Day 11 - Tuesday July 14

On Tuesday the 14th of July we did not go to the Old England primary school as usual, but we drove to the house of an old man called Samuel. He lived in a small house made up of three rooms: the kitchen, his bedroom and his living room. His house looked a little dull and it was a mess inside his house... There was trash everywhere; he had no ceiling; there was a thick layer of dirt on his floor; there were clothes all over the place; and the cockroaches came from everywhere, yuck! His house could definitely use a make-over, which was exactly what we were going to do! We had brought some yellow and blue paint, paint brushes and rollers, and some wooden boards for the ceiling. While Mr. Walker started working on the ceiling inside with the help of some of the guys, the others started outside painting his house yellow. I thought it was really cool to see how well we all worked together and managed to paint the entire outside of his house in less than two hours! (And not only the house itself, but ourselves too hahaha) It looked so much better and much more inviting after a coat of yellow paint. We then washed of the brushes so that we could use them for the next project.... We were going to paint his bedroom blue! This time however, we had to be a little bit more careful. We had nothing to cover the floor up with so we had to be really careful not to spill any paint on the floor or on his furniture. His room was only 2,5 by 2,5 meters so with the eight of us painting his room, we finished in only a few minutes. By that time, Mr. Walker had finished the ceiling and we could start painting the kitchen blue as well. While the boys finished painting the kitchen, the girls cleaned up uncle Samuel's bedroom. I was absolutely amazed by the transformation of this room, it looked way more cozy and it really looked like a bedroom and not a storage room anymore. As soon as we had finished, we got back into the kitchen to help the boys with the last bits of painting. We then found out that it was not such a good idea to leave the guys painting on their own. They had spilled paint all over the floor, and had walked through the paint leaving nice footprints all over the place (hahaha). So after we finished the painting work, we had to rub the whole floor and we cleaned up his kitchen as well, rearranged his stove and cleaned out all the trash. His house now really felt like a home and the smile on uncle Samuel's face was absolutely priceless. He thanked us by saying a praying straight from his heart and he shook us all the hand. We packed up our stuff and drove back to the Projects Abroad office where (still covered in paint) we attended the Patois and Culture class. We learned some basic Patois words and practised some Jamaican greetings and phrases. After a little pronunciation competition, we went on to the culture part of this class. We learned some more about the Jamaican fruits and about the different ways in which they are consumed and can be used. We also got to taste some Jamaican fruits and pastries made from them. Lastly, we got some coconut milk (which I personally did not really like), before we went to the taxis to drive home to our host families. Unika had made some noodles with chicken, yams and dumpling that evening. While we ate our dinner, we discussed what we would be doing that weekend. Since Projects Abroad had not planned anything for us for that weekend, Unika really wanted to take us somewhere before we would be returning home. We decided that we wanted to go to Dolphin Cove and the beach, but we still had to find transport (since Unika did not have a car herself) so we would get back on that. It was already getting late by then, so I took a shower and crawled into my bed.

#Buildingoutreach #painting #cleaning #UncleSamuel #PatoisCultureclass