I will not bother with any of the pleasantries associated with bureaucracies, or the philosophies associated with theocracies. I spent the last three years of my life preparing to join the Peace Corps, only to find myself serving in Jamaica. Now, let me interrupt your imagining that I am sitting on the beach with a martini and a laptop, and give you a much different mental image.
In 1738, a union of escaped slaves (the Maroons) sheltered in the Cockpit Country of Jamaica ambushed a patrol of British soldiers that had come to re-enslave them and establish control of the region. The defeat of the British soldiers transpired into a treaty between these Maroons and the King of England, granting the Maroons autonomy and creating a separate state within Jamaica. The success of the Maroons in the Cockpit Country was the first time slaves in the western hemisphere had successfully won their freedom. It also inspired the rebellion in Haiti that also granted slaves autonomy.
Hundreds of years later the Maroons still live in their mountain community. The Accompong District is comprised of other communities within the southwestern region of the Cockpit Country, such as Cooks Bottom and Quick Step. Originally a plateau, the Cockpit Country is one of the most karst topographies in the world in which water has drained through the various sinkholes sculpting the land into a series of egg-shaped mountains and gullies. There are few places in the world that are as rugged, uncharted, and biologically diverse as the Cockpit Country. Unfortunately, the land is in continual threat of bauxite mining and deforestation. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I am working to shift people’s livelihood to activities that preserve their environment and their culture.
Now, for the rest of my life, when i tell people that I served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, what images and ideas will be conjured up by my audience? ….I am forever doomed to the martini on the beach.
