Greetings from the ant hill!
For reasons I have yet to discover, the amount of ants in my apartment right now is unusually high. Perhaps it has to do with the thin layer of maple syrup I just put on all my stuff. Maybe there is a way to get that great maple syrup aroma without the antsy side-effects? Seriously though, I have killed like 10 ants crawling on me from my couch and bed in the last few hours, which has never happened before. Ants are perhaps the sneakiest creatures. One minute there are just a few on the floor, the next morning they are all up in the full peanut butter jar that I didn’t screw down tightly enough. THAT WAS CRUNCHY TOO, AAARG. Dodge Ram it!
In non-ant-related news, things have been humming right along here in MoBay the last few weeks. We have had a teams from Chicago and Holland, both of which had Hope College graduates, which is always a fun connection for me to have. Both teams were tons of fun and each finished a great amount of work during their time here.
Both teams also made the trip to Ocho Rios on their off-day, a trip that I have now made enough times to establish a well-rounded routine. We leave around 8:30 in the morning, a time which hardly seems early to me here, since the sun breaks though my thin curtains at full blast around 7:30 every morning. For the first 30 minutes of the drive, I attempt to fall back asleep with my head against the glass, but the G-forces involved in any Jamaican commute, combined with the relentless sunshine, usually prove to powerful for the Sand Man. The next 70ish minutes usually find me happily reading my Excel book and taking notes, stopping occasionally to look at some of the ridiculous resorts that still befuddle me (see the Iberostar, which takes about 30 seconds to drive past at 50 MPH) and to sing along with Mrs. Russell’s rendition of “Day-o” (Daylight come and me wannie go home) by Harry Belafonte.
We usually go to Dunn’s River Falls first, an Ocho Rios must-do. While I have made the trip many times now, I still have fun climbing the waterfalls. Each time I climb, I try to at least try one route that I haven’t done before. This is a practice that goes against the grain of my personality, however, as I am not big on trying to impress anybody or doing dangerous stunts. But the marginal amount of fun derived from pushing the limit, usually exceeds my propensity to remain the boring, safe Gunnar. This last week, though, I might’ve pushed it a bit too far.
Very early in the climb, there is a relatively small set of falls rising up about eight feet. There are two ways that I have ever seen anybody go; one route runs up the left and the other runs up the center. Over to the right, there is a much less obvious route the presents a much steeper face than the other two routes. When I noticed this, I put on my Mike-Forbes-Macho-Man face and headed for the challenge. As I soon found out, not only did this route present a much steeper ascent, but also much less footing available to push off from; just below the face was about a four-foot deep pool of water, which would would rise well above my head, were I to fall in (that was a short joke, I wouldn’t want it go over your head). I started up the face to the far right, finding some rock along the edge of to push off from. As I stood up to right of the face, I looked for the best place to put my left hand in order to pull myself across the rushing water and up to the top of the face. Unable to find a good rock to grab onto, I found a tree that would do the job nicely. Confidently, I pushed off strongly with my right foot, in order to transfer the vast majority of my body weight to my left hand on the tree. As I swayed across the face of the rock from right to left, I successfully shifted all of my weight, and, unfortunately the tree as well.
As the tree I had put all my faith in flung out from beneath my grasp and I started my six-foot decent into the rocky pool below, I thought, “Hmm… I guess that was really more of a dead log than a tree. Oops…” I quickly and successfully navigated my way from the top of that rock to the bottom of the pool beneath, with the help of my trusty guide-rocks, who gently gashed my rib cage on my way down, in order to help me find the landing pool safely. Gravity, I would also like to thank you for your contribution to my journey downward; you’ve always been there for me.
Bursting forth from the pool, I retook my original posistion as quickly as possible, all the while being careful not to remove my Forbes-Man face and reveal that I was shocked from falling so hard, embarrassed for being an idiot, and in pain from freshly and violently scraping my side on a boulder. I eventually made it up the rest of the falls without making a complete fool out of myself… again.
Since all of the blog above was written on June 19th, but not yet posted, the rest of this entry may come off a bit funny in terms of timing and tense. Keep in mind, you have been warned.
Evidently, a Jamaican man by the name of ‘Chucko’ had my phone number before I did, since his random associates have called me repeatedly and asked for ‘Chucko’ in Patwa probably about six times now. I usually respond and say, “Yeah, this is Chucko. Where’s my money?!” and then they’ll say, “Where’s your money?! WHERE’S MY MONEY?!” and then I’ll start quoting Monty Python while they start screaming Patwa swears into my ear. I usually make it all they way to the Holy Hand Grenade before they hang up.
Seriously, I have received several calls during normal business hours, as well as calls at 3:30 AM, and 5:45 AM from people looking for Chucko. Wrong number, mon! C’mon guys! C’mon!
Since I have been here on the island for quite some time now, I have become aware of a number of things about Jamaican culture that I wish American culture could emulate.
First, Jamaicans aren’t shy about interacting with and being near anybody. As the Chicago team made their way to the market in Ocho Rios for a few hours (a place that I have learned to avoid at all costs), I went straight to my favorite tourist spot in Ocho; Burger King. I love sitting inside BK because it is air-conditioned, it has a television, it is relatively clean, has chicken nuggies, and the employees aren’t all badgering you to come to their registers because, “Me give ya good discount, mon” or “Me stuff is deh bes!”
While sitting in BK, drinking my orange Fanta that I purchased so that security wouldn’t kick me out for being a non-paying beneficiary of the establishment, I was able to watch most of a World Cup game will reading my Excel book (See: Gunnar’s Heaven). I sat in a booth near the register and the television. During the two hours I sat there, no less than five different Jamaicans sat on the other side of the booth from me while waiting for their food, all for short periods of time. Some would say hi, others would not, but none felt uncomfortable for resting right across the table from me. At first I was a little taken back by the breach of my personal bubble, which of course expands to include an entire booth when you sit down by yourself. After a while, however, I felt my opinion shift to feeling like I was part of the Jamaican community, worthy of being sat next to in a booth without any awkwardness.
Next, Jamaicans tend to not be embarrassed if they can’t remember something while they are talking. With the MoBay teaching staff, I have observed a number of times where names or bits of information have been forgotten mid-sentence, and it has been no big deal to the speaker. In terms of names, I personally try to avoid using people’s names altogether, because I am scared of getting them wrong. I’m big on saying, “Hey mannnnnn…” or “Hello there amigo! It’s been while!” or “We are the knights who say…Knee!”, but I have been asked point blank a number of times what my name is again, by Jamaicans who have known me for weeks without a hint of embarrassment. Why can’t America be more like that? Instead of finding creative ways of dancing around the fact that I forget names likes it’s my job, why can’t I be free to ask people their names as many times as I want? It’s a cryin’ shame, I tell ya. And in terms of forgetting information or forgetting a specific word, I have often heard an honest, “I can’t remember what that fruit is called…” or “you can get some of these…[pointing at something specific]… things” or [in place of actual addition information to a statement] “and…umm…stuff like that.” I feel that as an American, I have to substitute an intelligent sounding phrase or word when I forget what a lime is called. Instead of basically admitting I’ve forgotten something, I will use words like appartus, element, item, antidisestablishmentarianism, and the luminously-bright-green-citris-fruit-closely-related-to-the-lemon.
Last, Jamaicans tend to be very honest when asked the question, “How are you?” On multiple occasions, I have had members of the staff stop mid-stride, look off to the side, look back at me and says, “I’m… a bit tired today. And you?” and then, being an American, I am of course obliged to reply, “I’m grrrrrrreat!” even though the spreadsheet application I was working on that morning still has a few bugs in it that have been frustrating me. I just know that asking how people are in America has become part of a greeting, not an actually question inquiring about the well-being of the person being greeted, and I wonder what it would be like if that were different.
And while we are on the subject of footwear, I broke my sandal a few weeks ago while watching UFC at a restaurant in MoBay with Warren. Chuck Liddell, the face of UFC, got knocked in the first round by a smaller dude (whose other arm had been broken earlier in the round by one of Chuck’s kicks). The knockout punch was so powerful that it caused me to flail my hands in the air and kick my feet into the table, thereby ripping the thong from the base out of my right sandal. I, of course, didn’t pack another pair because, you know, sandals take up so much space. Luckily, I packed 25 already-filled water balloons in my checked luggage instead (the hoidy toidy airline folk don’t let you carry-on full water balloons anymore. They told me it was a threat to airline security and could potentially cause a rapid decrease in cabin dryness. I said that was whole the point. They called security on me. I ran until I collapsed after about 70 yards from exhaustion. My last stand took place on my back in the middle of Terminal C. I threw 4 or 5 water balloons before security tackled and tazered me into submission. My hearing is in August. Whatever.) Anyways, being quite the Jamaican handyman, I fixed my sandal to be good as new later that week. I pulled the broken thong through the hole that it made when it tore and tied it in a knot. The knot, however, was to small to avoid pulling through the hole, so I put a zip tie in the knot to prevent it from pulling through. Doing this drastically reduced the amount of room for my fat toes to slide through the topside of the sandal. To remedy this, I simply removed the the soul (which had become unglued weeks ago and would turn into a slip and slide any time water got into my sandal) and placed my foot directly onto the base of the sandal, which provided a solid 1/8 inch of padding to cushion my every step on the rugged island. It was awesome. Here is a picture of my beautiful creation. Patent pending.
A work team from Cleveland stayed for the last two weeks at the MoBay school. Though I did (at Warren’s encouragement) sneak-attack spray water from the hose on everybody as they took a team picture in the septic pit while yelling, “It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!” they did not hit me with their handbags, for which I was most grateful. The first week, they did construction, the second week, they organized a camp for the kids. Though managing and keeping the attention and enthusiasm of 40-some kids for 5 days was challenging, camp was altogether a good time. We took the kids to the beach one day, with fears that some would swim far away from the beach. Those fears were quelled, however, when we saw that only about 4 kids could actually swim well enough to avoid confinement to the shallows. This realized was upsetting that these Jamaican kids all grew up 20 minutes from the ocean and can’t swim, but it was nice for the team to not worry about kids swimming away, only kids drowning.
On Saturday morning, after camp was finished, the kids began to leave for the summer. Though I knew the timeline far in advance, I was still unprepared for how difficult it would be to say goodbye to all my the kids. Over the course of the last 5 months, they have become good friends of mine. Waking up 8:00 AM Saturday morning, I had it all together, but I was feeling a sizable lump in my throat by 8:45 and was in tears by 9:30, following the departure of a few of my closest buddies.
Reflecting on the emotion of that morning, a slew of mixed feelings grip me. Part of me knows that the emotion comes from simply leaving good friends and from the fact that I will miss them and this place. But another part of me feels that I am leaving something unfinished. It feels a bit guilty for making all these connections and then simply just leaving their lives. I know that I will be back here to the school at some point (hopefully within the next year), but that it is unlikely that I will have a significant continuous contact with these lives again like I have these last 5 months. Though I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I signed up to come here short-term, this experience leads me to hope the next series of friendships I make with kids will give me the opportunity to continue to see them grow into adults, rather than only investing in them for a few months and then leaving. Regardless, I do not regret for one moment coming here to experience this school and this island and these friendships. In my heart I truly believe that it was better to make these friends and then leave, rather than never having come at all.
Thanks for reading! I also apologize for the 5-week gap since my last entry (See: five consecutive work teams and I’m lazy).
Take it easy. Much Love!
