I Saw The Sign

To my dearest family and friends… Seth here! Welcome to my first blog while here in Jamaica, other than my staff profile that is. I want to share with you all about a woman I have met down here, Juliet Green, also called Ava. Juliet is deaf and mute. Unfortunately, in Jamaica the culture doesn’t accept anyone who is different or has a handicap in any way. Most Jamaicans, even in Harmons, consider Juliet to be “dumb.” Many of them do not take the time to get to know her or try to communicate with her.

I met Juliet the second week of my time in Harmons. I was playing basketball and saw her sitting alone under a tree. I figured I would go and say hello and make a new friend. I quickly realized that she couldn’t speak or hear, and she started to write on my hand. I wrote back on hers, but we quickly ran out of hand space. So I ran inside and grabbed my journal. Now I have a couple pages of my journal filled with conversations with Juliet. We talked a lot about her life. I found out that she had gone to school in Kingston and that she’s 29 (I don’t think she looks 29, I was guessing maybe 40, but that’s beside the point). She wrote that she has a sister and family. She also gave me her address. I felt like it was a really sweet opportunity that God presented this woman to me, to be able to open up and deeply communicate in a way that was different than the ordinary.

After that I hadn’t had the chance to spend time with her until last Saturday. She came to the worksite where we were building a house for my friend Eddie. She said hello and just stood around for awhile. Nichole was also there, and once we tried to communicate with her a bit more through hand gestures and “writing” with our fingers, she got excited and ran back to her house to get a book. Bringing the book back, she showed us that it was filled with phrases and pictures on how to sign. Nichole and I spent over 2 hours watching and learning how to sign common, and some not so common, phrases. We also learned how to “sing” the hymns, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” When she saw that we were catching on and making the attempt to learn how to communicate with her, she said we could borrow her book to “try hard” and learn on our own time to better talk with her in the future.
I think I have recently been struggling to go deeper in my conversations with Jamaicans, and this time spent with Juliet has just opened my eyes to the fact that I shouldn’t take my time here for granted and that I should try to talk with Jamaicans about everything, God, life, and culture, and not be afraid to try and communicate with them, no matter what the circumstances might be.

(Hi Mom!!)