Culture Shock

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Well seeing as this is a travel blog, I should probably write about my travels to Mississippi over spring break. I went with 14 other students from Villanova to Jonestown- an extremely small, rural town in northwestern Mississippi. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was extremely small. There are about 1,700 people, it didn't show up on some maps, and the people there refer to it more as a village than a town. Aside from knowing that it was named one of the top 5 poorest towns in the country, I didn't really know what to expect. When we got there, it felt almost surreal, like something out of an old movie. It really felt like we had gone back several decades. There was one main street. Unlike our common notion, or at least mine, of a town or city's main street as being busy and commercialized, this street had 3 or 4 stores all of which were very run-down. In our industry, shops and stores are all about advertising and promoting their goods. Here, I think only one of the stores even had a sign with its name. The rest, no one would even know what they were unless you went in. But I guess being such a small town where everyone knows what the store is, you don't really need to waste time, money, and energy on advertising.

Being a rural area, the major industry is cotton. And it seemed like all there was beyond Jonestown was cotton fields for miles and miles. The land was so flat and so open- you could see forever it seemed. Jonestown's designated "wise old sage" was a big man with a big heart in his late 80s. Anyway, he told us stories of when he worked in the fields before they had any cotton gins or machines. He used to pick 300 to 400 pounds of cotton a day- and his brother could pick even more than him! The industry changed with the arrival of the cotton gin. Now, whether its working in the fields or in the mills, many people find employment during the cotton season. It's an industry that provides many people with jobs; however, it's also makes the employees very dependant on the crop. It is a seasonal crop therefore, when cotton can't be grown most people are out of jobs. There are very few, if any, job opportunities in Jonestown so one of the main options is to commute into Clarksdale, the neighboring city. Talking with some members of the community, most people that have jobs in Clarksdale work at the casino. In theory its a great opportunity because it provides lots of employment opportunities; however, just like most people, alot of the employees get pulled into the gambling scene and end up losing much of their earnings. So most people either work at the casinos or remained unemployed while waiting for the next cotton season. When we went it was not cotton season so we saw many people that were unemployed.

Of course I realize that different areas have different industries and rely on various factors, yet it was unique to actually travel to Jonestown and experience how people there live. Its one thing to learn where different areas are geographically and what industries are present there, but it is so much more enriching to actually live in the middle of a different culture and talk to the inhabitants and see not only what industries are present but how it affects their daily lives.

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Photos

Main Street
The stretch of stores is on the righthand side

Cotton Fields
Having fun in the fields :)

Casino Strip
It might be hard to see but it's a sign for the casinos