Located in a rural farming district, Adelphi borders on the
sugar and orange belt of Trelawney and is only 30-40 minutes from Montego Bay.
We are in Saint James Parish (like US county or state) located about 73 mi (or
117 km) North-West of Kingston, the country's capital town. The census doesn’t
list our town, but I guess the population is less than 1000. (Towns less than
2500 are not on the list. In the 2011 census Montego Bay had 110,115 residents.
Our town is really a cross-roads with about 5-10 buildings; it has a primary
school (where I work), 2 shops, a police station, a post office, a government
registrar’s office, many churches, an auto repair, 2 cook shops (restaurants with maybe 1 or 2
tables, but mostly take out, and a bar (as teachers, it is not acceptable for
us to go to a bar – although we can order a beer or even a rum in a cook shop.)
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| Post Office & Registrar's Office |
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| Police Station |
Housing – We live in the lower level of a wonderful home up on a hill. Our
landlord lives above, and she is marvelous about helping us. She has chickens
and we now get fresh eggs every week, also some sugar cane which she has given
us as a super sweet snack. We have a kitchen/living area (which we’ve modified
with enough table space for both computers. The bedroom is large; we have a
mosquito net over the bed, and we have bathroom with a shower. Piped water
(meaning ‘city water’) is pretty reliable and drinkable (it is heavily
chlorinated) and the house has 600 gallons stored in rooftop tanks for when the
water (or electric pumps) fail – these tanks are ubiquitous all over Jamaica.
There is no hot water – but after all, this is the tropics, and cold showers
are wonderful.
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| Water tanks on the roof of almost every house |
Community is vital. We’ve attend the local CDC (Community
Development Committee) meeting – we met in an unused former day care centre –
the conversation quickly moved to our ‘secondary projects’ for Peace
Corps…ideas for the building included a homework/study place, maybe a small
library, a computer skills training centre, and even some workout equipment.
The idea is to meet local needs for community gathering, to keep kids engaged,
to provide possible job skills training, and to enhance our community. The
Jamaican government’s Social Development Commission is a wonderful way to help
communities find resources and grants. We hope to identify our secondary
community project by September.
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| Mr Chin's Shop (Blue) & Bar (Yellow) |
Shopping - There are 2 shops in Adelphi – Miss Rose’s at the
bottom of our hill, and Mr. Chin’s (actually many shops are owned by Chinese
merchants – they are all called “Mr. Chin” even if they have another Asian or
even Irish family name). Both shops work like many in this country – all the
items are enclosed behind a wire and glass wall – you go up the small window
(imagine old time banks going up to the teller’s ‘cage’) and you ask for what
you need – usually there is no choice of brands, and often the answer is ‘not
today’. Since Miss Rose’s is only 3 minutes from our apartment, we
can even buy frozen ice cream and get it home before it melts in this climate.
We’ve made 2 marketing trips to ‘town’ – which means Montego
Bay. There are grocery stores similar to small town USA – aisles of open
shelves with some choices of products…the local brands are far cheaper than the
imported from ‘foreign’ which means USA or Canada. Also Asian imports of canned
meats and vegetables are much cheaper than North American.
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| Market Day |
Produce comes from the open markets – some farmers rent
stalls inside and are there every day, other ‘higglers’ spread out a blue
tarpaulin on the ground and sell whatever they have – could be yams, callalou
(like spinach) and cell phone chargers all on the same tarp.
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| The hill and path to our place (yes, goats and chickens too) |
Getting our purchases home is fun: we walk loaded down with
‘scandal bags’ (black plastic shopping bags) or take a short taxi ($100
Jamaican = about $1.00 US per person) to the Total Gas station in town – that’s
where the mini-vans pick up for surrounding towns. When a van headed to Adelphi
arrives, the driver miraculously helps load everything into the smallest
places…under seats, behind legs, and on laps of strangers. Everyone squeezes in
(it’s called ‘smalling up’) and with maybe 20 people and all their stuff in a
15 passenger vehicle, we head off up the pot-holed road for the 30 minute drive
to Adelphi. We are dropped off at the bottom of our hill and walk up with our
scandal bags.
On the north coast, about 45 minutes away (but requires 2
taxis – since taxis drive fixed routes and don’t go all the way) is Falmouth
where the mega cruise ships come in. On Wednesday is “Ben Dung” market –
actually Patwa for “Bend Down”. For decades, hundreds of higglers have
travelled many miles from all parishes to either sell or purchase food,
clothing and an assorted variety of haberdashery items at reduced retail and
wholesale prices.
As one higgler explained in the Sunday Gleaner (newspaper),
“The market could have earned its name because of how, with a scarcity of
stalls, items used to be spread on tarpaulin on the ground for display, forcing
persons to bend down to pick up the items for inspection.”
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| People build as they have money - so they live downstairs for years while building above. |
Wash day – we do our own laundry – BY HAND in a wash tub
outside. Elbow grease – plus some strong detergent and good old ‘blue soap’ for
the areas that need bleach are part of the process. The clothes lines are out
behind the papaya trees.
Cooking: We did spoil ourselves and invested some of our
‘settling in’ allowance from Peace Corps to buy a coffee maker and a toaster
oven. Our gas stove is fuelled by a 30 lbs. propane tank. When it runs low, we
can refill it just down at the bottom of the hill at Rose’s shop. We continue
to learn about Jamaican produce and are getting creative mixing styles for our
meals. We’ll save food for yet another blog post.
Satellite map from Bing – here is a map of our
home… (structure at the 'S' bend is my school)
The schools – We each teach at primary schools (Grades 1-6).
We’ve posted about these before, and we’ll devote a separate blog post just to
the schools and kids.
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| Irene relaxing with her guitar on our veranda |
Saying hello to everyone – There is a Patwa saying, “Howdy
an' tenk yu, noh brok noh square” - meaning: To say hello and thank you is not
a bad thing; it is good. Even on my 10 minute walk to work in the morning I
probably say hello to 10 or more people, ask how they night was, and also wave
hello to every car and taxi passing by. Not saying ‘gud maahning’ is plain
disrespectful; if the elderly man who lives next to my school is out on his
veranda, or out in his yard picking weeds, I will always try to wander by and
say good morning too.
So, we’re settling in, and we really feel very much at home.
Of course, being here together as a couple is the best part of our experience.
Each day we come home and share our stories – certainly there are problems and
struggles, but we’ve always found that there is at least one heart-warming
story or success which made the day worthwhile. Most of our Peace Corps
colleagues came here as singles – we communicate a lot by text or email, and we
have all found a lot of mutual support from what PC calls “our government
issued friends”.
We close with two wonderfully simple Patwa phrases when
departing,
“Respec” and “Walk Gud”.
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| The view from our road |
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