Jamaica 2013, Day 13 – Building a Pond and The God Of Spatula

July 6, 2013.     Hey, Hey, Hey! Yes it is true- two more days and we’ll be on our way back home.

I could say that we all had one heck of a sleeping experience last night. In our entire stay in Jamaica, other than when we were out and about, we never really had to worry about insects bothering us (host homes in the Blue Mountain or the Bennett’s). It was a little different at Source Farm…. They were everywhere! Mahlet stayed up almost the whole night killing bugs we’ve never even seen before. Some of the girls were terrified so she sacrificed sleep to help them. We adapted though. We had no choice.

We stayed in the school which they converted into a large dorm-style room for us. The design of the building was really unique. I also found it very cool that this building was designed in such way that rain water would gather in two gutters and empty into the pond that we are about to finish building. That’s so economical!

There has been a drastic change in our communication skills compared to how we worked at Allman Hill Primary while building the tire playground. We were in sync the entire time, no one was complaining, and we got the job done a lot faster than we expected. I was very pleased with the results. Never a day in my life did I ever think I would be building a pond from scratch, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. I’m just happy that I was able to contribute to the revolutionary things being done at The Source Farm.

Let me get started on “Concrete’s” cooking. This guy is like the Food Guru or like the God of the spatula. There’s nothing that Concrete can’t make. Concrete made us his famous oven-baked pizza (it was FROM SCRATCH not from the freezer section at Safeway!). It was yummy in my tummy I tell you. There was cheese pizza with FRESH vegetables on it and there was the basil pizza. If I could choose which one was better, I would, BUT I CAN’T. They were both awesome!

Today I learned that it’s not good to judge people. Sometimes you can expect someone to be a bad person, but then find out that you misjudged them. You can also have very high expectations for an individual just to be disappointed. People are all carved and shaped in their own way. It can take you an entire lifetime to understand how other people process things and the way they react to situations. Life doesn’t have a guide book, so you just have to see what comes your way and act wisely upon it.

This brings me to my two most important words of this trip so far: TOLERANCE and PERSEVERANCE. If you are working as a team then you MUST learn to swallow your anger and work with others. Everything will not go your way. People are meant to have different opinions and how you deliver yours is up to you. You must learn how to express your opinion in a manner that will not make other people feel like their opinion is incorrect.  You should express your opinion in a respectable manner, and you must listen to others before you speak. No matter how angry you get, you have to build a tolerance level and not let the littlest of things get to you. No one likes people who bring negative vibes into a circle and adversely impacts the group.  You must persevere and work through certain things and most importantly you have to keep a positive attitude.

Deuces!

Atem T., Central High School