...our trip to St. Elizabeth

We just returned from a 3 day trip to visit a wonderful Peace Corp volunteer who has been serving as a Literacy Advisor/Teacher in a Primary School in St. Elizabeth Parish 'way out west' in Jamaica. [As usual - we will not post the actual location or pictures identifying students.]



Steve and Irene with Julie and Brittany (PC Volunteers)

St. Elizabeth Parish coast

...a few words about travel. To get there we left our home in St. Thomas at 5:15 AM on a Coaster (mini-bus) - 1-hour all the way to Kingston. We've already written about 'smalling up' - squeezing in 5-across where there are only 3 seats - as Irene says, at least you don't have to hold on the sharp curves because there's no where to move. We then walked to the bus station for the long distance ride to St. Elizabeth - yes, 3 1/2 hours smalled-up again. Then, a 30 minute taxi ride from Santa Cruz to a small bush (rural) community only about 10km from Treasure Beach.

Typical Coaster bus

Our 'trainer' Julie was so great! we stayed with her at her home - she had a couch (Steve's bed) and a day bed (Irene's). We walked with to her school and shadowed her for the whole day - we even got a chance to do our own reading lesson with one of her students.

Steve with Literacy students (faces are blurred per Peace Corps privacy rules)

Julie in the classroom leading a priority setting session with teachers

Last night we chatted till late with her neighbors - laughing strongly while trying to translate jokes back and forth using our new Patwa language skills.

Our trip home was about the same, except that our coaster bus from the west was stopped at a checkpoint for 30 minutes while the government checked our driver and conductor's (the fare collector) credentials. Also, on our last local taxi ride (yes, small up again ... 4 in the back seat and 1 in front) a woman was nursing her 1-month old adorable baby girl.

Countryside in St. Elizabeth - on the walk to school

Julie and Irene at her host family's home

We are off for the 4-day Easter weekend - hopefully some time to catch up and maybe some beach time too. We look forward to hearing from you. Happy Easter - STEVE and IRENE.