Sparky The Plug

Yes, this is my first outright plug for my host-organizations on this blog. I know the holiday season is fast approaching and that is a time that a lot of people are looking for organizations to donate to. When I was a young professional, I started a search every November to find a good, worthy recipient of my annual donation. I don't think I donated to the same group twice as I kept renewing the search every year and finding new great organizations. So, for those of you searching, look no further!

The Bluefields Bay Fishermen's Friendly Society is hosting the Bluefields Bay Marine Show on December 23, 2007. There will be boat and canoe races for fishermen and an exposition on the bay environment and healthy living. Now, I'm guessing that many of you won't be able to make the show, but you would still be supporting the organization if you bought a ticket. Tickets are J$300 (~$4.30 USD) and if you are unable to attend (ha!) I will send you a ticket via snail mail as a souvenir. Checks can be made out to the above society and mailed directly to the society at:

Bluefields Bay Fishermen's Friendly Society
Bluefields P.O.
Westmoreland, Jamaica
West Indies

I also work with the Bluefields People's Community Association. You can click on the "How to get involved?" link on the lower right of their website for more information. If (when!) any of you come to visit, we can arrange for a work day or other projects as well. Helping hands are always welcome!

Happy Holidays!

Other Jamaican Firsts

As far as weekends go, it was an exciting one. On Saturday we were invited up to one of my communities for a relaxing hanging out afternoon and dinner. While there we had several firsts for Jamaican food. The first was jackfruit. How to explain jackfruit? First, it is about the size of a small watermelon with a rough, bumpy skin which resembles, other Jamaican fruit that you have never seen in America. Once cut open, the inside looks like a breadfruit with some seed pods. For those that have never seen breadfruit, I'm not really sure how to explain it. On the jackfruit, you pick out seedpods that resemble an artichoke heart but taste like...a jackfruit. It is sweet and very delicious. This description isn't very good because it is like no fruit I have had before.

Then, for dinner we had chicken foot soup. I had seen it but never eaten it. The soup is delicious, but I wasn't sure what to do with the chicken feet, so I decided to just put it in my mouth and suck the broth off of it. To my surprise I did that and spit out bones. The skin and connective tissue really just melts off. Not a lot of flavor. I had no problem eating all of the chicken feet in the soup and it is a wonderful soup, but when I got the curried chicken foot it got set aside for the dog. Just too much foot.

The ants, the ants!

Scott and I recently found a large sack of unused garden seeds at my organization. Included in this bag were seeds for cilantro (wonderful!). My coworkers said the seeds were no good because they were too old. We decided to try to germinate some just to see because seeds would be so useful, especially because I want to do some gardening work with a nearby village. So we had a sack of seeds in our bedroom for a while while we wait for small samples of them to germinate. They had not attracted bugs for weeks so we really weren't worried about storing them there.

Alas! Today I was toweling off after my shower and felt all tickly. Ants ants ants! Luckily they weren't the biting kind, but they are oh so tiny and tickly (and tiny enough to escape my glasses-less inspection of my towel prior to drying- the inspection has been necessary ever since I found a centipede all curled up in the furriness of the towel). They were in my towel. Many many ants. And since I was damp from the shower, all ants, both alive and smushed from the toweling off process, were stuck to me. Oi! I went back into our room to find that the seeds were indeed the source of the ants and spent some time smushing ants on the desk after removing the seeds to the yard. Scott was rather unconcerned with this and just thought it was in my head (since the ants were so tiny, I guess he couldn't see them from across the room or he just figured I was overreacting, which I probably was). Alas, I have been at work for an hour an half and am still finding little ants crawling along my arms.

Where does it end? Because my mind is definitely playing tricks on me and every tickle is not an ant. But perhaps one in ten tickles is an ant! *sigh*

This could be a long day.

Chunky and Delicious!

I find myself singing along with Jamaican advertising slogans…the age of the catchy jingle is alive and well here! I will be walking down the street and see a billboard for a company and find myself unwittingly singing the jingle. Often Scott will join me as well. We definitely sing along during the evening news and our host family laughs- at us or with us I am not sure. The particular slogan of “Chunky and Delicious” did prompt us to make the unlikely purchase of canned mackerel. We had it for breakfast today along with callaloo, fried dumplings, and papaya and it was quite wonderful. We will definitely be going back for more.

Overall I have been quite proud of our assimilation into Jamaican cooking. Our host family has been wonderful in both giving us a wide variety of traditional foods to eat as well as helping us learn how to make them. Last night was a wonderful feast of curried goat, rice and peas (our family makes the best rice and peas on the island, I think), salad, and fried plantains. Topped off with a dessert of rum and raisin ice cream. Fabulous. The true test will be how much of that cooking we maintain once we move into our own place. I am pretty certain that we keep making Jamaican-style breakfasts and I hope we at least keep the Sunday dinner tradition of curry goat.

A Pleasant Weekend

We just returned to our site this afternoon after an interesting overnight trip to Kingston. The original dinner event that was planned was cancelled, so we were able to enjoy the company of the other group 78 volunteers in the hotel for the evening. We also purchased true american pizza for the first time on island. Quite a treat!

I would also like to point out that we were able to watch the last game of the World Series thanks to cable at the hotel!

Hopefully we will get some more pictures and stories up shortly. I'm optimistic that my internet access is improving...we will see.

Peace to all.

Nothing New

I had intended to upload and post some pictures to this blog, but for some reason the computer is being snarky and won't let me do it. You can check out a few that I have posted on my Flickr account (link on the right side of the blog). Mostly, I wanted to show people Carrie's hair cut. I did for her in early September ("Can you cut my hair?" "NO!!" "Fine, I'll do it myself. (short break) Now you have to cut my hair." "Fine." "HOW SHORT ARE YOU MAKING THIS???"). Now her hair is shorter than mine (I haven't cut mine since mid-August).

We are starting to look for our own place. We have a few leads and hope to move around Thanksgiving. It is time for us to have our own place. More details when we know anything.

I haven't been able to watch any of the world series. We don't get Fox (or ABC, NBC, or CBS). I get plenty of college football on ESPN, Big Ten network, and Fox Sports, but I miss all the truly big games. Oh well. Better than nothing at all I guess.

Weight Loss Revisited

Dad asked me the other day if I was starving myself to lose weight (my scale said I lost another 5 pounds). The answer is no. I eat large breakfasts, smallish lunches, and a normal size dinner. I don't snack. I also think my body dropped some weight out of self preservation. When we first got on the island I was sweating profusely for the first, well, technically I still am. I think my body did the same thing sailors on a ship taking on water do, lose any unnecessary baggage. My body has done a pretty good job of that, so now I need to look for other ways to keep cool. I have actually thought to myself that if I took up smoking maybe my circulation would be poor enough that I would feel better. Then I realized that it would probably take a couple of years for this method to actual reach its goal and by then I will be off the island. The negative health benefits definitely do not make that a viable option. I guess sitting in front of fans whenever possible will just have to do.

We were on the radio this week. On Wednesday we did a 30 minute radio show on VYBZ FM where we introduced what Peace Corps does, talked a little bit about our projects, and did a short educational section on safe drinking water and personal hygiene. We didn't find out until after the program that the radio station is streamed over the internet. On Sunday we are doing a short introduction of the Peace Corps on the other local radio station, LYNX FM. I looked online and didn't find a webpage.