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Published: April 8th 2006
Come On In, Dear, The Water's Fine
We finally did more traveling this past weekend, as it had been far too long since we’d left the convent for a good adventure. It was about 9:45 on Saturday morning when 3 of the 4 remaining Passionist Volunteers - Jess, Maggie, and Eric - arrived in their white station wagon to pick us up. Our destination: Port Antonio, home of the gorgeous inlet of water made famous by the movie Blue Lagoon.
It took us just under 2 hours to get to Port Antonio, the drive alternating between towering mountain vistas and huge green waves crashing along the northeast coast of the island. Our first stop was, in fact, the blue lagoon or Blue Hole, as the indiscriminately placed cardboard sign stated. In fact, the sign was so inefficiently placed that had we not heard the strange man in the mesh marina yelling
“Blue Lagoon here, whities!” as we drove past the entrance, then we might not have figured out to turn the car around and descend the cracked driveway where the man was standing. It really was a sorry entrance to such a spectacular tourist attraction as it is alleged to
All the Volunteers at the Lagoon
Jess, Maggie, Meg, Eric, & Nancy, and in the back left corner, the $6000 raft. Looks charming, doesn't it?be.
We did, eventually turn the car around and we drove back to the strange man in mesh who told us this was, in fact, the home of the infamous Blue Lagoon, but the restaurant that used to bear the same name had long since closed and, thus, the sign was gone and the entrance was quite inadequately marked. He generously offered to show us the way to the lagoon which, it turned out, was approximately 100 yards from where we were, but where we’d have to pay $100 an hour to park the car.
So we drove the 100 yards behind man-in mesh on his bicycle and we promptly unloaded our stiff legs from the car. Man-in-mesh then offered to show us a good time at the Blue Lagoon. For a mere $6000 ($100 US), he’d take us on a quick 2-minute boat ride or a leisurely 10-minute raft ride around the lagoon and then - and here’s the kicker - he’d let us jump off our choice of transportation for a nice swim in the sparkling water of the lagoon. Now, here’s the trick: he’s telling us all this while we’re standing on the shore, our
feet
already in the sparkling water of the blue lagoon. He wanted us to pay him $6000 when we could take 6 steps and be immersed in water for free. Needless to say, we kindly declined his offer, at which point he dropped his price to $3000, which included not just the ride but an in-depth HISTORY LESSON. How could we turn down good education? Somehow, we managed. If we really wanted to swim and learn, we could do it on our own.
We bid Man-in-Mesh sayonara, took a few photos, reloaded the car, and drove 10 minutes down the road the Frenchman’s Cove where we paid $200 to lay out on what must be one of the most gorgeous and secluded beaches in all of Jamaica. It came highly recommended from the rich Jamaicans Eric knows from church. It was like a little tropical oasis, complete with a tree swing and a bar on the beach. We pretended not to see the sign about keeping personal food and drinks off the beach and unpacked our food and drinks. The next 5 hours were spent exposing ourselves to a potentially dangerous level of UV rays, swimming (or rather trying
Just so tropical!
Yes, I know. I do look entirely ravishing in this photo. Don't be so jealous. not to drown as we were knocked down by the massive waves), taking pictures, planning Nancy & Eric's joint 22nd BIRTHDAY BASHMENT (turns out they are birthday buddies), and drinking rum and coke. In a word: Perfection. At least, it remained a perfect day until Nancy and Eric used the entire car ride home to play corners - you know, when you lean over to squish the person on the recieving end of a turning car's motion. Then I became an innocent victim of centrifugal force and Nancy's pointy elbows.
IN OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK:
* "Lisa" is 16-years-old and used to be a resident of Dare to Care. She was 13 when she ran away from home because she was being molested by her mother's boyfriend. She started living on the streets and running with the gangs and sleeping with different gang members every night. At 14 she was pregant. The police eventually caught up with her, took her to the hospital where she was tested and found to be HIV-positive. The police couldn't send Lisa back to live with her mother, because of the dangerous situation, so they made Lisa a ward of the state and
placed her in the Dare To Care program. She was immediately put on a strict medication regiment and started to receive treatment to stop the mother--to-child transmission of HIV. Lisa had her baby, "Michael" at 14 years old, but he tested HIV-positive at birth, despite the ARV treatments. They continued to give Michael ARV treatment and both he and Lisa returned to Dare to Care. A year later, Lisa ran away from Dare to Care, and was placed in a different shelter for teenage girls. She eventually ran away from there, too, and returned to her mother, then ran away from her mother's house to live in the country with her brother. She kept in touch with Dare To Care while she was away, and learned that over the course of two years, Michael's ARV treatment proved successful, and on his 2nd birthday, he tested HIV-negative. At this point, Lisa said she wanted custody of her son, since he wasn't sick and thus wasn't such a liability. She was denied, as Michael is also a ward of the state by default, since his mother is. A week later she called back and said she had an aunt in the United
States who wanted to adopt Michael. Lisa was told she'd have to go through all the proper legal channels and it could take a long time for the adoption to be processed. Several days later, Lisa showed up at Dare To Care with her mother and asked to just spend some time with her son, since it had been several months since she'd seen him. So last Friday, she was permitted to visit with him under supervision, and did so, but as soon as one of the caregivers went to prepare lunch and the other went to the bathroom, Lisa packed up Michael and left with him. No one has seen or heard from them since.
* An excerpt from the newspaper on Monday:
Lask week's shooting deaths of at least five people in Spanish Town, St Catherine have been blamed on an ongoing feud between the rival One Order and Clansman gangs. More than 15 people have been killed and several others injured over the past two weeks as a result of the feud. Deputy police superintendent Anthony Castell said most of the shootings have been reprisal attacks between members of the two gangs. "What should be understood is that, for survival, a lot of these people do vending in the bus park. Because it is central and has a high concentration of people, some of these people may have come from these areas that are at odds against each other." Good thing I had to take the bus home from work both Tuesday and Thursday nights.
* I sponsored all my kids for Jeans Day on Wednesday. It set me back $500, but boy, did they all look handsome in their jeans and little white uniform shirts.
* Angela left us Friday to return to Canada, eh?. She's a volunteer occupational therapist through the Catholic Medical Mission group and I met her while working at Mustard Seed. She'd been in Jamaica a year already, but has decided to go home for a couple months and then
COME BACK to Jamaica for another year. I swear, she's loony. What would ever inspire her to want to return to J-country is beyond me, but kudos to her.
* Also on Friday, Dupont Primary School had their GSAT blow-out party as a treat to the 6th graders who have been preparing all year
If Only She Had Fallen...
Nancy apparently has a fetish of climbing trees and then trying to fall out of them. And don't EVER stand below her when she's climbing, because she's likely to spit. and finally took their tests last week. I was elected to paint faces for the event and Nancy eventually joined me, so we spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon paiting butterflies, flowers, flames, stars, suns, and spiderman onto faces. It was supposed to be a for-profit activity, but I felt so sorry for the kids who wanted their faces painted but didn't have any money, so I did quite a bit of charitable work. Nancy was a stickler, though...I'm pretty sure her charitable work was kept at a minimum, if it existed at all.
That's all I have to report on from this week. Join us next week for the next installment of "Living and Dying and Kidnapping in Jamaica." This is Meg, signing off....
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