rachelanna.com

For a long time now I have wanted to ride a bicycle, even if just for fun. Every day I see men using bicycles to transport themselves and some large load–either a couple of long 2 x 4 boards, a propane gas tank, a bag of charcoal, or a bundle of grasses upon their head. I always look out for women riding on a bicycle, and I have seen young girls riding, but it is only once in a blue moon that I have ever seen a grown woman on a bicycle. For a while I wondered if there were any cultural inhibitions keeping women off of these two-wheeled transportation systems, and I still can’t figure it out. I asked men and women Jamaicans if they had ever noticed this phenomenon, and one said that women do ride bicycles here, while the other said that they hadn’t noticed.

Anyway, next door, a second floor is being built on top of the first, and there is a man that comes to work on the house that has an old-time bicycle, the kind that I really love with the handle bars shaped like a “C” and the wide flat seat. Well, when I came home from work this afternoon, I saw that bike and said to myself, “I wonder if the owner wouldn’t mind if I borrowed his bicycle for a bit.” I dismissed the thought, but it came back so I thought that I would ask and see what happened.

As it turned out, he said yes, so I quickly went inside the house and changed my clothes, came back outside, and away I went. True, with the road conditions as they are, with potholes and all, the boys on the basketball court had reason to say “Take time Rachel!”, but I think that the community was so surprised to see a girl on a bicycle, charging forward, that it took them aback. For others, seeing “the white girl” zoom past lifted them out of themselves, even if for a few seconds. I don’t mean this to be presumtious in any way, but as far as I can tell, only a certain class rides on bicycles, and in their minds, a white person didn’t fit into that group.

Also, as mentioned before, bikes are usually used to get from point A to point B, and not for recreational purposes (excluding children), so again, this ride didn’t fit into their expectations. I got a lot of smiles and surprised looks, but I think it could be a good thing for the community to see that bicycles are not just for men and not just for work, but can also be fun.

I rode for the pure joy and fun of it, and it was great. I did a figure 8 through the whole community, and surprised myself how fast I could encircle the town. I passed all sorts of pedestrians and other bicycle riders, but none had a destination as I had mine, or so it seemed, because I passed everyone on the street. I guess people even amble along, even on a bicycle. They all asked me, “Why you ride so fast?” and “I didn’t know you were such a bicycle rider”, and I responded “Because I love to go fast!”, and “Yes, I have always had a bicycle, and I love to ride.” The next thing: Call Peace Corps office tomarrow and ask if there are any bicycles left which I could use.

With Regard to Schools and Students

Talk with students on certain topics relating to the environment, community, health, proper disposal of trash, volunteerism, composting, recycling, life skills, and technology
Needed
Crayons (150 boxes)
Healthy Living Coloring Book (Part of this proposal)
Any teaching aides, brochures, pamphlets, or literature that your organization would have which speak to the areas noted above–or on subjects that you think I should add to the list.
Also, if you have any teaching guides or information about your organization (in print or digital), all would be helpful.

Organize with selected schools, students, and communities, a series of clean-up days for chosen areas around each school and surrounding neighborhoods.
Needed
Funds for food and drinks (in cash or in kind)
Trash bags
Pick up of trash collected

Reproduction of the Healthy Living Coloring Book–for distribution to all schools in the area from Old Harbour Bay to Ginger Ridge, the parish of St. Catherine, or possibly Island-wide) Will work with the Construction Resource and Development Center (CRDC) who produced the first set.
Needed
Sponsorship

With Regard to Community Involvement

Activate community involvement and work on specific projects. For example, to clean, clear, dredge, and eventually cement the drains on Main Street, and Bay Bottom, Old Harbour Bay
(Will apply separately for funding of projects themselves)
Needed
Funds for food and drinks (in cash or in kind)
Trash bags
Pick up of trash collected

Increase regularity and reliability of trash pick-up (Old Harbour Bay)
Needed
Cooperation from applicable agencies

Put up signs or posters along gullies and drains that educate and sensitize community members on the dangers and or consequences of throwing trash in the gullies or drains.
Needed
Several of the “It Nuh Legal!” posters from NEPA, or “No Dumping” signs

Wash drums of their poisonous chemicals before dispersing them throughout the community as rubbish/trash recepticles. Unity Youth Club and Blackwood Gardens Citizens Association are both in posssion of drums ready or nearly ready to be dispersed All of these drums have varying quantities of the dangerous chemical left. According to the BASF website, you can “clean” up the chemical with water, ammonia, and detergent. I propose that for the next time that the Unity Youth club works on the drums that each be cleaned before heading to its new home in Old Harbour Bay, so close to the ocean and water table.
Needed
A gallon (?) of Ammonia, a large package of detergent, and cooperation!

Long Term Goals/Hopes for Communities and Schools

To form a sustainable and active recycling programme
Green Spaces/Beautification Programme

Old Harbour Schools

Heart Trust Center
Old Harbour Preparatory School
Old Harbour Primary School

Old Harbour Bay Schools

Baptist Bay Basic School
Blackwood Gardens Basic School
Children First
Old Harbour Bay Primary School
Prophecy Basic School
St. Wade’s Basic School

Available Voluntary Services

Cave Progressive Youth Club
Unity Youth Club
Terminal Progressive Youth Club
Portmore Community College Volunteers / Students

Agencies to work with

Construction Resource and Development Center (CRDC)
Create an Environment for Clean Living
Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ)
Food for the Poor
Grace Kennedy & Co. Ltd.
Jamaica Environmental Trust (JET)
Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF)
Metropolitan Parks and Management (MPM)
Ministry of Education (MOE)
Ministry of Health (MOH)
National Environmental and Planning Agency (NEPA)
National Environmental Societies Trust (NEST)
National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA)
National Works Agency (NWA)
National Water Commission (NWC)
Old Harbour Development Area Committee (OHDAC)
Recycle For Life
Ridge to Reef Watershed (R2RW) Project
South Coast Development and Portland Bight
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
United States Peace Corps
Water Resources Authority (WRA)

If this proposal goes through, everything will change very fast!!
Since work has picked up again, I am not sure anymore what I should be/need to be/want to be doing with my work time. Another opportunity for listening from the divine Mind and Heavenly Father

Until next time, take care and have a blessed day!

Today, Tuesday, January 13, 2004, was a good day. I DID get to study this morning. Both some of the lesson and some from my World Scriptures Anthology. I woke at 6:30 from the alarm and got up at ten to seven - hopefully I can do even better tomarrow.

At work, the day was quite productive - when I arrived, Mr. Titus was addressing letters. He and I continued to address them until we were ready to leave and go deliver them through out the town - in his car. It was wonderful to have someone to help me do this, as for the magazine and Community Expo, I had to walk all over town by myself and it took forever. We were able to cover a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. In addition, we got into a discussion about CS, and he was very interested, asking many questions.

We worked together straight up until just after five, when he had to leave and go pick up his daughter. I continued to deliver a few letters and talk to some community members.

Since everyone always asks, so what do you actually do? I am going to attempt to answer that question. I work for a committee called the Old Harbour Development Area Committee, and I am supposedly representing Ministry of Health in that committee. (Supposedly because I don’t actually visit - or rather, I haven’t had very much interaction with - the Ministry of Health.) Anyway, on paper, I represent Ministry of Health in the Committee. I am the only Peace Corps Volunteer on the committee, and the only person on the committee that doesn’t have another full-time job. The other members that make up the committee are leading members of the community.

OHDAC was started around two years ago by the Social Development Commission (SDC). I work in the SDC office in Old Harbour, and I am the only official representitive from OHDAC. Even though SDC is the parent organization, for some reason, there is a line drawn between SDC and OHDAC, especially when it comes to budgetary matters. This presents an interesting situation because OHDAC has no budget and is parasitically feeding off of the SDC budget!

Anyway? in the fall, OHDAC worked very hard to stage a Community Expo and publish a magazine. At the Expo, we had about 30/35 booths. Our venue was Ascot Hall, the nicest hall in town for plays, dinners, dances, and other community events. We were actually planning to have it outside, but a few days of rain before the event pushed us to look for a place inside. The Expo was successful except for the fact that we advertised it as being from 10-6, and the exhibitors started packing up from after three pm!!

The other downer on the Expo was that we were trying for the magazine to be ready for sale AT the event, but we had only seriously decided to publish a magazine a few short weeks (maybe 2 or 2 1/2) before the day. The Expo was to be on Wednesday November 5, and I personally handed the graphic designer/printry all of what I had for ads and articles on Thursday night, less than a week before the Expo. I then spent all day Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with the graphic designer to do what I could to help her get the work done. Also, everything was stalled when the committee was slow with the command to go ahead and print the magazine. Monday night, I had come back to the office with a dummy, and all the committee had was criticism, but they hadn’t been working on it to improve it, and they had no interest to do so!

Anyway, the day of the Expo came, and a small number of magazines got printed, and a co-worker and I drove into Kingston, in the middle of the Expo to help finish up the printing stages and hopefully bring back the magazine to the Expo to sell. You can figure out what happened next - we got back at 4:30, expecting the Expo to continue as advertised until 6:00 pm, but the place was absolutely empty, not a vender or booth, nor a customer or community member in sight! I was very disappointed and disheartened.

I spent the rest of November trying to distribute the magazine and collect ad money and other small projects at the office. December was very, very slow. Last week in the office, I sorted out two files that needed organizing. For some days in December, the most useful things I did on a work day were the personal errands that got done before, during, or after work. On those days, you might’ve found me playing solitare on the computer. Hopefully, since the holidays are gone and the feeling is waning, these dulldrum days will also go too!

Because Jamaica operates on a slower pace, I also have slowed down. I am learning to not rush anything, because if an activity requires rushing, then it simply won?t happen, or it will be late.[fullstop].

So, what am I hoping and planning next? I will be submitting a proposal to OHDAC that I might spend most of my time with and in schools.

My office spends an immense amount of time discerning, diagnosing, and discussing what the problems are, and then lets community members spend another heap of time talking about how bad it is and how it hasn’t changed and might not ever change. Obviously, that is where the Christ Spirit is needed to help guide the office into inspired activity and productivity, and that includes me!

Today, Monday, January 12, 2004, I learned again how much not fun it is to come to work at the late hour of 10:00 am. Went to a meeting at the Heart/Trust Centre, and there is a small possibility that I might teach classes there. I say small because my supposed schedule is filling up. Supposed because it is still only in my head. I shared it with Monica, but she didn’t say anything.

Today was one of those days that was frustrating and I really could’ve used a lot more “quiet space” of being at peace. I think that that peace leaves me when I feel guilt for having coming in late, and the tension of not knowing what to do, or wanting to do certain work but not having the technology, or access to the technology that I need. That is very frustrating!!

Digital woes: I have so many places for contact information whether it is Microsoft Entourage (the address book system on my computer), my hotmail account, my anbell account, and my cell phone. I would really love to have everything syncronized and at the same time, in one place. However, every time that I wish I could mesh it all together, I ask myself, okay, so what would you do with all those contacts in your phone for example, and the answer keeps me from buying a PDA. Besides, who needs another digital device?? I SHOULD already have enough digital toys, being as I am supposed to be living a modest Jamaican lifestyle!

Digital woe # 2 is that I have a wonderful camera, but the three photo programs I have on my computer are all very miserable and difficult to work with! Monica has Windows XP (which is wonderfully easy for photos), but that is her computer and she is reluctant to share it.

Gratitude for the day: I am VERY grateful that the internet finally works, and works well most of the time. I am grateful that I know that God is Mind, that I reflect this Mind, and that all wisdom comes from Him, and this Mind is an infinite source.

I am grateful for the recent inspiration, an epiphany really, that my body is a temple, with which I [can/must] glorify God. This means that I can only see good, be good, etc. If I am fully glorifying Him/Her, sickness, sin, disease, and death have NO place. One key to this idea is that when evil presents itself to let it go, to simply let it pass. To deny it takes time and thought energy. At first, I resisted the thought of not denying it, but from experience I can tell you that when you are concious of honoring God, nothing is going to take you off base from that. It is kind of hard to explain, but it was a nice feeling - this epiphany experience from Sunday.

I am grateful that I have the strength to go to sleep now, and get up at an hour so that I can be at work at 9:00 am. That means that I need to leave at 8:30 and be up by 6:30!! God give me strength!!!!! Please!! Back home (in California and St. Louis), somehow I was able to sustain getting up and being at work before 7. I need to demonstrate the same commitment, now, here in Jamaica!!!

Inspirational thought: In the Buddhist version of the Prodical Son story, the son returns to the father and immediately turns away in fear. The father sees this and works to come to the son’s level.

God knows where we are and sees our need (of growth, need for support, for consolation) before we even know, and has the answer waiting for us before we even ask.

* DAILY spiritual study and prayer time
* DAILY journaling
* Read more Sentinels and Journals
* Daily recording of lessons learned and or of gratitude for the day
* Blog on a regular basis!!

I could put to cook more or clean more often, or to read books, or this or that, but right now, I need to master these very simple goals. They seem to be eternal goals that never get quite fulfilled. And the idea is that if I am able to accomplish the goals stated above, then everything else in my life will straighten out—like the stress from work and getting used to a new (and very bureaucratic) culture/country.