This post was written by our wonderful intern, Paul Patitsas, on his last night with us.  Paul is hard-working, upbeat and full of energy. He is also thoughtful, spiritual, kind and honest.  We both respect and appreciate him and are happy that he decided to come spend his time with us.  Thank you, Paul, and we hope that we see you again soon!  Here are Paul’s words:

At this point things are rolling over in retrospect. It’s disappointing that I haven’t blogged more than this one time, but to also call it inappropriate would be false. Lately I’ve only been interacting with things that are alive…

Today I went to Coronation Market in Kingston. If you want to get the best fruits you have to get up. Up up; you have to get up at around 3 o’ clock in the morning. And if you leave by 4am you can [usually] listen to reggae on the radio and miss all the morning traffic. It takes about 1.5 hours to reach Kingston when you do it this way. During the ride all of the clouds come down from the mountain tops and you get to taste them and breathe them in. By the time you get to the city it is 5:30am.  Some people are building fires, other people are catching buses, the police drive around, and we search for a parking spot.

The only thing that isn’t relaxing in Jamaica is the traffic, so after we find a place to park we check and re-check the street before we walk into the marketplace. It’s loud. The roof is bright but the sun is only just on its way up. Beneath the lights are people, and, produce. Mountains of it. Some people are trimming plants and cleaning fruit and other ones push carts through a maze of stands. “How much fe dis?”…perfect, we’ll have 10lbs of it…before too long we can’t carry anymore so we unload everything in the Land Rover, look both ways before re-crossing the street, and dive back into the market. The outside part of Coronation seems just as big as the inside so it takes a minute to taste test a few oranges before we settle on which 100lb sack to buy. Watermelon, cantaloupe, neaseberry, gennep. Paw paw, star apple, mango, tamarind. Squash, spinach, callaloo, mint.

Without noticing the sun comes right up. But the beauty of whole thing is that we are ready to go. There is enough weight in the car to equal 5 young boys. But it will only last one week….