"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 3

The next year was very different. It felt different. I had approached the trip with an uneasy sense of foreboding that had started with the new year. Nothing I could explain. Some of it was the depression, for sure. I hadn't been taking the herbal/vitamin supplements I often use, and needed to get back on them. (But that was a matter of finances, as usual!) And yet, there was more to my uneasy feelings than that. When we had arrived in Jamaica and began the long bus ride, I looked out the window at the wandering goats and the congregating people and the ubiquitous dogs curled up asleep on the roadsides, and it felt like something was different--darker. Near the resort areas, I saw more people living under blue tarps. As we got further into the mountains, and the foliage became dense and dark, I would see solitary men looming from that darkness. I saw dark abandoned houses. I also saw fields with barefoot young men playing soccer in the twilight. This was World Cup soccer summer, and everyone everywhere on that island was playing.

Like 3 year old Trevon, the cook's grandson. He presented me with a tiny round plastic red ball and we kicked it back and forth, in the heat, for over an hour. This was while the other women were distributing outfits to the other children. This was a half day long project that sounds simple enough but is actually exhausting. The kids are brought in in groups arranged by age and size. They get their new clothes, they try them on, we oooh and ahhh and trot them outside to stand them beneath the poinciana and take their picture. The kids whose turn it is not yet wait very impatiently, and I was outside with them, as there were plenty enough women inside, doing the clothing thing. It all went very well until we got to the teen girls. We had already gotten a heads up about them from the home's guidance counselor. We had met with her one morning to see what particular areas she wanted us to work with the kids on. Reading? Math? No, how about you have a talk with the older girls about appropriate relationships and not having sex until marriage.

Okay. Suddenly I understood the strange men looming in the fields around the home. The home is in an isolated small town, kind of hanging off the edge of it. There is no secure fence, no compound, no protected area. We had already had a night of listening to the dogs bark in a frenzy for hours only to be told in the morning that someone had come and stolen all the water from the cistern, water that had just been delivered and purchased the day before. This is the kind of poverty we were in the midst of--the kind that steals water. And while that water had been delivered, we women were padlocked into our residence building and not let out until the men had left. The trouble with the teen girls, you see--it was like they were in heat, and all the neighboring males could smell it and were on the scene. Just like that. Yes. In fact. And so, the children's home director was taking no chances with our young white women being visible.

And so, the same girls who had been sweet and friendly the year before were all hooded eyes and surly mouths. They had eyes only for the teen boys traveling with us, but not for us older women--the boys were friends and we were authority figures. The boys were freedom and fun and we were surely not. They were bitchy and competitive with one another, and only more so with us. It was tricky and difficult-- and we were supposed to talk to them about sex? After they had sniffed and picked their noses at the outfits we had brought, had stood there with downcast eyes, loudly transmitting their dislike? These were girls who had cut open their shirts to reveal cleavage. They were running wild with the town boys up playing soccer on the upper field. They would grudgingly return to do bead projects with us with their eyes wild and triumphant and their shirts half unbuttoned, their young breasts clearly visible beneath.

So it was with great relief we retreated to the soft comforts of the younger children, and also of the ones called "simple". The ones who up here we would diagnose as developmentally delayed or disabled and would have treatment plans for. In Jamaica, they are called "simple", and what kind of life awaits them, I can only guess at and even then I cannot make a good guess. There was sweet sad Dido, and Kerry Ann and Morris. Kerry Ann and Morris are siblings, they have the same birthday and they are happy and proud that they share the same birthday but they also say they are not twins. Well, Kerry Ann says it--I don't think Morris knows what twins means. At any rate, who knows if they are twins or not? They were simply given the same birth date to make it all easier for the administrator. When we did bead projects with the older girls, after having spent the morning with them trying to have the relationship talk, we used seed beads and had real jewelry making findings and supplies. With the younger children, we used plastic string and big fat plastic beads. Kerry Ann was a teen but she did beads with the little kids, as did her brother Morris. They are only a year or 2 apart, if they aren't, in fact, actually twins. I sat beside Kerry Ann and helped her thread each bead onto the strand, one by one. It was quiet, calm, simple work, and I loved it, and she enjoyed my patient attention. She made a beautiful necklace, and later on, with the generosity typical of so many of the children at the home, she gave it to one of the girls in our group.

I hadn't yet gotten to know Morris as well as I know him now. At that time, I knew him as a sweet and shy boy with a big smile, and didn't really think he could talk much. He seemed to be a boy who was quite accustomed to being overlooked and ignored. All I had ever heard him say was, "Yes, Miss" and "No, Miss" and who replied "Fine, Miss" when asked how he was. On our last night there, when we were waiting for the Kentucky Fried Chicken we had purchased for the kids for supper to arrive, (it took hours and hours, as many things in Jamaica seem to), we had waited for so long that the cook had cut up watermelon for us and had a bag of small mangoes for the kids. Morris stood patiently by the girl who was handing them out and never said a word, just waited. Kerry Ann finally spoke up for him and told the girl to give him a mango, then turned to me with a mischievous light in her eye and laughingly said, "Morris does not talk."

And so I thought Morris does not talk. Later on when there was a second piece of watermelon offered to me, I took it and gave it to Morris on the sly. His joy lit up the night. See, I have come to know Morris better as time has passed, and I love him now with a love that pierces my heart. Because he is simple and sweet and I can do nothing for him but visit him and pay attention to him, enjoy him and pray for him. We had been told that summer that he would have to leave the home because of his age (all boys leave at 13) but that he couldn't go to the boys orphanage--they knew he would not do well there, and they did not want to separate him from his sister. They are 2 of the true orphans there. The director was hoping to find a home nearby where Morris could live. After learning this, we had put together a bag of clothing and snacks for him, with a note inside that we had all signed, not that he can read, but, you know. The whole situation worried me greatly. What would happen to that sweet boy?

On our last morning there, a Sunday, I left our building to go over to where the men were staying to tell them breakfast was ready. It was one of the only days when the clouds had parted and I could actually see the panorama of mountains on the horizon. It was blue and glorious! It was also the day we would all go to church together, and so we were dressed up in nicer church clothes. Besides the mountains, I also saw Morris sitting up in the dining hall window, looking over at our building. He had on a blue button up shirt, and looked very nice. As soon as he saw me, his face lit up in a great big smile and he waved to me. He had been sitting there waiting for one of us to come out! That smile lit my heart. The memory of it still does. I love that boy. And it is a love that breaks my heart. And that truly is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai