Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Random Stuff

I'm back in Askenish. It's so nice to be back in the hills where it's nice and cool. After training all last week I was looking forward to living in my little community and figuring out what I'm going to do here for the next two years. I'll be busy this week with some meetings and on Thurday we'll be having a health fair at the Health Dept. I'm also going to be going out and doing some water sampling. The most exciting thing that's happened this week is that I met with the Social Development Commision. They are an organization that works with communities to help them meet their needs. (confusing) Basically they help communities form community groups to organize and get the things they need. I'll hopefully be working with them in Askenish.
Sorry for the rambling short post but my time on the internet is about up.
Take care and call me sometime.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

My Job (Dedicated to Gavin and His Mom)

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing for my job here. Thats a good thing though. It just means I'll have opportunities to do lots of different things. My main project will be working to improve rural water supplies in my Parish. The Parish of Hanover is in the very northwest corner of Jamaica. It is considerered remote because it takes about 5-6 hours to get to Kingston. Most people have either jobs in farming, service, or tourism. The city of Lucea is the capital and the tourist city of Negril is also in the parish. The coast is beautiful and the intreior mountains are even more beautiful. The mountains are filled with a lot of small rural communities that don't have access to piped water. They get their water from springs or rainwater. My job will be to improve these water supplies and make them safe to drink. Right now a lot of people still carry their water from springs and rivers. I actually don't always have water available so it makes bathing and going to the bathroom interesting.

Hope that gives you a little bit of insight into what I'm doing here.
Later

PS Check out Gavin Finnegan's blog. He's one of my friends and it's pretty interesting

Monday, April 20, 2009

I'm Alive

Sorry I haven't been updating. I don't have internet readily available. These past couple weeks I've moved out to my site. It's a town called Askenish in the Parish of Hanover. I live on the side of a mountain in a very rural community. It's so pretty and I love hanging out there. I will be working throughout the Parish to solve some of the water problems they have. We can talk about that more later, but for now I'm just hanging out and getting to know the people in my community. I've also been traveling around a bit to see the country. Traveling is an adventure in itself. To get into town I have to ride about 10 miles down the hill in a "taxi". The term taxi is used loosely and usually there is no taxi and I end up riding in the back of a truck with some goats. It's awesome.
I love living in the bush and I'll post some pictures soon. "Soon Come" is the Jamaican saying for that.