A myriad of little details on our life in Jamaica

We have now officially moved into our new abode. It is a two bedroom concrete bunker that has a small kitchen and a dining/living room arrangement. It has ‘nuff nuff’ space for the two of us to conduct our life here in Jamaica. We moved in Saturday after spending an additional two days in Kingston holed up at the Mayfair Hotel to wait out the then tropical storm Gustav. When we arrived, we did have electricity but now after 6 days, have no water yet. We get dribbles now and again but in the main we are sponge bathing and buying drinking water – expensive when you can find it. Then you have to lug it back. Even under these conditions, it is still better than many of our cohorts elsewhere on the island who are essentially stranded as the road to their section of the island has been occluded by landslides, or worse has become a landslide as the road slid off into the valley below. Karen has done a spectacular job in dressing up our humble abode using the most basic of materials. Amazing what can be done with old bed sheets, construction paper and a few sentimental items brought from our home in NH.

Money now will be the ongoing issue for us for the next two years. While we do have funds of our own to draw upon, it wasn’t part of the deal to use our money to be able to stay in the Peace Corps. We are approaching retirement and using those funds would be a bad decision. Consider this, we are now existing, the two of us, on the equivalent of $1,000 USD TOTAL per month. This includes our rent, our food, our transportation and anything we chose to buy or do. The only thing not included in this amount is our medical care which is free to us. And lest you think that the prices are cheaper here, they are not. Gas is ~$5 USD/gallon. Milk is $3 USD / gallon. Groceries for the week for us will be approximately $150 USD…and that does not include routine stuff not labeled as groceries such as cell phone minutes, beer, wine, advil, Kleenex, paper, etc. We did install cable and will install internet in our home and pay for it out of our own funds just to preserve our own sanity and stay connected to home and America. Transport is fairly cheap here if you use the public transport system or the ‘route taxis’ that are virtually everywhere. A ride all the way into Kingston is about 80 cents US. You must have patience though as there is no published bus route and no way to tell when the next one is due to arrive. To be in hurry in Jamaica is to be constantly frustrated. It is good to be ‘launched’ however. We can now judge what it will be like in reality and not under the artificial constraints imposed by the Peace Corps.

Going forward, the major determinant of us staying will be whether or not we are being effectively utilized. Both of my projects are moving albeit with a pace that equates to crawling backward up Mount Washington during an ice storm in rubber galoshes. I have started the process of letting my agencies know that the clock is ticking and that the two years will go quickly. One of the projects, training safety inspectors in preparation for the passage of their new law, is hopefully going to get approval soon. This is an enormous project requiring preparation and coordination of at least 4 different agencies that have a stake in the outcome. The term ‘soon come – no worries’ means anything from a week to a year and there is really no way to know which when it is said. Hence the ‘type A’ gets expressed by following up in 5 days and again 2 days after that and ongoing to keep it on the radar.

More hurricanes appear to be on the way and we are filling up buckets just to be more prepared than we were the last time due to our move in the middle of the infrastructure shutdown. We have kerosene lanterns that I need to get filled for the inevitable power outage that accompanies nearly any little blip in the weather here. It does make me laugh when I see the US news and the ‘angst’ expressed [which 3 months ago applied to me as well] when the power is out for more than an hour or so. Now we are happy when we have electricity and water at all at the end of a standard sort of thunderstorm.

All for now dear readers and friends. We hope all is well with you and yours. Thanks for reading our posts and many thanks to those who send letters.
Love, Matt