Where You Invest Your Love, You Invest Your Life

I have not written in a long time for many reasons. But mostly because I have been stuck in limbo, not moving forward or backward, but finding myself simultaneously looking both directions wondering what my next move will be.

Home helped to clarify my future a little more. While I was in the States I realized what had been missing from the past year and a half in St. Vincent: my family. One night, in a hotel room in Jackson, Mississippi, my mom, sister and I sat up talking until three o'clock in the morning. I had never felt closer to anyone in my life. And I realized that I didn't want to give that up anymore. Two and a half years was enough time. But when that's finished, I need to come home.

Deciding to complete my service and return home completely changed the way I was viewing my current service in-country. It re focused my goals, which in turn really motivated me. There are several projects that I am really excited about for the upcoming months.

Thankfully, we have solidified enough local sponsors to keep the volleyball program running long after I am gone. So I have been able to create and assist in other programs though out the island.

My neighbor, KC, has been asking me for months to start a beach clean up on the Georgetown beach. But instead of just doing one beach for one month, we decided to do beaches all along the coast. And instead of making it a small project, we decided to make it big. We want dumpsters, trash cans. We want volunteers from all around the island. We want laws against littering on the beaches. We want signs. We, like Barack, want change.

Another project that I am excited about is one that my fellow volunteer, Kellan, initially came up with: the creation of an SVG Peace Corps website. St. Vincent is on the cusp of a technological revolution and it is imperative that Peace Corps moves with this change. Using spoken word and handwritten letters is no longer an effective way of mass communication, and it is necessary to communicate on a larger scale. Volunteer profiles, community programs, upcoming events, blogs, links to other SVG NGO's and organizations will all be hosted on the website. This will allow Vincentians a better opportunity to become more involved with the Peace Corps as well as their own community.

The only hold up right now is funding for the domain. It costs $US15.00 per month. We need foreign donations for the first six months, and then local funding will take over from there. If you are interested in donating (even for just one month), please e-mail me. Your donations will be much appreciated.

So for the next nine months I will be pretty busy creating, assisting and finalizing. I have a good feeling about these next nine months. I am ready to finish up my service with a bang.


I want to warn anyone who sees the Peace Corps as an alternative to the draft that life may well be easier at Fort Dix or at apost in Germany than it will be with us. --Sgt. Shriver

I'm Going to the Moon Without You

For Boom Boom.

Today Boom Boom's mother was sitting on the side of the street crying. It is rare to see a Vincentian cry, so I sat next to her and asked her what was wrong. Her breath was laced with the local rum, her hair was filled with lint. She was bra-less and shoe-less. Her eyes exemplified the only thing I could really relate to: tears.

She told me she was sorry. Sorry for how she had raised Boom Boom, her eight-year-old child that frequently eats dinner with me. She told me she was sorry for her appearance, for her lack of money. But what shocked me was she said she was sorry for her 15-year-old son, Shamal.

I had heard rumors of Shamal throughout the village. They had typically centered around his mother's alcoholism and his inability to walk, speak or comprehend.

She asked me if I wanted to meet Shamal. Of course I said yes.

Nothing in my year here could have prepared me for what I was about to walk in on. As I stepped into their one bedroom house, I immediately smelled the strong scent of stale urine. There was feces lining the walls and cockroaches covering the floors. Boom Boom's recognizable clothes were scattered throughout the tiny house. I just kept staring at his precious little shoes. Imagining him waking up every morning in this house, smelling identical to it, dressing for school that morning, putting on those shoes. I could just imagine him fearful of what the children would say about him today. About how he smelled, about how parts of the mattress always stuck to his hair. I wanted to take the shoes and run.

But the worst part about it was what was lying in the corner of the room. He looked like spider, all curled up after you stepped on them. His bony black legs intertwined while drool lingered on his chin. He was smiling, but not intentionally. Shamal, the 15 year old myth, was was lying naked on the hard wooden floor. He looked up at me with disturbing contentment oozing out his eyes.

In the background, I could hear his mother complaining about government assistance and lack of care for her boys. She had started crying again.

I wanted to hit her and hug her all at the same time. I wanted to scream at her for how bad she had let things get, but I also felt like crying with her.

I had never seen or felt anything like that in my life.

Several times I have gotten into altercations with community members over Boom Boom. They have long given up on him and wonder why I haven't done the same. And sometimes I feel that way myself. Until now.

After seeing what Boom Boom goes home to every night, yet he still wakes up and puts on clothes in the morning. After seeing the intense abuse and neglect that he has to endure every single day, yet he still approaches the outside world with a smile. After seeing what the community believes he is destined to become, I refuse to give up on him. And I am making it my goal to let him know that every single day.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.--Howard Thurman

The Distance is Quite Simply Much Too Far For Me to Row, It Seems Farther Than Ever Before.

My second year begun much like I expected it: busy and chaotic and fun. I feel more like myself in my new village. Maybe it's because I feel safe, maybe it's because the town is a lot bigger, or maybe it's just because it's my second year. Who knows.

My knee problems seem to have subsided for the time being. Because my house is on the beach, I am frequently running alongside the Atlantic in the evenings. For the first time in six years my knee actually feels good when I'm running. And the only time I notice a missing ACL is when I'm coming down a huge mountain, which I try to avoid.

The volleyball program took an exciting turn over the summer. After completing our summer programs, I was introduced to a unique individual who is the President of the National Lottery in St. Vincent. After several meetings and proposal revisions, Mr. Sealley and I came up with a monetary plan that worked for both of us. And the Georgetown Saturday program got funded for an entire year. This means we can provide travel and food for the kids in the area who want to participate on Saturdays. There is still room for expansion in the program, but we took this as a huge step in the right direction. In the meantime, I am still working on writing a grant to expand the program throughout the Windward side of the island.

As for my work in the schools, it is forever challenging. Remedial reading tends to be a very complicated task, as there are many reasons why a child cannot read. Over the summer I spent a lot of time researching different philosophies and techniques and think I made a plan that would fit my students pretty well. Some days my students respond well, and others I'm just not sure what's going through their head. Patience is a virtue. I wrote that on my classroom chalkboard, although I think it was more for me than for them.

I am also picking up small projects here and there. I'm trying to organize a Saturday Beach Clean up for my area; the hurricanes brought all of the trash from the water and organized it not so neatly on our beaches. And there have been many opportunities to tutor kids within my area.

What I am most excited about, however, is my brief return home to the States in December. I am taking a much needed three week break to celebrate Christmas where it should always be celebrated: at home. I am ready to see my family and eat Mexican food. It has been way too long since I've experienced either.

I just hope the States is ready for me.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life--Robertson Davies 'What's Bread in the Bone'

For me this is heaven

New village, new house, new kids. And here are the pictures...

The kids playing (un)American football with bamboo goal posts

Luda watching my neighbor peel coconuts to sell. (not Gavin)

The view from my back porch.

happiness.

My students at New Grounds Primary.

The sunset one evening over my house.

“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.” - Henry Miller

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