Way Back in the Hills

Greetings from the cool and misty Blue Mountains. What a difference 3000 feet makes! Linnae, I, and ten other Peace Corps Trainees from the Green Initiative program arrived in this small farming community called Woodford last week. We are now in the phase of training where we focus mainly on agriculture, environment, and culture/language topics. The days are long, but the air is cool and the people are warm. I apologize in advance if this blog seems a little long, but we haven’t had any internet access and there has been a lot going on.

We are being accommodated in the home of Lloyd and “Auntie Peggy” and enjoying their company and the company of their extended family. Four of their children and at least four of their grandchildren live in the immediate area and are a joy to be around. Just as in Hellshire, we are being well taken care of and being introduced to new aspects of the Jamaican culture and family/community dynamics.

Blue Mountains

A typical day involves waking up around 6:00 and eating breakfast around 7:00. Auntie Peggy feeds us well on things like johnny cakes, callalou, mackerel, porridge, and more. After breakfast we start our way down the hill to our training site a mile and a half away. I rather enjoy starting the day walking through the cool morning air and greeting the schoolers (school children) as they make their way to class as well. Our training is held at a currently decommissioned school building and the usual day starts with language and culture training followed by topics relevant to our jobs in agriculture and/or environment. After class is where things get a little rough for out of shape people like Linnae and I; for about 40 minutes we trudge back home for the 1.5 miles ascending a little over 500 feet. Once home, the first order of business is to take a shower.

I can usually gauge how cold the water is by how much squealing I hear when Linnae turns the shower on. There is no water heater in our home and the water in the mountains is COLD. It has been a while since adrenalin has been a contributing factor in my bathing, but it is helpful now.

On Thursday we visited a park called Holywell situated nearby at a little over 4000 feet. As the crow flies, the park is actually closer than our training site. However, the road is not considered safe enough for the Peace Corps van and we had to take a 10-15 mile detour. Once there we went on a guided tour along a trail that topped off at nearly 4400 feet. Just as we finished and were sitting under a gazebo, the mist started to roll in and the rain began to fall. I think we were literally in a rain cloud. On the way back down we stopped briefly at a roadside café where I had a cup of authentic Blue Mountain Coffee, yum.

Farming with a Rastaman

On Friday morning, Linnae, a fellow trainee named Tom, and I met with a local Rastafarian farmer for a kind of job shadowing. I was impressed by his use of limited space and the ability to get so much to grow on the hillside. There were bananas, plantains, beans, tomatoes, celery, yams, cassava, and more. The farmer then showed us how to dig a hillside bed with his hoe/mattock; it took a little bit of coaching, but I got the hang of what we were going for pretty quick.  After breaking up and leveling the soil, we made some small trenches to put some chicken manure in before transplanting celery shoots from a nearby patch. It was an honest morning’s work and now I feel like I could put a garden in if Linnae and I get placed in a home on a hillside. 

Saturday morning we attended our first Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church service. We arrived at about 9:45 for a short bible study followed by the music and sermon that lasted until 1:00. Our host family understands that we are not SDA and that we are not used to going to church all day long on Saturday. So, we were given a ride home to relax in the afternoon while they went back for “round two”. Linnae and I took a nap and caught up on some reading until they returned at 7:00.

Scrub scrub, take in the view, repeat...

This morning (Sunday) we were able to catch up on our laundry since Saturday is our family’s day of rest. Washing clothes by hand is a chore, but I can’t complain about the view. I think we got started around 6:30am; it is important to get the laundry on the line first thing or risk it getting rained on before it dries. 

Again, sorry for the long blog post, but this is the first internet access we have had in a week. And to be honest, I haven’t missed it too much. I do miss reading the news and staying current on what is going on in the world, but we have been well entertained by our host family and are learning about the local culture to a degree that we don’t miss the world-wide web too much.