She calls me Mr. Zeb – a name that I seemed to earn in the beginning of my service when I was teaching music class at the Accompong Junior High and Primary school. On the days that Jamaican culture seems to find every weak spot in my capacity for patience and understanding, when I begin to withdrawal from the public life of Accompong, Amanda will come knocking on my door and lights up my world with her smile. It is not just any smile. Some smiles are temporary – a fashion or façade with some particular purpose in mind, but there are a few people, those people who don’t become their work and their burdens, who find happiness as their gift and not an elusive objective, people who become their smiles. Amanda is such a person and she smiles incessantly with many other Jamaicans who, though by the standards of our culture have no reason to be happy, live with the understanding that one needs no reason to be happy and joyful.
Amanda
July 16, 2009 at 7:22 pm (Uncategorized)
Afternoon Walk
March 28, 2009 at 7:54 pm (Uncategorized)
After returning home for Christmas, I have discovered that I have lost one home, but gained another. At least O’Neil is back in town. O’Neil is one of Accompong’s more colorful residents that I like to think of as the town minstrel: one of those guys from the sword slinging days who used to roam around towns strumming medieval chordophones back when music was considered about as bad of a habit as picking your nose. O’Neil doesn’t pluck any strings, but he does chant his dance hall style poetry wherever he goes in the town. O’Neil has been in Portmore for a long time, but he recently returned to Accompong a few weeks ago. As I made my way past the square today, I heard him call to me from down the road. Sometime during my stint O’Neil started referring to me as white menace, a label which from anyone else would be a little discouraging, but from O’Neil would warrant the return of an equally racist insult, so I started calling him el Diablo negro, assuming that he didn’t know Spanish. Thing about Jamaicans is, even when they’re joking they sound serious, and seeing that there is no nice way to call someone a white menace, I appreciate O’Neil’s confidence in my tolerance. It’s actually a term of endearment coming from him, an example of how comfortable he is around me.
At the square I turned right and headed down to Middle Ground, to take a look at how Daniel’s Food for the Poor house is coming along. Daniel is Accompong’s token blind man. In addition, and as if being blind wasn’t sufficient, he also has 12 fingers and 12 toes. Maybe God was trying to compensate for his depravity of sight. Daniel was one of the first residents of Accompong I met. When I first came to town I stayed with Pastor Robin Dixon and his wife Ileen who live a mere 30 feet or so from Daniel’s little one room plywood shack. When I was trying to figure out what my job was, and everyone was asking me what I had in store for them, “Daniel made it very clear that my job was to get him a new house, a request which I discovered to be well worth the effort after inviting myself over one afternoon to find his floor collapsed and his roof leaking. Now, nearly two years later Daniel is getting his house and I’m thankful for that in more ways than one. Daniel reminded me of my job every time I passed him by since the day of my arrival. I tried to avoid him most of the time that I passed him on the road. It’s pretty easy to avoid a blind person if you just keep quiet, but sometimes some other passerby would yell, “hey Zeb” and disclose my presence. Then Daniel will turn around and, facing some random direction, say, “Zeb. Yu not mek nuttin agwaan…yu treat mi bad,” which isn’t the kind of conversation that I would like to have, so I would just tip toe away until eventually Daniel would realize that the person he was scorning was no longer present. Some people say that Daniel is ungrateful, but I knew that this wasn’t true whenever he paused for a few seconds and took in my presence before asking me to cut a back door in the house.
I walked up to the school and headed down the hill where I found Maggi tending her shop. Maggi is Zan’s wife, a meager woman who was bearing a child for the first few months that I knew her. I first met Zan when he was drunk and supervising the building of this shop where I was now eating a spice bun and drinking a Ginger Beer. It was after teaching music class in the school and I was passing by Zan and some others who were sitting in the middle of the road sharing a mixture of over-proof rum and Pepsi, when Zan invited me to join them.
Maggi is one of the many women in Accompong that has brought a baby into the world since I have been here, something that Jamaican women do very well. In the time that I have been here, many of these babies have grown about 2 feet tall and two of them are named Zeb. I remember when Zan and Maggi’s baby was merely a huge belly, now he sits on the other side of the bar giving me a look with eyes of consternation, eyes that seem to be asking me when I’m going to be a father.
No Gas
November 25, 2008 at 5:43 pm (Uncategorized)
Dowdy has this little one-eyed, electric stove that he bought after selling a spoon a couple of months ago. I was naturally feeling pretty good about the situation, about myself, and now about the fact that there is kitchen I can bum off somebody when my gas runs out as it did this week. For the past three days I have been heading over to Dowdy’s shop with seasonings, yams, and whatever else I have leftover from this months effort to feed myself with a Peace Corps living allowance. Seeing that he is going to get to eat, Dowdy is pretty excited about his too – something I realized this morning after he proclaimed his good fortune with my gas running out and everything.
Today is sunny and mild, a big change from the last three days of rain. I had planned on washing this towel that was long overdue a good cleaning. It started to smell like road kill about a month ago and now…I wont even say anything. The point is that it was ready for a wash, but the rain kind of called for a bit of rescheduling. So, today I washed it and you don’t have to go around saying that this Peace Corps guy named Zeb is a dirty dude, because now it is clean and I am not dirty anymore. It’s not really my fault that it got smelly though. I live in a damp, mildewy basement that gets about as much sunlight as the deepest caves in the Cockpit Country. Everything feels damp down here even if you don’t expose it to water, so the idea of hanging something up to dry is pretty well out of the question.
Pretty the Parrot
November 25, 2008 at 5:42 pm (Uncategorized)
Jamaica has indigenous parrots – the yellow and black billed parrot. As far as I know, the Black Billed Parrot can be found no where else is the world except Jamaica. Like most developing countries, Jamaica does a pretty good job of exploiting their wildlife, especially parrots. Thanks to their pretty feathers and uncanny ability to mimic humans’ form of communication, their demand in the pet trade is quite high, pretty much ensuring that they will eventually be captured into extinction. For whatever reason evolution made them so colorful and smart, or God made them so irreducibly complex, if they are to survive the environment of the future then they’re going to have to 1) change their diet to human babies or 2) get a lot uglier and stupider. If I were a parrot I would be doing the down and dirty with as many ugly, stupid females as possible, but unfortunately they are all pretty and smart – a surprisingly poor defensive mechanism in a world where the number of humans is growing exponentially.
There are quite a few parrots in captivity in Maroon-Town. This of course is illegal, but Maroons don’t seem to be too concerned with this little law. They have bigger fish to fry with all the drug trafficking and illegal firearms to worry about Babylon coming to confiscate their parrots. After about a year and half here, I can now say with utter confidence that I know the name of every parrot in the Cockpit Country. I could know the name of every parrot in Jamaica, but I am sure that there is some Kingstonian hippy out there who thought they were better than everyone else and named their parrot Rainbow. Still, I have never met a captive parrot who has not been given the name Pretty. Indeed, for such a beautiful bird, I guess it fits right in with Jamaican pet naming- every cat is Puss, every bird is Pretty, and every dog is…you guessed it – Dog.
Santa Cruz
November 16, 2008 at 11:37 pm (Uncategorized)
After about 3 days of inviting myself into someone else’s space you would think that I would begin to be slightly unwelcome, but much to my surprise I have once again managed to stay far enough off the radar that even my presence carries little or no impact. Grace Titus is a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Santa Cruz at the Red Cross – one of the most mature 21 year olds I have ever met in my life, and she gets extra points for putting up with me for three days.
My recent decision to be a bum on this weekend has done me little good until this weekend. Grace has high speed internet which has been quite the treat. While here I had a video conversation with an old romance among other less productive things like writing this blog. It is unfortunate how little practice I have with technology while I have been here. Things change so fast in the tech world and I have been on the outside of all the developments in social programing like Skype, Facebook, and …I am sure that there is something else out there that I am forgetting.
Sorry I don’t have anything to amusing to write about right now. I didn’t see many Jamaicans or Mongooses today, so life has been comfortably boring. I feel very relaxed down here with Grace, and I thank her foor supporting my efforts to reconnect with friends and get Accompong out of my life for a bit.
Mongooses and Mountains
November 9, 2008 at 7:29 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: peace corps jamaica
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the mongooses peered through the edge of the grass across the road, waiting for the right moment to scurry across the roadway. I jumped into Tony’s van and we headed for a quick morning down in Treasure Beach. As we rolled the pot-holed Jamaican road, I wondered why one doesn’t see dead mongooses littering the road in Jamaica. Mongooses were brought in at some point by the British to take care of the snake “problem” in Jamaica. Now the island is overrun by the rodent and there are pretty much no more snakes. The only road kill you’ll see in Jamaica is the occasional, unfortunate dog or Guatemalan frog, making the mongoose pretty much invincible I guess, because I’ve never seen a dead one and I am completely unaware of any predators that they may have. Big mistake – introducing an alien species to an environment that doesn’t challenge its survival. Yet here we are.
Treasure Beach is the “sun and sand” aspect of my service of which everyone is apparently so envious. Unfortunately, this experience usually ends up being slightly disappointing for me. There are more than a few socialites out there that find healing in the sun’s rays, but I side with the Jamaicans in saying, “sun’s hot man!” Jamaicans – a people that evolved under the wrath of the equator, leaving the lust for solar energy up to solar cells, drama queens, and photosynthesis. For me, the Jamaican coastline feels nothing like a vacation or an escape, rather it is like being a newly incarcerated animal that continually rediscovers the bars of its cage. I will trade the sand and sun for a panoramic view from mountain tops any day. It’s the difference between being on the inside looking out and on the outside looking in.
Good News
November 3, 2008 at 4:51 pm (Uncategorized)
Forest Conservation Fund just asked us to come to Kingston for a signing over of the check for the Quick Step Trail Project. This is going to keep me busy for the rest of my service.
Grill Work
October 19, 2008 at 7:57 pm (Uncategorized)
Yesterday was another project work day. Remember that beautification project that I have written about a few times? Well, it still isn’t quite finished yet. I am one of those guys that takes my time to a good job of something. Jamaicans are pretty laid back for the most part. I would describe them as a people that get in a rush about anything, unless that something is driving or standing in line. How could a people so unconcerned about taking part in a project only start to care once it gets started? Before I started the project people would have cared less about when it got done. It wasn’t until we started on it that everyone started to give their little opinions. “Why isn’t it done right? You not do the thing right. etc” When we finally firmed up the grill yesterday people took the opportunity to say -see, I told you it would have been better if you did this or that – Maybe it wasn’t a good project – I don’t know, but if it is going to be done soon and it will be done right, because when I get involved in something then I finish it and do a good job of it.
The only real project that makes me feel good about what I am doing here is Cockpit Republic. I will work tirelessly to see that this succeeds. I have also been doing a parenting group for a little while. This is pretty funny actually. There is a yard in this region of Accompong called Riverhole where there is a family of sisters that work tirelessly at producing children (some call it the pickney factory). When I first tried to get parents together for this nobody showed up, so i just decided to start holding meeting down at this particular yard, because I knew that there were enough parents down there to have a full group -and that is just a one yard. When I say parents I am referring to mothers. Father are 80% non-existent in the lives of Jamaican children. Sometimes a baby-father will stroll by the meeting in which case I extend invitation – only to be rebuked with a soon come. That is the Jamaicans polite way of saying no to an invite. The meeting usually consist of me discussing various parenting topics amidst the clamorous roar of untamed children. That actually provides some good examples for me though. Enough times when they don’t understand a particular point that I am trying to make I can find an example right away. I am going to be starting another one of these groups in the nearby community of Elderslie in a couple of weeks
I have left a couple of other posts that have been stored on my computer for quite some time now. Please take a gander at them.
Walk Guud – don’t hobble or limp
Zebulon
The Hat Effect
October 19, 2008 at 7:34 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: peace corps jamaica
What is it about hats? My experiences with this garb have left little doubt in the scope of its influence over human character. Every time I think about this I remember that Looney Tunes episode where Elmer Fud and Bugs Bunny are doing their usual running about – this time amidst a sky of falling hats. It doesn’t make much sense that hats would be falling for half an hour after falling out of a “hat truck”, but the effect that donning a new hat has on the character is a lot less mystifying. I don’t remember every detail of this Bugs Bunny episode, but it really drives home this point – that, in a sense, we are what we wear.
I had just received a package from home. This one was from my grandparents. My grandparents have always spoiled me from the time I was a little one, but I turned out alright regardless…I think. So long as you realize that you’re spoiled, then you should be ok, unless you happen to be one of the unfortunate ones who feels entitled to smothery love. I have always been the recipient of spoils within my circle of family and friends. I wonder if it has anything to do with my quiet nature. I seem to give people the illusion that I am a respectable guy from keeping my mouth shut. Give it a try – it works. People also tend to think that I’m rather laid back, which shows you their big misunderstanding of the circus that goes on in my mind. The reason I am so quiet is that there is so much noise going on upstairs that I tend to just sit in consternation with a jaded look on my face. An X-girlfriend most apply referred to this state as “being in the moon”.
Anyway, I opened the package after getting back from town, and inside I found a screw driver (thanks granddad), a handsome shirt, and a hat. I probably haven’t worn a hat since my days on the baseball diamond. In part, because I have this nagging fear that it is going to exacerbate the onset of baldness. I am not sure how well warranted that fear is, but it didn’t stop me from taking interest in the hat that lay before me.
I was thinking about investing in a hat anyway. I am tempted to buy a hat that is a complete contradiction to my character just to test the hat effect. Lots of the Jamaican guys wear baseball caps, most of which have the New York Yankees logo on the front. There are a lot of variations on this design though. You can find them in pretty much any color with your choice of bling bling. Your choices will range from several different versions of the dollar sign to actual pictures of the dollars – often in trimmed in gold. Who knew that baseball was going to be so inspirational in a culture that boasts of cricket? I wonder what Babe Ruth would say. Actually, forget the New York Yankees. I think I’ll go “all out” and buy one that reads Iced Out Money or Hustler.
Have any of you ever noticed the difference in how black men and white men wear baseball hats nowadays. It’s interesting how social deviance is being expressed in opposite ways by opposite races. One needn’t look any farther than the bill of the hat to see this. I don’t know why it happened this way, but black men are adamant about keeping the bill of their baseball caps straight, while white men seem to bend the hell out of them. To Jamaicans, white people are decidedly unkempt race. It is not just Jamaicans though, but young African Americans as well that make every effort to preserve the newness of a clothing accessory such as a hat – hence the label hanging from the hat. It is interesting how they never take ownership over it. One could even say it takes ownership over them.
White people are the opposite. We treat a hat like a pair of old shoes. Our attachment in hats is measured not only in the amount of time it has spent on our heads, molding our personalities, but also how much damage it has suffered while in our possession. Contorting the hat’s bill is our best effort at taking immediate ownership over it – fitting the hat to our personality instead of fitting our personality to the hat, but even this does not free us from the hat effect.
As I picked the hat out of the box and put it on my head I noticed something missing. I needed a baseball glove on my left hand. Actually, the hat effect never took hold until I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger looking back. This hat was special too, because it had these little lights that shine from the bill. I am not sure what effect that is going to have on my character. I noticed the unfamiliar sense of security that having a bill to cover my eyes provided. It really is true. Putting on a hat is going to change the way people look at me – it is going to change the way I look at me.
