Zebulon’s Weblog

After enjoying a week long visit from my mother I returned to Accompong to face the unrelenting scrutiny of the Maroons. It was the day before Labour Day, which, in Jamaica, is a day where everyone comes together to do community service. That is far from the American version which is characterized by a day of rest.

Jamaicans have a very odd relationship with “work.” A white Peace Corps Volunteer serving in a culture that was enslaved by your own presents some funny little obstacles – to put it mildly. Many tourists that have had the audacity to travel outside the walls of the all-inclusive resorts of the coastline have often come to the conclusion that all Jamaicans are just lazy and sit around smoking ganja all day.  These visitors fail to consider that the entire population of the island was captive to manual labor for about three centuries.

Now let us take a look at how our cultures of labor have evolved via domestication. Really that’s what makes us who we are anyways. Whether from our own willpower or from daddy’s belt, our sense of right and wrong has been instilled in us by our parents and by centuries of cultural development. My culture has always told me that if I work hard then I will reap the rewards. Phrases like “no pain no gain” and “work makes the man” have been ingrained into the western psyche. Meanwhile, back at the plantation, the master is not meeting his sugar quota for the month and decides to beat some of his slaves. He doesn’t bother giving them a lecture on how if they work hard then they will reap the rewards, because they have always reaped sugar and little else …they have no choice to do otherwise – except escape.

I am not saying that there is a good excuse for counterproductive behavior, but we should at least be conscious of our roles in the development of a culture born from the shackles of slavery. Then maybe we can be a little bit more understanding of each other.

The light from the morning sun cast a beam over my eyes, rousing me from a restless night. It was one of those nights where you are dead tired and sleep deprived, but your mind is swimming over a crux in your life that wants to be addressed immediately. Sometimes you aren’t even sure what it is that wants fix’in, and that makes your thoughts all the more jumbled and scampering about all restless like. I didn’t really want to get out of bed and start my day. The Peace Corps had been exciting thus far – for the most part, but now this place was starting to feel like home and I just didn’t want to accept that I am going to be here for another year. On top of that, I even had woman issues to deal with. That made it feel even more like home.

Well, obviously I got up or else I wouldn’t be writing this now would I. I don’t have anything against the morning sun. I even prefer it to the evening sun. But on this particular morning it just got in my face to tell me that I was a lazy bum, so I yelled back at it and told it to hurry up, do what it had to do, and continue on its way.

 The sun in Jamaica is pretty dang hot. Everything is always much easier in the shade here – tempers are cooler, bulla tastes better, cement dries faster. I have never been in a place where the sun was so intense. It really doesn’t feel much hotter than Tennessee for the most part, but the sun is just so darn hot. You never realize just how blasted hot it is until you look in the mirror and realize that you have gone through a racial mutation overnight. This pretty much proves the Theory of Evolution if you ask me – when you look into the mirror after a day in the sun and you dont recognize that face looking back at you…its hard to deny that our environments done change us after you observe that. All you need now is some hormones going in the right direction and your on the path towards creating something new and exicting.

Speaking of species. I never thought that there was that big of a difference between blacks and whites. There are self righteous people out there that think if you recognize a difference at all then you must be racist, so I have always tried to convince myself that I see no difference. Well, after having a Jamaican girlfriend and being intimate with all the various aspects of the race, I can tell you for a fact that there are some huge differences. I mean sure – we are from the same planet and everything, but really – come on. And I don’t think that I can call myself racist if I like the differences. Maybe I am wrong, but I think racism implies a certain amount of hatred and bias – not just discrimination.

Actually I love the sun. It helped to create black people.