Boas, Bees and Babies

Earlier this week I got to shadow a current PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). This is something that every PC trainee in any part of the world gets to experience. It’s an exciting, stressful, and nerve wracking experience.  From the moment we land in whatever city we land in for staging we have someone telling us what to do, where to go, what to say and eat and wear… This is the first moment since signing our life to the US Gov’t that they let us go on our own and figure things out for ourselves, and hope that they did a good job to prepare us. How well did I do???
 MONDAY
My day started at 5:30am when I woke up with not enough time to brush teeth, change clothes and make a breakfast that I didn’t even feel like eating once it was done. The closest PCT (PC Trainee) and her host dad came to pick me up when I still wasn’t ready but they waited for me to rush around, run down the hill, run back up to get my umbrella and then run back down. We would normally just walk to the square but he kindly insisted that he drive us and make sure we were ok. At 6am we waited with most of the other GI PCT’s (8 of us) for the mini bus taxi to pick us up. It comes, we small up, we make it to Papine and find a second city bus for the Kingston country bus park. In Kingston we met up with some of the others from the youth sector and split up to whichever bus we needed. Since I ended up tossing away my scrambled eggs for the dogs or a mongoose to eat I was getting hungry so I bought some plantain chips. There are people, usually men, who go in and out of busses while it waits and sell things. It’s usually snacks like plantain chips, juice or donuts but sometimes more random things like belts. The 3.5 hour bus ride was pretty uneventful and it was really nice to see more of the country and the man next to me added a nice soundtrack to the ride with his phone playing Shania Twain and Enrique Iglesias. We got to Sav-La-Mar and met with some trainees from the education sector and the current PCVs and got pizza for lunch (yay!) then me and my PCV bought stuff for dinner and breakfast and took 2 more taxis to where she lives. So in total: 2 busses 3 taxis and about 6 hours of travelling. I was pretty tired from travelling so the rest of the night was pretty uneventful.

TUESDAY
A lot got packed into this day since it was the only full day I had to spend with the PCV. The gist of it is school garden, boa, eco-tourism hike, bees, bush doctor, boa again, spaghetti.  The boa was a pretty big deal; the local media even came out to do a story on it. The PCV showed me her school garden and on the way back a young guy wanted to show us a snake in a tree. “Not a snake in your pants, right?” –PCV. The way Jamaican men talk you really need to make sure, but it was a real snake. I attended a meeting with a group that the PCV works with on local eco-tourism (I completely forgot their name). It seemed like it was a pretty productive meeting, but what I really liked was the food that the PCVs rasta boyfriend cooked (or “spiced”). Her boyfriend took me and a few others on the shortest trail and pointed out endemic and medicinal plants. On the way back I got to see his bees. They gave me a suit and I got to get close to them. It was kinda scary but really exciting to have the bees flying all around me. I got to meet a rasta bush doctor that had the cure to pretty much everything growing on his land and then we went to go see the boa again, by now they had caught it and put in a bag with an egg (to eat I assume).

Adding cardboard for smoke to calm the bees

A little nervous

The bees

WEDNESDAY
I started early again for the long journey back home. The PCV walked with me to where I would catch my first taxi and on our way a guy holding a baby followed us. It’s common for men to yell out things and most of the time it’s something as they pass by or if you are nice and then ignore them they’ll leave you alone. This guy was persistent.  It went on for a while but basically he was holding out his baby saying “look how cute this baby is, I made it and I can give you one too.” Basically… Anyway, this time around I was on my own. It was the same route but being able to ask for directions in English was very reassuring, I admire the PCTs that have to travel knowing the local language minimally. I wasn’t sure what bus to take once I was in Kingston to go to Papine but I just asked around until I got to the right one. I didn’t remember where to get off but I hoped that I would recognize something and luckily I did. I took a taxi with 8 people up to Woodford (it was a hatchback so there was one person in the trunk). Bam! Did it and was the second person to make it and I was the furthest away.  Pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to get back and now I feel more confident about getting around the island.
TODAY
Poop jokes are pretty funny no matter where you are.

Have you ever heard of Blue Mountain coffee?

Blue Mountain coffee is supposed to be the best coffee in the world, I'm not a coffee expert but it is pretty good. If you find it in the states you can get it for $30-$40 a pound. I am currently living in the Blue Mountains and my host mom has a lot of coffee trees. She harvests and roasts some to sell and some to keep. She let me help with the process.

Blowing the husks away from the bean

Taking out the bad beans

Roasting

Grinding

Fresh ground Blue Mountain coffee

The clouds come to my room

I have said goodbye to Hellshire and hello to Woodford. The landscape is very different; Hellshire was walking distance to the beach and Woodford is in the Blue Mountains. I liked Hellshire and the community very much but I have always felt much happier in the mountains than by the beach. Everything is green and blue everywhere I look and the clouds come and go, sometimes covering all around so I can't even see the mountain in front of me.

So, I live with a family of three; an older woman in her 80's, her niece on her husband's side, and the niece's daughter who is 14 and really enjoys throwing salt on slugs (I can't really blame her, it looks kinda cool when they shrivel up and fall off the wall). The house they live in is really amazing and the yard is full of plants like coffee, banana, mango, peach, pineapple, tomato, mint, scallion, ginger, garlic, gungu peas and there's probably some that I am missing. This is a farming community so I can see all these plants plus cho-cho, cocoa, coconut, guava... growing everywhere but I can't tell where someone's land starts or ends or if a tree had been planted by someone or if it's there on its own. A lot of people here have their farms on government owned land so I guess it's illegal for them to be there but it doesn't seem to be a big deal and some of them have had their farms for decades. I think that there are benefits that people get that own their land that they don't get but I don't really understand. The cost of coffee gets tricky, and seems to be very political , so I really try to stay away from that topic although I did have one farmer break it down for me and at some point it becomes impossible to make money off of coffee. Most of these farms are hillside farms so it's also really difficult to go up and down to take care of crops.

Yesterday and today my PCT neighbor, Alice, and I went to shadow farmers. We got to plant a few things but mostly we just talked with the farmers and got a lot of information. Having a small farm doesn't bring in very much money and most of them do several things, it seems most of them are carpenters.

I would post photos from that last 2 days but it takes too long with this internet so maybe some other time.
Leita!