{"id":5589,"date":"2018-06-05T10:07:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T10:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mapsofthemind.com\/?p=5589"},"modified":"2020-07-25T19:06:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T17:06:54","slug":"going-slow-in-jamaica-learning-patience-through-life-and-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mapsofthemind.com\/2018\/06\/05\/going-slow-in-jamaica-learning-patience-through-life-and-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Slow in Jamaica: Learning Patience Through Life and Language"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\u201cOnly three things go fast in Jamaica: the cars, the runners, and your money\u201d<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Having just spent the last 10 weeks based in Treasure Beach, a rural area on the south coast of Jamaica, I can definitely agree with the above expression. I was working there in a number of roles with a magic mushroom retreat operator and though there was plenty to do, the pace of life was slow. The high heat and humidity was probably at least partly responsible for this, but even when pushing past that, any top speed was always kept down by frequently occurring periods of enforced waiting and delay. A few examples;<\/p>\n
During the retreats – which warrant posts and memoirs of their own – the \u2018schedule\u2019 was loose and changing. When people asked each other what time a meet up would be for a meal, meeting, or departure; the scheduled time would be given, usually semi-jokingly followed by \u2018Jamaican time\u2019 – i.e. allow for tardiness.<\/p>\n
Morning meeting with the team – think this one actually ran on time<\/p><\/div>\n
Between retreats, when trying to set up video interviews with the locals on the retreat team, I suggested a time and day, and got at most a tentative confirmation. When that time came the interviewee was either elsewhere or doing something else. When I caught up with them later\u2026
\n\u2018OK, so can we get the video tomorrow?\u2019
\n\u2018Yeah man we got plenty of time.\u2019<\/p>\nI did finally get those interviews, the following week. Getting them online was impossible though, because of the – you guessed it – slow internet on site. Even just getting a few photos online wasn\u2019t easy, a batch of 20 onto dropbox could take over 10 hours, when the internet was working.<\/p>\n