Who's Wearing Smarty Panties?

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Yet another week has come and gone here in Jamaica and the following are just a few of the slightly odd/ridiculous/frightening occurrences that have come to pass.

1. The Mother Superior was in Jamaica this past week to visit, so we had a gathering at our house as kind of a Welcome-Sister-Judith-And-Thank-You-Mr.-And-Mrs.-Monroe-For-Giving-Us-The-House celebration. All the big wigs in the religious community were invited so, of course, we were graced by the presence of the current Archbishop of Kingston --Larry -- and the previous Archbishop -- The Edge -- among about 25 other guests, from friends to other sisters and several local priests. After a blessing we sat down to dinner and I was privileged enough to be seated between the two Archbishops. Needless to say, dinner was one of the most interesting in my life. The Edge (aka - Archbishop Edgerton Clarke) sat to my right and spent the vast majority of dinner talking to me abou the faults of the Jamaican education system, making fun of Jesuit priests, and teaching me the art of drinking rum. Rum is a masterpiece, he explained, and must be combined very cautiously with other flavours for a truly peak experience. Pineapple juice = right. Fruit punch = wrong. He also delved into great detail concerning the types of rum that should be consumed, but I don't remember much of what he said about that, as I believe I had consumed too much white rum at that point in the evening. Larry (aka - Archbishop Lawrence Burke) was sitting to my left and spent the majority of dinner trying to convince me not to listen to The Edge and at one point took my drink away. Larry joked that The Edge was a terrible influence on me. The Edge joked that Larry was just jealous of his good looks. Then the Edge looked over to the table where Nancy was sitting and said “Now there’s a girl who knows how to drink her rum.” Sofia just sat across the table from me laughing the whole time because The Edge had promoted himself to the position of official bartender earlier in the evening, and so had poured her a drink which consisted of 3/4 gin and 1/4 tonic.

2. Last night Nancy and I called Phillip - a seminarian from Oregon who is spending some time in Jamaica - to ask if he wanted to come have dinner with us on Friday night. After he accepted our offer, we mentioned that we could pick him up, knowing that he had no transportation otherwise. He said it was very nice of us, BUT there was a small chance we might run into trouble trying to pick him up. It just so happens that Phillip lives at St. Annie’s, located in the heart of West Kingston, which is yet another neighborhood torn apart by gangs in recent years. Driving through the streets of West Kingston during the day is scary enough - everyone stares at you suspiciously and there are broken down cars and trash piled in the streets from previous instances when gangs had locked down the neighborhood. Not to mention wild hogs. At night, however, Phillip pointed out that gang members stand guard at all the entrances to the neighborhood and, if they don’t recognize your car, they’ll shoot at you. He knows this because he and one of the other seminarians were almost shot a couple weeks ago when trying to drive home. Slightly nerve-racking, eh?

3. I bet you didn't know that Nancy and I were in Rome this past Wednesday!! We went with Fr. Peter Grace (how appropriate a name for a priest) as part of the St. Elizabeth's Housing Outreach Committee to visit the "homes" of families seeking help from Food for the Poor. Rome is so-called because it sits beside the Roman Catholic Church in the area, but the only semblance it holds to the real city is the fact that so many of the buildings lie in ruins. The general feeling one gets walking through the neighborhood is one of discomfort and sadness - the sprawling neighborhood is, essentially, the epitome of Jamaican poverty. At best, we saw one person living alone in a 30x30 room...think: your college dorm room, but with rotten wood-paneled walls full of cracks, a floor that slopes 4-inches downward in the middle, and a tin roof full of holes that leak water in massive amounts each time it rains. At worst, we saw 17 (yes, SEVENTEEN) people living in a house made up of just three rooms: a father lived with his four daughters, 2 of whom each had 4 children and the other two who each had 2 kids. We walked into a home where, just two weeks ago, a man had been murdered at 3:00am while trying to hide under his bed from rival gang members. We toured another house and talked to a woman whose boyfriend had been murdered just a week earlier, leaving her with no money and 3 kids to raise. There were still bloodstains on the ground outside her home. Another man we visited lived behind his son's house in his own little home. To even get to this home, we had to walk sideways through a passageway about 2 1/2 feet wide until we came into a clearing with a tin structure set up at the end. His "house" could not have been more than 7x7 feet - filled with empty milk containers, soda bottles, dirt piled up to your knees, and a blanket crumpled into the corner which I can only assume is where he slept. Rome sits alongside a gully, which is a blessing, because they have access to plumbing and sewage, but is also a curse in times of heavy rain because the gully constantly floods. Being such, we visited homes where people explained how the water from the gully had flooded their houses and had risen to over a foot deep in some places. Keep in mind the fact that everyone dumps their trash into the gully because there is no reliable system of trash removal. Now imagine that water sitting a foot deep in your living room. Even more depressing is the fact that we are visiting these familes promising them that Food for the Poor will come and alleviate all of their problems by building them a new home or reconstructing the home that already exists. An ideal notion, but how many of the 40 families we've visited in the past two weeks will actually recieve the improvements they think are coming?

On the bright side, there were some happy moments during our excursion to Rome. I played tag with some of the local children and they taught me one of the popular Michael Jackson dances. Nancy was proposed to but had to reply that her "husband" was waiting for her at home. Oh, and I can't forget Edith. We were visiting George's house when Edith, a sweet 70-something-year-old neighbor, came out and introduced herself to me, told me she'd been doing laundry all day, and then asked George if he had a stick of ganja she could have, because she wouldn't have money until 6:00pm and she couldn't wait that long to smoke. Being that such a request is entirely normal in Jamaican culture, George's only concern was that I could be an undercover police officer who would arrest him for dealing marijuana. I assured him that I was not -- and never would be -- a police officer, but a missionary working for the church. At that point, his major concern was that God would look poorly on him for dealing drugs in front of a nun. I assured him again that I was not --and never would be -- a nun, at which point he handed Edith some ganja and subsequently confessed his love for me.

And so it goes. Tune in for the next edition of "Live From Jamaica With Nancerino and Magon." Also, in case you're curious about the title, "Smarty Panties" is Sr. Sofia's version of "smarty pants" - you know, what you call someone who is way too educated. 😊

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