What follows is my recollections of our week in Jamaica -- some written while we were there, some since then. I guarantee nothing about the accuracy, coherence, or readability of any of this. Pictures will follow when I get them from Eric and Spud.
Day zero. Friday, Nov. 21.
The five Penn State students involved in our expedition -- Eric, Spud, myself, and the Andrews (Grim and McLean) -- make our way from State College to Lancaster in four different vehicles, as everyone pays their families/significant others a brief visit before our departure for Jamaica. Neil, the faculty advisor in charge of our trip, is already in Jamaica, awaiting our arrival. Over the course of the evening, the travelers arrive one by one at Spud's house; I myself am the first, having come with Spud, and so I take the opportunity to catch an hour or so of sleep, given the rather unreasonable travel schedule that lies ahead.
Day one. Saturday, Nov. 22.
After dozing fitfully for some time, I awake to find the other four standing around in the kitchen, doing some last-minute packing and playing with the fancy cameras we have on loan from the university for the duration of the trip. Having weighed his suitcase and found it to be thirty pounds overweight, Spud convinces me to add a twenty-pound toolbox filled with nuts and bolts to my bag. Fool that I am, I accept the offer.
Sometime between one and two o'clock on Friday night/Saturday morning, we leave Spud's house and begin the road trip to the Philadelphia airport, undeterred by an initial bout of technical difficulties with the rear hatch of our chariot. At half past three, after several unsuccessful attempts to enter the airport, we find an unlocked door and begin running up the down escalator, down the up escalator, and generally causing mischief. It takes somewhat longer than normal to clear security, due to the various cameras, computers, hard drives, etc., which we are carrying in order to document our time in Jamaica, but eventually we find our gate, check our expected departure time, and find to our great delight that we have just enough time to wolf down a distressingly gluttonous breakfast of airport food (I had sausage, hash browns, a cinnamon bun, and what had to have been at least two dozen scrambled eggs).
Breakfast in our bellies, we board the plane, only to wait on the runway for forty minutes as the captain waits for a missing log book -- this rather unprofessional snag in the bureaucratic paperwork raises fears that we will miss our connection in Charlotte, where we have less than an hour between flights (in the original itinerary). And so we find ourselves sprinting full throttle through the Charlotte airport, five college students with assorted carry-on luggage, posters, etc., until Grim mows down an innocent passerby on a moving walkway. By that point, we're all out of breath enough that we walk the rest of the way to the gate, where the flight attendants take our boarding passes, usher us onto the plane, and then shut the door as the plane pulls away from the gate and heads for the runway.
Safely ensconced in our flying machine, we breathe a sigh of relief that we will be in Jamaica by noon, as planned. The plane taxis to the runway, begins its run for take-off... and then powers down and taxis back to the gate. It seems a generator has malfunctioned, and so we spend the next two hours waiting for the electrician to fix the problem. Fortunately, the errant generator is in the end restored to working order, and in due course we are airborne once more, bound for Montego Bay.
Arriving at Mobay (as we hear it called here), we are met by Neil Brown, Eric and Spud's thesis advisor, who happens to be Jamaican himself; as our transport for the week, he has rented a full-size Mitsubishi van, into which we now load our luggage and ourselves, relieved and grateful to be finally on the ground in Jamaica, only two hours behind the original schedule.
The road east from Montego Bay runs along the coast, giving us plenty of chances to experiment with the borrowed cameras; as I'm not used to having this many buttons on a piece of photographic equipment, we cover a good bit of the distance to Ocho Rios before I figure out what I'm doing. After stopping in Ocho Rios long enough to visit the hardware store and eat a couple chickens (and a goodly number of "festivals", which are basically hunks of fried dough), we turn south and head into the interior, up the narrow winding road through Fern Gully, and out to Jacob's Ladder, a Mustard Seed Communities location near Moneague.
A word of explanation.
Mustard Seed is a Catholic NGO based in Jamaica, which also operates in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Zimbabwe, running communities for the mentally and physically disabled, HIV/AIDS patients, orphans, etc. --
Jacob's Ladder is one such community, where we will spend the next few days helping Eric and Spud build a
library out of a shipping container as part of
their senior thesis. Eventually, the roof of the library will hold a green roof (Spud's project) and solar panels (Eric's project), with a wind turbine nearby; our task for the week is to do as much as possible to prepare the container itself to function as a library and to support the fancy sustainability doo-dads going up top.
Of course, at the time of our arrival on Saturday, we know very little of this (or at least, I know very little of this). All I really know at this point is that I'm supposed to do some soil samples at some point, and probably help with some construction stuff too, and that at the moment, we're standing in the middle of rural Jamaica sometime between nightfall and daybreak, looking at a shipping container, and Eric and Spud are dancing around like children in a candy shop; it's all we can do to keep them from opening the thing up and starting to build right then and there.
Day two. Sunday, Nov. 23.
Although I have traveled fairly extensively, I have never been in the Caribbean before. Jamaica is, of course, very different from either the U.S. or Canada -- the closest parallel I have in my experience is southern Africa, and there are many similarities in the appearance of the two. A warm, tropical climate; a largely black population; a British colonial heritage expressed in such details as school uniforms, driving on the left side of the road, and a healthy number of football (soccer) and cricket fields; the list goes on.
But there are many differences as well, and the first of these to become apparent is the rain. My memories of Africa are memories of waiting for the rain to come and wondering if it ever will; in Jamaica, at least the week that we are there, one never has to wait very long. Perpetual variability is the order of the day -- ten minutes of rain, twenty minutes of sunshine, half an hour of cloudy skies -- such are the conditions we find ourselves working in.
If all our work was to be done inside the shipping container, the unpredictability of the weather would not be such a problem; however, although the overall plan seems to change on an hourly basis in response to conditions, availability of supplies, etc., the one constant is that we need to paint the roof, a task which requires that the roof be somehow kept dry. After a hasty conference, Eric, Spud, and Neil head back to Ocho Rios for supplies, leaving me and the Andrews in charge of erecting a tent of some form out of a large tarp and some scraps of lumber.
By the time they return two hours later, we have the rough outline of such a tent in place, and with the help of two more tarps, the extra wood they've brought to build the green roof, a scavenged length of PVC, some leaves from a nearby bush, a rope and length of twine from my backpack, and assorted cinder blocks scattered around the site, we craft a shelter for the roof. The evening is spent cleaning the roof and interior walls and applying primer so that they can be painted the following day; six guys painting all evening in an enclosed space leads to some interesting conversations, and Eric breaks out in song more than once.
Days three to five. Monday, Nov. 24 to Wednesday, Nov. 26.
As I make my way up to the container to join the others for the morning's work (as usual, Eric and Spud are up and out working before everyone else), I find Eric wielding a sawzall, attacking the shipping container with the intent of hacking out a door for the eventual library. The primary task for the morning is to paint the interior; first, though, we need paint thinner to clean the brushes and rollers we used for primer last night.
There being no paint thinner to be found in the tool shed, Neil and I drive down into Moneague (the nearest town) to buy supplies. After visiting two hardware stores, two grocery stores, and a bicycle shop, we return to Jacob's Ladder laden with building supplies and various comestibles of the sort which have quickly become our standard fare for the week. The latter comprise several loaves of bread, a few jars of peanut butter and guava jam, a handful of tins of corned beef, several gallons of fruit juice (sorrel juice with ginger, mango-carrot juice, and something that tastes remarkably like liquid gummi bears), rice, beans, and chicken for dinner, and several dozen packets of Ovaltine biscuits.
Upon our return to the site, we find that Eric has now cut five holes in the container; one door, two windows, and two vents near the floor for airflow. Meanwhile, the others have been assembling one of the two window frames which will need to be built; our return brings on a short break to eat corned beef, drink fruit juice (except for Spud, who sticks stubbornly to water), and in what quickly becomes a regular ritual, pass around a packet of Ovaltine biscuits.
From this point on, the next two days are somewhat of a blur in my memory. In a frenzied burst of activity which lasts until Wednesday night, the following things occur:
The roof is painted white (albeit rather invisibly under the tarps, which do a passable job of protecting it from the hourly spurts of rain);
the interior walls are painted bright yellow (a welcome change from the original rusted and faded blue);
the ceiling is a somewhat irregular blue (Spud and Andrew's painting having been slightly erratic at times);
we begin the task of installing the window frames, and discover that while we have an electric drill and a socket set with which to drive the lag bolts, we don't have the necessary attachment to connect the two;
Eric heroically manufactures the correct attachment on the spot, fashioning it from a piece of rebar, and performs one of the greatest happy dances I've seen in a long time when it finally spins true;
we install the window frames and door frame;
armed with a machete, a shovel, and a camera, Andrew Grim and I venture into the nearby bush for a morning to collect soil samples, returning laden with several kilograms of soil and a great many unnecessary pictures of each other and the landscape;
Spud builds the frame for the roof, which will eventually hold the green roof and the solar panels;
after much debate, we decide not to put the frame on the roof just yet, opting to wait until a proper foundation can be poured for the whole structure (and that is a gross oversimplification of the events surrounding that particular issue);
we build the vents for air circulation out of two-by-sixes and two-by-fours, and then install them using what can only be described as a perfectly unreasonable amount of caulk;
we spend rather more time working with power tools by night than I have ever done in my life before;
we build bookshelves to cover all the interior walls, a project which I somehow wind up in charge of;
back in the house we're staying in, I become thoroughly confused when Spud walks out of the shower with nothing but a towel and a level.
Each of those events is really a whole story in itself, and there were more besides, but that covers the broad structure of the project, and tone in which it was carried out. Although I may have given the impression that this was all in the original plan -- it wasn't. The periods of frenzied activity were interspersed with periods of equally frenzied decision-making, as we went from Plan A to Plan B and probably about as far as Plan Q or so before the passage of time meant no more plans would be made for this particular trip.
Day six. Thursday, Nov. 27.
After four days of work, we take Thanksgiving Day as our day to be tourists, and drive back up to Ocho Rios, where the first order of business was the craft market. This is a rather large and chaotic affair; each vendor has a small space, perhaps six feet wide and twenty feet deep, which is filled with paintings, shirts, carvings, trinkets, baubles, and all manner of kitsch which we are meant to buy. Competition for our attention is fierce, and it's hard to move two feet without the next vendor down the row calling at you to come give their store a look -- various members of our group are addressed as "Sexy Face", "Pretty Boy", and "Rasta Man", and I have to turn down at least half a dozen offers to braid my hair (which is down to my shoulders at the moment).
Eventually we settle on our purchases (which I won't reveal here, since one or two readers of this blog will be receiving mine as Christmas presents), and head up to Dunn's River Falls for a more relaxing afternoon. This is a series of waterfalls which run about a quarter mile in length, eventually emptying directly into the Caribbean Sea. Because each one is no more than four or five feet high, you can climb the whole affair, beginning in the sea and following the river inland until the falls end (or begin, depending on your point of view). And so we do, first revelling in the fact that it is Thanksgiving Day, and we're swimming in the Caribbean.
Day seven. Friday, Nov. 28.
Spud and Eric are up early to shoot a short video documenting the week's work; the rest of us rise a little later and go over the work site once more to be sure that everything has been returned to its rightful place. Once we are satisfied that all is in order, we return to the house to get cleaned up and finish packing.
But Jamaica's not quite done with us yet... hearing a knock at the door, Spud runs to answer it, expecting to find Brother Anthony or one of the Jamaicans from the site, come to say good-bye or ask a question or whatever -- instead, he opens the door to find a soldier standing there in full military uniform, holding a rather large gun. The ensuing conversation, as nearly as I can understand it from upstairs, goes something like this:
Soldier: Where is this place?
Spud: ... Jamaica ... ?
Soldier (now with another soldier standing by him): No, what community is this?
Spud: ...?
Soldier (now with a whole platoon walking by behind him): What community is this?
Spud: ... Jacob's Ladder... Mustard Seed Communities...?
At which point the soldier turns and walks away.
Our best guess is that it was a platoon out on a training exercise from the military base which adjoins the Mustard Seed site, who got lost in the woods and upon emerging into the clear, sought out the nearest human habitation (which happened to be us) to find out where they were. But the whole thing remains somewhat of a mystery.
With the army gone, we return to the business of packing, and finally are on the road by about nine o'clock. Another two-hour drive along the coast puts us back in Montego Bay, where we part ways with Neil over one last breaking of Ovaltine biscuits. In a gloriously convoluted set of itineraries, the Andrews and I fly out at 1:30, while Spud and Eric fly at 3:30 -- then Andrew Grim flies from Charlotte at 8:00, while the other four of us wait until 10:00. This leads to plenty of time sitting around various airports, perusing the duty-free shops, eating Cinnabons, glorying in the free wireless internet at Charlotte, and finally walking what must be half the length of the Philadelphia airport to reach the baggage carousel, where we are re-united with Grim (who seems to have had some adventures in the meantime involving a Vietnam vet with a knife).
The rest of that weeked is a blur of Thanksgiving dinners and various families (since most of the participants in this escapade are from Lancaster area), and slowly segueing back into the rhythm of life in Pennsylvania. There have been goings-on since then, of course -- in particular, it seems that the Canadian political scene suddenly imploded with no warning -- but all those will have to wait for another day.
Hmm. Three weeks since I last managed to post something... my apologies. I've been... distracted. But now I'm home in Manitoba for a week and a bit, with some free time to sit around, make funny faces at the camera, play Settlers with my family, and annoy them by taking random pictures of them during the game and then posting them here.
In the meantime, Fall term has come to an end -- the first draft of the book on fractals is done, the MASS students have suffered through their week of oral final exams, and Nevin and I have done our usual routine of driving all over Pennsylvania, New York, and southern Ontario before flying back to the prairies.
At the risk of sounding somewhat over-the-top, it seems that Pennsylvania is already mourning our absence -- if my information is correct (and this is all second-hand at least), then since we left the temperature has risen to an uncharacteristically warm 18 degrees Celsius, and there's been an earthquake. In Lancaster County!
But never mind whatever signs of the apocalypse may be transpiring down south. Here in Manitoba the snow lies thick on the ground, the air is cold, the skies are clear, and the sun sets shortly after lunchtime (only a slight exaggeration). Midwinter on the prairies indeed. So we spend our time indoors, playing games, reading books, watching movies, and singing Christmas carols. And every now and again I stumble on an interesting article worth sharing with anyone who's still checking this blog for updates -- so here's the most recent item on my perhaps overzealously compiled list of things worth reading -- a BBC article (surprise!) on the need for a rethink of the global food system so that it can be made sustainable as the world's population rises and the effects of 200 years of industrialisation begin to show. This issue runs much deeper than one might initially think -- the question of how we get our food is deeply connected to the questions of how we get our energy, how we use fossil fuels, how we treat our water supply, and how we organise society itself -- it permeates every aspect of how we live our lives. I'm not sure if I've posted in this space about The Omnivore's Dilemma, that wonderful, wonderful book by Michael Pollan -- I thought I had, but couldn't find the post if it exists -- but that book is well worth reading, for we really do need to rethink the question of where our food comes from. Provided we want a system which will work in fifty years.