My Stupid Day

A sample of daily Jamaican logistics and their inane complications. Most mornings I travel downtown to their National Library but today I need to finish and email an application to the history department back in MN. Should take an hour or two. This task requires a computer, internet connection, and a desk. Simple right?

Problem: my apartment has a computer and internet, but no desk. Or at least no desk you can actually sit in (see pic.) Not ideal for extended office work. When our apartment was advertised as coming with "2 desks," I had more in mind. Also, you can't buy used chairs in Jamaica (people are too poor to throw furniture away), and the local general store sells new chairs (lo-grade Chinese office diddies) for about $100 US. Too much. Solution: leave my apartment for campus, where the library has comfy chairs and desks galore.

It's about a 20 minute walk to campus, however recently we've been told not to do that if you're carrying a laptop, which I do. Lately thugs from neighboring August Town have been roving into the area, targeting students. During the day they usually don't risk bothering people in the open, but if they see a laptop bag and think they can net a big score...

So you take a cab. Today I was lucky because my upstairs neighbor Satchi was headed to campus. She's a student there, owns a car, said I could catch a ride if I waited until around noon when she left. Score. So in the morning I read part of an archival manifest and did laundry. We have a washing machine but there's a drought here so usually there's no running water (subject of future post). Instead, we have a big cistern which you use to bail buckets, filling the machine by hand. You have to do this at the beginning of the wash, and again for the rinse cycle. Then you hang it out to dry. It's relatively labor intensive. Shortly after I finished hanging the wash, it began to pour.

So Satchi came by and said we should wait until the storm was over, as she didn't want to drive in the rain. Fair enough -- it was coming down in sheets and the streets were underwater. As a typical tropical storm, we expected it to last for ten minutes. It lasted an hour.

Finally around 1pm we left for school. I was starving because I didn't have much food in the house and planned on eating at campus, thinking I would get there long before 1. When I arrived all of the food places were packed. Since it began raining right at noon, my guess is the hungry campus lunch crowd hid in their classrooms and dorms during the storm, coming out en masse right when we arrived. First place I went had a 20-min line. Second place had a 20-min line. I finally ended up at the school cafeteria which only had a 5-min line -- cuz they serve school food.

After that it was near 2pm. To enter the library you have to check your bag, meaning once inside you have to carry your laptop, books,notebooks, power cord, etc. with you by hand. They can't afford an electronic alarm system and don't want people to steal books, hence the bag check. I have a library card, but because I'm a foreigner I have to show my MN state ID and complete a logbook entry every time I enter. Then I found a big comfy desk upstairs to set up shop.

90 minutes later I had finished my revisions. Ready for email. The library has wireless, but you need an account to log on. That account is different from the account you use to enter the library. I have the second, not the first.

Not to worry, the library has a computer lab, with internet. I load my files on a flashdrive and shutdown the laptop. The lab has about 50 computers. Typically about 40 are full, 8 are broken, and if you're lucky there's a couple available. This time, the last remaining computer was missing a track-ball in its mouse. So I find another broken workstation (the second one had a bad monitor) pull that mouses' track-ball, bring it over to the first station, and log in. It takes about 15 min for the computer to recognize me as the school network is overloaded because the majority of the students in the lab are not working on papers, but rather streaming videos or playing computer games, jamming the bandwith. While I wait, I watch the kid next to me play Grand Theft Auto. He's pretty good and shows me some secrets I didn't know.

After plugging in my flashdrive and uploading the grant materials onto my email, I realize there's a third form that I still need from my laptop. So I log off, go back outside, powerup the laptop, transfer the third file to the flashdrive, shutdown, go back to the comp lab, and find a new computer.

Grant application submitted! Still, I didn't sign the application form ... can't via email. I send my dept an email asking if this will be a problem. Probably ... we'll see. Anywhat, now it's almost 5PM and I'm ready to actually start doing research for the day. There's a UWI dissertation from 1995 housed here on eighteenth-century sugar plantation management techniques and I want to look at it. It's in the "special collections" room, which is where they hold their rare materials. It's a small reading room with super cold air conditioning (which can be good or bad, depending on circumstances). After filling out more forms and submitting my card and Minnesota ID again, they give me the book.

A half hour later, I have to pee. All of the bathrooms are permanently closed in the library because of the drought (despite the earlier downpour). So I check the book back in, take my books, notebooks,laptop, etc. out of the library, stand in line to get back my bookbag, put my things in my bag, and walk across campus to the KFC. (Yes, they have a KFC on campus). For some reason the bathroom works there. Then I walk back across campus, stand in line again to return my bookbag to the bag people, get my check card, and go back in the library. Fortunately the same guard woman is working the door as before because I no longer have my card or ID ... the special collections people still have them from when I checked out the dissertation! She lets me in and I go back to work.

Funny thing about KFC: They have both french fries and mashed potatoes, but their meal deal comes with chicken and fries and you cannot sub the potatoes for the fries. You have to order them separately, which would give you fries and potatoes and who wants that. In Barbados if you asked nicely they'd usually let you do the switch even though they weren't supposed to. But people in Jamaica are less helpful and I've tried a couple times without success. In fact, none of their combos come with mashed potatoes. Nor can you buy pieces of chicken a la carte, thereby creating your own combo of chicken and potatoes ... so you're stuck with fries no matter what you do. Why even make the damn potatoes in the first place? The same is true with their corncobs and delicious biscuits, which are also unreasonably hard to acquire given the logistics of their menu. So people eat fries.

Back at the library now reading the dissertation, and I find a cool chart inside. I take the book to the copy machine, which I discover I can't use because my copy card is out of credit, the machine doesn't take cash, and the cashier who turns cash into copycard credit is gone for the day. None of that matters anyway becuse when the librarian sees me she scornfully states that photocopying out of the dissertation collection is forbidden. Any other book is ok, just not the kind of book I happen to be reading.

Finally it's after 8PM and I call it a day. I check in my book, get back my IDs, exit the library, show my books to the exit guard to show I'm not stealing, get outside, wait in line at the bag claim, give my claim number to the bag man, get my bag, fill it up, and head east to the taxi stand.

The taxis at the east stand are called "robot taxis" which means they're very cheap but only travel along a certain route, like a bus. Usually the taxis drop me off a few blocks away from home and I walk the rest of the way, but I'm worried because it's after dark and I have my laptop on me. Problem.

Solution! Further down the route the taxi goes past the supermarket. I'll stop there, do some grocery shopping, and take a regular cab home. Regular cabs are more expensive but on grocery day you suck that cost up anyways, so this way I'll kill 2 birds with one stone. Plus I know one of the cabbies who stages his business out of this supermarket parking lot. He and I worked out a deal where he picks me up on the mornings I go downtown to the above-mentioned National Library.

When I get to the supermarket it's closed, and my cabbie friend is gone. Now I have to spend for a cab and with no groceries as compensation. On the way home I ask the driver when the supermarket closes. "Nine" he says. "But it's 8:45," I respond. "Yah-mon, a sometime close early, um-hm."

So there it is, a day in the life. Now I'm at home, sitting on my bed (not the metal deskchair!), drinking a Red Stripe and trying to forget about my tension headache as I write this to share with you all. The catharsis and alcohol must be working cuz I'm feeling better. Time for bed -- tomorrow is another day.