"You people have inspired me"

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Wednesday night I remember sitting at dinner with Keith talking about how much I wished it would rain.

I went to bed that night and couldn’t fall asleep. Sometime around 2am I realized it was raining. I finally fell asleep, smiling.

Thursday morning I wake up, get ready for work and eat breakfast. It’s overcast which means that it feels at least 10 degrees cooler - Keith and I are thankful for this change in the weather. One of the jokes down here between Keith and I is that EVERY DAY the weather for Kingston is listed as thunderstorms. And EVERY DAY its bright, sunny and humid. No rain.

No problem.

We go into work and are told part way through the day that we have a meeting scheduled at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. We are both thoroughly excited for this. Despite my eagerness to learn, the lack of sleep is finally catching up to me. As we are sitting in this meeting learning about the disaster plan, etc., my eyes start getting heavy, and it gets increasingly difficult to concentrate. I push through by asking questions (a trick I’ve learned to keep myself awake). We finish the meeting and wait for our ride to pick us up, we sit for 45 minutes and joke about how by the time we get picked up it will be time to go home.

We get picked up. Go into the office for about 30 minutes and as we are about to leave we have a conversation which leaves us - ahem -- ME (I hesitate to speak on behalf of anyone else) rather confused and annoyed. I leave work fuming, and aching to go for a two hour run in order to sort my self out. But, I’m living in a tropical paradise complete with inner cities and machetes so going for a run is not an option right now. What’s the next best option? Red Stripe? Nap?

We hop in the car with Rocky, and the anger subsides to exhaustion. I fight to keep my eyes focused on the drive home. We arrive. I don’t even think I said one word the entire 40 minute drive home. I stumble out of the taxi, Keith opens the gate at the guesthouse and starts to discuss his frustrations with the last conversation at work - I stop him and assure him that we will discuss this later - after my nap seeing as how I can hardly muster the strength to walk up the stairs to my room, put my key in the lock, turn the knob, push open the door, walk inside, close the door, lock it, and fall onto my bed. At this point laying down at the foot of the steps on the concrete floor sounds like a better option just so I don’t have to go through all of that trouble.

I fall asleep for two hours. Wake up and stumble over to Keith’s room. I figure I should offer to go with him to get dinner, seeing as how it’s now much later than when we normally eat, and he has probably resorted to eating anything that could pass as edible at this point. He says that he knocked on my door earlier and I didn’t answer.

Apparently I was tired.

We go to dinner and discuss a frustration or two.

Friday morning I wake up, and get ready for work.
I am starting to hate breakfast.

I loath it.

The idea of having to sit there and be disappointed almost every time is starting to wear on me. The coffee is still amazing, and the toast with preserves gets me through, but in all honesty I think it will be a while before I crave toast.
But today is different - today is porridge. Keith and I are ecstatic!
I decide it’s going to be a good day.

We go into work and finalize the material that we are going to present to the Police Youth Club tonight in one of the inner city areas. We don’t know much about what this meeting will actually entail, or exactly who will be there, or how many, or the ages of the people we will be presenting to.
Who needs to know information like that? Not us.
We live in Kingston. We can do anything.

We leave work early to head up to the Police Station to beat the traffic out of downtown Kingston. We arrive much earlier than we expected, and we end up taking a tour of one of the rich areas, complete with multi-million dollar mansions. I can’t help but feeling like this confirms my idea of the conflicting images of Jamaica.

We get to the Police Station, about 15 minutes before the meeting is suppose to start. Turns out that the meeting runs on “Jamaican Time” and it starts an hour and 15 minutes late. We are presenting to two Constables, and the leaders of the youth police clubs for 13 different towns. We explain a bit about us, our program, our internships, and then do a little bit of psycho-social education on the psychological effects of disasters (natural and man-made) on children, adolescents and other vulnerable populations. We finish our part of the meeting and leave. We wait for Rocky to get us. We are told that we no longer have to meet at the police youth club on Sunday to do another presentation.

We get home and as we sit down to dinner it starts raining - and not just a drizzle - hard core torrential downpour. The wind picks up, and feels incredible. We smile.

The power goes out.
I laugh.
I think about the advice that my dad gave me to buy a flashlight.
Damn him for being right.

The power comes back on.

We finish dinner.
Walk back to our rooms in the rain.
It feels cool and refreshing.

We didn’t make any plans for the weekend because we thought we would have to work Friday night and Sunday morning. We briefly discuss going to Lime Cay on Saturday or Sunday. Depending on the weather - of course.

I fall asleep easily, listening to the rain.

I wake up. It’s still raining. I am tempted to go outside and watch it for a while, since it’s early and no one will be awake yet. I check my clock and it’s 9am. WHAT?! No call from the staff to tell me it’s time for breakfast? Wow…I’m impressed. I get dressed happily and head down to breakfast, amazed at what a difference it makes when I can wake up on my own accord.

We eat breakfast and watch the rain. It’s very dark out because of the clouds and the constant downpour. We decide to take a taxi to Mega Mart (the Costco-esque place we went to weeks ago). We walk around looking at everything for several hours. We stock pile American things that we have been missing. I am incredibly close to convincing Keith its a good idea for us to buy frozen pancakes. Keith buys Cow’s Milk and Oreos. I buy Ben & Jerrys. We decide for lunch we will be as White Trash as possible - we buy HOT POCKETS.

We head home.

Somewhere between my stomach and head I forget that both ice cream and Hot Pockets are frozen and need to be eaten ASAP. I get to work -- eating my ice cream and then my hot pocket - it’s a rainy day, what else is there to do but gorge myself and then lay around feeling sick?

Consider it done!

It keeps raining.

Keith and I talk about going to Lime Cay on Sunday, depending on the weather - of course!

At this point it has been raining heavily for over 24 hours.

It’s still raining when I go to bed - about 30 hours later.

I wake up. It must be early - no phone call yet.
I check the clock. It’s 9am. Wow! Two days in a row!

I get ready and head down to breakfast. It’s mostly sunny out, but hazy and some clouds in the distance. Keith and I discuss our options. We decide to roll the dice and take a chance going out to Port Royal and Lime Cay. We call Rocky. He will be at our place in 10 minutes.

We drive out to Port Royal (out past the airport) and get dropped off at one of the marinas. We are told the boat will leave in 5 minutes.

30 minutes later we get on the boat and head out to sea. It’s the same type of boat my grandparents used to have on their island that would transport people from the dock out to their resort. I remember sitting in boats like this one with my family all piled in with our luggage, looking forward to a few weeks of scuba diving, laying in hammocks, absolute paradise. My grandparents would always be standing there waiting for us as the boat pulled in… The last time I was in the Caribbean was when I was 18, in Honduras, on a boat like this, visiting my grandparents resort. I think about all of the places I’ve been, and what a prominent role water has played in each one of them. Despite the distances I travel, I always feel closer when I can see the Ocean. And today I am sitting on a boat, getting salt spray in my face, with the sun overhead and laughing with each wave we overtake.

We pull up to Lime Cay and there is a hut with drinks and food for sale, and music playing. There are people scattered up and down the island. Banners for Red Stripe and Heineken blow in the breeze. We decide to walk the island and check it out before we decide where to setup camp for the day. It takes no more than 15 minutes to walk most of the perimeter. We pick a spot. And lay there for the next four hours, enjoying the “real” Jamaica, while occassionally being pelted by sand that stings and is now permanently encrusted in my scalp.

We watch the boats come and go, and determine that they come every 30 minutes. We decide to catch the 4:30 boat back and call Rocky to ask him to be there at the Marina at 5:00. We then change our minds and instead opt for the 4:00 boat, and call Rocky to pick us up earlier.

And then…the 4:00 boat doesn’t come.
At 4:30 we decide to buy BBQ Chicken and eat.
At 4:35 a boat arrives, which isn’t the one we took out there, we opt to get onto it anyway. The boat is packed, only 2 empty seats on the whole thing. We have some trouble getting off Lime Cay because of how heavy the boat now is.

We are about half way back to the marina when the engine stops working.
We are drifting. The captain keeps trying to start the engine and nothing is happening. We are drifting in the right general direction, but we are headed towards the reef. It’s at this point we see an approaching boat - the one we took out to Lime Cay.

How ironic…if we’d waited 5 more minutes we would be on the right boat, and we wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of the ocean drifting towards a reef.

I laugh.

The boat finally starts, and we get taken back to a different marina. We walk back to the one that we are supposed to meet Rocky at, and apologize for being late.
He has his hood open, and is pouring water into something in his engine.
I think to myself, that the good news is that if we break down with Rocky we at least don’t have to worry about drifting out to sea…

We make it home, safe and sound.

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Comments

[Mom]

so good to hear a bit of chipperness in your voice
This episode has a wonderfully upbeat feeling to it. I'm glad you were able to sleep in. It seems to have made a difference in how you have been feeling!!! love u. mom