Peace Corps felt it was best to move me out of my community in Portmore and away from the corporate area completely (this includes Kingston, Portmore, and Spanish Town, where I spent nearly all of the last year and a half). I got the call at 9:00 a.m. and was out the door by noon. I haven't been back since, but I was able to call all my community members and tell them I'll come back to visit as soon as I am able.

While talking to staff in the months leading up to my move, I mentioned that I'm interested in winemaking and "agro-processing"; preserving fruits and produce by making jams, dried fruit, salsa, and other products. Some of the Peace Corps staff knew of an opportunity to do this in historic Port Antonio, Portland, on the North-East corner of the island, about 2 hours through the mountains from Kingston. Soon after I was headed to my new home.

Port Antonio, or "Porty" as the busdrivers will yell, is the capital of Portland Parish, and a beautiful little town with a marina and a few resorts along the North coast road. Compared to my previous site, it's tiny, wet, green, lush, and overall just amazing. My first few months here were spent setting up my assignment, working out what I hope to accomplish with this "agro-processing" idea. I was paired up with Mrs. Smart, who runs a nationally certified vocational school and offers courses in nursing, hospitality, and food preparation. Already having a full kitchen facility and experience in food education, it was a great fit, and I was off to work.

After talking with Mrs. Smart and many local farmers, produce sellers, and businessmen, we developed a framework around teaching simple food preservation techniques that are easily accessible to farmers or any interested person. Using common fruits such as mangoes, pineapple, guava, and others, the supply cost for the preserves should be minimal. For example; during mango season, there are literally thousands of mangoes rotting on the ground. "Stringy" or "Common" mangoes, while sweet, are very fibrous and not attractive to the produce market. However, if they were fermented, the fibers should settle or float out to be discarded. To test this theory, I used some leftover winemaking equipment to start a two gallon batch of mango wine at the school. Mrs. Smart helped, along with her husband and son.

I also ordered some additional equipment to test and further refine my winemaking skills and to adapt them to my new tropical climate. My hope is to test all different kinds of mangoes, pineapples, guava, and other fruits, setting up dozens of fermentations to determine which combination of fruits and additives will yield the best wine. After enough testing we will develop recipe and training guides and eventually start up our own agro-processing training school. Winemaking will be just one avenue, in addition to preserves and fruit drying, which I will also be experimenting with to develop local recipes and training guides. The ingredients and equipment that cannot be found easily on the island we will import and package into "wine kits" to sell to farmers at an affordable price that will include everything needed to start several batches of wine yielding hundreds of bottles. Anyone interested in making wine will be able to come to the school for training, recipes, and equipment.

The last few months have been some of the most intense in my life. I moved and re-moved, traveled all over the island for meetings and trainings, and had to adjust myself to an entire new community. Luckily I have the benefit of a Peace Corps staff that was helpful and understanding, Jamaicans who are welcoming and friendly, and a few other volunteers who are just great to have nearby. I will miss my former coworkers at Food For the Poor, however I am still in contact with them and hope to continue working with them in an auxiliary role.

Every day here is a new face, a new sight, new smells, new sounds. What comes next for me, I am excited to say I have no idea.

Old Capital

Let me start out by saying, with everything in the news recently, I and my fellow peace corps volunteers are safe. If you have any concerns you can reach me over email, but for now I feel the need to write or do something to keep from going stir crazy, so without further ado here is a brief glimpse into life in Spanish Town.

My agency built many houses in the neighborhoods surrounding its office. Eventually the zinc in many of them became rotted, so we hired one of our contractors to replace it. I was helping in the project management and reporting, so here are some photos from the area.

Here is Burton "Johnny Cool", who did an excellent job on the repairs.

The railroad which once linked Jamaica now is mainly just used to move chemicals to the industrial plant here in Spanish Town. It also now serves as a footpath through the communities of Ellerslie Pen and Palls Pen. There's a goat in there too, because there are goats everywhere in Spanish Town.

The Rio Cobre was once a huge river coming through St. Catherine and Spanish Town. Now most of it is diverted to gullies which irrigate farmland. This one travels through Ellerslie Pen and next to the bus park.
Many of the yards here are quite narrow and you have to walk sideways to go through.
I follow my coworker Junior through another narrow corridor of zinc.

A few schools with a grill and dominoes table in front.

A fence built with an old Pepsi billboard
A few of our houses with their new roofs.

A street corner with shop to buy phone credit.

And my ride back to Portmore. The goat waited with me for the taxi to fill up but decided to stay home in Spanish Town. I'm sure I'll see her again.