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.”