Never Say Never

A man from my village named Gavin is a crack addict.

In the mornings before work while I'm drinking my morning coffee on the porch I always see him walking with a big bag of coconuts to go sell, minding his own business. It doesn't take long before I hear my neighbors yelling at him to stop selling coconuts for crack, to get his life together, or to put on some shoes.

When I was coming home from a football game at the village park late one night, I noticed someone walking closely behind me. I started to get nervous, so I stopped walking and turned around. It was Gavin. He had the most beautifully big smile on his face. And I couldn't help but smile back.

Up close he looked so normal. His face was clean shaven, his teeth were perfectly white, something that is very rare here. He looked surprisingly young and I could picture how handsome we could have been, had circumstances been different.

I stuck out my hand and introduced myself.

We walked back from the park together side by side, neither saying a word. When we reached my house, I could hear my neighbor yelling at him to put on some shoes from the next house over. Not seeming to notice, he stuck out his hand and said goodbye.

From then on, every time he passed my house in the morning he would drop a coconut off on the front step of my door. He would never say a thing or ask for anything. He would just go on his way.

One afternoon I asked around to see if any men in the village had any extra shoes. That next morning I put shoes on the doorstep right where I knew the coconut would be later on that morning.

I knew when he picked them up, because I heard my neighbor yell from her window 'You better not sell those, Gavin.' She later told me I was helping out a lost cause. That the shoes would be gone by night time.

Sure enough, he stopped by my house that night not wearing any shoes. I looked at him in disbelief, as he told me he needed to scrub them before he could wear them. In my mind, there was no other explanation, but that he had sold them for crack.

I slammed the door on the same beautiful smile I welcomed earlier that week, feeling defeated and disrespected all at the same time.

But something remarkable happened tonight, which made me reconsider every preconceived notion I have ever had...about anything. Tonight Gavin showed up at my door with two coconuts in his hands and the same dirty shoes I had laid on the doorstep earlier that week, that definitely needed scrubbing. I was wrong and so were my neighbors. This time my smile matched his.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing--Friedrich Nietzsche

Jump: A Vertical Movement

To start off the school year, we are doing a huge push with our volleyball organization, Vertical. With the help of some friends, I have put together a blog that will center around the participants as well as people affected by the programs.

So check it out if you feel so inclined http://jumpvertically.wordpress.com/

The first entry is, of course, my man Gus Gus.

We also have a new fundraising website

So, check that out too if you're bored.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped get us through the last year, and those who have catapulted us into the next. A million thank yous.

Summer Skin

One of my largest struggles within St. Vincent over the past year has been the Christianity-infused culture. My first three months here I attended many church services and just could never seem to buy into it. I looked around me and saw so many children without fathers, so many women with unnecessary bruises and so many men with alcohol permanently staining their breath.

I heard countless anti-gay comments naming God as their source. The same men I saw ostracizing other men they considered feminine in the name of their God, were with a different woman every weekend while their wife stayed at home with the kids. I have always believed in God, but I couldn't seem to find God here.

The hypocrisy of the whole ordeal created such a disdain in my heart that I couldn't see passed my own judgement to understand their's.

It wasn't until I woke up to the screeching tires of a vehicle crashing into my house that I realized where I was wrong about religion. At least religion here.

I woke up at 6:45 in the morning to a van wrapped around the pole in my yard. The village was silent except for the eerie moans of the van driver, who was the only one left in the van. When I stepped outside my house to see if I could help, I was directed to a man who had been hit on the road. His legs were mangled and he was propped up on the wall next to my house. His body had gone into shock and all he could feel were the ants biting his feet. As I sat next to him, wiping off the dozens of ants that just kept reappearing, all I could do was pray. I didn't ask God what to do. I didn't ask God to change things. I just asked God to help me and those around me get through this.

Maybe Vincentians have got it right all along. Intrinsically, we as people know the difference from right and wrong. We don't need the Ten Commandments for that. And religion cannot change what happened or what will happen. But religion can get you through things. And although I will probably never attend any more church services here, it is comforting to know that each night me and thousands of other Vincentians ask God to help us get through the next day together. And maybe that's all religion needs to be.

'I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it'--Holden Claufield, Catcher in the Rye

Thank you

I really appreciate all of the nice things people have been sending me. Unfortunately, most have not gotten to me and probably never will. And when they do get to me, they have been opened or damaged through the postal service here.

So, in the future, if you could please send it to the address below and my mom will just send it through FedEx.

Your love will be safe with me

I'm officially one year older and one year in. And as I sit on my porch overlooking the Atlantic, it's hard to put a finger on exactly what I've learned and how far I have come. Most of what has changed within me is slight shifts in values or perceptions of things, probably only noticeable to myself. However, there is one thing I think is very important for Americans to know through my own experience. And, this might be the only thing I know for sure anymore...

Roosters don't just sit on the roof of a red barn on a cute little farm, waiting for the sun to come up so they can crow and wake up their owners. They are not used as organic alarm clocks the way they are depicted in American storybooks and TV shows. No, they actually crow at all times of day, including when I'm trying to get in a nap. They crow at three o'clock in the morning, they crow at three o'clock in the afternoon. They are persistently loud and obnoxious.

I initially sat down to write this blog in a list form. It was going to be a solidified list of everything I had learned in the year I have been here. But when I started writing, the only thing I could think of was the roosters. And just how wrong my initial American perspective of them was. How the storybooks were that off about these insanely annoying animals I'll never know. But when I hit the enter key and typed the number '2', I realized there was nothing else I could write down. I literally knew nothing else. And that's when I knew I had changed.

If there's one thing I've learned this passed year, it's that you (and me..) know absolutely nothing. We are often comforted by our college degrees and worldly experience, but that tends to only give us a false sense of security. There is still so much out there to learn about people, about places. About reasons why people are the way they are. And when you think you've learned all you need to learn, you find something or someone else that surprises you.


I have learned that there is no fact, there is no reality. There are only assumptions and perspectives. After all, it was a fact once that the world was flat, wasn't it? And we all thought Y2K was the reality of the situation, didn't we?


So instead of making a list of everything I want to accomplish this next year and make all these lofty promises, I'm just going to make a vow to not see things at face value. To question and then re question. To remember that as loud as I may talk, I still don't know much. And to never assume I know what someone has gone through. Because, really, you never do.


As much as a boast and brag about making it a year, it is an even bigger accomplishment that my parents have made it through 25. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Hippie Hop
I have no program for
saving this world or scuttling
the next: I know no political,
sexual, racial cures: I make
analogies, my bucketful of
flowers: I give flowers to people
of all policies, sexes, and races
including the vicious, the
uncertain, and the white.
A.R. Ammons
1970

Ya bumper in trouble, gyal

The past few weeks since my last entry have probably been the most interesting couple of weeks in my life. That's one thing about being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vincy, there's always something to do, something to see or something to drink. All three make for a very interesting day.

Regular classes have ended and my summer classes have started. For the beginning of the summer I am taking it slow with two classes of remedial reading a week. As the summer progresses I will begin my volleyball classes and camps. I have been very fortunate to receive some donations from local sponsors and a very generous donation of balls from my old high school coach, Joe Camp. Funding continues to be a problem, but honestly, when isn't it? I don't think I've spent a day in St. Vincent without worrying about money. This better pay off, either in a life lesson or some good karma.

Problems with my knee still seem to surface every once in a while, but as my beach partner kept reiterating, it could be worse. That seems to be a reoccurring theme for my Peace Corps experience...'it could be worse.'

Carnival provided a breath of fresh air as I danced behind trucks blasting Soca music. Vincy's say nothing is wrong during Carnival and this proved to be true. Nothing mattered. Financial problems, work problems, your home life. Carnival is a time to let loose and forget about this year's problems. And I did.

The day after Carnival my house was broken into again while I was sleeping. They didn't take anything, but my vulnerability scared me. The Peace Corps is in the process of replacing my door and making my house safer. Gut checks for me used to be when you're serving the ball during the opposing team's game point. This is a gut check on a completely different level. But, it could be worse.

It has almost been a year since I left the states. And I'm almost 24. Sometimes it shocks me how much I've changed. And other times it shocks me how much I haven't. Lines have been clearly drawn, then blurred. Friends have let me down and picked me up. I've wanted to quit and live here forever all in the same day. But one thing that has remained stagnent is the importance of the family we were born with and the family we choose. I have built a beautiful family here, but desperately miss my family back home. And depend on both.

'Freedom is the equal opportunity to succeed. But it is also the equal opportunity to fail.'

Brendan now you've got to come, she's where I get my smile from.

When I tell people I just recently tore my ACL for the fourth time, they have a pretty predictable reaction. Probably pretty similar to the one you're having if you're reading this for the first time. I've had people call me crazy, stubborn, passionate. Resilient, dedicated, stupid. Although my heart can't seem to settle on one of their assumptions. Questions about my intentions and the source of my motivation always leave me wondering myself.

And for a long time I had no answer for their questions, or my own. Maybe I did it because it was how I was raised, it was all I knew. I'm a Thomson and we don't give up. I can tell you stories that parallel mine about almost every member of my family. From Winston Churchill quotes to scenes from Rudy, my life has been immersed in the notion that to quit is to fail.

I could recite hundreds of cliches to explain my actions, but none seem to fit with me or my situation.

But only now do I see the whole picture; only now do I fully understand what is behind my desire to keep going, to never give up. And it has nothing to do with a quote. In fact it is quite simple: it's worth it.

The pain, the rehab, the crutches all pale in comparison to the experience the sport has given me. Without volleyball, I would have never been to Europe or California. I would have never won a National Championship. I would have never gone to the University of Tampa or represented my country in a National Competition. I would have never met the people I consider family. And I probably would have never joined the Peace Corps.

So I return a dropped jaw with a smile, because I know. I know the benefits I have reaped through this long process. And I know that if I was given a chance to play again, I would take it without question.