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!!
