The last week or so, the daytime temperature has been just a bit above freezing. Consequently, the snow is heavy, and wet. It exhales chill damp. The damp hangs in the air, trapped by the low grey clouds. Chills me to the bone. All that helps is hot baths, activity, hot tea, wool sweaters, long underwear. At some point I surrender to it, and wrapped in a blanket, I read, or write. I let my mind transport me someplace else. Like Jamaica, where it is never cold, not for us northerners. It gets down to about the mid 70s there winters, enough to make the children want to put on sweaters. That's what we call a really nice day up here.
The first summer I visited the children's home up in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, the most mountainous and most Christian Caribbean island, according to our friend and bus driver Peat, there was a hurricane on the way. We had landed in Montego Bay, taken our usual 2 hours to get our bags full of clothing and crafts and toys and educational materials through customs. (Prior to this, we had stood for about 1 1/2 hours in a long zig-zagging snake of a line, cooled by fans that look like props from a Humphrey Bogart movie, to present our documents to enter the country.) At that time, the customs area was in the same spot where the bags were coming directly in from the planes outside. It was hot and humid and smelled strongly of jet exhaust in there. We always seem to get into the wrong line, and scurry back and forth across the wide area, until we finally settle into what we were certain is the 'right' line. That never changes. That, and the fact we then stand there, and stand there, and stand there, slumped and leaning onto our loaded baggage carts. The customs people don't like the looks of our bags. That never changes either. They go through them, all of them, very carefully. They threaten not to let us through, all the while eyeing an especially nice new pair of sneakers. We give them the sneakers; they stamp our paperwork, they let us through.
We get upstairs and rush off to the bathroom. It is always this way. The bathroom is narrow, with several stalls. It doesn't smell so great. The floor is always wet with spilled over yuck from the toilets. This improved only when the Cricket World Cup came to the Caribbean region in 2007. Major renovations were done to the airport then. Our group leader uses her cell phone to call her husband back home and tell him we have arrived safely. He tells her he has been watching the weather channel and a hurricane is heading for Jamaica. Did we know that?
She asks the bus driver, it is Melvin, Peat's assistant, about it. Has he heard anything? His answer: "No problem, mon. This is Jamaica." And he laughs. I will come to learn that this is what all the resort and tourist workers say to tourists, it is their stock in trade, reassuring worried white people, calming them with a simple stereotype of Jamaican life. It is part of the illusion the tourist industry has created to hide the fact of Jamaica being the murder capital of the world, hiding the fact of the tremendous poverty there, hiding the fact the huge resorts that depend on this illusion are all owned by foreign nationals and that the Jamaicans who work there are paid a pittance, when they are paid at all. "No problem, mon." Just stay within our resort walls, and ride our buses and do not leave your group.
It is not the same in the mountains where we go. We are the only white people up there. There are no tourists up there. Just us and the locals, going about their daily living. That first year, with the hurricane, named Dennis, by the way, there is also another group already staying for a week at the home. They are from northern Ireland. They are standoffish, as a whole, and they take all the food before we can get to it. They resent our presence. We try to make nice. I did. They avert their eyes, they cut us out of activities. I think to myself, "Is it Bush? Is it Iraq?" I can't understand why they are so unfriendly. We are there for the same reasons, to help out--we are a group of enthusiastic youth, teachers and carpenters--, and to be with the kids. Is it the kids (along with the food) that they do not want to share?
Because the kids are the reason I am there. I hadn't ever planned on taking the mission trip to Jamaica. I had always wondered why people from our church went at all. I had always wondered why they said so little about it when they got back. Some of them only went once, and never talked about it. It was supposed to be hot and buggy and smelly and nauseating and nasty somehow. No way did I want to go. (I had done an internet search of the children's home before leaving, and all I could find was reports of allegations of staff people and boys having sex with the dogs. Did I tell anyone this? No.)
But then our pastor asked me if I would go. There were 2 youth already planning to go and they needed an adult to accompany them. The church would pay for the entire thing. It would not cost me any more than what I needed to buy food while en route and to get a few things at the market our last day there, if I wanted, and also if I wanted, $15 to go climb a waterfall, another tourist attraction we would participate in our last day there, the day we tried to transition back to normalcy, whatever that is. Or was. Because the mission trip to Jamaica changes a person, inside and out. It may take months, it may take a moment, but you do not come back the same person you were when you left. Nuh uh, not at all.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
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