Jamaica - no rest mon.
Lysol! Clean yes - Germ no.
Jamaica was not a vacation - I just want everyone to hear that. Yes, I visited a beach a couple times and yes, it was sunny for most of the days but vacation? Nope. Did I love it? Of course!
The first day we got there we took a look at the house that we were going to be using for the clinic and drove up to Freehill where the building team was going to be working. The backroads are horrible in Jamaica. We're talking hairpin turns and blind corners every 60 or 70 feet and they aren't maintains. At any point you will have hill on one side and a "cliff" on the other (it's in quotations because the vegetation is so thick you can't actually see the end of the cliff). A few miles can take up to 30 or 40 miles to drive. But if it's a clear day - you can see for miles. The picture on the right is half way up to Freehill looking down at St. Ann's Bay. On this particular day - we drove up to take pictures of the church/school that was to be worked on. It was very rainy and ridiculously humid.
The hill country in Jamaica is poorer for the most part than the coastal towns. This is mostly due to the amount of money that comes through the coast because of the tourism. The hill country has a severe difference between the rich and the poor that is more visually evident. The picture to the right is really foggy but almost in the middle is a little shack. It's about 5x5". The walls and roof are corrugated steel. And there's tons of them around. Some don't even have the steel. They just have tarps. I think of the tarp lean-tos that my outdoor kids build here at Evergreen. They would be luxury compared to what some people live in there.
We didn't stay long in Freehill because we needed to check out our digs in St. Ann's. The house was awesome. I mean - the house was AMAZING. In previous years we've run the dental clinic in some pretty cramped, pretty less-than-ideal places. This house was super (and it had a big mango tree in the front courtyard!). The room to the right will become the space where the dentists and hygienists will work.
It looks good there but whoa man. Before we got it looking like it did on the right - we had to move the chairs from behind a false wall where they had sat for FOUR years. Four years of nasty cockroaches and humidity (mould) and vermin and everything else you could possibly think of stacking up. For three days all I did was bleach bleach bleach. And then washed them and then bleached them. We had to borrow a really rusty old "dolly" from one of the auto shops around the corner to move the chairs because they weigh hundreds of pounds. Apparently dental chairs aren't designed to be moved around like that. Yeah - it's true. Oh, and yes - that is a beach chair. And yes - one of our hygienists used it all week. We were Red Greening it by the end of the week. I really REALLY wished I had taken pictures of the chairs when we pulled them out but I just wanted to get all of the poop and mould off of them that I didn't even think of it. Each night I was stuffed up and taking anti-histamines because of the spores. YUM! But hey - those chairs are key to the clinic running well. I think the worst part was sitting inside sweating while I was cleaning watching the beautiful sunshine outside. But the sun was not why we were there.
I think I'll put the truck in park for now. I think I'll give y'all a lesson in Patwa tomorrow. Have an irie day!
Jamaica was not a vacation - I just want everyone to hear that. Yes, I visited a beach a couple times and yes, it was sunny for most of the days but vacation? Nope. Did I love it? Of course!
The first day we got there we took a look at the house that we were going to be using for the clinic and drove up to Freehill where the building team was going to be working. The backroads are horrible in Jamaica. We're talking hairpin turns and blind corners every 60 or 70 feet and they aren't maintains. At any point you will have hill on one side and a "cliff" on the other (it's in quotations because the vegetation is so thick you can't actually see the end of the cliff). A few miles can take up to 30 or 40 miles to drive. But if it's a clear day - you can see for miles. The picture on the right is half way up to Freehill looking down at St. Ann's Bay. On this particular day - we drove up to take pictures of the church/school that was to be worked on. It was very rainy and ridiculously humid.
The hill country in Jamaica is poorer for the most part than the coastal towns. This is mostly due to the amount of money that comes through the coast because of the tourism. The hill country has a severe difference between the rich and the poor that is more visually evident. The picture to the right is really foggy but almost in the middle is a little shack. It's about 5x5". The walls and roof are corrugated steel. And there's tons of them around. Some don't even have the steel. They just have tarps. I think of the tarp lean-tos that my outdoor kids build here at Evergreen. They would be luxury compared to what some people live in there.
We didn't stay long in Freehill because we needed to check out our digs in St. Ann's. The house was awesome. I mean - the house was AMAZING. In previous years we've run the dental clinic in some pretty cramped, pretty less-than-ideal places. This house was super (and it had a big mango tree in the front courtyard!). The room to the right will become the space where the dentists and hygienists will work.
It looks good there but whoa man. Before we got it looking like it did on the right - we had to move the chairs from behind a false wall where they had sat for FOUR years. Four years of nasty cockroaches and humidity (mould) and vermin and everything else you could possibly think of stacking up. For three days all I did was bleach bleach bleach. And then washed them and then bleached them. We had to borrow a really rusty old "dolly" from one of the auto shops around the corner to move the chairs because they weigh hundreds of pounds. Apparently dental chairs aren't designed to be moved around like that. Yeah - it's true. Oh, and yes - that is a beach chair. And yes - one of our hygienists used it all week. We were Red Greening it by the end of the week. I really REALLY wished I had taken pictures of the chairs when we pulled them out but I just wanted to get all of the poop and mould off of them that I didn't even think of it. Each night I was stuffed up and taking anti-histamines because of the spores. YUM! But hey - those chairs are key to the clinic running well. I think the worst part was sitting inside sweating while I was cleaning watching the beautiful sunshine outside. But the sun was not why we were there.I think I'll put the truck in park for now. I think I'll give y'all a lesson in Patwa tomorrow. Have an irie day!
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