Hello! Good night!

So we have just begun learning the native language, Patois, but already some differences in the way they speak cannot be ignored.  “Hello, good night!” Was how my host father first greeted me.  For some reason they take our usual, “Good morning, afternoon, evening” to a new level… and I like it.  And when they’re actually going to bed they say, “Night night”. 

That is them speaking formal English.  Patois is what they describe as pigeon or broken English.  I played dominoes (the Jamaican pastime) for the first time last Saturday with my host mom, Nikki, and a couple of the neighbor guys.  This turned out to be a fabulous observing (and kind of learning) experience for Patois.  They went easy on me and my host mom (who had never really played before), and I was blessed with beginners luck.  The game is surprisingly like poker.  So after a while of enduring our naivety, the guys wanted to play a real game with the “professionals”.  This is when English went out the window.   I understood less than half of what they said, and thought they were going to get in a fist fight more than once based on the body language being thrown around (and I do mean thrown), but no.  It was all in good fun.

If you aren’t at all familiar with the Jamaican way of life, they are candid to say the least!  At first I was really put off by this, but I now understand that they really aren’t trying to be cruel, but rather honest.  They tell it like it is and don’t really expect a response or explanation.  The examples our trainers gave is that if someone has one eye you call him “one-y”, or if he is missing a foot he’s “stumpy” or “tumpy” in Patois.  They take no offense to this, so when I was called “fluffy and nice” and the “Jamaican whitey” I followed suit by replying with a wave or a thanks.  I’m hoping (in vain) that this is as explicit the blunt Jamaican names get for me.   The good news is that for every time I’m called fat I’m called beautiful about 15 times.  The two seem synonymous here, and I got my first marriage proposal at the market on Saturday to prove it.

The cultural differences are too many to list here, but suffice it to say I’m adjusting.  A lot about it is the same, thankfully.  I haven’t had to take too many bucket baths and the cold showers are generally welcomed due to the heat.  The food is great, and I’m infinitely thankful for my former Jamaican housemate from New York for bridging that gap a bit. I even tried turkey neck, which was surprisingly like beef.  They do eat all meats with the bones in, ALWAYS.  And everything is doused with a hefty serving of sugar, being that it is one of the major crops grown here.  I haven’t been eating many fruits and vegetables, despite the amount of the stuff they grow here, because most Jamaicans eat 4 food groups with each meal: starch, starch, meat, and sugar. 

A handful of the volunteers at the beach

Speaking of crops grown here, I saw my first Rasta man carrying basically an entire pot plant for sale on the beach last weekend.  He was none too happy when all the whiteys shooed him away without as much as a second thought.  It is actually illegal in Jamaica, contrary to popular belief, and of course just being illegal stateside is enough for Peace Corps to ban it from our latitude for the next two plus years.

I should say a word about safety.  The bad news is that Jamaica is rated, I think, third in the world for murder.  The policeman who came to talk to our group had this theory that if Jamaica’s population wasn’t so small they would rate much lower on this scale.  I think he was basing it on the fact that 80% of the murders are gang related and if there were more non-gang Jamaicans, by his thinking, then the number of murders per year would be the same and the per capita % would go down.  I could argue that there would just be more gangsters, but I decided to let this one go and not get involved in gang activity. For those of you concerned with my safety after that rant, don’t worry.  We’re in good hands.  Ann, our Safety and Security Coordinator, was voted the best in the world and our safety is paramount for Peace Corps.  We’ve been getting tons of advice and learning tricks to blend in and not get ripped off, not to mention we are basically treated like children having to check in with several people if we go anywhere other than our homes and to class.  We are still in the first leg of our training journey and are admittedly residing in a small safe town, but it is a great place to get used to the kind of things to come with a little bit of a stupid American buffer to help with the learning curve.

On that note, I’ll leave you until next time.  Inna di lates!

~B