Will Run for Rice and Peas

December 6, 2008

At 4:00 am, I woke up to the sound of my phone beeping. The first thought was I hate morning swim practice. Then I remembered that the last morning practice I had was over four years ago back in Ithaca, which seems like a world away now. I picked up my head and remembered that I was in Negril, Jamaica and it was time to get up and get ready to run a half marathon…Great, why do I always put myself through this kind of stuff… was the watered down version of the next few thoughts that went through my mind.

Slowly dragging myself out of bed, I immediately started to regret the three plates of pasta, bread and fruit that I had eaten the night before at the free dinner. But tell me, how was a PCV, living off of a steady diet of mac and cheese (the fake stuff), veggie mince and rice supposed to turn away from the first site of real pasta in almost 6 months? Oh well, that is why I have gotten up so many mornings over the past few months at 5 am, so that I’m ready for this early stuff, right? What is an extra few pounds of pasta in my stomach?

After washing up and a few handfuls of dry cereal, I came back into the bedroom of the house I was staying at and saw my girlfriend, Liza, still in bed…even more motivation to get dressed and go run 13 miles. I paid my money, got my free tee shirt and ate my free dinner, I might as well drink the free water and Gatorade along the course too. I put on my red Cornell running shorts that I have been using ever since my freshman year and my tank top that Liza and another PCV, Tami, helped me decorate the day before. As I start putting my shoes on, Liza sits up and takes a picture, saying that she wants to document the occasion. Great, that’s all I want are pictures at 4:30 in the morning.

Now it’s off to the race. As I step outside for the first time, I’m a little shocked by how cold it is. I have gotten used to Portmore where, even at 5 am, it isn’t much below 75 or 70 at the lowest. Here, it’s probably in the low 60’s. I remember that it is December and I’m walking outside in shorts and a tank top at 4:30 in the morning…just try doing that back in Philly and see how far you make it. I walk the mile or so to the town square where the busses are picking up the runners and volunteers and taking them to the start and water stations. As I run to get on the last bus, I start to here a few laughs after I passed by some people standing on the side of the road.

When I get to the start line, the sky is dark but the organizers have put a whole line of tiki torches along the side of the road to light the first hundred meters or so of the race. A steel drum band is playing in front of a nearby resort and a whole group of runners are getting themselves ready on the road. Among the crowed, I find Scott, a PCV who is running the 10K race and a few other PCVs who are volunteering at the water stations and finish line. I do a few quick stretches, jump up and down a few times, and wait for things to start, hoping that my knee doesn’t start acting up on me. Again, I hear people behind me laughing a little bit.

There is a very short speech and then, at 5:15 am on the dot, the starting beep goes off. Wow, this is the first non-“Soon Come” thing I have experienced in Jamaica. I was really expecting to stand here until 5:30 or 5:45 before taking off. At least we will be able to run most of the race before the sun fully rises and heats the place up.

The race goes by quickly and without any incident, which is always good for these types of things. I run the race as I like to. Start out in the middle of the pack and slowly work my way up through the crowd so that I am continually passing other runners. I know it is a bit cruel to the other runners, but it motivates me to run faster to pass other runners and feeling like they are trying to chase me down after I do it. It is funny though, after passing some people, I hear laughter rather than the usual mumbled curses.

The best part is the fact that the water stations are every mile and, at most of the water stations, there is at least one PCV that I recognized and cheered me along. The other really good part of the race is at the finish line, a guy with a machete is chopping coconuts so that all of the runners can have some fresh coconut water after we finish. Nothing like drinking coconut water straight out of the coconut! The stuff really is better than Gatorade in helping to re-hydrate you.
While I am drinking my coconut water, tired and a bit dazed, I hear a group of people standing behind me laughing and yelling, “Rice and Peas! Rice and Peas! Can we have a picture?” I turned around and walked to them. I held my coconut in one hand, a banana in another, and gave them the best smile possible after running 13 miles. “No, turn around, we don’t want a picture of you, we want a picture of the back of your shirt!”

First Thanksgiving in Jamaica

November 27, 2008

Today was the first time that I have spent Thanksgiving away from my family. Usually we I go to my parents or my grandparents house with the rest of my family and we eat, drink, argue and do the typical family thing for a few days. This year both my twin sister Kelly and I were unable to make it home (Kelly living in Chicago and starting to settle in out there). It was nice today when I was able to call home and talk to everyone in my family and hear that they were all enjoying their Thanksgivings.

The weirdest thing to me is how normal today feels to me. I’m not sure if it is because I am still a little shell shocked by things even after four months or the fact that the weather still feels like the middle of summer or maybe not being around Americans who are talking about Thanksgiving. What ever it is, it doesn’t even really feel like I’m missing out on Thanksgiving this year because it doesn’t feel like it is Thanksgiving to me.

When I woke up this morning for my run (to the sounds Browny, one of the dogs in my yard, barking continuously from 4:30 to 5 AM), one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was that it was Thanksgiving and I needed to call home. After I finished my run, ate breakfast, did laundry and cleaned up around my apartment, I had to remind myself again that it was Thanksgiving and that I needed to call home. I then saw the stick of sugar cane leaning against my fridge that Ms. White, my host mother, gave me this past weekend that I have been meaning to cut. While I was out on my veranda cutting the skin off and chopping the cane into pieces, I started to look around:
This is a picture from my rooftop looking north towards the mountains.












This is the view from my veranda looking west with the Cumberland High School in the distance












I know you can’t tell by the pictures, but they were taken at about 9 in the morning and it already in the upper 80’s and shaping up to be another hot day in Portmore. What is sad is that this is winter when it is as cool as it gets, and I’m still sweating…oh well, things could be worse.

After finishing with the cane, I had a chance to call my parents. They were doing well, at home preparing food and getting a small construction project around the house ready for the family members that were about to show up. This year, the project was to replace the door from the kitchen out to the deck. This is pretty minor to the Thanksgiving back when I was in college where they decided to replace the linoleum floor in the kitchen with tile during Thanksgiving. That was a fun time, getting a hammer rather than a handshake when I showed up the night before Thanksgiving and watching my mom trying to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with a kitchen floor that was torn up.

I was finally picked up by a co-worker at JSIF around 11 and we went up to a school in a town called Christiana, a place way up in the mountains in Manchester Parish where the views are amazing and the air is cool. We had a short meeting with the principal, some teachers and some parents about the reconstruction of the school and a nearby roadway and then it was back on the road to go home. What a hard day of work…

After getting home, it was time to warm up a left over bowl of red pea soup that I had cooked last weekend and a few phone calls to my family back home to see how things were going. It was really nice hearing from everyone, but like I said earlier, it really just didn’t feel like thanksgiving to me. I think it is a good thing because I wasn’t getting really home sick like a few of the other volunteers I know, which is good for the “mental stability” that can be an issue down here.

I guess what I am trying to say in the end is that I do miss my family and wish I was there to spend the holidays with them, but I think I have reached to point where do not need to do so. I am ready to accept situations as they end up without getting upset if they don’t live up to unrealistic expectations. Maybe that is a lot of what my experience here has been a lot about. As much as I tried not to set expectations before coming down, it is impossible not to. When I heard PC, visions of mud huts half-way around with a village of people excited to see me and work with me came to mind. Instead I got a nice house on a tropical island a few hours from the coast of America where there are a lot of very nice people but also a lot of people who are skeptical of my motives for wanting to do PC.

In conclusion, I am thankful for a lot of things and will certainly miss many of them in my short list: The health, support and love of my family, my friends (both in the States and here on the island), being an American who has this opportunity and last, but not least, chicken, rice and peas!