Last Days on the Rock

Well, somehow the six weeks have flown by and I’m leaving Jamaica tomorrow morning. This has been an incredible experience that I won’t soon forget. I must first apologize for my lack of posts recently but I haven’t been connected to the Internet for any significant period of time for the last three weeks! Don’t let that fool you into thinking that not much has been going on, because I’ve been very busy working with the students at the school and making sure things are in a good state for me to leave.

Since my last post, a lot wonderful progress was made. I assembled my crew of five students at Stepney and took them through an intensive training program on how to shoot a documentary. We discussed what a documentary is and why anyone would want to make one, going from general ideas to specific thoughts on what our work should focus on. We also discussed the different phases of production and the different jobs that need to be done to get everything together smoothly and professionally. My crew, who dubbed themselves Five Wise Kids, started off pretty shy, but they were soon throwing ideas out and making decisions on their own, choosing camera angles and setups and arranging interviews without needing much guidance from me.

By the end of the week, on their suggestion and initiative, we drove up to the Bob Marley Mausoleum in Nine Mile, where they interviewed anyone who was willing and able. I cannot express how amazingly professional these guys (with addition of two girls from the school) conducted themselves and the footage of the interviews is the proof. They managed to get three solid interviews without disrupting any tours or personnel at the site, and they did it within the time provided. I can’t explain how impressed I was and I have a few pictures of them in action that show how focused they were on getting the job done right.

Besides this project, I continued my effort to teach staff and students computer basics and the skills they would need to be self-sufficient after I left. For the students this involved taking pictures and recording video with the built-in camera on each laptop, and learning how to use iMovie to rearrange clips into a final film. I also showed them games like Solitaire, FreeCell and Chess to solidify mouse techniques and keyboard commands in a fun way. I taught the staff how to copy CDs and DVDs, how to copy files to an external drive, and how to use PowerPoint.

Stepney is trying very hard to implement and improve their literacy program, literacy being a very big challenge among children in Jamaica. I realized that this project could easily and effectively work in conjunction with their efforts to promote literacy and numeracy (a term they use frequently in schools here, but I find a little unusual) to the students at the school, through the use of literacy-based software. Almost all of the kids are very enthusiastic about using the computers so we could definitely use that to our advantage to teach them basic reading and writing skills.

On their part, they held a Fun Day at the school on June 24th to raise money for their literacy program that was a packed house and even had as a special guest Romaine Virgo, a Stepney alumni that recently won the latest run of Rising Star, a Jamaican take on American Idol. I was enjoying my one week vacation on the beach with my friend Gordon, who took the opportunity of me being down here to visit Jamaica for the first time, so we drove down to Nine Mile to take pictures and record video of the event. In fact, the Five Wise Kids were in attendance and so I gave them the equipment and again they did an amazing job filming the event from different angles without causing any disruption.

Upon my return to the school this week, I attended the Graduation or School Leaving Ceremony (not all of the kids are actually graduating, in the strict sense of the word, but the ceremony is a big deal in the community, often more important than actually ensuring that the kids go to school, unfortunately). I took pictures and recorded the event and got to enjoy seeing everyone dressed up for the big event.

Since then I worked with the crew to get a few more interviews at the school, as well as working on establishing a charter for proper use of the computers and designating two students as representatives for the computers, to work with the teachers to ensure that the computers are well taken care of and there is equal access to everyone. I also did my best to get them to work on setting up one or two days a week where interested students could come to use the computers for an hour or so, not instruction based, just on their own. Hopefully when I follow up I’ll hear more about this from them.

All in all, I would say that this initial leg of the project was a success in introducing the computers and identifying the needs and constraints of establishing a computer presence at Stepney. Personally, the experience has been phenomenal and it will definitely have an impact on my life going forward.

Check back soon to see more photos, plus some video clips from my time here in Jamaica, and, if that weren’t enough, more reflections on my journey and where things will go from here!

I have to give unending thanks to all of those who have helped me during my time in Jamaica, I will be forever grateful! Thanks, as well, to everyone who’s been keeping up with the blog and the photos, and I promise a lot more to come in the coming days and weeks!

Until then, much respect.