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.