My first day of work

In the last post, I was ending my training in Stony Hill. Now I get to tell you about Santa Cruz! Santa Cruz is in St. Elizabeth parish. The town is in a valley, and therefore rather HOT. yea. in all caps. I sweat when I walk from my room to my kitchen. The suns heat seeks you out. I live with a lovely older woman and we have a splendid time on the mornings I get up early enough ( 5:00am) to go walk with her around the neighborhood. She is one heckuva walker. The lady can move. I've been able to get a better idea of the residential areas with the hour walk. I walked with her when I came to Santa Cruz two weeks ago to get my feet wet. It was orientation of my site before the last week of training...which ended with me getting sworn in!

Now that I am a volunteer, this past weekend I did a little settling in. On Saturday I went to the market and supermarket for a few necessary things. I went with a fellow volunteer that lives 10 minutes away in another town, also in St. Bess. There are two different vendors, farmers and sellers. Clearly the better choice is to buy from the farmers, and after some looking around...I found farmers, and they were friendly and affordable. Two things I most certainly can deal with. I got some apples, oranges, cucumbers, and callaloo. Callaloo is like spinach, it's super healthy and delicious.

Then once we were satisfied with our purchase, we went to the supermarket to get other food and things for the house. As we were browsing the aisles in search of ramen (yep, i'm eating it daily), and other staples, a lady strolled up to us with a cart of toothpaste. She was wearing scrubs, and told us the benefits of sensitive toothpaste for sensitive teeth. I wanted to laugh. I've never seen anyone come to you with a product in the supermarket to sell you something...that you can buy in the supermarket. I don't know if she was being paid by the store, the toothpaste or both. And there was also another woman who was trying to sell white grape juice bottles, buy 3 get one free. So random!

After three hours of searching for household items and a weeks worth of groceries, I went home. Then on Sunday I went to church with my host mom. She goes to a Moravian Church. Moravian church is part of the Protestant view of Christianity. The service had hints of Catholic tradition, and so it wasn't too different from what I've been exposed to. However, like most church services it lasted over two hours. When we got back, I ate lunch and then passed out! I was asleep for most of the afternoon. And can I just tell you...it was awesome. That was the deepest relaxing, i-want-to-hibernate-until-fall, kind of sleep. I was just really tired.

Today, however, I woke up and did Insanity workout, ate a hearty breakfast and went to the SDC office. I work for the Social Development Commission, it is a government organization. There are offices in every parish and I will be working with the one in St. Bess. The day started a little slow. People were trickling into the office. As people came in, I got more things to do. By the end of the day, I'm responsible for planning two events... brainstorm some teamwork and communication games for an outreach day at a Boy's Home and to begin planning lessons for an Intro to Computer Skills class. Yay!

And that's it for now. :)

The last week of training

Can you believe it’s been 7 weeks since I’ve left you? I sure can’t. To know that I’ve nearly finished my training in Peace Corps Jamaica is amazing. I’ve learned so much with only two months. I’ve become accustomed to the large trucks and their down shifts up the hill to become my morning alarms. I know the radio jingle to the popular fast food, Tastee. I feel nervous about where I’ll be placed, but to me it’s like when you were young during the holidays. The Christmas tree has been lit and the gifts are wrapped, and I know I’m getting a pretty stellar gift…but in my case here, I can’t shake it, or even peek the wrapping. I don’t know what’s to come! But I can’t wait!

Last weekend I went to a literary festival in Stony Hill, several drumming groups performed and there were vendors as well. The drummers were amazing! I kept tapping my foot to the beat, and one group actually invited the audience to go up and dance! I went up- and it was thrilling. ( drummer above)The beat and the performers showed us their rhythm with their feet and hips, soon enough I did the same! It lasted until late, and by the time I got home at 11:00pm or so I was ready for bed.

The next day, early morning, we went to the dam to meet the Agriculture/Environmental group. They live on the other side of the dam, so we planned a rendezvous. It took close to 2 hours, leisure walk to the dam. On the way we ate delicious fruit. I had mango, guava, begonia flowers (me eating the flowers below), cocoa fruit, and jack fruit. My stomach was smiling that day. I was happy to have such easy access to fruit! Yummm. When we arrived at the dam, we met the Agri/Envrio group and headed into the trees and took a dip in a waterfall! Ahhh, the water was chilly but a good change from getting eaten by the mosquitoes! I think we all walked about 8 miles round trip from the waterfall to Stony Hill.

This week I did my last few practicum’s for my youth development training. I went to a Women’s Center which helps young mothers and their babies. I talked to a group of girls aging from 13-16 years old who have 6 month old babies. I knew of girls in my high school getting pregnant, but I had not been exposed to girls so young with babies. It was a touching experience when I asked the girls about their relationship with their children. At the end of the meeting with them, we had them write a love letter to their child. That was my favorite part. The girls decorated the envelope and wrote To: baby from: your momma.

Another practicum we did was HIV/AID’s outreach in Stony Hill on Tuesday. I went with the HIV/AIDS advisor trainees and we talked to pedestrians about safe sex and both illnesses. Many people have a good idea of what HIV and AIDS is but didn’t know all the proper ways to protect their self. We had condom demonstrations on the road, and it made some nervous, but overall people continued on their way knowledgeable. I enjoyed learning about people and how to talk about these important topics. The training in Life Skills, HIV/AIDS, and use of Sports in Life Skills will hopefully all be used when I go to my site!
Tomorrow is the last day of training. AHH!! And so it’s bittersweet. I look forward to the next adventure on another part of the island. Yet I am sad that I have to leave this community that I finally feel integrated into. Sad face!