LearnServe Jamaica 2018, Day 7: From the Farm to the Kitchen

Today we woke up with a long day ahead of us at E.I.T.S. To start off our day we had an authentic Jamaican breakfast that consisted of callaloo, ackee, and dumplings. After breakfast we went straight to work on the farm. When first seeing the location of the farm I was really shocked, because I had expectations of it being like a typical farm back in America. But my expectations were way off.

Since we are in the Blue Mountains everything is on a slope. When we got to the farm it was a downhill and uphill battle. The steps to get down to the farming bed were difficult to walk down, and I was scared. There were a couple of times where I almost slid down the steps because they were so steep. Before working we got separated into groups. The boys had to go down by the stream to build a pathway, while the girls had to stay on the farm to plant seeds. Planting seeds may sound easy, but it took a lot of hard work. The girls had to dig little holes in the ground and place each of the seedlings individually in the holes we made. We planted over 200. Also, it was extremely hot, which made us exhausted quickly. At first, the boys were nowhere to be found. Then they quickly re-appeared and told us that the task they were given (to build a path to a river) was rough as well because most of them fell in the river.

Doing the morning work, I kinda felt like giving up. I wasn’t feeling too great and was exhausted from the sun. I left the farm with Sydney and asked our host Robyn if there was any indoor work that could be done around E.I.T.S. for the remaining time before lunch. Our original plan for lunch was to eat by the river, but this quickly changed after the boys came back and said that the river wasn’t a good lunch spot. This is one of the biggest things I’ve learned from Jamaica. I need to be able to adjust to things quickly because everything is fluid here and sudden changes happen. For lunch we ate beef and chicken patties with coco bread in the common area of E.I.T.S. and they were amazing. While enjoying our lunch, I took this time to relax and prepare myself to go back to working on the farm for another two hours. I wasn’t expecting the farmwork to be so hard, so I had to really prepare myself to go again. When lunch time ended we went straight back to the farm to continue to plant seedlings, this time Kale.

This time around I felt much more comfortable working. I had nice conversations with my teammates Abby, Omar, and Ms. Randee, and the weather was much cooler than earlier because there was a nice breeze and a slight rainfall. After working I felt like I redeemed myself in a way because I continued to work and plant all the seedlings in my tray with the help of my team. To kill some time before dinner, we played a couple rounds of mafia and then cleaned up. We had a small meeting as a group to give Robyn a thank you note for hosting us at E.I.T.S. For dinner we had a chicken stew and rasta pasta with a really wonderful dessert (rum cake and banana crepes). After today I really learned how much work it takes for E.I.T.S. to bring food from their farm to the kitchen. It is a long process, and it makes me appreciate food more.

Overall being in Jamaica has made me realize how being uncomfortable is the new comfortable (kind of like what Abby said in one of the previous blogs). I didn’t expect the living spaces to be so different. I was not used to not having AC and being surrounded by bugs. But I am glad to experience how other people live differently than I do because it makes me have an even more open mind to the world.

Ilianna G., Benjamin Banneker Academic High School

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