CCCD in Mandeville

We're here in Mandeville, up in the mountains and enjoying the much cooler weather and fantastic breeze with sunshine! today we are taking our first day off since arriving - although in the end it only gets to be a partial day off - we need to meet with one of the primary Deaf Christian leaders (and the son-in-law of the director here at Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf (CCCD), and may try to get together with more Deaf workers after their church service here at 6:30. Some thoughts today:

• My (Liz's) dad has been having heart problems again and is back in the hospital today to perhaps put another stint in. Please pray for his healing and success of the procedure
• We're staying at the CCCD campus, here in Mandeville. They have their own complex, and it's a residential deaf school - so the majority of the students actually live here. Many of the teachers and staff do, as well. The staff has been very welcoming to us and we are very appreciative.
  
• We were going to take a bus here but our taxi driver that we'd been using strongly advised it against us. He said it wasn't about the money, but he really wanted us to be safe and leave with a good taste of Jamaica and was worried that if we took the bus (which we'd have to wait for until it was full, and is located on the edge of the ghetto) we wouldn't have a good experience. So, he offered to take us for the same price that CCCD staff said they could do it for (but not until later in the week). We arrived in about 2.5 hours from Kingston.
• Mandeville is the richest town in Jamaica - and it shows. The houses here are monstrous. We're told that many Jamaicans that have lived abroad will return to retire here. Even some English will decide to come and live here. It's rich, but not entirely safe. We were told to make sure our doors and windows were locked as there have been some thefts here, and even a couple of rape incidents. Rape seems to be a serious serious problem here in Jamaica.
• Upon arrival, we've found that there are 10 Deaf staff members here. Some teachers, teacher's assistants, cooks, maintenance crew. They've been very welcoming and from 5-10:30 we were talking with them non-stop. And two agreed to give us a wordlist. One of the guys who did this grew up in the nearby St. Elisabeth parish, in the area of Top Hill. Top Hill is an area where there is a high percentage of generationally deaf people that have developed their own sign language - called "Country Sign". Most of these people work as farmers. Unfortunately (for linguists, although the country deaf people don't seem to care), Country Sign is dying because only older people speak it, and the younger people that learned are also learning JSL and more likely to use that.
  
• There's a work crew here at CCCD from the US - college students from Indiana on a short-term mission trip for their spring break. We're told that lots of work crews come, very few of whom know sign language. They begin to learn while they're here though. Deaf staff say it's a good thing because they spread the word about the need to support deaf students here, at $25/month so that they can attend school. Without this support, many of these kids wouldn't have this educational opportunity.
• There's an old tree that we had a "jamaican bbq" at last night - our Deaf friend said he guesses it's over 250 years old. It's full and a great climbing tree, but half of it was destroyed during a recent hurricane. Still, an awesome natural site. At this bbq, we wrapped bread around a stick and roasted it over the fire like you would a hot dog or marshmallow. What a great idea! Warm bread - yum. We didn't have our camera with us, but I hope we can make it down there later to take a picture of the great old tree.
• We're moving along faster then we thought and may get to have an extra couple days at the end to enjoy Jamaican beaches, or to go to more towns with Deaf people and collect more data than we had initially anticipated. What would you say we should do? :)