jamaica
Jamaica is a fierce, passionate, live from your gut country. In 2006, I spent seven months as a volunteer coordinator in a mountain village where the only running water was the river and the primary mode of transportation was walking up and down the steep mountain roads.
I can still feel the bass from the two story tall speakers at the block parties in my chest. I will never find a better jerk chicken and rice and peas than the kind Madge made.
It was somewhere between chaperoning groups of students between their resort day trips and classes to teach toddlers how to wash their hands that I began to question the sustainability of voluntourism.
It was also the first time I would feel so acutely (contextually) Other. I struggled with the endless catcalls and objectification on the one hand, and my privilege of being a relatively naive white girl from America on the other. I was simultaneously humbled, ashamed and more alive than I’d ever been in my life.
My experience in Kyrgyzstan shook me. Jamaica woke me up.
