Mosquitoes:21 Mark:4...

That is the score of bites vs. how many little buggers I’ve actually killed so far. These bastards are relentless and I am definitely learning a hard lesson in self control. It is amazing how a mosquito bite disappears as long as you don’t scratch it. But when I have three of them in a very concentrated area, it’s hard not to let my fingernails run loose. The pests are most prevalent in the cool hours of the morning and the evening. In the middle of the day when the sun is at full force and the temperature is a hardy 83 degrees, Fahrenheit, of course, they are nowhere to be found.

The remainder of my first week here was spent on the campus of St. Vincent Strambi. In addition to a church and a house in which the priests live, they have a school which serves the local children. They are as young as six and as old as 18 and I was given the opportunity to spend some time with them this week, both in and out of the classroom.

My first encounter was with the Fifth Form, our equivalent of high school juniors. Our time together comprised answering their questions about my educational experience in America, various careers in the states and the schooling that goes into making them happen. They asked about what it takes to become a doctor, lawyer, actor, nurse, or engineer. They wanted to know how someone makes a career in the military, how long one has to be in school for anything and of course, how much money can be made in the various fields. I learned very quickly how the idea of American dollars can catch their interest and how quickly that interest is dashed when the thought of prolonged schooling enters the picture; a situation not entirely dissimilar to ours.

Another similarity I have noticed between America and Jamaica is an ingrained apathy around the idea that ‘the problem is so much bigger than anything I can fix, I’ll just wait for someone else to do it.’ One of the largest differences I can see between the two countries, though, is the fact that America has a middle class. It has that cross section of people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and handle their business which in turn keeps things progressing. That, in addition to a serious lack of resources (it truly pales in comparison to the states) leads me to think teachers in Jamaica have a slightly harder time than those in America.

I met up with Fifth Form again later in the week. Their English studies have them reading Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” and given my experience with acting, their teacher, Fr. Anthony, asked me to come in and talk about the play from a staging perspective as well as how an actor might approach the script. I was anxious about this simply because I had not touched The Glass Menagerie in ages and have never really stood in front of a group of people and talked about approaching a script from an actor’s standpoint. It was difficult to put into words techniques I have used time and again.

An eye opener came my way when I was asked to describe the history of the play’s setting of the 1930’s. They didn’t know anything g about the Great Depression so a lot Williams’ references made no sense to them. As far as they knew, America has always been a rich and prosperous country so the idea that there was that much economic hardship was foreign to them. As I dropped some knowledge with respect to that dreadful decade, they quickly drew parallels between our country and theirs and the effects an economic depression can have on a people.

With respect to Fr. Anthony, he is the pastor of St. Vincent Strambi. He is a very well read, articulate man and a Jamaican native who spent many years as an Anglican priest but was recently ordained a Catholic one. Why he changed teams I have yet to find out. His sense of humor is dry, heavily intelligent and while he pretends to be taken aback at the suggestion that someone might feel intimidated by his intellect (which I was when I first met him), I think deep down he enjoys the advantage it affords him. “As pastor of St. Vincent,” he told me, “I have taken upon myself the responsibility of your spiritual formation while you are here.” Hence my awareness of their morning and evening prayers of which I am taking part. Once, after clearing his dinner plate from the table and taking it to the kitchen for him, he said, “Thank you, Brother Mark. I mean, Mr. Konold. I will sing at your ordination. Or your wedding.”

“What if I ask you to sing at both?”

“Ah. Brother Deacon Mark!”

Being in this small of a town on the Southern coast of the island has exposed me to some truly authentic culture, providing some of the best experiences thus far. It being Christmas and all, the school is closing for the holiday and the church hosted their annual Christmas dinner; an all day picnic style event complete with a talent show and a raffle drawing. People from the area filtered in and out of the parish compound, some people arriving early to check it out then leaving to go home and get pimped out for the evening half.

Part of what I found so amazing about this event was the fact that food preparation began the night before and was orchestrated by a small handful of women from the parish who perform this task every year. As if it were an everyday occurrence, I saw them dismantling and seasoning 500 pounds of chicken, ham and goat. The next day, before I even got out of bed they were cooking it all over three fires as well as preparing a local soup called Mannish Water which I sampled and absolutely love. Going into that experience was an adventure in and of itself simply because the priests had informed me of the soup’s ingredients when I first arrived. It’s not completely unlike the moment one discovers what escargot is.

Goat for them is like steak for us, the biggest difference being that when they pick out their goat meat, the goat is still alive. It’s slaughtered shortly thereafter and picked up closer to the date at which it will be used. (By the way, much of the left over slaughtered goat comprises many of the ingredients in Mannish Water. Let your imagination take it from there.)

Probably my biggest exposure to the culture here has been the introduction to their local language, Patois (Pa-twah). There are arguments as to whether it is a language or a dialect, similar to the ones that raged in the 90’s over Ebonics. When spoken as the locals speak it, there is no chance in hell an outsider is going to follow. If you were to write it out it would look like a mangled form of English; ‘faddah’ is their word for ‘father’ and since the school is run by a group of ‘faddahs,’ it is not high school but faddahskoo. What’s more they drop their h’s the way a Bostonian drops her r’s. (‘im nat go dung deh = He didn’t go down there.)

During the week some of the students spent some time teaching me words and phrases like, “Kiss me neck,” which is an expression of surprise along the lines of us saying, “No way!” Of course when I say something like, “Wow, the weather is wicked nice here,” they look at me as if I have lobster crawling out of my ears, so it goes both ways. I am trying my best to incorporate that which I have learned and finding mixed results of success and embarrassment along the way.

The final item of note from this first week is the weather. It is perpetually summer here. As I write this, the air temperature is a comfortable 78 degrees, there is a constant breeze off the ocean and there is a warm sun shower taking place. From what I have been told, this constitutes a cold front.

You read that correctly; a cold front.

Yes, the rain is interfering with my attempts to dry my clothes (there is no dryer here, only a washer) but I think I’ll get over it.

Jamaica sits around 17 degrees latitude, just north of the equator, so their amount of daylight doesn’t change as drastically as it does for those of us up north. They get an almost even split of 12 hours for day and night and those of you who know how much of a sun lover I am can imagine how much I am trying to take advantage of an opportunity to add some much needed color to my skin. Throw in the fact that the Santa Cruz mountains are directly east, the Caribbean Sea is directly south and there are practically no lights to diminish one’s view of the stars at night; one might conclude that this climate is almost too perfect.