A Jamaican Opera Story

Public transportation in Jamaica is an interesting beast. Normally, it is hot, crowded, loud and fairly dangerous. I swear listening to Celine Dion at full blast while sitting in 100 degree heat smalled up to the point where it feels like your ribs are going to break is a form of torture. But, since we are only allowed bicycles, we have to depend on public to get any significant distance. While I have experienced much crazier happenings on busses and in taxis before, I thought this one was fairly amusing and I haven't stopped laughing about it.

Yesterday I was on a bus from Kingston coming back to Port Antonio, reading my book and minding my own business in relative comfort (as comfortable as you can be when you're sharing one seat with another man) when I finally realized what was playing on the radio. No, it wasn't the Dancehall, Reggae or Hip Hop, and it wasn't the Celine Dion or random Country song that comes on, it was OPERA! After a long day of traveling 5 1/2 hours to get to Kingston for about 2 hours worth of meetings to be told that everyone will taking off from now until after the new year (which I already knew), listening to a few minutes of opera music on a bus hurtling around corners and narrowly missing other vehicles on the Junction Road really made my day. The best part was the Jamaican guy next to me humming along to the music. After the opera song was over, it went back to dancehall (I think it was "Ride it like a 10 speed bicycle" - a pretty hilarious song), but it was a few moments of Zen.

That's about it for now. I'll try to come up with a better post before Christmas to update everyone on my recent happenings with my trip home and what's going on now.

Blame it on the Rain

For those looking at this in facebook, I'll upload the pictures seperately.

Over the past few months, I’ve started to understand how hard life can be without easy access to water. Bellevue is supposed to get an average of over 200 inches of rain each year, but for the past three months, we have hardly had more than an inch. There are some springs in the community that have dried up for the first time that most of the old timers can remember. The community started having problems with our water supply in the beginning of the summer and the last time we had water in our pipes was some time in early August. Ever since then, my host family has been depending on the water in our two 400 gallon tanks, which lasted a whole week thanks to the guys mixing cement for the ongoing construction at the house, and carrying water from the spring.

Here is a pictuer of the spring to the left. Its not the best, but it is dark and my camera is not the best. I do have to admit that it hasn’t been too tough for me mostly because of the preferential treatment my host family shows me. They never ask me to carry water up from the spring, I just try to when ever I can because I feel that I should try to pull my weight as much as possible. I especially felt that it was my responsibility to carry water when it came to needing water for my garden. After a few weeks of dry weather, I noticed that my tomato plants were starting to die so I tried to make at least one trip with a 5 gallon water jug to carry them. The spring nearest to our house is less then a ¼ mile away, which is really close compared to some people, but the only problem that the spring is a ¼ mile down the side of the mountain. That means that when I carry the water, it’s a ¼ mile up a steep hill. Oh well, like I said, it could be a lot longer.

After the water in our tanks ran out, I have to admit that I went a week with, let’s just say, infrequent bathing. I finally got over myself and decided that bathing at the spring can’t be that bad, hell, I’ve been bathing outside under a standpipe for the past 4 months anyway, how bad can walking down to the spring really be. It was actually kind of nice, the spring is back into the bush a little so it is even more private then the standpipe in my host family’s yard. I was getting used to bathing down there and everything was going fine when I also decided that 3 weeks was long enough and I really had to do some wash. I mentioned it to my host sister who happened to be talking on the phone with my host mother who is on a work program in America. Next thing I know I’m on the phone with my host mother, who I still haven’t met face to face, getting yelled at that “You shouldn’t be going to the spring at all! You should get someone to carry water for you! Bla bla bla.” All I could do was just say “Yes mam” and wait for the verbal assault to be over. When I woke up the next morning around 7 to go down to the spring, my host brother Rick was coming down from his last trip to catch water, filling two 50 gallon drums for the “family to use.” I can’t say I was disappointed that I didn’t have to do my wash at the spring, but the special treatment is a bit annoying at times. Would it really have been that hard for Rick to let me help him carry some water?

This was going to be the end of my story dealing with the water until about 3 days ago when rainy season finally started. The two pictures to the left shows clouds coming over the John Crown Mountains into the Rio Grande Valley with my house in the bottom of the pictures (its gong to rain soon...) It is pretty amazing, after 3 months of pure sun shine with hardly any clouds and maybe an inch of rain, it has been pure clouds and rain for the past 3 days with maybe 4 inches of rain or more. Now that we have enough water, we’re having problems with the light. It has been on and off since it started raining, luckily today the light came back on this afternoon and has stayed on since. I guess we’re now settling in for the official “Rainy Season” and I’ll finally experience what it is like to live in a place that gets over 200 inches of rain. I’m sure I’ll be singing “Rain, rain, go away” soon enough.

In other news, besides the occasional annoyance of special treatment by my host family, everything is going really well with them. Everyone is healthy and happy, which is a good thing. I’ve finally started to get brave enough to try some recipes from home with my host family. My first attempt was with pancakes, using a recipe from the PC Jamaica cookbook making the batter from scratch. I started with this one because it is pretty simple and Jamaicans have a lot of flour recipes already, so I figured it would fit well. It went ok, except I don’t have actual measuring utensils at my host families house, so it was all estimation and I didn’t add enough baking powder, so they were too flat and doughy. My host family seemed to still enjoy them enough and even have cooked them on their own a few times since then. My second attempt was making spaghetti. I was unsure on this one because Jamaicans don’t eat a lot of beef or meet without bones and they don’t eat a lot of stuff in tomato sauce. To my surprise, it went very well, and the 2 lbs. of beef along with a bunch of vegetables and 2 lb of pasta was completely finished off by the end of the night. Looks like I’ll have to start that one again. My next try will be with pizza, which will be this weekend. Again, I’m a little weary because Jamaicans don’t eat a lot of cheese, especially mozzarella, so we’ll see how it goes. As you can see, I’ve been thinking a lot about Italian food lately…..all I want is a big plate of beefy, cheesy, tomatoy goodness.

Enough about food before I drool all over my keyboard. School (the picture to the left) has started up and Omar, my 5 year old host brother, has started Grade 1. He is pretty much a terror, but our school has a really good Grade 1 teacher who is able to manage him and the rest of the class pretty well. The problem for me is when I’m left alone with them, or any other class for that matter. I remember not taking substitute teachers too seriously when I was in school, but completely disregarding them and running around beating each other up is another thing entirely. Today, the Grade 1 teacher had to leave early because the principal wanted her to attend a training seminar, so she asked me to read a story to the class and do some exercises with them. As soon as she got in the taxi and drove off, the kids ran to the door to see her go, then turned to each other and literally started beating on each other. I did what I could and got 2 or 3 of them to concentrate on their work, but the others only wanted me to chase them around or hide under desks, so I tried to ignore them and work with the ones that were responding to me. Finally one of their mothers who works in the canteen came in and whipped the rest of them into shape (amazing how it really is a motherly figure they all respond to). After that, the principal just put the Grade 1 in the same class with Grades 2 & 3, which made them start to cry because the Grade 2 kids can beat them up and the Grade 2 & 3 teacher uses the belt to keep order in her classroom.

Instead of reading to the Grade 1 class, I ended up taking the Grade 6 to the library and getting them started on checking out books. Its amazing, a few weeks ago we had a group from the National Library Service come up and help revamp our school library, taking it from an unorganized closet with books in it to an actual library with fiction, non-fiction, reference and West Indian sections and posters and other colorful signs (See two pictures to the left). I’m even working on an alphabet chart with Winney the Poo and Dora the Explorer on it (the picture to the lft). I knew all that copying of cartoons from magazines when I was a kid would come in handy some day. I’ve even been commissioned by some of the teachers to do some more drawings for their classrooms. Not exactly saving the world, but at least it might brighten a wall in a classroom and help a kid actually pay attention to a lesson, lord knows that is hard enough as it is.

That is about it for anything I consider interested. The water system in my community is an ongoing project. Hopefully I’ll have something to report next month if we get some grant money to hook up a better spring onto the system. Yeay, hauling concrete, sand and metal pipes 2½ miles back into the bush! Can’t wait! Anyways, like I said, that is about it for now. Below are just some random pictures.

The ongoing construction at my yard. They will soon take down what remains of the board house to build 3 additional rooms on this side.

Our new puppy out our yard, his name is Zeekes. He's fun except for when I wake up at 5 to run and he attacks my shoes while I'm trying to tie them.

Sammy, my host brother, holding his nephew, Omar, also my host brother

Julie, my host sister and Omar's mother. I usually just call her my host mother since she does all the cooking and treats me like a son, even though I'm older then her.

A view from the Bellevue School looking down towards Port Antonio. Its 6 AM and you can still see the couds in the valley from last nights rain.

Life in Bellevue

I apologize ahead of time - these pictures loaded in the wrong order - I'll have to work on that for next time.

This is the next spring that runs better during the dry season. We are going to try to make a small dam and run about 400 m of pipe to connect to the existing system. Hopefully this will happen some time in the next year.

This is the dam used for our community water system. It works well, except that during the summer when it doesn’t rain often, the spring runs low and doesn’t flow enough to fill the middle chamber where the outlet pipe is.

This is my 5 year old host brother, Omar. It is almost impossible to get a picture of him standing still because he is always running around getting himself into trouble somewhere.

This is the view from the side of my house (a window for my room is in the back left of the pictures). You can see the Valley between the John Crow and Blue Mountains where the communities of Ginger House, Comfort Castle and Millbank are. You can see all the weather coming this way when the clouds spill over the top of the John Crow Mountains and head our way.

This is the front of my host family’s house. As with most houses, it’s a construction in progress. They are currently taking down the old board house and putting up block and steel, one room at a time.

This is the view from the front of my host family’s house. You can see the coffee trees in the foreground and a few banana trees that my host father has and again you can see the Rio Grande and the Caribbean Sea in the distance. I get to see this every day, which is pretty sweet (also the reason Bellevue has it’s name).

View from “Look Out” about ½ the way between Bellevue and the dam for the water system. My house is the one in the middle of the picture, the school I teach at is the big roof to the left of it. The river is the Rio Grande and in the distance you can see part of the Port Antonio Harbor and the Caribbean Sea.

Tuesday, July 20, 2009

So far, life in Bellevue is going well. When I first got here, school was still in session, so I was teaching a few days a week and spent the other days helping out with maintenance of the water system. Since the end of June, I’ve kept busy most days with the water system and also trying to coordinate with some Ministry of Health persons in Port Antonio to get a few various projects running up here in Bellevue. Due to the really bad road conditions, the MOH does not have a strong presence in the community. The closest operational health clinic is only about 10 miles away in Fellowship, which is the first community in the Valley up from Port Antonio. Unfortunately this 10 miles takes over 45 minutes to drive due to the condition of the road, and this is only once you catch a taxi, which can take 2 or 3 hours.

Since the beginning of July, I have started a computer training class for interested community members on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It’s run out of the school library, where we have two working computers that I am able to teach 4 students at a time. We don’t have a blackboard in the library so, with advice from another volunteer, I was able to jerry-rig a white board with some cardboard, white paper, paperclips and plastic report covers that I duct tape to the wall during class. It works great! Hopefully I’ll get a picture of it for next time. My students are mostly female and range in age from teenagers to probably mid thirties. I look forward to continuing this through the rest of the summer and then holding it another 1 or 2 times in the next year before I leave.

Part of my time recently has also been spent working on the community water system. The system took about 6 years to build with the help of a few former volunteers and has been actually running since about November or December last year. Unfortunately, after all the work that went into building the system, there was no strong, organized group running it in a transparent manor. So far, we have organized a new Water Committee, brought new persons into the system, started holding regular meetings and started to set rules and regulations. It’s a long process and will take more then the remaining year that I have, but I am hopeful that things will work out. Just today we had a Community Work Day where 8 males and 5 females went up to the water lines to clear the bush that has overgrown the pipes. I wish I had some pictures of the work we did, cutting incredibly thick vegetation on steep slopes where there are 200 feet drops to the valley below. All total, we cleared about a mile of bush, which is pretty good. I think I showed some of the guys that I can manage a machete and walking along some rough areas. My hands and arms are all scratched up and I think I lost about 10 pounds from sweating, but I enjoyed the day.

Besides all the day-to-day activities, the summer time is a great place here. The best part is that everything is coming ripe now. Mangoes are all over the place, bread fruit and ackee are starting to come in, avocado will soon be in season. There are occasional jack fruits still on the trees. My host father hasn’t been able to sell all of his banana in the market so we are getting a lot of ripe banana. The vegetable garden I started with my host family is doing well and soon we will have all the carrots, callaloo, pumpkin and corn that we can eat. We also have okra, scotch bonnet pepper, sweet pepper, lettuce and tomato that are starting to do well. Unfortunately the bugs are attacking the tomato so I have to sort something out with that. The past two Saturdays I’ve had the chance to go to Port Antonio to hang out with some volunteers at some of the beaches around Port Antonio, which is a welcome break from the summer heat.

That is about it for now. I’m planning a trip home towards the end of October till mid November (I probably won’t be home for Thanksgiving). Hope to see some people then.

Coffee and Pie

It was good having a cup of coffee and a piece of pecan pie for breakfast with my grandfather the other morning.  For me, it was my first cup of coffee in a few months and my first taste of Grandma’s baking in over a year.  For my grandfather, it was one of the first things he had eaten in about a week.  We never have been accused of being crazy about health foods.

 

A few days ago in Jamaica I got one of those calls.  I was woken up at 5:30 in the morning by a phone call from my mom saying that things were not going well with Grandpa, how soon could I get there?  By the time I had contacted the Peace Corps office, sorted things out in Bellevue and packed a bag, I missed the last morning taxi down to Port Antonio.  I walked the three miles down to the cross roads at the Alligator Bridge hoping to get a taxi from the other side of the valley, but still had to wait three hours for the next taxi.

 

Fortunately I was able to make it to Kingston before the end of the day and arranged a flight for the next morning, sorted things out with Peace Corps and got a place to stay for the night.  My flight had no delays for the first time in a long time and I was able to meet my dad at the Philly Airport old school style with no cell phones.  A few hours drive later and I was at my grandparent’s place with the rest of my family for the first time since our dinner last summer in Philly.  It felt good, though it would have been nice under better circumstances.

 

Over the next few days, with no real explanation of how or why, my grandfather seemed to get better.  He felt so good in fact that he decided to get on the tractor and mow the lawn, refusing to let any of us do it for him.  I did have to put my foot down when my grandmother asked me to start the weed whacker for her so that she could finish the lawn.  There is something about an 85 year old, 110-pound lady walking around the yard with a weed whacker while her 26 year old grandson watches that just doesn’t seem right to me. 

 

When I left yesterday, Grandpa was back to normal, eating his dinner of corned beef, cabbage and potatoes with a small side of creamed spinach and broccoli for “health” and complaining that he couldn’t understand what took our family so long to pack up and leave.  Now that my mind is free to wonder, it’s starting to feel a little weird being back.  The first time I got behind the wheel to drive, I had to ask my sister if I was driving on the right side of the road and I have a fear/guilt feeling of going into a grocery store among a few other things.  No offense to my family or friends, but I’d rather be back in Jamaica right now and deal with these things in a few months when I have a planned trip home. 

First Two Weeks in Bellevue

I’ve been in Bellevue for a little less then two weeks now and I’m enjoying myself so far.  I would like to think that I’ve been here long enough and had enough different sites to know when I have found a good place, and I think I have.  Bellevue is a small rural community of about 600 people in the mountains about 15 miles south of Port Antonio.  If you don’t mind smalling up in a taxi for about an hour on really bad roads, the people are nice, the food is good and the views are amazing.  From my house, I can see down the Rio Grande Valley all the way back to Port Antonio and the ocean.  I finally have batteries again, so I’ll take pictures when I get back to site and post them as soon as possible.

 

Like I said, the community members are really friendly.  One reason for this is that they had a volunteer living in the community a few years ago who everyone really liked, so they have a good view of volunteers already.  Another reason is that, with the community being so small, everyone knows everyone and most of them help each other with their farms and raising animals. The hardest part so far is trying to remember everyone’s name.  Walking down the street, I have been getting into a lot of conversations with people who know me and who I’ve met before, but can’t remember.  A few more months a few thousand more awkward conversations and I’m sure it will sort itself out.

 

My host family has been a real highlight so far.  They are farmers who have a sizable piece of land and grow yams, dasheene, bananas and coffee (yes, blue mountain coffee) along with some random fruit trees like papaya, mango and pair (avocado).  They also raise goats and chickens.  I’ve already seen my first goat butchered and will be seeing the first round of chickens go next week.  Also, in a few weeks, one of my host brothers will have a birthday and said he wants to butcher a hog, definitely looking forward to some nice fresh pork.  I’ve enjoyed eating with the family and learning more about real Jamaican cooking.  There is never a shortage of yams and dumplings at dinner. 

 

As for work, it has been the typical Peace Corps experience of “easing” into the process.  I’ve been able to get involved with the maintenance of the community water supply system, which is a pretty big task, trying to maintain a few miles of pipe through some rough terrain.  In addition, the principal at the school has been enthusiastic about letting me help with literacy and computer lessons.  It is just beginning now, but I’m looking forward to getting more involved with the school.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to all the frustrations that volunteers have in schools, but it is better then commuting into Kingston on a daily basis.

 

So that is about it for my first two weeks.  Can’t wait to get back to site.

A Busy Few Weeks Doing Not So Much

I never thought that I could be so busy when I’m not really doing much. For the past few weeks, I have not been doing too much in terms of work because I am in the process of moving again….for the last time!!! All I’ve really done is help to put together some group grant applications totaling about $5 million Jamaican (a little over $50,000 US) for projects for other volunteers and typed up a disaster plan for the basic school up the street from where I currently live. The best part about doing work at the basic school was going out and spending time in the school with about 20 little kids who are 3 years old and dressed up in school uniforms, just about the cutest thing you’d ever see.

Then, a little over a week ago, I hosted my first visitors with my sister Kelly and her boyfriend Tim came down for a week long visit. It was a great trip! I took them up to Portland Parish and showed them Port Antonio, San-San beach and parts of the Rio Grande Valley. The highlight of this part of the trip was definitely visiting Jesse and Josh in Comfort Castle with Kelly, Tim and Liza and hiking to the Dry River Water Fall. As we were hiking into the bush to get to the water fall, a group of about 15 Pikini (Patios for children) who looked like they had just finished a mud fight, ran past us and beat us to the river. We all spent a while swimming around and jumping off the rocks. As soon as I get some pictures from Liza I’ll be sure to post some.

After that, I took Kelly and Tim to the Riu, outside of Ochi to get them checked in for their last few days of vacation. By some miracle, the guy gave us three all-inclusive bracelets when Kelly had only signed up and paid for two. Kelly and Tim said it was cool for me to stay with them, so I spent three days eating tons of food, drinking tons of booze (a few too many White Russians as usual) and sleeping on the floor. Its certainly a different side of Jamaica being in a resort with all tourists, still trying to “process” it, to use the PC lingo.

All in all, it was a great trip and I really enjoyed myself. It was a lot of fun trying to teach Kelly and Tim some Patios and having them chat a little to the taxi drivers and bar tenders. They certainly were troopers handling the “smalling up” on public transportation so well. I had a few days after arriving on island before getting into a bus, they had about 30 minutes. I’m sure we’ll have even more fun the next time they come and visit…..

Now I’m back in Parottee trying to get packed up to move to Bellevue on Monday. The only problem was that I haven’t done laundry in about 3 weeks and yesterday I didn’t have power or water all day. Hopefully Lauryn, an awesome PCV that lives about a mile down the road and has a washing machine, will have power and water tomorrow or else I’m going to be spending my first day at my new site hand washing almost every piece of clothing I currently own.
One last note, my new house has one of the best views I’ve seen in Jamaica. It is out on the edge of a mountain that is looking down the Rio Grande Valley almost 15 miles to Port Antonio and the Caribbean Sea. Stop by if you want to see a great view, meet some cool people and experience some of the worst roads in Jamaica.

Contemplating Another Move

I was a bit of a nomad after graduating college: 4 states, 3 jobs, 2 grad schools and 1 car with a lot of mileage.  I guess it’s not a surprise that this lifestyle has followed me into the Peace Corps.  I am about to move my 3^rd site: Black River.  It’s not my fault that one of the only places Peace Corps does not let me live is where JSIF’s only office is.  So, after about 8 months of commuting into Kingston more then I should, I’m moving out west to work with community groups on maintenance training and disaster preparation, or something like that…

I’ve noticed that I’m trying to convince myself that this is the right thing to do, almost like the decision to join Peace Corps in the first place.  I know that my current work with JSIF that consists of writing training manuals and power point presentations is not very fulfilling and not exactly what I should be doing, but it has become comfortable.  I don’t struggle to find stuff to do on a day-to-day basis; I can always go to the office and find something to do or I can sign up for a field visit and check out a few sites.   Moving is going to require more self motivation to find projects and people to work with.

I’m certainly going to miss the ease of living in Portmore.  I have two grocery stores in walking distance, fruit and vegetable stands nearby, a cool Rasta that sells fried fish and festivals on my way home from work and consistent water and electricity.  Most of all, I’m going to miss my host mothers: Ms. White and Ms. Susie!  These two ladies are great to me, they always keep me rolling in citrus and cane, they’re always up for a random conversation and they take down and fold my clothes if I’m not home during the day.  I’m certainly going to miss them.

I’m also going to miss the easy access to the rest of the island and both Spanish Town and Kingston that living in Portmore gives.  This has been really usefull when traveling to help other volunteers at their sites.  I have multiple choices of transportation at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week.  Where I’m going to live is off the main road, has only a few taxis and, from what I hear, almost no travel on Sundays. 

Oh well.  The whole idea is that I’m going to start working more directly with the communities that need help rather then working for JSIF to help them help communities.  It’s going to suck trying to gain the trust of new groups of people and learning a new part of the island, but it’s also going to be fun gaining the trust of new groups of people and learning a new part of the island.  It’s also going to be great being within walking distance of a swimming beach!

I don’t know what I would do if I actually settled down a bit, but I don't think I have to worry about that happening for a while.

Gully Creepin'

January 10, 2009

Ever since coming down here, I have had a pleasant break from engineering. The hardest thing I have had to do so far is climb up on a platform where a concrete slab roof was being prepared and help someone I work with check the rebar placement against the design. However, as I have started to get my bearings a little more, I have been getting more involved with things at my work and with other PCVs. One such thing is to get involved with a PC committee called the “Nuts and Bolts” committee, which is comprised of a group of engineers (civil, mechanical, chemical, and maybe a few others I can’t remember) and other technical volunteers who try to help other volunteers around the island with problems the find at their sites.

At a meeting a few months ago, Bill and Gail, two volunteers living in the community of Castleton, St. Andrew, in the mountains along the Junction Road about half way between Kingston and Annotto Bay, mentioned that a section of their community was experiencing significant erosion problems with one of their gullies. Since I was the engineer who lived closest to the site, I was chosen to go and take a look at it. During my first site visit, I met with the volunteers and a few community members, took a general look at the community and the gully and thought that it didn’t look too large and expensive nor to technical and time consuming, perfect for a group of volunteers with no money and a two year time limit. Therefore I told the volunteers and the community members that I would “soon come” back to take some measurements of the gully so that we could get a better idea of what the cost and scope would actually be and really get to work.

Well, in Jamaica, “soon come” can range from 5 minutes to never, so the fact that “soon come” in this case took about a month and a half (which included the holidays) was a pretty short amount of time. This time I returned with two other engineers (Tiffany and Scott – a cool married couple from Ohio), a 100 meter long tape measure and a slight case of sleep deprivation from the night before (you have to try to have fun any time PC puts you up in a hotel in Kingston for free). After meeting up with Bill, Gail and their daughter Jill who was visiting for a few days, and after Scott changed into a sweet pair of knee high water boots, we took the 5 minute bus ride down to the bridge that you had to walk over to get to the community. Did I mention that this community has no vehicle access? The only way to get there by walking over one of a few pedestrian bridges in the area.

We had a brief meet and great with some volunteers and we quickly got to work. We all climbed into the gully and Scott and I worked the 300-foot tape, Tiffany worked the bamboo stick with foot markings on it for elevation, Gail recorded the chaos while Bill and Jill tried to get more information from the community members who came out to help. Unfortunately there had been a hard rain for a few hours during the morning before we started, so the gully was running with a few inches of water. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem except for the areas where there were steep 5 foot drops or the areas where there were 2 foot deep pools. At one point, I was standing on a rock after taking a measurement, talking to a community member and getting ready to wheel in the tape. I made a slight shift in my weight and my feet slipped out from under me. I then proceeded to slip three more times within a minute while standing on the same rock trying to wheel in the tape. I never claimed to be a quick learner.

A few minutes later, about 20 meters up the gully, we came to an area where the gully is about 5 feet below the surrounding ground surface. This also happens to be the area where the gully has a few pools that are about 2 feet deep. Rather then getting out of the gully and walking around the pools to the other side, I figured that it would be a good idea to stay in the gully and try to shimmy over the pools. I had about 10 community members (mostly old ladies) and PCVs standing at the top, each telling me to go in different directions or do something differently, and I had my feet half way up one gully wall and my hands propped up on the other side, trying to hang onto the tape measure and not fall into the water all at the same time. It’s not too hard to guess what happened a few seconds later…

The only pair of pants I had brought with me for the weekend were now soaked above the knees and my water proof hiking boats were now full of water. After hearing a bunch of “Me did tel yu fi do dis…” I got my last measurement and Scott kindly offered a hand and drug me up and out of the gully.

After finishing with all of our measurements and talking with the community members, we all grabbed some chicken rice and peas from a cook shop and sat in the botanical gardens near by while the sun dried us out a bit (yes, it is January and it is still in the 80’s during the day here). Not a bad way to get back into “engineering.”