ESC (December 5-9)

No, no, not ESCAPE, but Early Service Conference.  If there are 2 things that PC loves it’s acronyms and paperwork!  Good golly, do I get enough paperwork, ha.  It’s all good.  In any case, there are three conferences that staff holds with the volunteers: ESC, MSC (Mid-Service Conference), and COS (Close of Service).  We officially made it to our first conference, yay!!!  This Conference is split: the first half of the week is set up as a PDM (Project Development Management) – I think that’s what it stands for – and the second half the week is ESC.

PDM is with a Counterpart or Supervisor from our communities.  It is a workshop designed to help us get a project or idea started for our communities.  It was really helpful.  We got lots of helpful tips on project planning that I intend of using for my upcoming project(s).  Backing up a little bit.  I ended up bringing Miss Fern, a counterpart of mine , since Tamor (supervisor) couldn’t make it due to school duties.  Miss Fern and I left at 7am from Queensbury (after a hopeful 6:30am proposed time of leave, but in true Miss Fern fashion, she was late) to try and make it to Ocho Rios (where the conference was being held) by 10am.  NOT gonna happen.  Then workshop started at 10, we didn’t reach til noon.  Why, you ask?  Well, 1. we left late B. we stopped and ate breakfast for an hour 3. we got super lost and D. we took the long way.  Geographics.  Ochie is straight north east of Queensbury, and since there is no direct routes in JA, we have to drive half way around the country to get there.  You can either drive west and ride the cost line the entire way, OR you can drive east kind of bypassing Spanish Town, then go north to Ochie – the longer way.  Just crazy.   She thought she new where she was driving, but she didn’t.  There was a road that was blocked off, so we ended up driving 20mins out of the way, then 20mins to get back to the road we needed to be on in order to get to where we needed.  Well, we finally made it, just in time for lunch.  We missed all the introductions and such, which I guess isn’t too bad, but still.

Miss Fern is probably somewhere in her mid 60′s, so she’s got some age, but acts as if she’s in her 40′s, kind of like denial of how old she is, I think.  In any case, she’s pretty well-known across the entire island for many different reasons, she also travels a lot (States, Canada, England, and such).  She won some like national community assistant award, I think, I dunno.  But yeah, she’s the person whose house I ate at for Thanksgiving.  Nice lady, but at the same time, she kind of disappointed me during the conference.  I’m not sure if she was bored, or what, but she fell asleep during most the workshops and didn’t really give me any brainstorm ideas.  Whatever, I did just fine alone.  Blegh.  So yeah, they all left Wednesday after lunch, leaving ESC to being Wednesday evening.  The beginning was just a lash out of how we were doing since swear-in, and everyone seems to be doing just fine, even the people who had to leave their sites/houses cuz of different situations.

The big deal with ESC was the presentation of our CASI.  Gah!!!  I e-mailed mine in the Thursday before the conference, but still had to come up with a way to present it.  It was nice to see what everyone has been doing, so we can take ideas away from each other.  I ended up doing a nice little presentation that I organized the night before in the hotel room after watching Glee.  I basically made an outline of what I was going to talk about on flip-chart paper.  Worked out just peachy fine.  I learned some stuff about my community during the presentation (due to questions asked), so that was cool, too.  For instance, the youth in my community are not very creative, and my PM (Theresa, Program Manager) asked if we had cable.  Most people don’t have cable or internet for that matter.  Think about it, most creativity comes from what we see in everyday life.  If they don’t get out of the community much, don’t have cable, or internet to look pon, then their creativity levels are most likely going to be pretty low.  So I am going to try and change that, and help install some  creativity in the youth!

TRAVEL HOME FROM OCHIE (this is far more interesting than the other stuff I just wrote about, I swear, it’s worth reading)

Getting back from ESC.  I had to take public transportation this time, since Miss Fern left Wednesday.  I decided to ride back with Cait since she lives in Barbary Hall (like 20mins west of me).   Started off just perfect.  As we walked out of the hotel, there was this taxi sitting there waiting on nothing.  So we decided to check and see if this wasn’t too good to be true, and he wasn’t.  Woo! First taxi grabbed super easy.  That had to be flag #1 that this was going to be the worst.trip.ever.

We make it to the bus park, lost in direction of where to find the bus to Montego Bay, so we ask and get pointed in directions, never sure if we were being showed the direction or the actual bus.  So we walked, and in a couple mins we finally found the bus and hopped on in.  It was about half-way filled up, so not much longer to wait, or so we thought.  Yeah, country buses.  They take FOREVER.  We sat there for about an hour before we left. Ugh… So annoying and hot.  Venders never get tired of beggin, “Phone cyard! Peanuts! Bag Juice!  Pretty Lady, yuh waan banana chips?”  Ugh.. Noo!!! I didn’t want any 10mins ago, and I STILL don’t want any!   Bus takes off, finally.  We’re all pilled in packed like…pickles….You know, no possible room for one more dill, the door is shut and held together by the person pressed against it.

Get to Mo-Bay, and to our surprise (due to the emptiness of the bus) we leave almost instantly!  Well, then we take a 10min gas stop.  I hate that taxi drivers and buses, don’t get gas on their own time.  Nope.  They wait til they have passengers that are trying to get somewhere.  That was just the beginning.  Next stop, Sav.  But not before we get stopped for 10mins so the cops can write our bus driver (and every other bus on the road for that matter) a ticket for have too many passengers.  Really?  That’s like a commonality and part of the Jamaican culture…to be packed in a vehicle like turkey stuffing.  Whatever, it’s election time, so the cops are trying to get more money, or so that’s what everyone was saying.  Not much further after the ticket did we get stuck in some MAD traffic!  This was equivalent to going home Chicago traffic on 94.  Awful.  Finally, we get to Sav.  Get on a bus that goes to Mandeville, but makes drops in Black River (where Tamor was going to meet us to give us a drive home).  Yeah, that bus didn’t leave for a bit.  Now it’s getting dark, Cait n I are in the back corner of the bus.  We’re trying to pay attention to where we are at so we can remind the driver to drop us in Black River (note to self don’t sit in the back of the country bus after dark, the bus driver will forget about you).  Yup, soon we saw the 3mile long bamboo path, at that point Cait, louder than she probs thought, says, “Oh Shoot! We’re going to Santa Cruz.”  Dang.. this is out of the way for us by a good 30mins.  To that I shout, “Yo, Driva!!! Yuh figet bout Black Riva?!”  He acts dumb as if he never knew to drop anyone off there, maybe it was the distraction of all his person 1,000 stops he had to make on this route.  ”Driva, yuh got two passengers back here that were supposed to be dropped a Black Riva,” shouts the unusual, but entertaining fella next to me.  Still nothing.  So we go to Santa at about 8:45pm.  Not somewhere you wanna be at dark.

Get in a taxi, and head 30mins back south to Watch Well where Tamor was now going to meet us.  Smooth from here?  No sah!  Some chick had to stop and try and fit a friggin cooler in the already packed trunk.  Luckily it didn’t fit anywhere cuz it REAKED!!! I’m talkin rotten eggs, reaked! ugh… So yeah, she gets back in the car, we drop of people, and finally get to Watch Well where Tamor was [thankfully] waiting for us.  9:30pm is the time.  We were on the first bus at 1:30pm.  This should be no longer than a 5hr drive, and it took an unnecessary 8hrs.  I don’t even get home til 10pm!  My bladder, yeah, I peed a friggin marathon when we reached Cait’s yaard.  Hot dang!

Needless to say, I will not be travelling to Ochie for a while.

The best part of ESC - Seeing my PC Grandparents! John is the oldest PCV in JA at 77 and I the youngest at 23. Wanda is his wife of like 50-some odd years.