Saturday, August 19, 2006

Jamaica / Antigua / and...




So after the two weeks in Jamaica - which still leaves such a sweet feeling - I spent three in Antigua. And I mean Antigua - I didn't leave once except to go to a few pueblas in the surrounding area. I spent a lot of time in my sweet homestay room, with its open, grated window looking out onto orange trees and the volcano in the distance.........I read about 7 novels, each of them rather amazing (and found by my finger-walking method on the used-book shelves.) One about a hurricane in Jamaica that destroyed the family's home. One about two boys living in the "projects" in Chicago (which I once did in L.A. during my first marriage.) Each one always gives me something.........tiny stepping stones on my path.

I checked out my original project "destination" - the chance to volunteer that started me on this whole trip. And was told, "Thank you very much," they already had all the long-term volunteers they needed!

I was shocked, but did as was suggested and talked to the other volunteer coordinator about working in Guatemala City instead of Antigua. I was game for going to counsel some kids who were having problems, and give some ideas to staff, and for working in the brand, new BEAUTIFUL toddler center (tho the coordinator didn't seem to know why one would want to focus on children that young) until I went with the group on the chicken bus to G.C. to take the tour. An hour bus ride each way, each day.........even three days a week is just too much time out of the week for me, after nearly twenty years of one-hour commutes each way to work.

So I put that out of my mind.
Then, on a fluke, I looked up the website for CommonHope and decided to take their tour. Gorgeous new buildings in traditional style, just outside of Antigua; a parenting program, a counseling clinic, and a school for kids who aren't making it in public school, and a social worker who goes up into the pueblos nearby. I arranged to go with her on her rounds, 2 days.....into the corrugated aluminum shacks people around there have to call "Home," into some new concrete block or prefab concrete small buildings which the project has built for some families who have put in enough work hours. Communities on the sides of the volcanoes. BEAUTIFUL setting for some impoverished living, and sweet faces and sweet smiles, even from the kids behind the corrugated aluminum door to their concrete block shack in an alley. While the worker talked to the older boy in her excellent Spanish (the mom was at her 12-hr day job in a factory in town), I played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with the younger ones.
I was hooked. So I talked to them about long-term volunteering, and it looks as though we can work out a plan to contribute in all those areas: parenting, home visiting and classroom behavior.
Wonderful.

So I started looking for apartments. Amazing what you can find, tho everything very expensive (relatively) in Antigua, in part because of the numbers of Americans and Europeans who come there to adopt babies and pay a lot to stay comfortably for a few weeks. And because of gringos like me. I tried to keep the price down by going for the apts at $350......one sweet one in the back of a hotel, but not private enough for me; two were arranged as two separate rooms side by side on rather private balconies; one was a huge room in a colonial house with a fireplace and one lovely window out into the garden, but a kitchen shared with the grande dame of the place. That was $400. And then a small house in one of the nearby pueblos with 3 tiny upstairs rooms and a living room with a little fireplace and a sweet tiny kitchen downstairs, set with 3 other identical houses behind a tall wall (like all Antiguan homes) with a plaza next door where kids play "papi futbol" (a fast, cut-down version of soccer played on concrete) and a big church, whose bells ring out strong at noon on Sunday. I was on my way to put down my deposit for that house when my Spanish teacher (who walks around w/ me to make sure I say things right and understand what's being offered) called my attention to an ad on a door. We checked it out, saw the (incredibly beautiful) house, right next door to my favorite church with a big grassy area where I'd been to sit several times in the last few weeks, and by morning I had plunked down SIX hundred American dollars to secure the place.
And left the next day, AMAZED that I had set my plans in concrete without even intending to!
Originally I thought I'd put $350 down for the little house, come home, and think about Jamaica and Antigua, the different projects and the different possibilities, and if I chose something else, a lost $350 wouldn't kill me. But $600???
So........with a lot of regret, I have accepted that I am not going back to Jamaica.......now..........that I will start volunteering with Common Hope, and live in that beautiful house (fortunately not in a very touristy section of town, and close to the bus for C. H.) and see where things lead from there. I know I will never be satisfied just working inside a clinic, however important the work is. I have to get outside. If the in-home work and maybe parenting classes in the field develop for C. H., that would be pretty satisfying. If I find a little house to live in, safely, in one of the pueblos, that would be good. I think maybe they have other projects up in the hills, too. 
I still want to go see Livingston (especially after making a little connection with the Jovenes Garifuna group who came to a restaurant/bar in Antigua one weekend to play) and see if it's true that there are no projects for the street children there.
And in the meantime I have an extra room for friends and family to come visit me, and enough privacy to dance and play music and holler in my living room.
Bastante. (Enough.)
 
The photos above are from a parade I happened across near the Central Park, and a photo of my living room (not QUITE as grande as it looks. There's also lots of tile that I love and a tiny garden.)

Jamaica, Jamaica!




Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Hagley Gap, Jamaica, to learn that I would be in charge of a squirrelly group of 3-5 years olds for a 4-hr-day/5-day week "Fun Camp" for my 2 weeks volunteering there. I had 2 young Jamaican helpers for my group, both of whom (when they showed up) exercised the usual local discipline methods of yank, yell, scold, shame and hit. Grant you, the kids are so wild - having learned no SELF discipine - that I COULD NOT keep them paying attention, staying in the group and learning WITHOUT these young helpers, whatever their methods, but the biggest challenge, beside trying to understand the VERY thick local patois, was getting other ideas of discipline across to my helpers and to the few parents who also come to help (mostly do their children's work for them.) But at the end of the two weeks, the helpers were doing more encouraging, my group actually managed to behave well one session WITHOUT the helpers' presence, and the kids learned the greeting song I learned at Head Start "...stand up tall and we'll clap for you," (an apparent anomaly as usually individual attention means ridicule or punishment.) I also learned some wonderful songs w/ motion from them, and have a fantasy of turning one into a children's book, complete w/ photos of the area and the kids, called "She looks like a sugar in a plum." The kids are so eager to learn and avidly look at every book I hand out. Also so eager for attention and cuddles - MOST kids up to 7 or 8 suck their thumbs routinely. What they DO have here is a whole mountain community which is close-knit and completely safe, and the beautiful river, where everyone has swum, washed clothes, bathed and gotten their drinking water since a hurricane wiped out the water system 2 years ago. Also one of the most beautiful environments (if you ignore the trash here and there) I have ever seen - with bananas, plantains, guavas, pineapples, coconuts, mangos and peaches growing wild - a real boon in this area of 75% unemployment. The people who DO work (visibly) work incredibly hard - farming on hillsides, mixing concrete by hand, and of course everywhere broken-down vehicles being worked on. The project (Bluemountainproject.org) is wonderful. Minor glitches, as with any all-volunteer programs, but the manager (a 30 y o. American woman w/ a BA in Community Development, who has visited here 12 years and lived here 3) has produced this yearly summer camp, a year-round clinic w/ a reg. nurse, and visiting dentists to come, will be getting Engineers without Borders to replace the bridge on the main road to town, and is getting a helicopter donated to bring in supplies when the road is washed out (and it's terrible in the best conditions) and so someone could be taken to the hospital in Kingston if needed.
There's Dance Hall music and lots of dancing in the square in front of a few raggedy stores at the top of the hill on Fri & St nites, which includes many of the older kids, and one afternoon we had a great impromptu drumming session w/ several of the young men on the tables, pots and pans of the community center - which included one of my 5 yo boys, who will be a great drummer, and of course this very happy person. But in general I never walked (climbed hills) so much or worked so hard in my life. No bad bugs or snakes, and I'm not bothered by the mosquitoes at all, tho some are - and the crickets or cicadas sing and buzz at nite, and there are tiny fire flies! The temp is about 80 during the days w/ probaby 70% humidity - and cooler at nite, tho I understand it gets colder in Jan/Feb. Perfect for me...shorts and tanks all day. I think of living here for awhile - there's so much work to be done with parenting and discipline in the schools, and I could have some goats and chickens, but there'd be so little communication w/ my family except by cellphone and not really a place to visit, especially for my gay son, as Jamaica is known as the homophobic capital of the world (also the murder capital) and two gay rights workers were just brutally murdered recently. But I am strongly drawn and there is possibly a job opening as "Ed. Director."
LOTS of frustration due to cultural issues, mostly time-concept, things happening when they were supposed to (or at all), and the incessant discipline issues. But I've lost another 5# due to the physicality and am brown as a berry (which is a meaningful concept due to the coffee-growing here.)
On my last day I was told I could give a parenting talk at the local 7th Day Adv. church and went at 1:45 to be told to come back at 3:30-4....so I used the time to walk upupupup (another 1500' elev)(the lower community at about 4500') to a whole community area I was previously unaware of.......a little more primative or ghetto-like....a little scarey to just set out walking without knowing anyone.......but I managed to get up to the first of the four preschools (called "basic school" here and funded by the govt) to see what things looked like there. If I returned to Hagley Gap, THAT is where I'd be working. (My fear of heights coming vitally into play here.) Then walked back down to wait more than an hour more for the "afternoon service" and then to give my parenting talk to what turned out mostly to be grandparents and young people....so I switched the talk to "care for the children in our midst." The response was really wonderful, the two pastors were very enlightened men who really care about their "flock" - wanted to know what to do about the single mothers, fatherless children, etc etc. I was very moved and I guess they were too. Really a wonderful experience; unforgettable. I will miss the children, especially.
And then in the morning I started off a 8 am on what turned out to be a 12 hour journey by car and cancelled fights, and 1/2 hr. between 2 flights in the dreadful Miami airport and eventually again by jitney to my homestay in Guatemala, in the midst of a cold rainstorm and to bed by 8:30.
And now the adjustment (very difficult) to Spanish, and this lovely town, and whatever it holds.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

....begins with a single step

Each new journey begins with a single step, and I think begins with a single purpose in mind - in my case, to find a place where my skills are needed, where I can feel I am doing some good for people who could use some good, a place where I am working with a community of like-minded people - toward the goal of "making a difference" to some children and families.
Another purpose is to challenge myself; can I do this in an new environment where I don't carry any "reputation" or old relationships to support me, AND in another language?
And of course the lure of a beautiful environment, a chance to explore a new culture, and to see how the effects of the American economic system (and European) are impacting this other culture and it's people.
That's the "single step" but reading some material from the website The Cassiopaean Experiment this morning, I realize that's just the starting point.
I am open to being led to where I need to go. Who knows where that will be or what it will entail.

Friday, May 12, 2006

violence, gay rights, and other considerations

So I bought my tickets for Jamaica-Guatemala- and return in 6 weeks about 8 pm. Wed. night.
At 9 pm an email arrived from my son describing horrific murders of two gay rights activists in Jamaica and an on-going attitude there. http://planetout.com/news/feature.html?sernum=1382 I can't imagine that my cancelling my flight and planned stay in a tiny project there is going to impact that situation, and my son isn't pressuring me, but my feeling about Jamaica is sullied by this news, and I want to express my solidarity with my son and gay rights, generally.
Then I go to my Spanish class and the teacher tells me of the assault and robbery of two of her relatives in Guatemala. Native Guatemaltecos!
So..........what do I think about this? (Besides a regressive urge to take back my resignation at work and stay home.) There is more crime in those countries and more ugly attitudes in general in part due to the stronger influence of the church, but primarily due to the poverty and lack of hope. Evidently (another article this morning) the US recent deportation of tens of thousands of immigrants who had been affiliated with gangs, here, has brought about a crime wave in Central America. Nicaragua is evidently responding with more programs and economic incentives, Guatemala is responding with a "no tolerance" attitude.
It is the economic disparity between the "developed" countries and the "undeveloped" countries (read: colonized, treated inequitably by our policies) continues, of COURSE immigrants will keep pouring in to the developed countries (US, Europe.) As they do, and our goverments allow business to take advantage of the cheap labor here (and there) not only will they continue to come, but our own citizens will be pushed out of jobs, thus creating resentment and backlash, and possibly a sort of civil war here.
When we reject them, they turn their resentment and sense of hopelessness on tourists in their own countries as well as, evidently, their own - more affluent - citizens.
The only answer is for the economic disparity to devolve. Some countries, I think Honduras is one, are now requiring foreign investors to pay reasonable taxes and to hire a high percentage of locals. That's a step in the right direction. For "us" to want to invest there, there has to be closeness to resources and some economic advantage, but it shouldn't be such that our businesses LEAVE the US, or exploit the people of the country invested in (while lining the pockets of the government officials who design policies.)
What does all this mean for my "JOURNEY"?? No sé at the moment. I am considering cancelling my tickets and trip to Jamaica (and I see the faces of those sweet kids looking up at me from their tacky school) and sending the project a little money, and taking my trip straight to Guatemala.
As far as the violence there, the question is whether "putting my life on the line" is worthwhile if I am not doing so in some really effective way with a big cause. Going to Colombia to be in solidarity with peace activists would be something like that (which would scare me to death.) I don't know that putting myself in harm's way to increase the mental health component of some small school project is quite the same. But of course if a few more children in Guatemala feel good about themselves and are more able to be successful, that's something.
No sé.....realmente no sé.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Headed for a New Life

I am actually headed for a NEW LIFE.
It is interesting to think how much might be new, and how much of my present self I will take with me.
According to Astrocartography, I will be more MYSELF than I have ever been.....at least since I left the longitude of my birth. But what will that be?
I imagine myself in an apartment above the street....enough above that I can see the greenery on the hills beyond town, and the volcanoes that enclose the area. I imagine it spare and light and colorful. Room to eat and sleep and write, no more.
And I imagine I will write............about making a new life, about the culture of childrearing and parenting in a new country, about finding out what parts of my career/work might be useful in this new town/country/culture. I imagine I will write a lot about HOW one finds one's life..........how serendipidy works.
I imagine, at times, that I will find ways to recreate the life I have here........not the gardening or animals, certainly, but perhaps a group of women to connect with, maybe counseling clients even, and when I am dancing to music in my living room here, I imagine I will teach Authentic Movement, or create a dance jam or class. Who knows?
I might end up working in the jungle or the mountains and living in a tent or small cottage. I might end up leaving Guatemala for another country............No se'.
And WILL I learn to be fluent in Spanish??? A lot depends on that.

No se'.

Getting closer

So it seems I've decided to go, specifically to Guatemala. I'm still waffling on Jamaica, mainly because it's an extra amount of money that might be very precious to me in the future. But I think it's important to me to know what it would be like to live and work in a community of rural poor.........whether that becomes Nicaragua, Guatemala, Africa...wherever. As opposed to my plan of more private living in Antigua and working in a project nearby.
Whatever floats your boat...........but I gravitate to both.
I am a fairly private person, however, so I'm headed for one, but going to investigate the other.

And then of course today I discover a way to get to Africa - and to Mali, my most recent choice.
For anyone who might be reading this there is: operationscrossroadsafrica.org. $3500 for 7 weeks/ and your airfare to Africa. And apparently a quality organization.
There is also www.idealist.org for anyone who wants to talk with other people interested in volunteering in the US or abroad.

Sort of a pragmatic post. I guess that's my mood today.
I'm excited to know that I'm actually going, but of course that involves many steps to extricate myself from this home of 25 years and 10 year job.................with all that means leaving.
I will most miss my connection with two groups of women, and my weekly Body Tales.
But you never know what I might be able to create.....wherever I go, and however long I'm gone.

Hasta....

Saturday, March 11, 2006

First: Jamaica!


What an incredible trip to receive an invitation to my step-son's wedding - in Jamaica! And what an incredible trip it was. [Street i Ocho Rios to the right, and my oldest daughter)
In the first place the long conversation on the plane with two men sitting behind me who were on their wayto Brazil to find a healer, and the woman next to me who has a home-building project in the Dominican Republic. She invited me to visit her there (which I would love because I sponsor a boy in a Children Int'l project, there) and said she'd come visit me in Guatemala.
Then our family converging from all over the US, hooking up with each other in varying combinations in Miami and then on to MoBay on the north side of the island, and then (at night for my two daughters and me) by van on the incredibly bumpy pavement to Ocho Rios. We checked in with the father of the bride at the hotel he and her step mother own and as I recall went to bed early (like midnight.)

The following day breakfast in the hotel dining room with every permutation of these two wide sprawling, multi-racial families....meeting new people, getting into interesting conversations with people from NY, Sweden, California and Jamaica....and eating an incredible breakfast (me, who never eats dinner for breakfast): boiled greens, sawfish and acree (a fruit growing on a tree outside the window, which looks like scrambled eggs when cooked) and of course melons and juice and some little pan-friend puffy breads. A GREAT cook and a great meal.
We then spent three days going out dancing at nite (with some guidance from Elvis, the cook) and going to jerk chicken places in the day, climbing the Dunns River Falls (many laughs and photos there), taking an all-day tour to the Blue Mountain area - where I got a great photo of a little falling-apart schoolhouse over the edge of the "highway" with lots of adorable Jamaican kids waving up at us, and we saw the devastation of a hurricane a year ago which wiped out the connecting road to Kingston (so we couldn't go there, which I had hoped for because I wasn't hearing any reggae music anywhere except on the boom-boxes, and had been told I might hear it there.) And also of course more "jerked-chicken shacks." Great conversations everywhere because I always want to know what life is like for everyone I come across.....so I learned things about the school system (the gov't is finally giving scholarships to some worthy kids so they can attend highschool free - other wise for the poor education ends w/ gradeschool,) the gov't (considered fairly liberal, but things could be improved, they said,) and that $15,000/year is a pretty good salary and you can rent a reasonable 2 bedroom house for $150./mo. Everyone I ran into wanted to sell you something........especially on the street, where this became onorous for my daughter and my son-in-law, who spent the rest of the time in the hotel, as do most tourists (I didn't see many whites on the streets, tho there may have been black tourists there.) I just figured they needed to make a living and politely refused, except for a few items. But even Elvis sought to provide us with services of one sort or another, casually accepting a tip in exchange (with a quick look at the amount.)
I walked alone in the neighborhood behind our hotel.....broken concrete streets, broken concrete houses, abundant flowers and greenery everywhere, a little barbed wire (not like Guate. City), a few kids playing in the streets (no begging,) a few women talking over the fence (but although they speak English, don't think you'll understand the patois!) and of course some guy who came along when I was questioning which turn to take, and walked with me, chatting about politics and social problems, until I got back to the hotel, whereupon he hinted that a tip was in order for his "guiding." Which was okay until he suggested that $150 J was not enough.

I loved every moment of the trip, as did my younger daughter who stayed out dancing til 3 or 4 with a couple of friends from the wedding party or, in one instance, with one young Jamaican man, while I went home about 2 or so each nite - at least twice walking the block or so from the wedding hotel to the one we were staying at by myself. My sense was that I needed to be watchful but not afraid. The only thing to fear was the traffic, which was even wilder and crazier than in Antigua, but of course at that hour minimal.


This account in no way does the trip justice. It was absolutely wonderful. I loved Jamaica (although it was overcast a lot while we were there and I only made it to the beach for a few minutes) - and I will be going back to work for the Blue Mountain community-building project in July! But to be in another, exciting, invigorating country with all four of my children and both grandchildren and my greatgranddaughter ! (now 17 - and on her ggrmother's insistence she went out dancing w/ us - which I regretted later, when somebody let her get drunk, but even that was okay.) And to eat great food and walk in the bustling streets all day and go dancing all nite! Whew!!!


Sunday, January 01, 2006

The Day of the New Year

I prayed long and hard last nite for direction, and realized I don't really need to know, I just need to stay close to God.......and my steps will be guided. I can remember being carried during the campaign and the organization of the successful fundraising nite; I know what that feels like.
So that felt relieving. With the cancellation of my private practice ad, and putting in notice on my office........certain baby steps are being taken, and my anxiety about it has returned.
So this morning I am lighting my fire and pull yet another request for contributions out of the paper trash bag..... I have hated it that if I follow my own desire to help personally it will mean that I can't make the money I have been to be able to give some away. So lately I've been tossing them in the trash. But this request's from Drs. w/o Borders, one of my favorites. So I open it and read about refugees in Darfur and Colombia. And once again, wonder what I'm doing. Going to Guatemala...or at any rate Antigua...seems too "cushy," not "hard-hitting" enough.
I want to help the children "of the basura" - whose parents work in the city dump in Guate. Is that not enough?
What is enough? What is this need to help?
My sister and daughters query me: do I have to help everyone in the world?
My answer is that if each of us says "not me" - then who does it?
If something falls to my hand to do, and I step away..........then who does it?
I don't think everyone has to "go help" (although I wish everyone would pick a favorite charity or two and send $25 a month!) But I am alone in the world; my kids are grown; I am 70. I'm in a position to go do something.
And I am told that in Antigua there is Drs. W/o Borders, Amnesty Int'l and many other NGOs. Perhaps going there is just a start.
And if nothing else, I will put this urge to rest, if I go there and learn something about what that's all about.
Who are the people who do this work? Are these NGO's honest and "for real?" Do we really help? And HOW does one help?
For all my naivete' I see things pretty clearly; I think I will learn a lot.
And about myself, of course, I will learn a lot.
I think I am pretty divested of personal fantasies: I know I'm hard-working and dedicated. I know I need to be hedonistic at times. I know I can be strong and dynamic, or wimpy and hesitant. I know about my need to be loved and needed, and how to keep track of that and not let it take over my objectivity. I've learned a lot in all these years of social work and counseling, maybe especially about myself.
And I'm not going to save the world. But I might find a place where my contributions make a difference, where there are like-minded people, an organization that is really doing what it says it does, and of course always a bunch of little wonderful cantankerous, mixed-up, sweet kids. Which is what is really is about.
But I hope I can do some training, too..........so I leave a little behind.

I keep thinking I have to have a good reason to change my life like this, drop a good job, leave my friends. That I have to justify it.
But I think it's really just that I want to do it.

Day of the New Year musings.