Greetings from American soil!
Though I left the island today (July 31), I still hope to have another post or two following this one regarding my time in Jamaica. Most of this blog post was written while I was still on the island, so you can be there in spirit as you read this…
I will admit, there have been blog posts in the past where I have struggled to pull together funny or interesting stories in order to engage and entertain my lovely followers. This is not one of those posts.
Before I tell my story, I need to introduce Alison, my partner-in-crime of the last 5 weeks. Alison arrived at the MoBay campus on June 27 as a short-term missionary (same as me) to help out with work teams for a total of 6 weeks. The bad news is that she is half Canadian. The good news is that according to leading medical research, her condition is not contagious, so my prolonged exposure to her probably won’t have any lasting damage. I’m still planning on have some tests done when I get back to Atlanta, just as a precautionary measure. Better safe than sorry, right?
A deaf man by the name of Ionda Campbell was married on Saturday, July 10. Ionda, a resident of the Jamaica Deaf Village, is one of the loudest (yes, loudest) and charismatic people I have ever met. He is quite popular amongst the CCCD crowd here in Jamaica and is close friends with all of the full-time American missionaries here. On the 10th of July, as five different CCCD work teams were arriving at the airport in Montego Bay, the full-time missionaries for the MoBay, Kingston, and Knockpatrick schools were all at the wedding, which complicated the communication for this entire situation.
For the MoBay campus, we had two different teams come in on July 10th. One team was from Connecticut (Alison’s home church) and the other was from St. Louis. The two teams had worked together last year and had become pretty good friends. Mrs. Russell, Alison, Lipton (our van driver), and I successfully picked up the Connecticut team in the morning, without a hitch. The St. Louis team’s flight was to come in at 12:45, so we arrived at the airport around 1:15 (immigration never takes less than 30 minutes; ask Kolt and Chase who got to experience somewhere in the ballpark of 7 hours of immigration and customs at MBJ).
Just before leaving for the airport, Mrs. Russell informed us to also be on the lookout for a different team that was headed across the island to the Kingston campus. Mrs. Russell was asked by the Kingston principal to say a few words to their team (welcoming them to Jamaica, yadda, yadda, Yoda) and to call their bus driver to pick them up. So as Alison and I walked into the arrivals area at MJB, we were just on the lookout for two different teams, neither of whom we had seen before.
Waiting and looking for mission teams at MBJ is a pretty fun, sometimes frustrating experience. You simply keep your eyes glued to the exit doors, and look for large clusters of tired and confused looking white people, often clad in matching t-shirts (which makes them even easier to identify). Quite often you will see a group of scantily-clad girls, or a group of guys already double-fisting Red Stripes. You know immediately that these are not missionaries and that they are headed straight for the resort. Continually watching the doors can become quite tiresome, however, as immigration, ect. can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours or more.
After about 10 minutes of waiting I got a call from the principal, Mrs. Dorette Russell (hereafter “DR”), who was waiting a couple hundred yards away from the airport entrance (so she didn’t have to pay for parking). Mrs. Russell is a very organized and very disciplined leader. So when she speaks, you listen (a very important attribute to have when you are the principal of a deaf school).
DR: Guh-NAR! (She heavily accentuates the NAR in my name). GM: Yes, Mrs. Russell. DR: Make sure you call me as soon as you see either team! Ok? GM: Yep, I understand. I will call as soon as we see anything. DR: Because I need to talk to them and call their bus, remember? GM: Yes, I remember. DR: Okay then. I will wait for your call.
Twenty-Five minute mark. Phone rings again.
DR: Guh-NAR?! GM: Yes, Mrs. Russell? DR: Do you see either team yet? GM: Nope. Our eyes have been peeled, but I don’t see them. DR: Okay. Let me know right when you see them, okay? GM: I absolutely will.
Finally, at about 45 minutes (over an hour after the original St. Louis group), Alison spots a group of confused-looking white folks in matching green t-shirts. Bingo. I find the Team Leader (“TL”) in the group and start the conversation.
GM: Hello there! Are you looking for CCCD? TL: Yes, I certainly am. GM: Awesome, you are in luck my good man! My name is Gunnar. Where is your group from? TL: We are from St. Louis, in the great state of Missouri! GM: Cool, so you will be coming with me to the campus here in Montego Bay… TL: No, we are going to the Knockpatrick Campus (located not in MoBay nor Kingston, but in the city of Mandeville, in the middle of the island) GM: Knockpatrick? Not MoBay? Do you mean Kingston? TL: Nope, we are definitely going to Knockpatrick, just like we did last year. (I glance over and see the word “KNOCKPATRICK CAMPUS” printed on the back of one of the team member’s t-shirts).
GM: Ummm……Well, I don’t know how to say this, but I actually wasn’t even looking for your group. We were looking for one of two other groups. I didn’t even know your group was coming in. TL: Oh… Okay. Well, we saw another team about 15 minutes behind us in customs. GM: Oh good, that must be the other St. Louis team. Do you know who is picking you up? TL: We were just told that our bus driver would be here and find us. GM: Okay. I am going to go ahead and call the MoBay principal and make sure she doesn’t know anything about your bus. TL: Thanks, Gunnar.
I call Mrs. Russell.
GM: Hello Mrs. Russell. We found a St. Louis team, but it… um… wasn’t ours. They are going to Knockpatrick. DR: Knockpatrick? Do they mean Kingston? GM: No, they are definitely going to Knockpatrick. They are currently waiting by the curb right now and have no idea where their bus drivers are. But they said there was a team about 15 minutes behind them. DR: I did not know there was a team coming into Knockpatrick. And that other team must be our St. Louis team. I will make some calls to find out what is going with this Knockpatrick team.
Another 15 minutes pass before we see the other new team come out into the arrivals lobby. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Knockpatrick team is still waiting and confused. I go to talk the the First Person (“FP”) that I see on the new team. GM: Hello! Where is your team heading? FP: We are going to Kingston. GM: Okay, good. I need to tell the MoBay principal so she can call you bus. FP: Oke dokey, artichokey.
I call Mrs. Russell, to let her know that the Kingston team had made it.
GM: Hi, Mrs. Russell. We found the Kingston team. DR: [Laughing hysterically] GM: What? What are you laughing at? DR: [Laughing continues] GuhNAR! [Laughing more] GM: What? I don’t understand. DR: You are never going to believe what happened? GM: What? What happened? DR: The Knockpatrick bus drivers [Still laughing while talking]… They took our team and got half way to Knockpatrick (which is in the middle of the island, mind you) before realizing they had the wrong team! They drove for about 45 minutes before realizing what had happened! They are their way back to the MoBay campus right now. GM: Good Lord Have Mercy on Cheeses of Nazareth.
So after we realized what had happened, we simply took the Knockpatrick team back to the MoBay campus, where the Knockpatrick drivers had already dropped off our St. Louis team and the correct team exchanged buses, and made their way to Knockpatrick. Maybe this story isn’t as funny as you are reading it, but when we are standing in the airport looking for a group of 20 adults, and then get the news that they have been stolen from us and have been taken half-way across Jamaica, we could not physically have another response besides laughter.
My final four weeks here have been awesome and adventurous. Boring recap imminent; brace yourself. Four weeks ago, we left for the Jamaica Deaf Village (JDV) and helped out a work team from North Carolina. Three weeks ago, we came back to MoBay to help lead two teams; one from Connecticut and one from St. Louis (yes, the same St. Louis team from the famous St. Louis debacle). Two weeks ago, we went back to the village to “help” (I actually did very little that week, as the work team was huge. And it was my birthday week, muahaha) a work team from Texas. After saying goodbye to all of our good friends at the village, we came back to MoBay for our final week to lead a group of teams from California and New Jersey, along with a father and daughter from Mississippi, and an individual from Georgia (pronounced JOE-jaw in my head).
For my final week here, Warren was at JDV leading a team he knew from previous years for the week, so Alison and I were left in charge of leading the group of thirty. Luckily, most of the projects we had to work on this last week were relatively straight forward (65% Painting, 30% Landscaping, 10% Other, 5% Learning How to Add Percentages. This group really gave 110%. I’m a C.P.A., did I mention that?), so I was able to work hard in the early mornings, getting everybody what they needed to work, then spend the rest of the day standing around saying, “Good stuff! Good stuff! Do you have a Snickers on you? No? That's fine. Good stuff!,” making sure that the rocking chair in the team room didn’t run away (by sitting on it, of course), and having long face-to-face meetings with Mr. Giant-Oscillating fan. I did feel a little guilty for putting a group on landscaping duty all week, but they did a great job and did not hit me with their handbags, for which I was most grateful. All-in-all it was a good week that went as smooth as I could have hoped.
As I sit on the plane flying away from Jamaica right now, I have an overwhelming amount of mixed emotion. I am sorry, but I cannot possibly capture all I want to say in this moment. There are far too many incomplete thoughts and far too much emotion I do not fully understand to fairly try and put it all together right now. I will absolutely miss the island, my friends, the lifestyle, and the experience, but I am also very excited about the next great chapter God is writing in my life.
Though this post is coming to a close, I am far from finished writing about my time in Jamaica. I have a substantial backlog of unwritten stories and unshared pictures that simply haven’t been blogged because I have been very focused these last two months trying to make the most of my experience here and not yet capturing in words what the experience has been. I also plan to sit down and write a final reflection on everything I have experienced. I promise at least two more posts within the next month catching up on forgotten stories, pictures, and reflecting on my time in Jamaica. Thank you so much for reading.
Take it easy, mon! Much Love.
