Thursday, July 5 – It was moving day! At least we thought… our plan for the day was to help the young ladies at Mary’s Child move in to their new home. This is why we were astonished to see so many alluring women with sashes waiting outside Mary’s Center. As I looked at my teammates, Omar and Reone’ for a short-lived laugh, we were wondering what was going to happen today. As it turned out, the organization Miss Jamaica East Side was doing a visit at the home today with their 21 finalists. It is a part of their program to do service and community outreach. As we have learned to do in Jamaica, we just went with it.
As we set up chairs – not only for ourselves, but also for the beauty pageant contestants and the students of Mary’s Child – it was as awkward as imagined. We were trying not to look at the women, so we ended up just looking at the ground. As we sat down in a circle, we all began to share stories. It quickly became emotional for the beauty pageant 
contestants. They were sharing stories of their difficult childhoods and words of wisdom to never stop trying. To me it seemed a little like they were each trying to out-do the other person’s stories, so I ended up listening to 2 hours of them repeating the same thing in different ways. After the crying stopped, they put the Mary’s Child moms in fancy dresses, taught them how to answer questions, and hosted a fake beauty pageant. As you can probably tell, this wasn’t the highlight of my day, or the trip. However, although it didn’t impact me as well as maybe it should have, I saw that many of my LearnServe family members were deeply impacted by what was said.
We left the home at lunch to go to the tourist/artisans market downtown. On the way Omar and I sat on the bus watching TV shows and waiting to spend our money (at least I was). We finally got to our destination, and as soon as we walked in people started screaming, begging, and pleading at us to go into their stores. “Come take a look!” “See what you like!” “I have discounts!” Another Paul student, Jerome, was walking behind me looking at the same items, trying to bargain for the right price. The lady was NOT budging so we ended up leaving, much to her disappointment. Time flew by as we walked around the different vendors. Although at first nothing peaked my interest, I eventually did end up buying a lot, including a painting of a Caribbean island that was actually pretty nice.
Jamaica has shown me that not everything is what you hear or expect. You need to go see for yourself to understand what’s really going on. I was told Jamaica was a paradise, and that I wouldn’t worry at all on the trip because it would be so fun. But since I’ve been here, I’ve seen the real Jamaica and the real culture, and it’s more complicated. After living in Kingston, the heart of Jamaica, for almost two weeks, I have experienced things that used to scare me. This trip has been kind of hard for me because I am not used to being away from my family for more than maybe 5 days; I can’t wait to get back to my mom. I’m also not used to being my own person and doing things for myself. But overall it’s been a good experience, and I’ve learned a lot.
Rahlek M., Paul Public Charter School