Alva, Jamaica
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Month 3 in jamaica. Last weekend we had "quarterlies". 4 times a year there is a meeting for volunteers in the peace corps office. This meeting included voting for the new VAC (volunteer advisory council) which is kinda alot like student government i guess. Other than VAC there are meetings in project groups that work on larger projects together. I can't remember all the groups but there is a literacy group, health across sector lines, information technology, and an engineering group. Normally to get peace corps to reimburse you for quarterlies you have to be a warden, or on the VAC, or a officer for one of the project groups so it was a race for everyone to get one of those. I got on the engineering group so i now get a free trip and night in kingston 4 times a year. While we were there we got to stay at powell plaza with one of the embassy staff. Me, Gaven, and Jerry stayed with a marine named josh. It was pretty awesome he got us stuffed crust pizza! also he had guitar hero and hot water. That night we went to a club named quad, and got in free b/c a volunteer who lives near kingston pulled some strings. It normally is $1000 cover. Its called quad b/c it has 4 floors, one floor is a lounge with a bunch of chairs and booths, the next everything was painted white (white floor, walls, bar) and had silver redbull tables, the next floor had dark wood floor and walls and a wall coverd in different shaped mirrors in gold frames. I never made it to the last floor. It was interesting a giant group of white people probobly isnt something they see everyday. The next day i spent returning from kingston. I left around 10 in the morning and didnt get back to my site untill like 6. Spent all of sunday sleeping and woke up monday to find someone had cleared all the brush around the water catchment and had white washed the whole thing.
Over the past week i have been working on a bunch of projects the engineer in st. ann left behind b/c they went home. One of them was in this rainforest near ochi they are trying to build some tourust shops back there and want to get water from an old resevior like a mile into the jungle. We got to hike up to the old pump house and take pictures and get eatin alive by a cloud of mosquitos. I had a mosquito bite on my lip which felt weird.
I also went to a community called beacher town where they had piped water about 10 years ago untill the boxite company sold the water supply to the national water commision the water commision let the pump burn out, and they continue to this day to send the residents bills. Since then all the pipes have disappeared and no one is sure who exactly owns what.
Other than work there is a jazz festival in ochi this weekend. I watched a video cameraed copy of "up" i downloaded and it was pretty good. Also I am in a hard rock and just watched someone empty a salt shaker into a can of coors light...my reaction was "oh shit, they have coors light!"
