Tropical Times

I just got done with a 4-day Reef Check on the south coast of Jamaica. It was great to go diving so much, although the weather wasn't very helpful. A tropical storm was headed toward Jamaica this weekend and created big waves on the south coast. It would have been nice to have my surfboard here... Needless to say, it made the the diving interesting with the huge surges! With each surge, it would push me 8 meters-- very fun!! Some people got a little scared of being crashed into the reef though. The coral reefs here are pretty degraded (especially compared to Belize). I've seen a ton of bleaching, some coral disease, and very few fish larger than 10 cm (the waters are heavily over-fished).

About the tropical dry forest, where I live now is considered the largest area of tropical dry forest in the Caribbean (the south coast). Lots of acacia, agave, and cactus. The terrain is pretty rough limestone, but that means that there's lots of caves to explore!

Crime here is real. Many Peace Corps volunteers have been robbed, harassed, etc. But, the crime isn't as rampant as everyone thinks and hears about in Kingston and Montego Bay. Although, there were big riots in Montego Bay a few weeks ago where a lot of taxi drivers got shot and people were stabbed. It's just taught me to be really aware. Luckily, neither Bryan or I have had anything happen to us.

Peace Corps Reality

Bryan and I live in ¼ of a house in May Pen, Clarendon where we have an apartment (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, extra room) to ourselves; it is nice to have our own space. For our first month after training, we were living with our Supervisor (I’ll get to her later). Needless to say, it was not an optimal arrangement! We share the water spickett outside where we do laundry—all by hand with cold water. Let me say that our hands hurt terribly all the time from laundry washing and ringing out!! It also takes a long time to do! The only problem we have with our place is that the kitchen completely floods whenever there’s heavy rain (about 2 times a week.) It usually rains about 4 times a week, but it’s not always hard enough to make our window and kitchen leak. So, we’re dealing with that right now.

We walk about 10 minutes to get to the main road where we catch a taxi and go to work in Lionel Town (about 20-25 minute drive). The taxis here are completely crazy, but we’re pretty much used to them now. I know my Mom would freak out! The area we live in and work in is considered “rural” and is the hot, dry (vegetation-wise), flat part of the island. There are some areas with Tropical Dry Forests here, but for the most part it’s just sugar cane fields. Goats, cows, and dogs roam the streets everywhere—kind of weird at first, but you get used to it.

The NGO we work for, The Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation (C-CAM,) is sometimes good, sometimes bad. Most days we just come to the office/cybercenter, which is just like a 3^rd world Kinko’s and help Jamaicans with their printing, photocopying, typing, and faxing needs. Woo hoo. Great fun. Other days we get to go out into the field and do Beach monitoring (surveying for erosion) and twice we got to do Reef Check and go SCUBA diving. Overall, work’s bad with some really great days once in a blue moon. I hate to sound so negative, but it’s the truth! Also, I think our supervisor (a strict, controlling woman) and other people we work with forget that everything is different and hard to adapt to for us here in Jamaica—the people, the nose, the smells, the food. I’m getting pretty sick of the constant verbal harassment from every guy on the street. I hate to go out alone.The smells here can be pretty awful as well . . . burning trash and dead goats and dogs everywhere combined with the heat and humidity—not to mention the terrible body odor of the Jamaican man squished next to me in the back of the taxi this morning (4 adults squish in the backseat of the car!) Okay . . . enough of that . . .

The good stuff: our NGO (C-CAM) is supposed to get funding in January and next September, so hopefully next year we’ll be able to get out more in the field and do real work. In our free time, most weekends we travel to other parts of the island, like Montego Bay and Ocho Rios where we spend time at the beach, snorkel, and if we’re lucky—dive. We meet up with some of our Peace Corps friends and do a little of the tourist thing (Dunn’s River Falls, Margaritaville, etc.) Also, we’re going to try and join some organizations on the island—Bird Life Jamaica, Jamaica Natural History Society, Jamaica Caving Club, and the University of the West Indies Sub-Aqua Club (SCUBA diving club) to help out in more ways. Through those organizations, we can take field trips and go places we couldn’t find on our own.

Peace Corps gives us next to nothing, so for the last week of each month we are practically starving—mainly because taxi fares went up 40% (HUGE increase) earlier this month and is really affecting our budget now. But, apparently Peace Corps can’t raise Jamaica’s volunteer’s allowance until they give out surveys at the end of the year, and if 80% get turned in, then they will consider a raise. There hasn’t been a raise in living allowance for years because it’s practically impossible to get 80% of the volunteers to turn in their surveys. Anyway, I guess this is all just a lesson of bureaucracy.

Update from Dengue Dana

Bryan and I are officially "Peace Corps Volunteers" now. After 7 weeks of busy training, our Swearing-In ceremony was August 22. It was a big affair-- the U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica swore us in, the Governor General of Jamaica (appointed by the Queen of England) was the guest speaker, and it was broadcast on TV.

Unfortunately, the last couple weeks of training were pretty tough for me. I came down with "Dengue Fever" and felt like I was going to die. Dengue is a mosquito-born illness that caused me to have a temperature of 105 degrees, intense joint and bone pain (my body felt like it was broken), a bad neck and head ache, and bright red skin that turns into a full-body rash. I had such a bad case of Dengue that I had to be hospitalized in Kingston for 3 days where I received shots galore and had bloodwork done. After my fever broke, I fell into a mini-depression that lasted about a week (the doctor said that some people are depressed for months afterward) where all I wanted to do was go home to California. But, Bryan supported me through all this and I stayed! The doctor told me that I am the first case in the beginning of a Dengue Fever outbreak in Jamaica, and that there hasn't been one here for 5 years . . . what an honor. . . :-(

After a teary-eyed goodbye to our host family in Linstead, we departed to our permanent Peace Corps assignment in Lionel Town. We're very excited to be here-- out of the 20 Environmental volunteers in our group, we think we got the best assignment! :-) On September 5-7 we are going to Negril (west coast of Jamaica) with our Supervisor to a Coral Reef Monitoring Network Training (Reef Check.) While there, Bryan and I will learn the techniques to assess Coral Reefs through transects, etc. so we can do the monitoring at our NGO's protected area (Portland Bight Protected Area.) The training is mostly underwater SCUBA diving. Bryan and I are now certified SCUBA divers. We went up to Ocho Rios (North coast of Jamaica) on weekends in the last month to get SCUBA training, and we were just certified August 23. Our SCUBA training had been delayed due to my Dengue Fever.

During training, Bryan and I made 2 close friends in Peace Corps. Andrea is from Shelter Island, NY and Michael from Virginia. Michael's Peace Corps assignment is in Montego Bay, so we plan to meet up with him some weekends and go SCUBA diving together. Andrea's assignment is in a small mountain town (400 people) near the center of the island (about 1 hour from us) so we'll still be able to hang out with her on weekends, too. The 4 of us plan to take weekend trips hiking in the mountains, camping, etc. together. They're both 22 like us, and just graduated from college too.

We've gotten used to the climate here in the last couple months, although we are still perpetually hot and sweaty. I don't think we'll ever get used to the mosquitos . . . Jamaican food has grown on us . . . and the Jamaican landscape and people are now seeming like home. Please write us if any of you have a chance, and let us know what's going on in your lives!

Jamaican Life

Well, we've been in Jamaica for over 3 weeks now and we've been warmly welcomed by most Jamaicans. 

 Bryan and I have been staying in the town of Linstead with the Rochester family. They are great!!! They've made us feel right at home and are very eager to teach us things and give us tremendous support. Due to the comfortable atmosphere we have with the Rochesters, the "cultural transition" has been, we think, pretty easy. Some other trainees in our Environmental group are having a rougher adjustment time. . . the food is another thing we all have to get used to. Most of it is pretty good (home-made juices, rice and peas, jerk chicken, ackee and saltfish), some of the food is pretty bland (breadfruit, yellow yams, boiled green banana), while some of the food isn't very appetizing (mackerel-- too fishy and salty, pig's tail and ox tail- for obvious reasons, etc.) We play dominoes a lot and football (soccer) is also a common past time in Jamaica. We're learning Patois slowly because everyone speaks English in Jamaica anyway, so it's hard to force ourselves to use it.

Training is O.K., a lot of long days in a hot room; but for a couple days a week we go on field trips to other parts of the island. We went camping in a mountainous tropical broad-leaf forest area called "Cockpit Country" where Bryan and I were able to do some caving and bird banding. The bird banding was neat; I got to release one of the birds (a bananaquit)-- it was very cute!! We've seen the endemic and endangered Yellow-Billed and Black-Billed Parrots flying in the wild as well as Jamaica's national bird, the Swallowtail Hummingbird (Doctor bird) which was very pretty. We also went swimming one day at Turtle Bay in Ocho Rios.

This Sunday our sites were announced. Bryan and I will be working with an NGO called the "Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation" (C-CAM) in Lionel Town (parish of Clarendon). We'll be living on the farthest point south on the island. C-CAM, just 10 days ago, received jurisdiction to manage the newest-- and largest-- protected area in Jamaica: Portland Bight Protected Area. Bryan and I will be doing some manatee monitoring, coral reef monitoring and surveying, bird surveying, crocodile monitoring, GIS work, management planning, and community outreach to local fishing villages to help stop overfishing and dynamite fishing. We are extremely excited about our assignment!!!!! We feel very fortunate to have received this one. Although some other volunteers got assigned to beautiful places on the North Coast (Negril, Montego Bay, etc.) we feel like we will have a great "job"; something that we can really have our hearts in and that will interest us.

I hope you've all been well and having a good summer. Feel free to send me a letter or e-mail me; I'd love to hear from you!!

Arrived in Jamaica!

Bryan and I have been in Jamaica for a few days now, and so far we love it-- but I guess we'd better, because we're going to be here for a while! 

We were in Miami for 3 days for an orientation into the Peace Corps, and got to meet the other 75 volunteers who are volunteering in Jamaica with us. Our training class of 77 people is the biggest in Peace Corps history! 

The flight over the Caribbean was beautiful, and from the air it looks like Jamaica's rainforests have a lot of largely intact areas, although I could of course see deforestation and fragmentation. 

Kingston is a huge city at the base of the Blue Mountains. In Kingston we saw areas of intense poverty right next to large, nice homes and Rastafarians right next to conservative Jamaicans-- it seems like the country has a lot of diversity. . . and beauty. 

Right now we are at the University of the West Indies, which we'll be at until Friday. For the next 7 weeks I'll be in "Pre-Service Training" with 5 of those weeks being "Community Based Training." During Community Based Training, Bryan and I will be near the town of Linstead in central Jamaica living with a host family. There, we're supposed to learn Patois (Jamaican Creole), how to cook, other cultural traditions, and go to work everyday to learn the skills in order to be effective Environmental Educators. 

It looks like Bryan and I may have our training in a forested area with waterfalls and rivers. I probably won't have access to a computer for a while, so I hope you all are doing well and I'll e-mail you later!

My Jamaica address has changed permanently to:

Suchet Loois

Country Director

U.S. Peace Corps

Attn: Dana Roeber

8 Worthington Avenue

Kingston 5

Jamaica, West Indies