Such is Life in Jamaica

For those of you who have been following the blog I'm sure you have seen pictures of our home here with the two unfinished stories above the bottom floor where we live. When we drive up our road there is a little hill that slowly revels our house from the top down. As we approach and I see the arches and columns, it always reminds me of the ruins we saw in Rome or Pompeii. There are houses all over Mandeville (and Jamaica for that matter) that are built, and unfinished is the same manner. They kind of give the place the bombed out look of Europe in WWII. I guess that it isn't really that much different from the way we build a house back home, other than their unfinished basement is on the top and exposed for all to see. Oh, and they can't store all of their junk in their unfinished area because of the rain. These houses are all built of cement block which is plastered and then painted some are covered in a stucco type of coating. The ceiling is also constructed of concrete which is poured in place. They always add decorative arches supported by concrete columns and have the ever prevalent wrought-iron security grates covering all of the openings. Most of the iron work is very ornate and elegant so at least we feel like were locked in a classy prison at night. Some of the less expensive grates are made from re-bar which give a more traditional jail-cell appearance. I'm surprised how many have bars that radiate out from the middle with connecting pieces forming ever widening circles which results in a real spider-web look - maybe it gives the owners a feeling of being wrapped in their cocoon at night?

Our land-lords are trying to finish the 2nd and 3rd story "basement" above us. This involves chiseling channels in the block walls to accommodate the electrical boxes and plastic conduit, and plastic water and drain pipes. The piping and electrical conduit is all run across the floor to its destination and then two or three inches of dirt is hauled in to cover the pipes. They then pour another two to three inch layer of concrete over the dirt, thus sandwiching the pipes and dirt between the two layers of concrete. This concrete is not given a very smooth finish as it will be covered with ceramic tile. The concrete is mixed by shoveling some sand, cement, and water together on a section of the floor (see the man at the back of the photo) and then scooping it into a wheelbarrow and rolling it to the area where it is being used. I've seen Ready-Mix trucks but I suppose it is cheaper to do it by hand.

Shanna placed pictures in the blog showing her vegetable garden here in Jamaica. Since she posted, the 'cukes and string beans have truly flourished. However, the tomato has kind of struggled. I don't know if we should have cut some of the fruit off from it when we planted it, but we didn't and its leave are looking pretty sad. Yesterday she noticed that there was new dark green leaves on the plant and we were excited that it had "turned the corner" and was going to survive. Well, , , , look closely at the attached picture, , , , notice the dark green leaves visible in front of the green tomato? Look closely at what those leave are emerging from. . . . . Yep, the stick supporting the tomato! It looks like it will develop into a nice little tree - exactly what kind we have no idea, but as I say, "Such is life in Jamaica mon."

Things in life I never thought I'd do

On Saturday morning we drove down to Junction to participate as advisors to a farmers co-op meeting. Never thought I'd be involved in farming - especially in an advisory role. Like I know anything about farming. Actually our role is in helping them with their business and financial plans. Not to say that we're experts in those areas either, but at least our perspective comes from outside the group.

Sunday I was approached by a man in the ward who wants me to teach him piano! Never thought I'd teach piano either. We brought some piano teaching materials with us so at least I have something to train me. I guess I just have to be ahead of the students. Our branch president's wife "plays" the piano for Sacrament meeting and I'll be spending some time working with her also. She plays by ear and uses a continuous same two note accompaniment so there is quite a bit of work to do with her also.

One other thing. On Friday we went to Mustard Seed Community which is a Catholic run home for handicapped children. They had several people from a parish in Rhode Island that were here for the week doing activities with the kids. You know, those white people really looked out of place here. I'm glad we don't look like that. ;)

When you wake up, you never know what the day will bring!

We had a project that E/S Preece started at Godfrey Stewart High School. It included lots of science lab equipment. The equipment was ordered in May 2009, but guess what, it was never delivered to the school. We made a phone call to the vendor and guess what, two days later the products were delivered. Not sure what the deal was, but we are glad they have the equipment.

Yesterday, we traveled the 4-hour round trip to Godfrey Stewart High and verified the inventory - all is well. The picture is the teacher with her new microscope. The brother is President Samuels from the Sav-la-Mar Branch.

Today, we opened the Church as an employment center. This is a project we are working on directed by President Graff. Each Thursday from 10 to 2, we open several of the chapels throughout Jamaica as employment centers. Theron and I are working with Salt Lake to get the website working for this country. We are making baby steps, but that's good. Anyway, I have taught two brothers the self-employment workshop. It's been fun to teach them how to think "non-Jamaica." I ask, 'Why should I buy your product?' Their answer was 'Buy from me, mine is best.' I really challenge them and say, Why, tell me what makes it better, etc. It is so fun to see their eyes open by just suggesting using a business card and a ziploc bag to put his necklaces in.

We are trying to get hygiene kits and newborn kits, there are none to be had. I have cukumbas and beans up. Wow, it's only been about 4 days!

Gardening in Jamaica

I have to take advantage of the year-round growing season here. I am starting to grow our own vegetables and Rohan White, our landlord, is a farmer and has planted the bananas, noni (look it up online), and other plants around our yard. I trade farming stories with him and he laughingly takes them in stride -- especially when I come home with plants that are already producing. He tells me I should just throw the seeds in the ground and they will grow. The pictures here are of the tomatoes, strawberry and green pepper plants purchased and then we planted in the pots beans and cucumber. Rohan makes fun of how I say "cucumber"; its ckumba. Notice the pineapple by the strawberry plant. Rohan took the top off a pineapple I had purchased and just put it in the ground. It's still alive and beginning to grow.The Whites are taking us to the farmers market in Christiana on Saturday. They have told us not to go alone to these markets because they will raise the price too high. The markets in big cities look for people like us who come in and while one person is selling to us the others are picking our pockets. We have traveled through some of these markets on weekdays and it is congestion to the max.

Every is supposed to have a garden. The Ministry of Agriculture wants the children to know how to farm and raise chickens. The graduation exam includes questions on how to raise and pluck and prepare chickens. We have visited one school and seen their chicken coop. The purpose of all of this is to not only teach the children, but it provides food for the lunch program. For some children, this is the only meal they will get. One project we are working on is to produce seedling fruit trees. When they are ready, the schools will get fruit trees and the children will then take care of them and harvest the fruit. Not a bad idea. I hope NSL takes advantage of the community garden.

These pictures are of the other plants around the yard - potatoes, corn, banana, noni, and sugar cane. Also, look at the size of this mango -- that's mongo in Jamaican.

A whole week?

I truly didn't realize that it had been an entire week since we updated our life on the web, but it has been a busy week. Chronologically speaking, here's what happened. Sunday night the APs brought our truck back to us with the new real wheel bearings so we have our own wheels again. Monday was spent traveling around Kingston getting pricing quotes for items for our health center project in Guys Hill. We also got our hair cut by Alondo at the Pegasus Hotel and we met with a consultant to the Ministry of Agriculture who is looking to do a small farm mechanization project. A good day followed by a long but quieter ride home. New wheel bearing do help.

On Monday we drove back to Spanish Town to meet with Susan, the health care director with Food For The Poor, about a wheelchair project. We had received word that the church was now providing three days of mandatory training to the medical personnel involved in prescribing and followup with wheelchair recipients. We were a little worried about how this new requirement would be accepted since FFTP delivers many more wheelchairs than those provided by LDS Charities and has worked with most all of the island's hospitals for years in this endeavor. Well, our meeting couldn't have gone any better. Susan had been to a meeting just last month where the problems addressed by our training were expressed to her by the hospitals, but no solution had been found. She was about as thrilled and excited as we were. We were also able to arrange for the consultant to arrive by the end of April to have our initial planning meeting and detail the training program that will be held later in the summer when the wheelchair shipment arrives.

From Spanish Town we took the coast road west to Junction to meet with a farmers co-op group that we are working with. This road was the loneliest road in Jamaica. It was almost grown over with trees, bushes and willows. The co-op is just getting started and most of its members are LDS.

Wednesday we headed out west to Savanna la Mar to see a school project that the Preeces had started a year ago. We were quite upset when we found that the supplies for the science labs had not been delivered even though they had been purchased last April. The school had received a couple of computers and some training materials, and the carpentry shop had completed all of the lab benches so they were grateful for that. We made a phone call and hopefully got thing moving so that the balance of the equipment will be delivered next week. Branch President Blake and brother Robison met us there and participated in the meeting.

We then traveled to Negril on the west coast to see a small daycare/kindergarten that was in need of some help. We thought it was an elementary school and so we brought school kits for each of the 50 children. The younger kids will use them but they are designed for slightly older students. Here is a picture of how Shanna and I were received by the students.

The remained of Wednesday was spent at the Coco LaPalm hotel on 7 mile beach in Negril. Okay, the next day was also spent at Coco LaPalm hotel on 7 mile beach. We originally had planned to travel back to our home and then drive back up to Lucea (lucy) and Mo Bay early Friday for meetings but realized that less driving and more sitting on the beach sounded like a better idea. We actually worked a couple of hours in our room and then made quite a few phone calls from our chairs on the beach. We have been working with a branch member who is creating jewelry to sell to tourists so we visited a few of the tourist shops to do market research for him. (yes we are sticking with that story). We had a lovely lobster dinner out on the sand as we watched the sun slide into the warm Caribbean sea.

Friday we traveled up to Lucea and met with senior couple Russel. He is the branch president. They took us to an infirmary that was severely in need of some help. We'll see what we can do to turn it into a project that will fit our guidelines. We had lunch with the Smiths - senior couple in Mo Bay and visited another infirmary. This place was in good enough shape that we probably won't get involved there (they have roofs, working ovens, dining room, etc). We then drove 4 hours home in the rain, and the fog, in the dark. I'm very glad we decided to stay Thursday so we didn't drive both ways on Friday.

Saturday was wash day but it was raining so I constructed a couple of clothes lines on our back porch so that we have some hope of drying clothes (note to self, be careful about fasting for rain). al least it makes ironing shirts a little easier when they are slightly damp. I'm afraid that Shanna's 220 clothes dryer (2 clothes pins - 20 minutes) is now a 440 (440 minutes).

Click on the picture of the garbage truck to enlarge it. I could use these guys to help put up my Christmas lights.

Fast Sunday

Today was Fast Sunday in Jamaica. We had almost 50 people in Sacrament meeting including 3 investigators. Testimonies were express by many of those in attendance and truly amazing was the spirit, love and knowledge of these saints. They have a wonderful, loving way of expressing themselves and their love of our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ.

Following the block, Brother Eugene Reid was baptized. The elders found him on the street a couple of weeks ago and invited him to come and register at the LDS Employment Center (the branch clerk's office). He showed-up and said that he felt that this was the church to join when he walked into the building. He had been previously introduced to the church by some earlier missionaries but wasn't really interested. They actually started teaching him at the church after we signed him up on the employment website. Today he also stood and bore his testimony of the gospel - he said he wasn't much of a talker but today he felt like he could write a book with what he wanted to say!

We're on our way to Kingston to spend the night with Elder and Sister Cheesman, meet with a consultant to the ministry of agriculture, get our hair cut, and finalize some of the quotes for our first project. Oh, It's raining - prayers have been answered.

Don't worry BEE happy!

You never know where the day will lead or the adventure that awaits. Today we met with Norvil and Dwayne who are agronomists for Food For The Poor. They have been involved with the shade/greenhouses that LDS Charities built as part of a project to produce a million fruit trees for Jamaica. It was fun riding sitting on the left side of the truck and not having a steering wheel in front of me. I finally got to see some of the countryside as we wound around and up and down the mountains behind Kingston to Salse Berry Plains. The three greenhouses have been completed and look good, however, the spring that will be used to water the trees has dried-up and is just a slight mud hole. The pump to bring the water to the greenhouses will be installed soon (I only hope it can pump water out of the air).


We talked with Norvil and Dwayne about the projects they were involved with and they started telling us about a bee farming effort that they had started. Honey is a commodity that is very much in demand and short on supply. It is something that can be done with on-the-job training (that is provided by Norvil and Dwayne) and can easily lift a family from poverty to being adequately fed. Well, to BEE more specific, we ended up at a bee keepers farm dressed in bee keeper veils and gloves opening and inspecting beehives. I and the two agronomists were impressed that Shanna was brave enough to venture up to the hives while wearing a dress! She may have had a bee in her bonnet but not one under her dress! (there has to be a joke in there somewhere but I can't come up with it). This was absolutely fascinating! We learned about queens, drones, workers, royal jelly, bee pollen, wax, etc. They can make money selling the wax, honey, bee pollen, and selling hives populated with bees. Oh, and we very much enjoyed the "special" smoke that they used to pacify the bees and bee keepers here in Jamaica (my glaucoma is much better now mon) We will now see if we can assist in providing equipment so that others can get started in bee farming. We brought one of the honey racks back to FFP and cut it up and distributed with the workers there.


When we got back to FFP they had loaded 30 cases of school kits in our truck which we will be taking to Negril and Montego Bay next week. The repairs on our truck had been made but by the time we got finished with the bees we didn't have time to go to Kingston to get it.

Wednesday already?

Okay, we've entered the time compression zone. Every day seems to race by a little faster than the last. Monday was Easter holiday here on the island. The Hopeton branch had "Fun Day" and invited the Mandeville, May Pen, Santa Cruz, Junction, and Linstead branches to join in a day of celebration and fellowship. There was a couple of hundred people that showed-up, the Linstead branch came in a bus which must have taken some doing to arrange and fund. Fun Day included soccer competition between all of the branches, volleyball and basketball was more adhoc. They had a large sound system and had people sing or talk for food tickets, etc. They showed cartoons and conference sessions inside the building. Elder and Sister Schaefermeyer visited the ice cream booth and then watched the soccer game. Some of the guys were playing without shoes and no one had shin guards. The lawn was so dry that they were tearing it up and making dust clouds. No one seemed to get injured and I was very impressed with the sportsmanship and brotherhood that was exhibited. It seemed so friendly I wasn't sure it was a LDS church competition.

The front brakes on our truck had given up the ghost and we were grinding metal to metal so Tuesday was spent getting them repaired. Our landlords, the Whites, were lifesavers in getting us through that process. We had to take the truck to the mechanic, we waited while he removed the wheels, we then drove to the part store and bought pads and new rotors, returned to the mechanic who determined they gave us the wrong rotors, returned to the parts store and found that they nor anyone else in town had the correct rotors, returned to the mechanic who then resurfaced the bad rotor and put our truck back together. As we were driving back to our home we passed a naked Jamaican man standing on the side of the road. His back was toward us and he was bend at the waist "winking" at my wife. When I told our landlady's son Von about the event, he asked if the guy looked like a crazy? I told him that I hadn't seen that part of the anatomy of enough people to be able to identify sane or crazy but I was leaning toward crazy. Sister White said Shanna was a "yardie" which is Patois for a real Jamaican, after that kind of a sight.

Today, Wednesday, we drove to the Health Clinic in Guys Hill and finalized the plans for providing some much needed equipment and fixtures. As we drove our little truck back down the mountain the rear differential started making some bad sounds so we stopped in Spanish Town and met with the Mission President who was traveling back from our home of Mandeville. I took the truck for a short drive with President Graff in the bed listening to the noise. We decided to leave the truck in Spanish Town and have it towed to Kingston to have it worked-on. We then had to travel to Kingston with the President and borrowed the AP's truck.

Easter, Good Friday, Easter Monday - We celebrate it all

Happy Easter to all of you. General Conference was wonderful. It holds so much more meaning when you are sitting in a little branch building with a few saints on Saturday and about 80 from various parts of the northern branches on Sunday. For all who are not here, image sitting in this little building watching the prophet and others speak to us - we are one hour ahead of Salt Lake - and every time they mention missionary, service, love, humanitarian efforts, etc., your heart races and you feel like they are talking to you about your work. It was great. The marvels of technology. Elder Anderson of our Area Presidency spoke on Saturday and addressed some of the 'tings' (that's Jamaican for things) about Haiti.

The senior couples in Lucea (Lucy), MoBay (Montego Bay) and Ochee (Ocho Rio) and of course us from in the south had a great conference weekend. We stayed with Elder and Sister Russell in Lucea. Each day, we drove to Montego Bay because that was where all the action was. There was a baptism on Friday night and then branch game night. Saturday was conference all day and priesthood in the evening and Sunday we attended the morning session and left for home a 2.5 or 3 hour drive depending on potholes, which road you travel on, whether you get lost, etc.

On Friday at the baptism, the elder's quorum president conducted and kept changing the program. Some of the unplanned things were the sister missionaries being asked to sing "I am a Child of God" - that was fun. The Bradleys (from Ochee) bore their testimonies, and Elder Schaefermeyer gave the closing prayer. It was great being involved. They have two very strong sister missionaries (Sister Wilkinson from Morgan and Sister Smith) and their trainer (Sister Meddows from Jamaica) in MoBay and this was their baptism.

Perhaps you remember the plane crash in Jamaica where the plane slid off the runway, there was a returning missionary on that plane, Sister Meddows. She was asked by the mission president here to train the two sisters (the first north American sisters to serve in Jamaica). See the picture below, boy what a team these three sisters make.

We were able to talk with two branch presidents who have humanitarian projects and look forward to pursuing these. If we can get this going, we will be back in MoBay and the northern coast many times.

These are the senior couples - are (LR the Schaefermeyers; Sister and Elder Russell in Lucea; Sister and Elder Smith in MoBay, they leave us next month; and Sister and Elder Bradley in Ochee, they were the first black couple baptized in the Philadelphia Mission and live in New Jersey.

Just a few pictures of the country, also.