In defense of my slowness, my internet accessibility has not been exactly stable over the last four weeks. Even as I write these words right now, though I am using my own computer (that was brought to me last week), I am sitting in a hot laundry room to pick up a decent wireless signal. I would just go into Warren's apartment, but he is out right now. I would like to send a special shout-out to Emily Baker, who is the only one to harp on me for being so far behind on my blogs. Without her encouragement, I would be up in my apartment right now. Napping. And then eating peanut butter. And then napping some more while eating peanut butter.
The day was last Wednesday. I had gone to sleep quite comfortably after a long days work running the hammer-drill busting up concrete. I had fallen asleep immediately as I always tend to do here. I started having a dream that I was talking to Chad, my boss here at JDV. Chad had, on multiple occasions, voiced his concern that he did not want me working too hard and get burnt out before my time here was over. My conversation with Chad in my dream had mirrored this concern. We were out front of the dining hall and I had assured him that I would be fine and that if anyone was good at taking breaks, it was me. As I was walking away from him and from our conversation, a number of startling events occurred nearly simultaneously. First, I hear what sounds like a helicopter operating at full power right in my eardrum. Only after hearing about three (BOOM, BOOM, BOOM) of the helicopter's rapid and intense rotations, did I, all in a split second 1) realize this was not a dream, 2) sit up in my bed faster than I ever have, 3) see a HUGE flash of green light illuminating my entire bedroom, 4) say, "OMAHGAWD" 5) swing my right arm at full force within millimeters of my face 6) look over the left side of my bed, panting heavily with eyes open wide, staring at the largest lighting bug I had ever seen in my life writhing near-death on my floor. After finishing him off with my sandal, laughing for a good fifteen minutes, snapping a pic of the beast, checking the time (5:25 am), I attempted to go back to sleep. With the light on. Unsuccessfully.
Check out this crown I made from clothespins.
I had actually started to write a blog post three weeks ago, but never finished it. Since I already had a number of paragraphs done, with verb tenses and relative times established, I am going to just add to it before coming back to my present situation here. Does that sound good? Too bad, I'm doing it anyways.
{Travel back in time three weeks. WHOOOOOOOSH!!}
Greetings from the rolling hills of Manchester Parish, Jamaica!
Pretty, huh? View from top of the village
From L to R: Maintenance Shed, Furniture Factory,
Sewing Shop, New Life Church for the Deaf
From L to R: Pastor's House, Team Dining Area,
Chad's House
Last week (and this week) I am helping out at the Jamaica Deaf Village (JDV), which is located in Mandeville, about a 2.5 hour drive (if I remember correctly) across the island from Montego Bay. Please see a Jamaica map if you want to know the exact relative location. You can find one at a map superstore or even a simple map outlet store might have one. Maps 'R' Us usually has them in stock. Also Maps, Maps, and Beyond would probably be a good place to look. T.J. Mapps is probably my favorite place to go, because you can usually get them a bit cheaper there, but they might not have the exact map you are looking for (so be careful!).
In keeping with tradition, I have a story before I actually describe any of the work I am doing here.
Figure 1. Scardemeh Shetaless
Sorry for the bad picture. That's about an 1.25-inch
long lightning bug. AKA Yoda.
Mandeville is up the hills of Jamaica. With the elevation change comes much beauty, but also many discrepancies from life in Montego Bay. First, the temperature is much cooler. Earlier this week, for the first time, I wished that I had a blanket to supplement my sheet during my slumber. Also, it is much foggier in the mornings here here then on the coastal regions of the island. Though the cooler temperature and fog have been slight adjustments for me, they have, in the realm of new stimuli vying for my attention, been upstaged by my arch-nemesis here in Mandeville; bugs.
During my first week at JDV I had, in all, five major showdowns with creepy crawlers of the rather-large variety. The first I have already told you the story. I called him Yoda. During my time here I have also killed (in my apartment): a cock roach with a plunger, a beetle with a sandal, a millipede with a plunger, and a cock roach with a chair. As you can see my weapon of choice is the toilet plunger, but my favorite kill was with the chair. Sorry I did not get it on video.
Figure 2. Nomatchforous Plungerous
For size reference, remember that my big toes are
about 5 inches long and 4 inches across.
Bugs make good stories, but they do not really help at all describe the entirety of my time here. Though creeeeeepy craaaaawlers make me uneasy, my time here at JDV has been awesome. My boss's (is that right grammar?) name here is Chad Huber. He lives here at the village with his wife and their seven children. Coming from a large family, I can appreciate the excitement that so much youth creates. The children range in age from 17 to 1-ish (sorry Elise, I forgot how old you are. In a few years, when you can read this, please forgive me). In addition to Chad and his family, there are four other families, and about seven single adults that live at JDV. To call it a village I guess is a bit misleading, it is more of a small community, but it is a great place with awesome people!
My experience at JDV has been quite different from being at the school in MoBay. Here at JDV, there are no deaf children, only deaf adults. Though many of the deaf couples at JDV have small children, the children are all hearing. Though I thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet and build relationships with the adults at the village, I am definitely more reluctant to ask deaf adults to teach me sign language than deaf children. In part, it's because many of the children are still learning JSL as well, so for them to teach is very helpful for their abilities. Another part of it is that I do not feel bad asking a child to take time out of their life to show me signs. But the adults at the village have jobs, social lives, and many other things they can do besides teach another slow-thinking American their language. Though I am reluctant to ask for help from the deaf adults, they have always been more than happy to teach me every chance they have gotten. They did not hit me with their handbags, for which I was most grateful!
In term of construction here at JDV, there is only one building we have been working on. The building will be used for work teams to stay in during their stays at JDV. The building also has a large dining room, large commercial kitchen, and a few apartments for residents. The building is about three years from being finished {Keep in mind that all CCCD campus construction is funded and built 100% by work teams that come in each spring and summer, so progress is very... gradual :) }.
My primary role during my time here was to make holes in the cinder block walls for water, electrical, and plumbing pipes to go. My weapon of mass destruction is the demolition tool. It looks like a giant drill and can use different bits to either jack hammer or drill through concrete. I have also heard it called the Hi-Lie, the Hil-Tee, the Hammer Drill, and the Jack Hammer. Since everyone was throwing names into the hat, I came up with a few myself: Big Poppa, the Haymaker, Jeff, Thugnificent, the Power Bomb, and Icky-Icky-Icky Kah-Bungo. I ultimately settled on calling it the Rain Maker, a reference to the conclave of concrete and mortar it rains down from the Heavens above when you use it.
The Rain Maker and I. Inseparable. Especially when my fingers
can no longer release from squeezing the trigger for too long.
Formally: Cinder block wall
Currently: Rain Maker food and an area for 3-in. pipe
The groups that have been here at the village are a group from Charlotte, Michigan (isn't that crazy?) last week and the group from Francisville, Indiana this week. In addition to meeting and spending time with these two groups, I have also got to spend a lot of time with Chad and his family (the let me watch a movie with them last week. Hooray!) and also with a strange young man by the name of Blake Widmer, (my current roommate) who is the Missionary at the CCCD school in Kingston. Blake (and Chad) are both from Francisville and have many friends and relatives on the team this week. Since Blake did not have any work team in Kingston this week, he is helping out here. Blake graduated college a year before I did, so it has been fun to get to spend time with somebody in my similar life situation, sense of humor, and age-range. Not that I don't love hanging out with the toddlers and teenagers at the school, nor the high-schoolers or adults that come down on the teams, but I feel that much of my humor and many of my references are lost on people outside of a specific age range, and it is refreshing to experience that again every once in a while.
Thank you for reading about my time here at JDV! Since the Gold Medal game has not yet taken place for hockey, I hereby predict that USA beats Canada in overtime as Sidney Crosby accidentally scores on his own goal in OT to let down his country right before he twists both ankles and develops a rash from being Canadian. You heard it here first!
{Jump back to the present. WHOOOOOOOOOSH!!}
So now that I have you all caught up with my two weeks at the village, I can tell you that upon completion of those two weeks, I rode back here to MoBay, to meet a new team from Pennsylvania, and my brothers! That's right. Kolt Martin and Chase Parker actually got off their lazy, Call-Of-Duty-playing asses (can I say "ass" in this blog?), got on the plane, and flew to Jamaica! And remembered their passports to boot!
So stay tuned for my next blog post, where I describe what happened last week. Sooner or later I will get this blog caught up and laugh at all of you who said it could not be done. Now that I have more easily accessible internet, I plan to blog again yet this week.
But before I go, one more JDV bug story...
So one night during my second week at JDV, I left the team dining room (where people often hang out, play games, and talk until the wee hours of the morning) a bit early to get some extra sleep. Since Blake and my apartment had internet (via Blake's computer) one of the high-school-age work team members (we'll call him "Boone," to protect the innocent) accompanied me back to the apartment so he could use the internet real quick before going to bed. After arriving back at the apartment, I realized that the gate one must pass through to gain access to our door was locked. I looked around the side of the apartment to see that our light was on and that Blake must be inside with the key. Now, the widows on the side of the apartments each have awnings, and under each awning hangs about five clementine-sized wasp nests. Keep in mind, it was nighttime, and very cool at that hour, and the chances of wasps coming out of their nests, as long as you didn't straight-up punch their homes, were very small. So I, being very afraid of things with stingers, and not wanting to venture anywhere near said nests, asked Boone to peep in the window and ask Blake to let us in (without telling him of the nests, of course). So Boone goes over to the window, makes the request of Blake, and then walks back around front, without any snags. After we get inside the apartment, Boone, wearing a hooded-sweatshirt with the hood up, makes an off-hand complaint about a beetle flying in front of his face. As Blake and I look up at his face, we both simultaneously notice one of the largest spiders I have ever seen DANGLING FROM HIS HOOD, almost kicking him in the nose. Though Blake and I were both freaking out and screaming and flailing our arms, Boone remained amazingly calm as Blake batted our eight-legged friend out of our door and into the garage before ending the episode with a sneaker. I laughed even harder upon the realization that Boone had run into a spider's web beneath the wasp's nests in front of our window. Though it happened very fast, I can describe the spiders body size as just under "dime" and his legs probably extending slightly beyond "Ritz cracker." As I said that night, "YAAHHAHHYAAGEEEEZ Get itta wayyy from me!"
That it all. Take it easy. Much Love!
