Do You Dare To Care?

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Where Does The Time Go?

Four months gone by. Sometimes it feels like forever, like when I consider the last time I saw most of my friends, the last time I ate real shredded cheddar cheese and the last time I fell asleep without being serenaded by gunshots and Whitney Houston. Other times it feels like I just stepped off a plane yesterday, like when I’m trying to understand a group of guys yelling at each other in Patois and they might as well be speaking Hungarian for the amount of the conversation I’m able to interpret. But isn’t that what I’ve come to love most about Jamaica: the fact that it makes absolutely no sense sometimes?

Life and Art and Art and Life And Does It Matter?

Last weekend, a classic example of life imitating art, or art imitating life. Either way you look at it, it shouldn’t be happening.
The art: lyrics to the song Serious Times by the artist Gyptian
Seh on the corner
Watch how you a hang out on the corner
A straight drive by mi she a gwaan pan di corner
On di corner di youths dem really naw hold nuh order
A stray a dem go stray and left the border
Cause a domino them she dem gone out deh gone play
And den cyar come in and shot start to spray
All the innocent lives get taken away
So I say, these are some serious times
All I can see around us is just violence and crime
Full time for us to centralize, socialize, and realize
So let the sun shine throughout every day
Let the moon shine through the peaceful night
Cause this is seven times rise and seven times fall
But I don't really believe in the falling things at all
And life continues
As it goes, if you really want to know the truth
Half the truth isn't being told, no no no

The real-life re-enactment: A week and a half ago, there was a funeral at St. Pius for a 2nd grader. Apparently (and the story differs depending on who you talk to) there was a Christmas party in the White Wing neighborhood and a gunman who’d been released from prison the day before the party was in attendance. Another gang, pissed off that this guy was out of jail and probably more pissed off regarding whatever he was in jail for to begin with, drove by the party seeking revenge. They sprayed the place with bullets, killing two kids, injuring four others, and the guy they were after managed to escape unharmed. Doesn’t it always seem to work out that the innocent suffer the greatest injustices? Jamaica is, evidently, a great place to test your faith.

The New Girl On The Block

To anyone keeping track, good news: I’ve finally managed to get myself a new job!!! Teaching just wasn’t working out for me - there’s something distasteful about trying to teach a group of unappreciative adults how to add and subtract and make shopping lists. At least no one can tell me I didn’t try, because I stuck with the job through the entire semester. I am sad to leave St. Pius behind, though, as there are a lot of crazy people there who definitely made my days interesting. But regardless, my new job is in the city of Spanish Town, about a 30-minute drive from Kingston. I’m working with an organization called Mustard Seed Communities who sponsors and runs a variety of “compounds” - for lack of a better word - across Jamaica, serving everyone from pregnant teenage mothers to severely disabled adults. I work at the Jerusalem compound and, more specifically, at the Dare To Care home, which houses orphaned children living with HIV/AIDS.

Let me tell you a bit about the events of my first week on the job. My first day of work. I was getting the grand tour of the compound and happened to be at the children’s home at breakfast time. I witnessed three men pee their pants, one woman have a seizure and fall flat on her face, and I discovered the sad fact that most of the kids are detained in wheelchairs and those who are able to walk spend the entire day literally tied to a chair. Even during fresh air time, everyone is wheeled out or walked out onto the grass under the mango tree and made to sit tied down to a chair. This is, perhaps, why I was so surprised when, while walking to work the next morning, I saw a figure in the distance, running across the open field. Upon further speculation, I discovered that the figure was not actually one single person, but two: one naked man sprinting across the grass and one nurse chasing after him. You see, part of the charm of Jerusalem is it is divided into homes for people suffering all sorts of diseases and disabilities: mental and physical retardation, HIV/AIDS, cerebral palsy, elephantitis, sickle cell anemia, schizophrenia, etc. There’s also a wing of people who were living at Bellevue Mental Hospital until it closed. The sprinting man, naked as a jay bird, happened to be one of the Bellevue patients, off his meds and screaming something about “The Red Coats Are Coming!” It was really quite preposterous a sight to behold. I was getting ready to board the bus headed back to Kingston that same day when a little boy ran up to me, jumped at me, wrapped his arms around my neck, and yelled breathlessly, “ARE YOU A NEW VOLUNTEER???” “Yes,” I told him. “Are you a volunteer, too?” He laughed like it was the most ridiculous question he’d ever heard “NOOOOO!!!” he screamed, “I’M THE DRIVER!!!” Several days later I was in a van with a group of kids when a man walked up - again, naked as the day he was born - and the kids who had previously been using my camera to take pictures of each other decided to try to take pictures of their naked friend, instead, who was at that point trying to climb into the van with us. Luckily, we were spared by the caregiver who came to retrieve him and reprimanded him for running away during bath time.

But onto my real job: I work at the Dare To Care home and I spend about ½ of my time in the office, making newsletters, designing brochures, creating sponsor cards for the kids, and utilizing my Stonehill degree at last. (Wouldn’t my graphic design professors be so proud?) And I spend the other ½ of my time wiping runny noses, helping with homework, breaking up fights, and spinning kids in circles until they’re too dizzy to walk in a straight line. It’s perfect. Like kids everywhere, the children at the Dare To Care home are slightly psychotic. Most of them are hyperactive and many suffer from developmental delays. Clayon, my favorite little boy (not that I pick favorites!) is six years old, but he’s the same size as a two-year-old and is at about the same mental capacity, also. I suppose the fact that most of their first memories are of abandonment and neglect doesn’t help. HIV/AIDS has such a negative stigma in Jamaica that their families won’t even bother trying to take care of these children…they take them to hospitals and leave them there or, in many cases, the parents themselves have already died of AIDS and the kids’ relatives are unwilling to take on the burden of care.

It’s very strange how familiar the whole hospital routine is to all of them. Clayon just returned from the hospital this afternoon after being admitted yesterday, and the first question the kids asked him was what hospital he was at and which doctors he had seen. (The second question he was asked concerned whether or not he would share the piece of chicken he’d gotten for lunch at the hospital.) It strikes me as so unnatural to hear 6 and 7 year olds asking these sorts of things (the former questions, not the latter….the latter is definitely not a strange question). It’s strange to see them line up each morning, afternoon, and night to take a daily dose of antiretroviral meds. Strange to see kids so accustomed to running immediately to an adult at the first sight of blood….not because of pain, but because they recognize how dangerous their own bodies are.

So Many Kids, So Little Time

Sometimes I want to strangle them. Like when I have to walk them to school for the seventh time in a morning because they keep running away from their teachers. Or when I have to ask them repeatedly to stop yelling at each other and stop hitting me with rulers and stop throwing food at Boom Boom and stop hiding behind the office doors before I tied you to the swingset. Other times I wish I could adopt every single one of them. Like when I get 40-some-odd hugs each morning. When someone offers to share a half-eaten spoonful of corned beef. When they yell “Auntie Magon, tek me, tek me!” and strike a pose for a series of pictures. When the older kids climb into my lap and play with my hair and make fun of my accent and ask why I have to leave so soon and why can’t I sleep over just this one night?
Oh-so-rewarding. Working at the homeless shelter last year was certainly rewarding and I absolutely loved that job, but in an entirely different manner. This job is about enriching lives. About saving lives. It feels good to be embraced by 46 kids who adore me and look up to me and are hungry for affection and attention and love. 46 kids who know me only as Auntie Magon and who I can shower endlessly with affection and attention and love, knowing that I could very well be the first and last person to do so that day, that week, maybe that year. 46 kids anxious to live, but trapped in bodies that seem all-too-anxious to die. 46 kids I love to the depths of my soul, even when I’m mad at them. Now, I finally feel like I made the right decision in coming to Jamaica. Now, I can feel the impact. Now, it makes sense.

The only subsequent problem is deciding how many kids to try to smuggle back home with me in June. 😊

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