Sports Day

One of the tasks I was set when I arrived at CCCD was to try to organise some kind of Sports Day-type event before the kids broke up for the summer. It was acknowledged that there might be a few hurdles I'd have to get over in making this happen, one being that finding time to squeeze it in wouldn't be easy what with exams, preparations for graduation, school trips and various other things in the genral wind down to school closing, the other being that the teachers probably wouldn't be able to lend much of a hand as their priorities were getting all the end-of-year reports and marking finished in time.



Paris shows off her artistic side

 Nonetheless, Miss Cilda was keen that something should happen, and after advising me that my original plan for a full day split into younger kids in the morning and older students in the afternoon was probably a bit ambitious, we decided I should focus on an afternoon during the final week of term, settling in the end on the Tuesday. The other challenge I was set was to try and think of activities that would be a bit different, particulalry for the younger ones, as they had already had a traditional sports day earlier in the year with egg-and-spoon races, three-legged sprints etc. As all the students were split into three houses, red, orange and purple, I decided some kind of team competition along these lines would work best, and not knowing how much help I might get, I only wanted to run one event at a time. So the final plan was to have a team 'soft-putt' (shot-putt with large softballs), skittles (ten-pin bowling with half-filled pop bottles and soft balls) and rounders competition for the younger kids, followed by five-a-side football for the older boys and then volleyball for the girls. Sorted.

As it turned out, a great big group of 20-odd volunteers turned up from Florida at the weekend, many of them keen to get involved in sporting activities with the kids, so I would have all the help I would need. Knowing I had enough help at hand, I started to wonder if it might have worked best to run different activities at the same seeing as we only had three hours to play with. But at two days notice, I didn't really fancy re-working what was a pretty straightforward plan (not to mention re-doing the posters) into something much more prone to go disasterously wrong, especially as I didn't really have much of an idea how to organise an effective sports day and was pretty much going on guesswork.



Playing field pre-strim

 So Tuesday came around and I was feeling pretty nervous - I really wanted things to run smoothly and give the kids an afternoon they'd really remember. The first job, however, was finishing mowing the playing field, which had been four-fifths done by some of the boys over the previous ten days using a hand mower and strimmer (the field is the about one-and-a-half times bigger than a typical football pitch and the grass had been allowed to grow seriously long). As usual, this was a job I probably should have done earlier, i.e. at the weekend when I had plenty of time. The other thing I didn't realise was that the mower had broken, which was why the boys had started the laborious job of strimming the half of the field that hadn't been mown yet. I was in for a busy morning.

Things didn't start too well when the strimmer kept cutting out as soon as I got it started. After 15 minutes of fruitlessly begging the stupid thing to work, I finally trudged back up the hill with my tail between my legs to seek advice (me and machines are rarely a good mix). Monty, one of the visitors from Florida who'd been at the school before and had used said strimmer successfully, gave me another demonstration and it turned out I had been flooding the engine by being too heavy on the throttle (not much change there, then). Armed with this new piece of insight, I returned to the field and, lo and behold, I got it working. It wasn't actually too bad going, if tediously slow because of the grass, and in a coupld of hours I got about half of what needed cutting done, enough for a largish five-a-side football pitch and plenty of room for the other games as well. The hardest part was the fact that the constant vibrations made my hands sieze up into aching claws that took a good couple of minutes of flexing to return to normal once I'd finished, and still tingled for a fair while after that. I have a new-found empathy for anyone suffering from VWF.



Kasa in action

 A couple of hours labouring in the sun was enough to leave me flagging, but I didn't have time to feel tired - by the time I collected all the gear I needed together, drew up score cards and ate lunch, it was 2pm and time to get started. The lower school quickly gathered on the playground with Miss Crane accompaying, and as Miss Crane is also deaf I had reason straight away to be thankful for the American group being here, especially Tia and Sam who can sign and were therefore responsible for passing on instructions. The first task was to organise the group into their house colours, which took a good ten minutes - Britney, for example, didn't want to go in the purple line and wanted to be red for the day, while other kids seemed to see the process of lining up as an excuse to have a good argument about who stood in front of who etc.
After finally getting it all sorted between about six of us, it was time to head down onto the field for the first event, Soft Putt. Having now worked out that they were playing in their house teams, the kids actually lined up again pretty well while the rules were explained to them - one player from each team would step up at a time to compete in three's, having two attempts to chuck the softball as far as they can, the furthest winning three points for their team, second two points, and third one point. For the second time I had reason to be grateful for the help of the American group - it took one person per team to stop all chaos breaking lose in terms of kids pushing in front of eachother and throwing balls at random instead of waiting for their turn, and three to mark out the distance of throws, while I tried to keep score and order by indicating when throws were to be taken. Having just one event at a time started to look like a good idea after all.



Moesha launches one



I had already anticipated a potential issue with this game - with a group of kids ranging in age from 4 to 11, matching like-with-like ability was not going to be easy, with, for example, one team (purple) having the majority of the younger girls while orange seemed to have more than their fair share of bigger, stronger boys. As it turned out, the competition ended up being pretty even and went down to the wire. At first, my fears for the purple team seemed to be realised as their younger girls lost several of the early rounds while boys on the red and orange team slugged it out for the big points, oranges coming out on top as expected. But things began to turn about half way through - purples, perhaps through a stroke of tactical genius, had left their-biggest hitters to last, while reds and oranges began to ran out of steam.



The turning point came three rounds from the end when reds and oranges both had players disqualified and awarded nil points for abandoning the game before they had taken their second throws to go running across the field to look for a type of beetle they are all obsessed with which, when captured, makes a rattling noise when you rub its belly. Both teams had possibly already lost focus on the competition a couple of rounds earlier when a scuffle broke out between the two camps over whose line started where - this latest indiscretion handed purples their second consecutive three points and, with reds now effectively out of the contest, it was left to oranges and purples to slug it out.

With Moesha, who had already impressed me over the past week with her cricketing skills, having secured a third successive win for the purples, it all came down to the last round - a win for oranges would be enough to secure victory, while a win for purples and anything less than second for oranges would hand purples the win. However, with oranges having lost their last player and Alice nominating herself to take his place, it seemed purples were on course for victory, as they had proven their tactical nouse again by leaving Dwight til last, a natural sportsman who easily competes with the older boys at football and cricket.



Me and Dwight



It wasn't, however, going to be that simple. Rawayne, an older boy who had only started at CCCD earlier this year with no language whatsoever, signed or spoken, was last man for reds. All I'd seen of Rawayne so far when it came to sports was a mixture of extreme shyness and frustration when he didn't always get his own way, and I therefore have to admit that, despite his obvious physical advantage over many of the younger boys, I was surprised and delighted when he launched his first effort way over the length of the field and into the cow field beyond. We had a game on.

Needing the three points to pip oranges to the post, Dwight was suddenly under pressure. With all eyes on him, he produced a visibly titanic effort to fire a monster first throw of his own, just beating Rawayne's by perhaps a yard to hand the advantage back to his team. In reply, Rawayne didn't quite get his technique right on his second throw - probably straining too hard for distance, he instead sent his reply veering off slightly to the right, falling just short of the the fence into the cow field. Purples had come from nowhere to win by a point.

I hadn't factored on soft-putt taking quite so long, and all of a sudden it was 3pm and we still had two events to go - it didn't look like rounders (which had become T-ball thanks to some kit the Americans had brought) was going to happen. Not to be helped, we pressed on with skittles, turning the concrete cricket pitch into a temporary mini-bowling alley. The game was going to work by having each member of the three teams taking one turn (i.e. two bowls) to knock down as many of the ten skittles as probably, with scoring as per 10-pin bowling. To hurry things up a bit, we decided to do it a team at a time rather than in three's. Oranges went first, and maybe it was the narrow defeat they'd snatched from the jaws of victory in soft-putt playing on their minds, or maybe it was the pressure of going first, but they didn't live up to expectations, managing only a below-par team total of 17.

Purples were up next, and their go followed the same pattern as soft-putt - after a poor start, scoring just four points after five rounds, they finished strongly, some impressive scoring towards the end guiding them to a potential winning total of 35. So it was all on reds to transform their fortunes from the soft-putt and beat orange into second place in the competition overall (first and guaranteed second at least meant purple had already won over the two events) by winning the skittles. Things didn't get off to a promising start - they didn't score a point until the fifth round. Things picked up significantly after that though, and some steady scoring saw them ease past the oranges total of 17. However, with just one go remaining, they had managed to score just 24, still 11 behind purples, and meaning their last player would have to do what no one had managed so far and knock down all ten pins to have a chance of winning. And then up stepped Rawayne. Not to be outdone again following his near-miss in the soft-putt, he stepped up to the line like a man with a purpose, steadied himself, took aim, and bowled - bullet-straight, with plenty of power behind it, the ball fair slammed into the skittles, sending bottles scattering in all directions. STRIKE!! Needing only one more to wrap up victory from his remaining two bowls, he knocked down a one and a three to see his team finish on 41, leapfrogging oranges into second in the process.

Already feeling a bit guilty at stopping the younger kids' fun a game early, my mood wasn't helped by the fact that, come 3.30pm when they'd all been told to turn up for the football tournament, none of the older boys were anywhere to be seen. After two or three tours round the school, I eventually rounded up enough, plus Mr Lewis' son Ryan and Monty, Ryan, April and Sam from the American group, to at least have a game, although the tournament idea had to be abandoned due to time and lack of numbers. It also meant I had to play, which I was hoping I wouldn't have to coz by this stage I was knackered. In the end it turned into a pretty good game of 8-a-side, a few of the Jamaican lads taking it seriously enough to don full kit including boots, while others, including April (who turned out to be pretty good) had to struggle on barefoot or in flip-flops. I have to hold my hands up and take some of the blame for my teams eventual demise, however - 4-3 up with just five minutes remaining, with me playing in goal, I completely forgot about the no-handling-from-goalkeepers rule we were playing, instinctively putting up a hand when the ball was blasted at me face-wards. Despite my protests that I was just protecting myself and trying to save myself having to run for the ball as it sailed wildly over the bar, the opposition were having none of it and insisted on a penalty. Needless to say, they scored, and then went and grabbed a late winner with the last kick of the game. Damn.



Chillin with Damien and Moesha

 Althought the football didn't go exactly to plan, at least we had a decent game in the end, which was infinitely better than the complete failure that turned out to be the girl's volleygirl competition. In typical fashion, the night before a big group of them had been out playing, and I was confident the tournament would be a big hit, telling as many of them as I could to meet on the court at 4.30pm the next day. But did they? Did they heck. I'm quickly learning the older girls' approach to sport is pretty simple - a bit like whimsical sheep, they act as a group and do what they want when they want, and you might as well forget about trying to round them all up when the group consensus is against you. To be honest, by this time I was too tired to care much anyway. I rightly suspected they might suddenly all show an interest after supper, but by that time I was well past organising anything, so I just handed them the ball and let them get on with it. My work for the day was well and truly done.

Chasing Waterfalls and Treasure

It's just after 7.30 on Sunday morning and I've already been awake for over an hour, courtesy of some of the kids deciding to head for an early morning game of basketball right outside my window, adding to barking dogs, heat and apocalyptic rainfall in the list of things designed to keep me from my sleep.

Anyway, I shouldn't complain - I have a cup of strong Jamaican coffee to hand, and I've just been wished 'Happy Father's Day' by Miss Carol. If I'm feeling a little more tired than usual this morning, it is probably because my Saturday evening's entertainment consisted of an hour-long game of three-a-side football. I can't remember the last time I ran so much, the surprising thing being that I DID actually keep up with the Duracell bunny-like boys who all put me to total shame in the fitness stakes. Still, it seriously wiped me out, so much so that I was in bed for 10pm. Oh how my life has changed in a short two weeks.

So what's the news this week? Well it's been much hotter for one thing and I'm now starting to develop the beginnings of a pretty impressive tan. In terms of school duties, the week has been dominated by cricket, partly because I've discovered that having the kids outside rather than as a captive audience confined in an enclosed space makes it much more difficult to round them up, especially as it's after school and there are only a few teachers about to tell them they have to - those who don't want to play sports simply drift off and do their own thing. Cricket, then, is just the easiest option, because it guarantees a hardcore of at least 12 to 14 boys, some days more, turning up.



Britney works the camera

There's also the fact that the first 'proper' coaching session  I ran on Tuesday went really well, when I put a large group of older boys through some bowling drills (for all their enthusiasm, far too many of them don't understand the concept of not chucking the ball), followed by a 'proper' match, with two teams, captains, field placings, rules and everything. It ended up being a pretty exciting and entertaining game - the team batting second just about managed to scrape home to the 56 they needed for victory thanks to four byes in the last over, and it drew a pretty sizeable crowd of staff and other pupils. Even the principal commented on it the next day, asking me if I'd be doing the same again that day, so I guess I'm partly duty bound not to change a winning formula.

And anyway, it's not like I haven't tried to diversify a bit in getting the girls involved. On Wednesday I was all set to run a Volleyball session with them, having seen how many got involved in a knock about game during the weekend. Come 3.15pm, I told maybe three or four older girls about what was going on, and then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. By 4.00pm I decided enough was enough and sacked it off to go and play cricket with the group of boys who had spent the last half and hour pestering me to get a game on. It seems that whereas the boys straight after school will immediately get changed and are ready for action within five minutes, the girls need a good hour to do whatever it is girls need to do before venturing into the outside world. I've thus learnt that the best time for volleyball is after supper.

The school welcomed a group of visitors from Texas this week, from a deaf church called the New Life Deaf Fellowship (I hope I've remembered that right as some of them might end up reading this). As a mixed deaf and hearing group, with some of them trained American Sign Language teachers, spending time with them has helped me with communication, both in terms of having a ready group of interpreters at hand and also improving my own sign language. It also gave me more to do during the days. On Wednesday and Thursday, while some of the group ran teacher training workshops, the rest were left to occupy a school full of kids for a morning, which I got to help with. Needless to say, eight adults, none of them teachers (and in the kids' minds definitely lacking the authority of teachers) in charge of 100-odd pupils presented one or two challenges, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. I'm not entirely sure why but I seemed to get the role of telling the kids off when the general low-level boisterousness went just a little too far - maybe a week of trying to get the kids to do what I want purely through body language and undefined threats had given me good preparation.



Damien and his pink visor

 I ended up helping out with the younger kids doing drawing and other arty stuff on both days. During the first one of these sessions, I found Damien, who at a guess is seven or eight and easily one of the most competitive kids in the whole school, taking winning at whatever sport he's playing so seriously that it occasionally spills over into open aggression no matter how much bigger his opponent might be, decorating his folder with hearts and the words 'Love I you Kal'. I asked him what 'Kal' was and he pointed to me - on further enquiry, I worked out that he was trying to spell my name, but had got confused between 'K' and 'P', which in American Sign Language have similar hand shapes. I was so touched that I couldn't bring myself to correct him on his grammar. The next day he was happily decorating a pink sun visor in a similar fashion. Kids are ace.

On Friday the American team took a day off to go and see some of the island's sights and, with the planned sports day I was going to run postponed because some of the younger kids having a trip of their own, I blagged on to it. The plan was to visit YS Falls in the neighbouring St Elizabeth parish, one of Jamaica's many stunning waterfall beauty spots and a pretty big tourist attraction. As a bonus, it was decided to also make time for a trip down to Treasure Beach on the south coast, meaning I got to see the two places I wanted to see while based in Mandeville in one go, without the hassles of route taxis and, thanks to the generosity of the school and the Americans, the day cost me nowt. Thanks guys!

Just to prove I've been to a waterfall

I was made up just being able to take in more of the island's scenery on the drive over to YS. Leaving Mandeville, we descended down the steep descent out of the Manchester highlands via Shooter's Hill, heading down into a gorgeous valley penned in across the way by the Santa Cruz mountains. One of the things that strikes me most about the countryside out here is how similar it is to parts of the UK - this wide vale could have easily been in the Peak District or Yorkshire Dales, especially at a distance because of how green everything is. The big difference is when you get close up. Yes, out in what is very much farming country, Jamaica has cleared, fenced-in grazing land interspersed with solitary trees and clumps of shrubs, as well as rolling plains of crops, that look much the same as the UK. But surrounding all of this, hemming it so close that it looks like it's in the process of reclaiming what human beings and their beasts have so rudely been obliterating in the past few hundred years, is thick, impenetrable forest-cum-jungle that is far more wild and interesting than anything I've ever seen before - it's not like you could just go for a casual walk through the trees here, not without a pretty damn good machete in your hand anyway. Most of it covers the high hilltops, where in Britain you'd just see open moorland. It really is amazingly beautiful, and I it's what home would look like if you turned up the thermomenter by five or six degrees and left the countryside alone for 50 years.

The Texans taking a dip



After a stop for patties at the bustling town of Santa Cruz, we headed to YS Falls via the Bamboo Avenue, a straight corridor-like road canopied by, you've guessed it, huge bamboo trees, which skirts the northern egde of the Great Morass, a 10-square mile swamp land surrounding the Black River, Jamaica's longest, and a favourite haunt of crocodiles. YS, set in a former plantation, is set quite a way off the beaten path along a really beaten-up old road (pretty common over here). Even once you've reached the car park, you have to get on a carriage drawn by a tractor which takes you over what looks like the grounds of a typical English country mansion. But following the river up into a wooded cravass, you suddenly start to see palm trees before, right ahead of you, the river is lifted up the gorge in a series of stepped terraces, the milky water rushing down in a raging torrent all the more forceful because of the recent rains (which meant the top two terraces were out of bounds for swimming).

Just to prove I've been to the beach

After two weeks working here it felt a bitstrange to be surrounded by tourists (i.e. white people) again, a fair group of them reminding me of what I didn't miss about England with their grating cockney accents and crap tattoos, union jacks and British bulldogs included. But hey, YS is beautiful, and it was great to finally get a swim, especially fighting the current and trying to stay stood upright under the falls.

Although it is perhaps a little over ten miles as the crow flies from YS to Treasure Beach, the drive down takes a good hour, mainly because the road down is like an extended version of the pitted one-track axle-mangler that takes you from the main road to the Falls, not to be negotiated above ten miles an hour for considerable stretches. But again, I loved the scenerey, right through the middle of full-on hill-billy country, with the Santa Cruz mountains rising up sharply to the left and rugged farm land all around. Passing through the various villages also attracted some attention, the highlight being a group of school children shouting 'Hi, whities!' as our van crawled past. They don't do PC in JA.

Treasure Beach is even sleepier than the guide books make it out to be, which is hardly suprising considering how remote it is. But rather that than the swarming all-inclusive resorts to the north. The bar we headed to, Jack Sprat, is a bit of an island institution, with it's own beach and a reputation for seriously good seafood, although I was a bit disappointed that the 'record shop' didn't have any records, just a lot of over-priced T-shirts. Although the strip of sand on the bar's beach is extremely narrow and the water full of rocks, I could have spent all day in the warm Caribbean water, with the sun falling slowly in the sky to the right towards dusk. Just to cap off a great day in style, I treated myself to two luxuries I haven't indulged in for over 18 months - pizza WITH cheese, and ice cream (seeing as Jodie, Miss Cilda's daughter, had ordered me to try the Devon Stout ice cream as one of the thee things I had to do while in Jamaica, I didn't really feel in a position to say no). Oh, and I had my first beer since getting over here as well, a Dragon Stout, just to go with the ice cream. Yes, you read that right - ONE beer in TWO weeks.

I was feeling in such a good mood, especially as Josh, the American group's leader, very kindly insisted on paying for my meal, that I decided to buy some tat off the old Rasta sat on the beach, even though he point blank refused to haggle in a very un-Jamaican way and I could probably have bought the necklace I settled on as a present to Daisy for about 50p back home. The third and final leg of the journey was probably the best of the lot - with the sun sinking behind us, we climbed up the southern slopes of the Santa Cruz range just above where they plunge into the sea, winding round a series of switch-back bends through somnolent farming hamlets and villages which clearly attract people with a bit of cash to spend, judging by the size and extravagance of some of the houses - hardly surprising given the view they have over the Caribbean. I know I keep banging on about it but the physical beauty of Jamaica really is something to be seen.

As I was taking all this in it got me thinking about how sharp this beauty contrasts to what is undoubtedy (and the people here know it better than anyone) a pretty ugly side to life on the island. On Wednesday, the talk all round the achool was about 11 prisoners breaking out of Mandeville jail the night before. Three had been recaptured almost immeditately, but one, a taxi driver who was being held for murdering his girlfriend pending trial, had somehow got hold of a gun, and ended up being shot dead by police at dawn on the road just down the hill from CCCD.

I guess as much as anything it was a reminder that the stories you hear aren't fantasy, bad things do happen here and it pays to be careful. But I'm not going to moralise about it - I've known rapes, gun murders and machete attacks happen close to homes I've had in Leeds in areas where I wouldn't think twice about walking around on my own at night. More than anything I think it's sad because in my short time here I've found the people I've met to be incredibly warm, kind and proud of who they are and where they come from - they don't deserve the reputation that the statistics and the news headlines have given Jamaica, because this place is not some helpless backwater or basketcase, nor is it somewhere where people should feel scared to visit unless it is to be locked away in some pre-fabricated fantasy protected by the high security fences and armed guards of the resorts. That said, violence is a problem, and I think the causes of it bewilder most people. I hope for their sake it's a problem they can solve together.

Settling In

I've been here just over a week now but it feels much somehow. That's nothing to do with boredom, although admittedly I do have a lot of time to myself, particularly in the evenings - after the kids's curfew (7pm on school nights), there's nothing much to do but sit and read, and I guess it can feel a bit lonely at times. I think the reason I feel like I've been here much longer than a week is down to settling into a very different kind of life. Home feels a million miles away and thinking about what I'd be doing if I was there now seems strange - bar missing not seeing my daughter, I don't miss any of it. I'm happy here.



One of many, many games of cricket

 A big reason for this is how kind and welcoming people here have been. I was told right at the beginning of my stay that people who visit CCCD usually comment on how special a place is, and I can see why. The thing that strikes me most is the incredibly strong sense of community here - whether that's a reflection of the closeness of the deaf community at large or to do with so many of the students and staff living here and therefore effectively existing as one big extended family, I don't know, but coming from a world where people barely bother to get to know their neighbours anymore it is something I find very warming. I particularly like watching the way the kids interact, the way the older ones very obviously play a role almost in parenting the little ones (some of whom are as young as four), they way they are all encouraged to take responsibility for helping to cook, clean, tending the grounds, washing their own clothes, the girls spending hours doing eachothers' hair on a weekend, even running their own chapel services. And best of all they're still kids, they carry on and argue and laugh and fight and play like all kids do, and they're a lot of fun to be around.

I have no illusions about my role as an outsider, someone who is passing through and observing this tight-knit little commune high in the exotically lush breezy hills of Manchester parish, and that's fine. I'm most aware of my outsider status when it comes to sign language, as I've mentioned before, but while communication is still not ideal, I'm making do and learning new signs every day - and it seems the more I try, the more the kids want to help me to learn. To be fair my life and role here are very easy, and very comfortable - in return for three meals a day and a large apartment to myself, in effect all I'm required to do is help entertain the kids after school and on weekends through various sporting activities. Getting on with the kids has proved easy - the boys have been easily won over by the range of sports gear I have to offer them, while the girls are even easier to please, I just have to try talking to them to keep them happy.

So my routine is something like this. On school days, it's up at 6.30am for breakfast at 7, followed be Devotion, which takes me roughly to 8.30. After that, the rest of the morning and early afternoon is more or less my own, with lunch around 12/12.30. To get as involved as I can in school life, I've been going to the primary-age class's PE lessons at 11 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the English teacher, Mrs Johnson, also runs regular 'Reading Labs' which I'm keen to attend, although they have been disrupted by end of year exams this week. The purpose isto help students with the translation of written English (which is extremely garrulous, i.e. there are always about ten different ways of saying the same thing) into sign language (which is by contrast very economical and depends largely on body language to convey context), and the one class I've been to so far was very helpful for my own signing.



Crab Football, an all-time classic

 Apart from that, my day really starts at 3.30pm, when I take after school sports clubs up until supper - older boys on Monday, older girls on Tuesday, younger boys Wednesday, younger girls Thursday, and then a 'free activities' session aimed at younger kids on Fridays. I've loved every minute of these, although I'm more or less learning as I go along. On Tuesday, for example, my worst fears about my ability to engage a group of teenage girls in sports looked like they were going to be realised when a group of perhaps 8 girls turned up, stood in a huddle for about a minute and then turned round and left, leaving maybe three of the more enthusiastic members of the group behind. I had, of course, made a rooky mistake - not having the session set up and ready to go the moment the walked through the door, I had failed to grab their attention immediately, heightening their feelings of self-conciousness and leaving them wondering what the hell they were doing there. Fortunately, I resisted the urge to just give up and carried on regardless with a game of 'HORSE' disguised as a netball shooting drill and then, lo and behold, when I invited a couple of lads who were hanging around if they wanted to join in a game of four square, the girls one-by-one started to drift back and reclaim their session, so we ended up with maybe 10 in the end taking part. Disaster averted.



Me and Alice strike a pose

 My job got about ten times easier on Thursday when it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. Although it didn't really make much difference to the small class of younger girls I was taking that day, who were quite content with a bit of gentle skipping and catch, which could have easily been done indoors, it did mean I could start playing out after supper, which has been the highlight of the weeks so far. I kind of feel like I'm back at school again myself, playing cricket, football, four-square, baseball, basketball or whatever else in the sunshine for hours on end. I can't remember when I was last this active, and it's pretty obvious the kids have way more energy than me. The only real issue I've got is ball trouble - the tennis balls I brought are simply not up to the task of being smashed around with a cricket bat and are falling apart at an average of one per game, while two footballs have also been punctured so far, no doubt due to the wide variety of thorny plants that seem to dominate the foilage around here. I must have spent a good couple of hours in the past few days battering down bamboo bushes, large broad-leaved plants that look a bit like rhubarb, and various spiny specimens in the fruitless pursuit of lost balls. Jamaica's lush greeneery might be pretty to look at, but it's a bugger for losing balls I can tell you.

Saturday was a brilliant day - real hot sunshine, a two-hour cricket game in the morning followed by baseball on the recently-mowed school field in the afternoon, and a film in the evening. I also squeezed in my first solo trip into Mandeville, heaving with Saturday shoppers, particulalry around the crowded and chaotic market. I'd only really gone into town for some super glue to mend a broken shoe, but ended up wandering around for about an hour and a half, lapping up the BBQ smells from the street vendors and the heavy bass lines booming from shop speakers all over town. As relaxing and calm as life at CCCD is, I felt I was due my first taste of the 'real' Jamaica.



Not sure what the cricket bat is doing....

 I guess the only other thing to report is I am now officially a lapsed vegan, as of my second morning here. Angela, the deaf cook, had been told I didn't eat meat, but not that I didn't eat fish, dairy or eggs either. She did try to ask me what I did eat before the hearing kitchen staff returned on Monday, but with my extremely limited sign language I think I just confused her more, and she seemed genuinely concerned about what she would be able to cook for me. Anyway, after not touching a plate of fried fish (which I hadn't even realised were meant for me as I was eating with two American visitors), I didn't have the heart to refuse the plate of cheesy scrambled egg I was served for breakfast the next day (and anyway, it tasted REALLY good). So I've had eggs for breakfast most days since then, and a couple of cheese toasties for supper too. It's not like my sense of self-worth and spiritual well-being depends on eing vegan or anything, so I'm not really bothered. On the other hand, I have eaten a serious amount of rice and peas since I've been here, which is just fine by me, as well as sample some proper Jamaican specialities - fried dumplings, yam, breadfruit, and, best of all, the mangoes, which are in season at the moment and simply blow the imported supermarket crap you get in the UK out of the water.

Rain, rain and my first day at school

Around teatime Saturday, the persistent drizzle that had been falling since early afternoon advanced itself into a steady downpour that quickly shrouded the surrounding hills in a thick mist that made it difficult to decide where the heavy grey sky finished and the lush green lanscape began. By the time dark fell, the wind had whipped itself up into a frenzy and the rain had begun to lash down with the kind of ferocity that makes even a precipitation-hardened Northerner like me cower inside. Barely 24 hours in Jamaica, and three days after the official start of Hurricane Season, and I was being treated to my first tropical storm.

48 hours later and the rain has yet to let up. There are peaks and troughs in its intensity, and the violent wind that woke me up several times Saturday night has more or less subsided, but bar for one particularly crazy week of rain I remember in Leeds one October about 10 years ago when I vividly remember Clarendon Road being turned into a small river, I can confidently say I have never seen so much rain fall in my life. So much for the tropical roasting I was expecting from JA!
Rain like this obviously brings its problems. There are reports of extensive flooding around the island already, and with the weather forecast predicting more of the same possibly for the rest of the week, there is a real concern of some very serious damage being done. And this could be just the start - Miss Veronica, one of the ladies who works here at CCCD, told me that they are predicting a particularly bad wet season this year, with as many as 16 major storms forecast in the coming six months. Looks like I picked the wrong year to leave the good old miserable British summer behind.



The main school building during a rare bit of sunshine

 Closer to home, the rain has given my first few days at the CCCD a slightly strange feel. Apart from the fact that I can currently barely hear Junior Murvin's 'Police and Thieves' booming out my laptop such is the noise being made by the rain thundering on the roof above me, it has meant that I've spent a considerable amount of time cooped up in my apartment twiddling my thumbs (or reading). Despite regular empassioned pleas from some of the kids for a repeat of Saturday's impromptu cricket match, strict school rules against playing out in the rain (as well as the laws of general sanity) have unfortunately prevented such an occurence. It has also thrown a bit of a temporary spanner in the works of my brief as sports coach.

Anyway, after a very quiet (and damp) first weekend in JA, Monday morning finally rolled around and with it my first proper day at school. I actually felt quite nervous when I got up at 6.30 to shower, dress and get to the dining room on time for breakfast at 7 - was I going to be able to cope taking a group of kids by myself? How was I going to work around my lack of sign language? After breakfast, the day started with Devotion (what I'd have called assembly at school), which included the brilliant sight of all the kids sign-singing hymns. At the end it was my turn to stand up and be introduced by the Principal, Mrs Demercardo, and I even had the honour of being given a sign-name - after some debate it was decided it should be the signs for my initials signed against the open left palm, and early variation being rejected for apparently being too girly. Well, either way, it saves me painfully fingerspelling my entire name everytime I'm asked.



Sports Club in full effect

 After Devotion I had a meeting with school administrator Mr Nicholas Headley and Mrs deMercado (Miss Cilda when out of earshot of the kids) deciding what it was they would like me to do during my time at the school. It's pretty straight forward - at present the kids have very little in the way of structured sports or PE, so they want me to run a series of after school sports clubs for different age groups and the two sexes, as well as offer some help with informal sports and games for the residential kids after supper on an evening and at weekends. Oh, and as an added challenge I will also be trying to organise an end of term Sports Day / Activities Day, possibly as early as a week on Friday. Eek. I think the idea is that if a clueless outsider with no sign language can give the kids a bit of structured sporting activity they enjoy and get something out of, it should be easy to follow up more formally next school year.

So, after a quick tour round a sodden Mandeville courtesy of Nicholas and a meeting with Paperfoot (aka Charlton Francis), my official mentor and main contact with the sending organisation back home, it was onto my first sports club - an hour-and-a-quarter with the senior boys. Given the fact we couldn't go outside, this was probably the toughest first assignment I could have had - with pretty much all the sporting equipment I'd brought / been given by two visiting benefactors from the States at the weekend, namely footballs, volleyball, tennis gear, badminton gear, a cricket set, and baseball/softball set, being negated by the weather, what exactly was I going to do with 15 or 16 teenage boys in an indoor auditorium? A lesson in planning for all eventualities, methinks.

Summoning all my reserves of blag, and quickly consulting a list of kids' games I'd downloaded from the internet, I struck upon one that might just work - Chinese Ball. Basically involving getting a group of people standing in a circle and throwing a ball around, with anyone who drops it having to drop out, I reckoned I could pass it off as a cricket catching training drill. I even fancied I could do a bit riffing on the idea by a) using two balls at once and b) getting anyone who dropped the ball to stand in the middle and try and obstruct throws around the circle, earning the right to get back into the circle by blocking throws and thus encouraging a bit of teamwork. Or something. Anyway, thanks to Miss Cilda insisting all the senior boys turned up, and also thanks to Ryan, Mr Lewis' son, who signs perfectly and kindly acted as my interpreter, I think I got away with it. Just. I wonder if I can get away with the same with the girls tomorrow?

First Impressions

Virtually the first thing you see as you fly westwards into Jamaica is the Blue Mountains – soaring, ragged peaks covered in greenery, the tops poking clear of the clouds as you fly parallel with them for a few minutes, the bulk of the island hidden below. Then the mountains fall away to leave a huge bowl-shaped coastal plain filled with the sprawl of Kingston, a narrow causeway leading out to what looks even from a modest height like a couple of scalextric pieces stuck together and left floating in the sea. ‘That must be a private light aircraft runway,’ said the middle aged Scottish couple sat behind me. ‘We can’t be landing there.’ No sooner had they started wondering where Norman Manley International Airport actually was than we did a tight u-turn and began our descent towards what was effectively a small sand bar a couple of kilometers out from shore with a strip of tarmac on top. I had time to wonder how many planes over the years and managed to overshoot and ended up in the Caribbean before we touched down safely and ground to an abrupt halt before we plunged nose first into the briney blue.

Just as we landed, the guy I’d been sat next to the whole flight looked at the book I was reading about volunteering abroad and asked, ‘Do you do voluntary work? So do I.’ The guy’s name was David and he’d been living in Brixton for the past 12 years, currently working for an organization called Catch-22. He was apparently over in Jamaica for a few weeks to arrange for his kids to come live with him in London after their mum sadly passed away earlier this year. We swapped numbers and agreed to try to catch up before he left for the UK again.

Immigration and customs were straight forward enough, except for some reason the passport control officer I was left with didn’t seem to believe I had confirmed voluntary work for six months – she instead gave me leave to remain for three months, telling me I’d have to make an entirely unnecessary trip to the Immigration Office in Kingston by September 2 if I wanted to ask permission to remain for the remainder of my intended stay. But by this time, after a solid 18 hours traveling, I didn’t much care, I just wanted to get to where I was going and rest. So I was very relieved when a slim, middle-aged man with a beard and glasses walked straight up to me outside the airport brandishing a print out of the photo I’d taken that morning and posted on my blog – the wonders of modern technology. The guy introduced himself as Lewis from the Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf and we were soon on our way in his minivan on the two hour drive to Mandeville. And as an additional welcome, the sky was overcast, keeping the temperature down to a very bearable 26 C.

It’s gotta be said that the first things you see on the ground as you drive away from Norman Manley Airport haven’t exactly been designed to make the best impression on the visitor. Then again, I guess these are the realities of life in Jamaica. After crossing the causeway back to the mainland, which is undergoing heavy construction work to make it two lanes each way, Mr Lewis gave me a guided tour of the huge, mud-encrusted cement works, a sprawling flour processing factory, before we passed on the outskirts of a ‘bad area’ known as ‘Town’, the Rae Town prison, and began to circuit the far edges of the notorious West Kingston slums. It seemed slightly odd that perched in the middle of all this near the waterfront is the towering, gleaming Bank of Jamaica building – talk about two worlds colliding. Some of the worst-looking corrugated-iron-and-timber shack communities looked like they were built on rubbish dumps, and I quickly got the idea that you can distinguish the better off areas from the ‘bad areas’ by the number of buildings made from bricks and concrete.

Leaving Kingston behind, we took a gleaming new toll road which slices through a very green area that you could easily mistake for the UK. Beyond this, as the road narrows to a single lane again, we started to pass through a series of towns and villages gearing up for Friday night – dozens of people walking, talking, eating, drinking or just plain hanging around all along the roadside outside a procession of stalls, stores and one-room bars, a large number brightly lit with neon signs and fairy lights, many thumping out heavy reggae beats. Whereas we seem to spend most of our lives indoors in the UK (perhaps understandable given the climate), only venturing out to get somewhere, life here looked like it was played outside on the streets (or, more accurately given the lack of pavements, the roadside). I watched all of this passing by with the setting sun turning the sky ahead deep pink then purple then navy, reggae and hiphop blaring from Mr Lewis’ car stereo courtesy of Kool 97 FM (which I decided I liked as soon as they made an appeal between songs to help find a listeners’ green and blue Macaw – ‘it’s wings have been clipped, so it won’t be hard to catch!’), and one ear turning numb from the warm wind as Mr Lewis roared along with the windows wound completely down.

The night began to close in and the road got narrower as it started to wind its way upwards into the hills, but none of this seemed to deter Mr Lewis from his love of speed and a good overtaking manoever. I’d heard Jamaican drivers tended to be somewhat aggressive on the roads despite the huge number of potholes, pedestrians, animals and other miscellaneous obstacles, but even I was surprised at some of the daredevil darts around vehicles in front that most drivers seemed to take for granted – and I like driving fast. After one final steep climb, just as a steady rain began to fall, we reached Mandeville in one piece, which after the exotic difference of all the other towns we’d passed through looked ever so slightly drab and familiar – very British-style buildings and winding, illogical road lay-outs, a large town square and even ‘the Manchester Shopping Mall,’ Mandeville being the principal town in Manchester parish. They say Mandeville is the richest town in Jamaica, its gentle hillside climate attracting first the British merchants and more recently hordes of Jamaican ex-pat returnees from the UK and USA, investing their life’s wages from oversees in opulent bungalows, villas and mansions for their retirement. It’s definitely a town where brick outdoes the shack.

A few miles further on and we reached our destination, the small, dispersed settlement of Knock Patrick perched up on a series of rolling hills. You reach the CCCD via a long drive that curves upwards, ending in a long oblong-shaped courtyard of two story buildings, the majority at the far end housing the main school rooms and dormitories. Though too dark by now to look round properly, I was impressed by the neatness and location of the place, looking down over a valley on each side. I was shown to my own very spacious apartment, given a good meal of rice, beans and stir fried veg, and then left to my own devices to get some much needed sleep – and once I’d worked out how to put up the mosquito net, sleep indeed I did, helped by the mercifully cool night.



The Dog

  

'Sunny' Jamaica - Overlooking Knock Patrick from CCCD





As I write this I’m sat on a veranda with a dog at my feet looking out over the mist-shrouded hills as a steady rain falls. It is quiet – the 40-odd kids who are residents here are all in their dorms, it being the norm for Jamaicans to avoid the rain like the plague (they do actually believe the rain itself makes you sick). It’s quite a contrast to this morning when the sun was out and I got to meet some of the kids for the first time – producing a cricket bat caused a mini riot and I spent a good three hours trying to instill some kind of order over the on-going free-for-all over who got to bat next. I had been worried by extremely basic grasp of American Sign Language would cause problems, but we all seemed to get on ok – they did actually do as they were told when I told them who’s turn was next so the bigger kids didn’t hog all the action, at least. It’s hard picking out their names because they fingerspell so fast, but I will hopefully get used to that.



Here goes nothing...

So here I am, sat in the departure lounge at Gatwick Airport, about two hours away from setting sail (metaphorically speaking) for Kingston, Jamaica, to start my six month adventure as a volunteer. I have to admit to a certain feeling of incredulity that I'm here at all - a fortnight ago, leaving seemed ages away, but someone seems to have conspired to have adjusted the normal rules of time perception and, as surreal as it feels, here I am.

Actually, the 'conspiracy' is mainly my fault. As per, I managed to completely ignore how much preparation moving house, quitting work and planning and packing for a six month trip might actually involve, whimsically assuming 'it'll all get done somehow'. Well, yeah it has, but it's been nothing to do with the magic packing fairies - panic, adrenalin, caffeine and a great deal of help from my ever reliable mum and dad have been largely responsible for getting me here. Thankfully, I tend to do my best work under pressure, and there have even been times where I've found myself actually enjoying the frantic activity.

I've been told there will probably be plenty of times in the coming weeks and months where I will wonder what the hell I'm doing, and it's a question I've got to admit crossed my mind a few times in the whirlwind of goodbyes (some inevitably emotional), leaving my home, my friends and everything I know behind. But after a virtually sleepless night Monday as the reality of leaving Leeds the next day started to kick in, followed by a 14-hour marathon of packing, cleaning and driving, as I sped away down the M62 half drunk with tiredness in an overpacked car with a knackered Void tape blasting far too loud on the stereo, I remembered why this was all such a good idea - I could feel the routines of a city I've called home for the past 12 years, the complacency of everything being so comfortable and familiar racing away behind me. Ahead lies adventure, trials, new experiences, new friends - all the good stuff that makes us feel alive. I've had my doubts about doing this, but right now I'm so glad I am.

I am in a rush so I apologise if I am rambling. I will hopefully be able to write something slightly more coherent and considered in the next few days as I settle into my first placement at the Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf. Hopefully this blog will evolve into something more presentable and readable as time goes on, but for now, here are a couple of photos of my 'travelling' hair cut for you to laugh at (my lovely locks!), and I hope you will all feel moved to follow this blog. Keep in touch!