22 August 2006 17:04
sunday got off to an early start for me.you may have noticed i skipped saturday. saturday happened, and it involved fun things like pushing very heavy yet dead land rovers up hills, trying to snorkle with a leaking face mask, participating in a very un-jamaican run along the hip strip in mobay, and some good conversations here there and along the way. we also moved a dozen people from the south coast to the north coast (picking up a couple friends along the way), to arrive in mobay at a guest house run by Jamaica Relief Ministries. it was a good day. now the group: Robert & Lois, Monica, Philip, Shirley, Carmen, Melissa, Krista, Brooke, Michelle, Steve (Maranatha's driver), and myself.
but yes, sunday got off to an early start. the three single guys had been billeted in the first floor bedroom, but a complete lack of air movement in that room quickly decided us for sleeping in the second floor living area. which of course meant that everybody had to traipse by us to get anywhere from the third floor bedrooms. i used the opportunity to tease krista throughout the day for "stomping" down the stairs at six thirty in the morning, though in reality she had been creeping down them. they creaked quite horribly though, so a quiet descent was well nigh impossible.
everybody assembled in their sunday best for a ten o'clock departure. we left at 1020, but since we'd built a twenty minute buffer into our departure time we were still right on schedule when we arrived at salters hill. they were still working their way through the tail end of sunday school, so we stood around the church yard in quiet conversation looking conspicuous. when they finished we filed in and significantly boosted their sunday morning attendance numbers.
after the service we returned to our milling stations briefly before pastor (donovan I think it was) invited us down to the parsonage for lunch. it was the first i'd been there since helping a crew from dayton do the finish work at the end of 2004, so i looked it over good. it was definately lived in, and the work had never been fully finished--but it is a far cry better than where they were living before. lunch proved to be sometime coming (and their living room was not really designed to seat twelve). philip and i put my frisbee to use and there proved to be some local kids that had a pretty good arm. it's always been interesting watching jamaicans throw a frisbee. it's not a very popular sport on the island at all, and while most have a game go at it, their throw needs some work. on the other hand, some are born naturals.
and then there are people like me who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if they tried, but if there's a vehicle within 200 feet then it's a guaranteed frisbee magnet if i'm around. it was maranatha's minibus in this case, and i must confess i was a very poor example for the kids.
lunch was a delicious affair of rice and peas (duh), fried chicken, baked chicken, fish, and a local juice concoction. between that and the fact that it didn't happen til after two in the afternoon helps explain why nobody was very hungry for supper in the evening.
we all piled in the bus (plus two of pastor's kids) and headed back up the road a short ways to robin's nest, a private orphanage there in the community. while everybody else walked up to visit, steve and myself climbed the genip tree at the bottom of the driveway. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven. fortunately genips take a while to eat, so i was able to pick some to save for later while still sucking on the first few. they'd gotten a lot of rain recently, these were by far the largest and most succulent i've ever had (not to mention free). by the time we were finished ten somewhat sticky minutes later, we had two scandal bags laden about three quarters full. that's a mess of genips : ).
we loitered for some time at the orphanage, ostentatiously "visiting". i spent most of my time shooting pics of some of the flamboyant trees in all their extravagant splendor. but the afternoon was progressing on quite rapidly, so we proceeded back to the guest house.
the house is owned by Jamaica Relief Ministries, a group that works with the state-run orphanages in kind of an over-flow capacity (i think). monica has a cousin there, which provided the connection for our staying there for the weekend. soon after we arrived, a number of us went up to get introduced by monica. philip and i wound up talking for some time with JD (see the staff page), he and his family have been there for a number of months now. he eventually had to leave for a church program, so philip and i headed back down to see what everybody else was up to.
the answer was "not much". monica and i eventually started working on supper; but only after we spent adequate time arguing over how, when, where, and why we should have supper. it was a lot of fun :). although i'm pretty sure we didn't finish supper. we started the spaghetti to boiling then ran up to the Millers' to borrow some garlic or some such. she wound up talking to her cousin and i wound up talking to Julia for fifteen minutes or so. never fear for the spaghetti, somebody noticed it and rescued it from death and destruction...until it was served up on my plate that is, then it was all over for the spaghetti. oh, and i finished off the pancakes from that morning too. it was my first time having pancakes and spaghetti together, but i'd do it again in a heartbeat.
the first group would be leaving pretty early in the morning (four?), so things shut down relatively quickly and i found myself back on the couch again for the second night.
monday definitely started early, but i had the benefit of being able to go back to bed half an hour after i got up. after the PIM team left, i slept until seven or so and then helped the others get the place cleaned up. it's amazing how much work that took after being there only two days. we took our leisurely time at it though, and finished up around ten. then it was time to say goodbye to the rest and head off on my own (brooke and michelle were going along to see them off at the airport, then they'd return to st. eliz with steve). i spent several minutes mailing post cards for melissa and carmen before heading out of town on my 4.5 hour drive back to kingston.
for the most part it was ho hum normal. and very boring to be in the car by myself. no a/c, so rolling down the highway with the windows all the way down, watching the blue sky and the green grass and actually obeying the speed limits for the most part. more and more parts of the north coast highway are opening up (i don't think it's highway2000, but they're widening the old main road into the equivalent of an american "super two-lane". very nice. especially when sections of it are still the old narrow twisty potholed road so you have ample opportunity to compare just how much better the future is. "good ol' days" my foot). they still route you through rio bueno, but instead of a 12-15 minute slog behind a row of dump trucks i made it through in three minutes flat. that right there made my day.
my good day was somewhat wounded by me missing the turn-off in st ann's bay again. it's not that much longer to go through ocho rios, but third time's the charm and i'm definitely not going to miss it the next time. until you've tried to find your way anywhere in jamaica don't look at me cross-eyed, you didn't actually think there'd be road signs pointing the ways at the intersection of two primary roads did you? (okay normally they do, but this one has some construction issues).
then it rained while crossing mt. rosser. poured. i'd already driven through three or four showers on the north coast, this involved a rush to roll up the windows. but mt rosser was another story. after a while the windshield started fogging up, but the defroster didn't work so i rubbed it down with a shirt that i grabbed out of my bag. turned out to be the shirt i'd worn to the beach on saturday, so now i had a light film of sunscreen on the inside of my windshield. that smeared nicely and then refused to come off. meanwhile, i've neglected to mention that the windshield wipers on the nissan i was driving were worthless. something to do with the various rubber pieces trailing along behind the main body of the wiper. don't tell anybody, but i think there was a small amount of dry rot involved [3].
so after a somewhat slower drive than usual between moneague and ewarton, i sailed into the clear of the ewarton valley. i'd already planned ahead to try something different than the usual route through bogwalk gorge and past spanish town, so i turned east from bog walk along the rio pedro for a very scenic drive into the backside of mannings hill. i'd highly recommend it. drop by and i could probably even take you myself.
the day finished off with a rather good looking sunset. so ends july.
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