Jamaica

Jamaica

On February 5^th I looked into Jamaica. I didn’t look into it the way I usually do, by looking up a ton of things on Wikipedia. I woke up to Bob Marley, and then like Usian Bolt (in extreme slow motion), I got in a run. At then end  of the day I actually went and saw my friend Tevita who is from Jamaica.

Conversation:

I hadn’t seen this friend in a few years, so I was really excited about seeing her.

While I was at her place we discussed Jamaican home life, and how the elderly live with the family. Tevita told me that prior to moving to the U.S, she thought it was awful that American’s put there elderly family into homes. She had thought that the homes would be cramped and lonely. While many of them are, she has decided that enough of them are much better then what she had expected.

Keeping the elderly at the house is really based on the fact that in Jamaica someone is always home to look after people. In the U.S. this is not the case. Once a person here is no longer able to take care of themselves, there is no one home. Many cases, everyone is working or going to school at the same time of day.

Many people of different cultures do look unfavorably at nursing homes and assisted living. What a lot of people o not realize is that assisted living is often a either a chose by the person staying there or a last resort after the family discovers that they cannot handle the individual on there own.

I have to admit, very few of my family has been in assisted living. I have 90 year old grandmother still living on her own, a step great grand mother in her 90’s living on her own who often helps her “elderly” neighbors (who are younger then her). My maternal grandmother, who couldn’t take care of herself even had been living in her own home up until her death. My mom had reverse mortgaged her house to pay for a live in maid. The one exception to this lack of assisted living is my Grampa (Paternal Grandmother’s second husband). This had been a tough decision. My grandmother and grandfather had been living with each other, but my grandmother decided she just couldn’t take care of him by herself, even with family just up the road from her.

Food:

Tevita made a fantastic dinner: which included boiled corn, boiled sweet potato, boiled plantains, jerk chicken, and mackerel. She also made these dumplings. I had told her that I really like the dumplings. Her reply was that a Jamaican would never admit to liking those, because it is just filler. It would be like telling someone how much you like plain rice. The entire meal was impressive. She must have spent a long time making it.

She had also made fresh fruit juice. She explained to me that most people make there own juice. This was also incredible. When I got home I opened a bottle of Red Stripe, “Jamaican for Beer”, which unlike Tevita’s drink, was awful.

Movie:

Jamaica is known for its runners, like Usian Bolt. It rarely makes an appearance in the winter Olympics. One of my favorite movies about Jamaica is “Cool Runnings”. This movie is about the Jamiacan bobsled team, and is loosely based on the team that went to the Olympics in 1988. The movie is a comedy staring John Candy as the teams coach. The team must overcome discrimination and overturn disqualifications in order to compete, and though they do not medal they feel accomplished just by the fact that they were able to compete.

Olympics:

This year, the Jamaican bobsled team is back at the winter Olympics for the first time since 2002. This year they found themselves short the funding that they needed to make it to the game, so the team went web pandering, and were able to raise times the minimum amount they would need to go.

They are not favorites to win, but they are there, and they hope to stun the world by winning a medal.

Work Cited:

“Bobsled Team Winning Would Make Great Story, But They Face Uphill Battle In Sochi”.  NESN. Published: February 14, 2014. http://nesn.com/2014/02/jamaican-bobsled-team-winning-would-make-great-story-but-they-face-uphill-battle-in-sochi/ Retrieved: February 15, 2014.

Turteltaub, Jon. “Cool Runnings”. Disney. Released: 1 October 1993