St. Joseph Basic School - Cross Keys

To give you a better idea of what my days are like, I'll share yesterday, especially since I took some pictures and videos!

Shaqueel, one of my favorites at St. Joseph Basic School

Kimora

On Fridays I get up at 6 am (I'm going to do a video tour of our apartment next week, I promise!), and get ready for the day. By about 7/7:15 I walk into town, which is about a 10-15 minute walk. Like I've mentioned before, I have to be pretty awake for the walk into town, 'cause there's usually a decent amount of people that are in the mood to talk, even at that early hour. When I get into town I go to the area where the Cross Keys taxis park, and I try to find one that is nearly full so that it will be leaving shortly. There's a high school down in Cross Keys, so I can usually get a taxi with students pretty quickly. Since all Jamaican schools have uniforms, it's easy to spot the Cross Keys High students, as the girls wear pink shirts and grey jumpers. Since I've been going down to Cross Keys for a while now, I'm getting to know a good number of taxi drivers, and look forward to the mornings when I get to ride down there with a familiar face. Mom, Grandma, and Grammy may want to stop reading now, but the taxi ride is pretty interesting. We usually sit with one or two people in the passenger seat and then four or five people in the back seat, not counting any kids under age 10 who can be crammed in anywhere. There is occasionally a seatbelt in the passenger's seat, but they aren't always functioning properly. Some of the cars are in good shape, but some look like they have been built by putting together the parts of about 10 different cars, so those can be interesting. I also like the ones that have a trick for every car function, whether it be putting the window up, opening the door, or even shifting. You never know what you're going to get with these cars. This particular Friday, the taxi driver only put 4 of us in the car, which was surprising, but then he told us he was going to have to drive into the "bush" to pick someone else up on the way. We all told him that was fine, but then when he pulled off the road we ended up taking a 15 minute detour down hilly dirt roads that we realized at the end was solely to avoid a police roadblock/inspection that was set up on the section we missed. (The police set up roadblocks all the time where they stop cars at random to inspect their paperwork and various other things). Anyway, after avoiding the police we made it to Cross Keys smoothly, even if the drive had taken about 40 minutes, rather than the usual 25.

Some of the taxis will drive me to the school, but others just drop me off at "Cross Keys," the intersection of two roads that constitutes the rural district known as Cross Keys and earns it a place on the map. I like being dropped at Cross Keys cause I walk down to the school with some of the parents and students or run into people that I know and get to say hello. I usually aim to be at school by 8, because that's when the kids start arriving. We hang out and play until 8:30 when devotion starts. All Jamaican schools do devotion, whether they are public or private. At St. Joseph it consists of all of the classes gathering together outside and singing 2 or 3 "lively choruses," which are songs with lyrics like "Jesus' love is a bubbling over, Jesus' love is a bubbling over, bubble bubble bubble bubble bubbling over, Jesus' love is a bubbling over." The students then sing the Jamaican National Anthem, recite the Jamaican pledge, and then recite different psalms and sayings about education and manners. After all of this, which takes almost half an hour some days, the school day begins. On Friday I found out that one of the teachers wasn't there, so I ended up with the class of three year olds that I'm usually with on my own! We had a great time. I taught some geometry (the triangle), and sang and danced as much as I could to keep 20 three year olds  under control as best I could. (I know what you're thinking - my singing and dancing skills probably made them want to leave, but it worked!) Anyway, it was a tiring day, and it gave me a lot more respect for those teachers who handle that many students of that age on their own every day.

School ends early on Fridays (1pm), so usually I would try to visit some people in the area to say hello, but on this particular Friday I had to get back up to Mandeville to get to the bank since I'm in charge of the finances for us here in Jamaica. It's not my favorite job, especially since banks here are a lot less efficient than at home. (Open 8:30-2 M-Th and 8:30-4 on Friday; no online banking; 15-45 minute wait in the line for a teller, etc.)

Anyway, I took a couple of videos at school, and I put them together into one, so here it is. These are some of my favorite students, and they will introduce themselves in the video. The part at the end where I am repeatedly calling Shawndee's name is a little thing he does every single day I'm there where I say his name and he immediately says "don't call me" or "no call pon me" over and over. I know I probably shouldn't have favorites, but he and Shaqueel are definitely up there on the list!