04-08-2012: St. Thomas There and Back

This is a brief story about my mango picking trip. On Saturday evening my host mom, Lurline and her friend, (we’ll call her Sue for fun) decided to go to St. Thomas to pick East Indian mangoes and they invited me to come along for the trip. 

We left on Sunday morning about 9:30 am for St. Thomas. Being new to the area I assumed either Lurline or Sue would know how to get from St. Andrew to St. Thomas. I soon realized that this was a false assumption as we proceeded to get lost in Kingston. Finally, after much driving around and asking for directions, we made it out of Kingston and on our way to the parish of St. Thomas.

Lurline then asked Sue if she knew where in St. Thomas we were going to pick the mangoes. Sue simply responded, “By the school.”  Now mind you every wide spot in the road has a school and this woman didn’t know which school it was or which town this school was in.  We came upon a small town and asked a local if there were any East Indian mango trees around with ripe mangoes and he pointed up the road. We followed his directions and found a mango farm with a man harvesting mangoes for export to the USA and Canada. Lurline negotiated a price with him and we proceeded to pick some mangoes. The farm had two types of mangoes: East Indian and Julie. The Julie mango is what is most commonly found at the supermarket back in the states.  The man was very kind and allowed us to try the mangoes and explained the differences between them.

Since the ones we bought were a little green, we proceeded to drive around some more looking for super ripe mangoes. After much contemplation my host mom, Lurline, decides to try to find her pastors house. This involved more driving along the back roads of St. Thomas. We finally found the pastors house but he was gone. So we backed tracked to a neighbor’s house and bought some East Indian mangoes from him. He was also very nice and gave us some Common mangoes and Black mangoes for free. I will say that out of all the varieties of mangoes I’ve tried thus far the Black mango is my favorite.

The return trip was pretty uneventful until we reached Kingston. Now for all of my family that doesn’t know anything about Kingston just imagine a poorly designed Los Angles in a third world country.  When we arrived in Kingston Lurline was asleep in the back seat of the car and Sue (who was from Montego Bay, the complete opposite side of the island from Kingston) was driving. I noticed we had past the road we took when we left Kingston that morning and asked Sue if we needed turn around to take that road to get home. She said she didn’t know. Luckily at this point Lurline woke up and was telling Sue to turn around but Sue proceeded to ignore the request.

Needless to say we ended up in the slums/shanty town/ squatter settlement area of Kingston. Now you can imagine the looks we got. Two older black women and me, the only white guy around, on this street so narrow one car could barely fit. The slums of Kingston are a sight I will never forget. The houses made out 4 pieces of roofing metal. No water.  No power. Definitely NO bathroom. The stench was unreal in spots. Luckily a few turns later we found a main street and proceeded home to Woodford (about 30 minutes north of Kingston) amazingly unscathed and no worse for wear. It was a very eventful day and I can say that I definitely won’t be travelling anywhere with Miss Sue driving ever again.

~Tom

Oops I got a boo boo. (Insert very sad face here.)

So...after going the past 5 years without comprehensive medical insurance and not getting sick or injured in any way...I went and ruptured my Achilles tendon on March 30th. Technically we were playing soccer but I was actually down at the other end of the field standing still all by myself awaiting a pass (which I totally would have dribbled in for a goal) when I pushed off to run and ka pow! I snapped my Achilles.

Yes, it was extremely painful.

No, none of us heard the tell tale "POP".

After this I  remained in Jamaica until April 5th when I was flown to DC on "medevac". I had surgery Friday, April 6th and am currently here in DC until who knows when. I had a follow up appt Wed. April 18th with my orthopedist, Dr. Lutton, to remove the cast that was put on in the hospital and place me in a hard cast. I have another doctors appt on Wed. April 25th where they will remove the hard cast and my sutures and place me in final hard cast until around May 3rd. At that time I will begin physical therapy and be placed in a walking boot for hopefully only two weeks taking us to May 18th (our swearing in date). Physical therapy should last for around 4 weeks total.  The first 2, while I'm in the walking boot and hopefully the last 2 can be done on my own doing exercises at home (hopefully at home in Jamaica!).

However, everything remains uncertain because each person heals differently. Furthermore, medevac only lasts 45 days from when you arrive in DC so that is May 20th and the official end of my physical therapy would be around June 1st if all goes well. So this would mean that I may get "Medically Separated" from PC and be sent back to my home of record, which is either Missoula or Absarokee....Tom and I can't remember what we put on the form. From here I would have to be re-instated as a trainee to depart for Jamaica once the Office of Medical Services (OMS) has declared me physically sound for return.

Frankly its all a big mess and I am having digestive issues and extreme teeth grinding because of the stress. Tom is still in Jamaica and will continue with training and be sworn in with the rest of the group which hopefully bodes well for my swift return but really no one can tell. It all depends on my healing and how my Country Director and her staff feel about my missing 6 out of 9 weeks of training. I have been keeping up on training in my own time but its easily recognized that it is not the same as being in country so we'll shall have to wait and see what comes of all of this.

I am of course doing everything I can to advocate for myself and know that my Program Manager, Dan, is doing the same on my behalf. (He really is an awesome guy! I feel like we really lucked out with our training team, Dan and Anika! Kudos to them!) But all in all, we will just have to see how my recovery goes and try to stay positive that I will return to Jamaica when the time is right.


First cast from when I returned from the George Washington University Hospital

Second cast put on Wed. April 18th, slated to come off April 25th when they remove my sutures.


~Chelsea

Next up...a synopsis of Tom's recent trip to St. Thomas in search of some delicious mangoes!

Technical Difficulties

Well it appears we have been having some technical difficulties in viewing our blog. I have attempted to address the problem and hope it is now fixed. However in that process I was forced to remove a previous post entitled The Beginning. I am hoping to have Tom email it to me and re-post it as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and continued viewership.

~Chelsea