I think every Peace Corps Volunteer has a moment (or many) where the only sane and prudent thing to do is to call your APCD and request your ticket home, like 10 minutes ago. Today was one of those days and quite honestly, for about an hour, the only thing (only!) preventing me from doing so was the fact that just yesterday I’d announced my decision to extend another month past my official COS date and to back track 24 hours later seemed…silly.
So instead, I went to the storage room and very quietly sobbed out some rage and frustration. We all get frustrated, we all want to go home now and then, but I’m still feeling like I don’t have any success stories and I’ve been at site for a year and a half. I go to school, I do what I can, and I try to get things done at my main assignment. I do, I try. I try and try, and this morning it was painfully clear that many of my efforts had come to naught. So it goes, I guess.
On a regular day, I’d take off early and decompress at home, but today was International Rural Women’s Appreciation Day, so my supervisor, one of her employees, and myself piled into a chichi bus with lots of other women. We creaked and groaned and swayed our way on the most unbelievable roads to a church in the middle of Nowhere, Seriously Nowhere, St Ann for a special conference addressing the plight of Jamaica’s rural women.
This is a theme I’m really familiar with, because FarmGirl Produce is part of the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers, and many other members where there with their goods to display and sell (we brought our flavored bammys, which were a huge hit!).
As usual, Yours Sincerely was the lone white girl in attendance, drawing all sorts of “cut eyes” and my favorite, the Very Pointed Ignore. Whatever, a so dem stay, and I’ve been here long enough to know that as soon as someone hears me speak and interact with another person, the “pree-ing” immediately gives way to delighted disbelief: “No sah, mi never hear a white ooman a gwaan so!”
Todays breakthrough moment occurred after the conference with a fellow JNRWP member who was chatting with my supervisor. I was standing around waiting for the bus to load when I was approached by an entreprenurial young man selling pumpkins and plaintains to the hoards of women milling in the road. After hearing me conducting my business in patwa, the other woman started asking my supervisor and Mildred (President of JNRWP) all about me and how I get on with things on The Rock. After it was discovered that I can cook rice and peas (“with coconut milk and the scallion and the things” Mildred was quick to reassure her that I was the genuine article) and that I can get around on public ( transportation) like you wouldn’t believe, and finally, that I love coffee, it was casually mentioned that that their group (in rural St Andrew) was having a work day next Wednesday. I volunteered myself and my waterboots which brought more shrieks of delight: Jamaicans just LOVE to see me walking down the road in my Hunters with my cutlass (machete) slung across my back.
By the time we piled back in the bus, I was completely and utterly drained, and daunted by the prospect of starting from zero again tomorrow at work.
Now, every time I have a really bad day, or as the case is right now, a rough few weeks, I know that around the corner is something wonderful or ridiculous or kind or…or….awesome is awaiting me, because that’s just how Jamaicans are. They may not make it easy for you, but they will make it all worthwhile if you can just wait it out.
Right, anyways, so I was completely zoned out when someone tapped my arm. “You want a piece of cake?” The group from St Andrew had made decorated cake to display and there was some left over. Cutting a tall iced cake with a plastic knife in a crowded bus on some of the worst roads in the world is a serious undertaking. I was sort of expecting that the rest of the cake would be passed out in due fashion, but, nope. No one else got any cake. Just me, which means that this was one of the rare occasions (I’m wheat-intolerant) when I had my cake and ate it too. I can’t begin to tell you how good it tasted.
When we finally reached Claremont and the driver stopped to let allow a large flock of us to disembark, all of the St Andrews women made sure to touch my arm and say “Take care! See you Wednesday!”
So, here’s to Jamaica, to rural women the planet over, and to the Friendship Heights (I think that’s right) ladies in particular: you could have no way of knowing how rotten a start to the day I had, but your kindness and sincerity made it all worthwhile. Thank you.
