Ginger Hill

On Wednesday of last week Jermaine, Jason and I went to Ginger Hill All-Age school to do a 4H presentation for their boys day. We decided to talk about the 4H and then do a recycled paper demonstration. It was pretty fun, even though it rained towards the end. We had to have the kids line up to do the ironing part because they were so excited about the whole thing.
I had never been to Ginger Hill before, as it is in the northern part of St. Elizabeth parish, very close to Cockpit Country, whose motto is 'me no sen, yu no cum', which essentially means 'stay out'. But its not really like that these days, we even have a peace corps volunteer in Accompong, which is a maroon town. Maroons were runaway slaves that ran to the wilderness areas of the island to escape the Spanish, then first fought the British to a stalemate and won their independence and then later cooperated with the same British when they tried to capture their own runaway slaves. I guess they didn't like immigration either.
Anyway, Ginger Hill is known for its pineapple (just called 'pine' here) so all the way up Jermaine was so excited because he knew we would get free pine. They did not disappoint. Not only did we get whole pine but they served us a pine and ginger drink with lunch that was awesome. All the way back Jason and Jermaine were complaining how their bellies hurt from drinking 20 cups of the pine drink.
Here we are with our recycled paper, that's Jason second from the end in the cool glasses with the Ginger Hill boys. He and Jermaine had to run crowd control during the demo. There was a lot going on there. People from HEART, the vocational tech school, were doing welding demonstrations. A man was there from Boy Scouts and there was even a lecture on hygeine.
Here I am with some completed paper. The hardest part about making recycled paper is that you have to convince the kids not to poke it after it's laid out. Squishy-ness can be so tempting.
At the top is a pic of Ginger Hill, you can see the mountainous cockpit country in the background and a field of pine in the foreground. It is truly a beautiful place.