Has it really been almost three months?

I wake up in the morning with the bright island sun shining in my eyes, my eyes squinting with the drastic change of sleepy time darkness to new day wonder. I am tired. No, I m exhausted. At this very moment, I am in love with my bed. I roll over and pull my blanket over my head. There has been a cool breeze at night lately. I wonder if I am cold because it is getting cold here or if I am cold because I have been used to overwhelming heat for the past few weeks.

I know my day lay ahead of me. I will walk a half hour through the mountains to my bus stop where I’ll wait for a coaster bus that will soar through the winding, rolling hills up to good ole Devon Pen. Now that it’s been almost three months, I usually recognize someone on the bus or on the street, which is comforting and actually really cool. I never thought I would have friends on the road in Jamaica. I never thought I would be living in Jamaica either, but that’s a whole other story.

Forty-five minutes and a wild bus ride later I reach Devon Pen. Sometimes I’ll visit shut ins before school, or visit lonely mothers busy at work hand washing the family’s clothes, cooking dinner, or coming back from “the bush” where they farm most of their food. This certainly is a matriarchal society. I spend time, chatting and learning about their lives, the happy and sad, the triumphs and struggles. Sometimes I learn to cook a Jamaican dish, sometimes I make my favorite juice from a Sorrel flower, or sometimes I help make chocolate, a process that includes roasting, peeling and mashing the bean. I have learned to appreciate how “the time” is what matters. Being there, spending time, allowing them to teach me, is what ensures their dignity of both of us, together, as friends.

The school children are the most beautiful children I have ever seen (except for Leigh-Leigh and Michaela, Collin and Keira of course haha). As I walk up the school yard, the children run full speed towards me, racing to be the first to latch their skinny arms around my waist. I catch myself smile and laugh…can it get much better than this? As they near, I brace myself, because once one fastens himself to my waist, they will all be seconds behind, arms wide, as they form a giant circle of children, each holding the person in front of them to create a giant skirt of children ascending from my waist. After much teetering and near falls, they begin to break away, awaiting for individual hugs, and leaving remnants of their snacks left on their face all over my shirt. If I wasn’t profusely sweating before this, I certainly am now.

The fact that these children learn at the schools is a miracle. Some of the kids are so bright, and excel through their natural tendency to absorb knowledge quickly. Others are drastically left behind, a poor reality in schools of poverty, where they are understaffed, under-resourced, and overall discouraged. More times than not, the kids aren’t given the benefit of the doubt, are too soon beaten than understood, and bullied by other school children in a culture where it is not uncommon to hit your neighbor as a way to play. I am not there to change any of these things, as much as it hurts me to witness, and although I see a different way of conducting class, I am fresh and in many ways, ignorant eyes to issues that are centuries old and cultures away. I try to encourage the kids with hugs, affirmations, and explanations. I try to focus on love and praise them as a way of positive reinforcement, but for all of their lives they have learned to react to punishment. At the end of the day, I am exhausted, confused, and overwhelmed.

I try to wake every morning, with the sun shining brightly in my eyes, approaching the day as a new day, with a renewed energy. I try to see God in my daily activities, whether it is a mother bathing her infant in the river or a patient and loving pre-school teacher who treats the children as her own. I struggle daily and even hourly at times in processing poverty, crime, and how God’s grace fits into all of this. But then I remember a prayer written by Richard at Sunday School a few weeks ago. He is a ten year old boy being raised by his grandmother and very sick grandfather.

“Please pray for my mother and father and grandmother and sick grandfather. Please keep them safe and healthy because I love them very much. And please help me to be the man you want me to be.”

A ten year old is asking God to help him “Be the man He wants him to be.” He is a beautiful soul in this country, raised by a beautiful family, and that is what keeps me going. The children. That is why I am here.