Jamaica. First impressions.

Frenchman's Cove, where a little
river meets the sea.

When we arrived back in December, the cool and dry season in Jamaica was just getting going, in which it only gets up to the high 80s every day and the rain only comes once per week. From our 3rd story vantage, we can see the rain coming from afar, an opaque gray drape unfurling across tree and building, unloading copious, fat drops and then departing just as quickly. The amount of water from one passing cloud is easily many times greater than the annual rainfall in Lima. I find that I am still comparing many things here in Kingston with how they were in Lima. But also, every day, my first impressions are a collision of my American cliche of what Jamaica is (a reggae beach destination) and a more complex reality. So here, 4 months into our Jamaica life, are some first impressions.

First Impressions

Fitting the preconception, there are indeed many Rastafarians, their men with long dreads piled high into knit caps. Jennifer and I drive down the street amusing ourselves by noting just "how many Jamaicans there are in Jamaica". But Rastafarians make up less than 10% of the population, there is a strong Protestant majority here, running the gamut between thin-lipped conservatism and dance-in-the-aisles tent revivalism. Uptown Kingston is peopled by a professional class, polished and urbane. Skin colors run the gamut, and I've been surprised by a little old Asian lady rattling off in the Jamaican dialect called "patwa". Women's hairstyles in particular express a creativity and variety to be marveled at. Unlike Lima, there is a chuckling friendliness even among strangers and it is not uncommon for the checkout lady to rib me a little as I fumble to pay a grocery tab that can easily be over 40,000 Jamaican dollars (that's $350, groceries are expensive on this island).

We are lucky enough to live one block from a restaurant
and music venue where the stage is under an ackee tree.

In Kingston, most locals seem to easily switch between a beautiful island version of "the Queen's English" and lively Jamaican patwa; this is fortunate because the communication has completely broken down with the few people I've encountered who are strictly patwa speakers (technically an English dialect, but so rife with alternate grammar, lingo and other cultural influences, I think it counts as its own language). There is a warmth and ease between people that is refreshing, music abounds, and beauty and creativity and humor seem to be a big part of life here.

There is also a dire, deadening poverty that runs counter to the mellow vibe and underpins very high crime ratres and, on the street, a steely-eyed demand for "rispek" (respect). It will take me some time to understand this facet of Jamaica and, particularly, Kingston. The vibe in the capital is unique, grim-faced. Every so often I see the odd tourist, wandering in search of the Bob Marley House, looking somewhat blanched and forlorn, getting challenging stares from locals and wondering what's become of the tropical reggae paradise they were imagining. It's not so pronounced for the initiated, but still...Kingston is Kingston. There are large swaths of the city that are completely off-limits to us and the level of turf violence and thievery remains oppressively high, with gangland overtones and psuedo-political affiliations. I may be imagining it, but there seems to be more of an undercurrent of tension here than in Lima. Perú has a long, difficult history of racism and oppression, yet even as part of the "colonial" class there, I rarely suffered any revolutionary resentment, though I often wondered why. Here in the birthplace of Marcus Garvey, perhaps the birthplace of pan-african nationalism, featuring a people that labored long under slave-driven plantation society, there is more of an edge. In our well-to-do uptown neighborhoods, window-washers at stoplights ignore all refusals and act offended when not compensated. Walking in the swept business district of New Kingston, an ever angrier panhandler followed me until I turned in to a fast-food place just to lose him. Driving through an intersection crowded with pedestrians and higglers, one guy came up and slapped the car, pretending I had hit him. We did not stop. In fact, we are instructed that if we ever actually hit a pedestrian, we are not to stop and instead should go on to the nearest police station and inform them there. That does not sit very well with me, but I am too new here to be cavalier with such advice.

Jamaican stuff: ginger beer, sharp and spicy,
ackee fruit for the national dish made with
saltfish, and scotch bonnet peppers
(about 15X hotter than jalapeño)

Kingston

We live in a light-filled 3-bedroom on the 3rd and 4th floor of a little complex. Our terrace has a small pool and looks out over a police tow yard, New Kingston, with a the Caribbean visible if you squint a bit (see the photo at the end of this post). The city sits on a wide alluvial flat, ringed by green mountains that the clouds spill over. Out past the modest multistory buildings of New Kingston, we see the water and a large commercial harbor that's hugged by a long sand spit. At the end of the sand lies the old pirate capital of Port Royal, 1/3 of which lies under water after having sunk in a 17th century earthquake. As in Lima, Kingston offers us a privileged bubble to live in, but here it is not as comprehensive. I wake hearing a cock crowing somewhere, while at night we hear the sound of slapping dominoes as the men in the tow yard next door play and talk under a tree full of butterflies. On the street, fruit vendors wander in traffic, fancy cars stuck in traffic bottlenecks sometimes jockey for roadspace with goats foraging on the shoulder, and after dark the lane next to our building is populated by ladies of the night. We've heard tell that there are some places where the prostitutes stand in the road naked, so I suppose we can appreciate the decorum in our neighborhood. There are some shopping centers that aren't quite malls, a couple 2-screen cinemas, some very earnest restaurants…but it all seems like a small town to us, perhaps due to much of the city's footprint being strictly verboten to us.

Portland parish

The Island

Sadly, Kingston is not near the glorious beaches of Jamaica. For that we need to take an admittedly beautiful 2-4 hour drive either around the coast or through the mountains. The drives involve dodging pedestrians and bikes and goats and bottomless potholes and sheer dropoffs (all while driving on the left side of the road, I might remind you). We pass through small towns with music booming out of corner stores and taxi stops and fruit stalls and on Sundays locals are on the road in their church finery, many heading to little, stone Protestant churches. Each town seems to have its own reputation that we are only beginning to learn of; one town has the best jerk BBQ, one is for surfing, one is where the slave rebellion happened, etc. Eventually, the drive delivers you to the northern coast where you can opt for long sands at all-inclusive resorts or hang out at less developed coves. We've already sampled both, probably enjoying the rustic areas more. There is plenty to dislike about the big resorts, but I have to be careful about applying my privileged keep-it-quaint-for-me attitudes to an industry that is clearly very, very important to the well-being of many Jamaicans. Plus, never-ending cocktails, scuba rentals and abundant activities for Carter is pretty great, and only about 25% of the pinkish resort guests walk around with rictus frowns frozen on their thawing, mid-Western faces. But outside the resort lie miles of coastline still to explore, waterfalls to climb and a mountainous interior still unknown to us.

Our vista in Kingston

The end of Perú Diary. The beginning of Jamaica Diary.

NOTE: Seriously, this is very much just a diary of the final months prior to leaving Lima, nothing very sexy. So unless you are my mother (Hi Lois!), you may wish to skip this post and just wait for something juicier next time!
Sitting here in Kingston, one month after moving here from Lima, and I finally have the urge to write again. Our final stretch in Lima, from roughly Halloween until just before Christmas, was a mash of preparations for departure and social events (with each seeming more like a good-bye than the previous). Now, though we miss our friends in Lima and several Peruvian things, we can stand on our terrace on the 4th floor and look out over the roofs of Kingston to the Caribbean and the green, green hills that ring Kingston. The city here is a little under a million people, compared to Lima's 13 million, so things are quieter, main arteries sometimes seem like backroads and traffic will seem underwhelming once I get used to driving on the left side of the road. We live very close to the well-swept business center of New Kingston, where one can find a Burger King and a Pizza Hut, yet Jen was unsurprised to come across a flayed goat carcass hanging from a tree in a lot nearby. But more on Jamaica later, I need to wrap up Perú.

Halloween
Jen spent the last half of October and the first half of November in Washington DC for training, but we got a little Halloween spirit before she left at the 1st Annual Perú terror festival where we saw Julio's short film among others. But after that, it was just Carter and I. Carter decided on Robin Hood, and we toured the Embassy Trick-o-Treat with Julito and little Emma as Mini Mouse. I was decked out as a Mexican sugar skull and headed out later to a very fun grown-up party. It was the kind of Halloween party I like, where most everybody clearly enjoyed the dressing-up part. I parked close to the party at the house of some friends, and walked over with them (he dressed as a famous local butcher, her as bacon). He is a Canadian mining executive and, as such, has received some threats so has a full-time bodyguard. It was extraordinarily surreal walking back with them after the party, tipsy, followed the whole time by a stern, large man.

Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor!

Carter and Mariza go to Washington DC
I was busy (as I wrote in a different post about going to the Bolivian jungle border), so we wanted to have Mariza accompany Carter to DC to visit Jennifer during her training there. Typical for us, we waited too long prior to sorting out the paperwork for Mariza and it was only by the narrowest of margins that we succeeded. The process took several days, with shuttling back and forth between ministries and the embassy and the notary. At one ministry, I was literally told to "…come back at 2pm, pick up the embossed certificate, take it to an official translator to process, he will give you a translation tied in a red ribbon…". At a different ministry, I waited 45-min in a line (futilely, I might add), most of which time another man in line decided to use the opportunity to preach hellfire to the masses. In the end, Carter and Mariza did go and visit. Mariza was the adult, but Carter's English and his travel experience meant he was the guide. Mariza had a lovely time in DC, though, amazed at how clean things are. She also figured out that she could go into any store and if she just kept speaking Spanish, eventually a Spanish-speaking employee would show up.

Thanksgiving & Despedida (Farewell Party)

Hogar folk at our house for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving this year was bigger even than previously. We had 80, including 50 or so Peace Corps volunteers but also a handful of kids from the Hogar and a couple of the volunteers there. One of the kids was Julia, coming straight from chemotherapy. It was a joy, as always, though many of the Peace Corps volunteers used this as their chance to say how sorry they were to see Jen go. At one point, all the volunteers were chanting enthusiastically "J-White! J-White!" A couple days afterwards, we had our official going-away party at the house of her boss, Parmer. There were speeches and dancing and drinking. A couple had been hired to show some Peruvian dance, so we got to see a Marinera and an Alcatraz (in which couples have paper napkins tied to their rears and chase each other around with candles, trying to light the napkin). Jennifer and I, for better or worse, were dragged up on stage for both dances. The Peace Corps people had been very nice to remember me and made a point of inviting my 3 buddies from the Amazon Raft Race and their wives. Of course, by the end of the night Jeremy and Ben had managed fall backwards on a table, later fall and smash the flower bed and, finally, to piss off their wives. It was a damned good time.

The Marinera

Jen to PDX with Cat

Allison

So it turns out that it is 99% impossible to bring a pet to Jamaica. Hint: the only viable way, assuming your pet is not British already, is to take your pet to England for 3 weeks and make them and a British animal. So before we tried this option for our cat Allison, we figured we could find her a nice home in the States until a better option was apparent. What finally happened, however, was a comedy of confusion and error that saw Jennifer fly for 12 hours with an unhappy cat and then 4 days later fly home with that same cat. The good news is that Jen got to spend 4 perfectly Portlandia days with her friends in Oregon, which is probably just what she needed prior to taking on her new role in Jamaica. 

My litho stone

Stone Litho
Ben (my raft race buddy) is an artist and took the time to walk me through the ancient art of stone lithography. It's an amazing, multi-week process in which limestone is smoothed, worked with acids and oils, and finally made into something that can print to paper with very high resolution. Ben helped me create a stone with an image I created from a photo from Lake Titicaca. Sadly, I am not thrilled with the image I created, but the chance to experience a very, VERY hands on craft was great. It's not something I will do again (partially because of all the specialized equipment), but Ben did get me thinking about what I am going to explore next: screenprinting. So far, no luck finding a screen-printing teacher in Kingston.



Final Days

With Rosario

And then we hit our final weeks, in which got everything packed up and organized. I had my last class with Rosario, having at least tested into lower-intermediate Spanish. Mariza's still-unidentified nervous condition seemed to worsen as the day that her "gordo" was to leave came ever closer. By the end, we were living out of our suitcases.

With Ana Lucero

There were several Christmas parties, one for embassy personnel, one for Peace Corps, and, of course, there was the annual handicapped kid festival (at the embassy). That last one, that's the one where 2 years before I met Jefferson and got introduced to the kids at the Hogar. So it was wonderful to be at the Christmas festival again, this time good friends with the kids, for one last hurrah. We went out to the Hogar several weekends in December but those Saturday and Sundays are chock full of charitable groups coming by to entertain and give gifts. A lot of the Hogar's larder gets stocked during this important time there, but it was not conducive to a nice, quiet goodbye. Jen and I drove out one Wednesday night so we could have that goodbye. The kids were sweet as ever, funny and irreverent as always, and Jen and I held it together until we made it into the car where we masked our emotions by cursing instead of crying. OK, crying a little.

Julito's birthday party

It was all hard on Mariza. We also had to say goodbye to Maureen and Julio and their whole family who had all but adopted us. Carter and Julito bore it like troopers, but it was clearly one of the first heart-breaks either had ever experienced. I know we will go back to visit, but that's small consolation. There's a sad flip-side to the joys of the nomadic, expat life we're living right now…and it has to do with leaving people. Kids. Friends. Compadres. Vamos a estreñarse mucho, mis amigos!

Last few days at the Hogar de San Francisco de Asis (with Shayla)

One last visit to The Cricket Club with Julio and Maureen and little Emma.

Geocaching in Jauja

Tomb at Shutuy Marca ruins

This post actually is actually out of order, all about our weekend over 3 weeks ago.

The Road to Junin
Traditional Andean life is not that distant from Lima. As the crow flies, Junin province is just 100 miles away, with towns where small ladies wear traditional hats, children have cheeks polished by sun and wind, and the earth is often tilled by hand.

Taking the central highway due east out of Lima put us at 15,800ft above sea level, in a mountain pass called Ticlio. It's the highest I've ever been. There we were, not mountain climbing, driving our Hyundai at 1,000 feet higher than Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 USA. We had left while it was still dark, but the sun rose rapidly while we left the fog and smog of the city behind. We watched the river canyon squeeze in around us and the road start to fold back and forth on itself, eventually passing under snowy crags at the pass before winding down a long canyon to end up at a town called Jauja (how-hah). You may know that Carter and I are fans of Tintin and, in The Temple of the Sun, he and Haddock come up this canyon by train and meet the boy Zorrino in Jauja. So we enjoyed seeing the book come alive, though the train only runs seasonally now and lost it's status as world's highest railway in 2006.

Simply driving this route is no small feat, it's a road of overloaded and underpowered trucks, spewing black fumes, serving the mines or the oilfields over in the jungle, and big suicidal buses. This route is notorious for epic traffic snarls that have trapped people we know for up to 5 hours. The truck we saw flipped on its side was not all that unusual; at least it was off to the shoulder. There are certain tight turns where only one truck at a time can pass, but we were lucky and none of these spots got jammed up. I passed the trucks when possible but also kept a wary eye for the oncoming cars inexplicably passing trucks around blind curves, forcing me to break suddenly or roll along the shoulder. Once, we only avoided being muscled off the cliff by coming to a complete stop and letting a truck come within millimeters of us. At another point, we were forced to pass a large careening bus listing dramatically to one side. The climb up the canyon is so long and steep that we burned half a tank of gas on our way up while our return down would later burn only a quarter tank. If I ever had a moment to see beyond my white knuckles or the road, I appreciated the rugged beauty of sheer rock faces dotted by cacti and epiphytes, dusted atop with snow.

Jauja
Eventually we crossed the pass, coming quickly on a large mine community and following the polluted river down to Jauja, a town of 20,000 people at 11,000 feet. It had taken us almost 5 hours to go 160 miles. Jauja is very provincial, but it served the conquistadores as their first capital in Perú (probably for the simple fact that the Inca left behind a couple year's worth of supplies and riches). We checked into a very simple but friendly hostel and set out to find a cup of coffee. Though some of the world's best coffee is grown just over where the jungle is, it's not easy to find a cup in Junin, the people  drink a hot barley drink instead. But we asked around and ended up under a tarp at the market stalls where old ladies serve food and beverage. Along with the coffee for Jen, I felt obligated to purchase a bowl of "patasca", the specialty at our stall; it turned out to be an unpleasantly tepid bowl of soup, with choclo (fat corn like posole) and grizzly chunks of meat I only later realized was goat head.

Geocaching
Geocaching is a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt in which a hand-held GPS or phone guides you to specific coordinates where someone has hidden a little treasure or "cache". Typically, you sign a logbook and trade a little trinket for one from the box. The best caches also take you someplace new or interesting (e.g. I did it once in Oregon and was taken to a relatively unknown pioneer cemetery) or even take you on a kind of tour. That's what the local Peace Corps volunteer has done here to encourage ecotourism, she has set up over 40 caches that introduce outsiders to local culture, history and environment (https://www.keteka.com/geocaching/). We spent the day with her and a local guide and artist named Chasqui (he is called this, the term for the ancient Inca long-distance runners, because he used to be an extreme athlete, once running the Inca Road from Ecuador all the way down to Bolivia). Carter has been developing the idea of himself as explorer, so we all enjoyed searching out 5 caches over the course of the day.

The first cache was in the valley floor, well-protected under the spines of a cactus, close to a small river where women were washing clothes. Another brought us into the little village of Acolla where locals were practicing a kind of street art, spreading colored sand and flower petals to create large images like carpets on the dirt road. Eventually we headed to an even smaller and more remote village called Saca and got out for a long, breathless climb up a peak there, at times walking portions of the Inca Road. At altitude like that, we rested often, taking in the view and checking our GPS signals. We passed a father and a daughter who was roughly Carter's age, turning the soil of their 45-deg slanted field by hand. The coordinates eventually brought us to the top of the peak where we came upon Shutuy Marca, the pre-Inca ruins of a small community. The ancient people here were not particular friends of the Inca, but this spot was off the beaten track even in those days, so perhaps the Inca let them be. Chasqui blew on his conch shell, asking for permission of the spirits before we entered among the stone walls, many still partially standing, with a dozen or so small circular houses clustered around the peak, a couple still showing large lintel stones over their doorways. The cache was hidden in a nook behind a small funerary tower still holding bones (though the age of the bones is hard to know). Alane, the Peace Corps volunteer, had brought some bright Indonesian fabric along so that she and Carter could play/dance in the wind, flying bright gold and scarlet in that landscape of brown grass and blue sky. But the light was waning, so we hurried down the steep slope to a little canyon where the wind and brush was replaced by the tinkling of a stream and green turf. We found the last cache hidden in a little dell along the stream and walked back to our car. It was rush hour; but since ours was the only vehicle apparently in the village, the commute consisted only of the shepherds bringing in their sheep and cows for the night. We had to stop for a while because the traffic jam of sheep in front of us blocked the entire road. Before leaving the village, a dozen local kids ran up and when we asked, only about half said they had seen gringos before. Sadly, we were so exhausted that we could not do more than take a few photos with the kids.

Leaving Junin
We took Alane and 4 other PC Volunteers out to dinner and then quickly crashed into our pillows for the night. I was up pretty early on Sunday, so I walked out of town and up to the high hill where the remains of the Inca fortress are. Walking like that seemed to highlight little things: the man who shook my hand because he was proud I was walking up to the ruins, the stone in my hand to throw at the blustering dog, the rebar and neon cross set on the hill amid the ruins, the little girl crying as her mother painfully combs her black Andean hair before going to market, the campaign murals that look like folk art, the priest sprinkling holy water on the engine and interior of a minivan as the family watches. Something about the air and light in the Andes makes me feel awake. The attendant at the locked lot where we had parked was not awake, however, but luckily a couple of local kids knew where he lived and went to wake him up. I returned for Jen and Carter with fresh rolls and squeaky cheese and yogurt; thus fortified we drove back up out of Junin, back towards the pass. We almost got stuck when traffic nearly locked up in a small cliff-side town where the highway squeezes through very narrow lanes…2 large trucks got pinned at tight corners several blocks apart, blocking the highway, and it was only by luck that Jen was able to get out and find an alley and direct some traffic and get us out of that town.