Jamaica, Jamaica

I've been home for less than 3 weeks and already I'm on the road--this time to Jamaica with Liz. I'm serving as her assistant at the Calabash Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, the small fishing and farming village where she has lived and worked. It's hot, hot, hot and we spent most of today riding around in the middle of nowhere buying vegetables from local organic farmers for a group of Jamaican ital chefs who will be cooking and selling traditional, vegetarian food at the festival. I love watching Liz interact with all the people here. She speaks perfect Jamaican patois--I understand not a word--and is completely comfortable with every one we meet here from rastafarian farmers living way off in the hills to Kingston socialites in for the weekend.

Last night at dinner, I listened in awe as she carried on a long--very long--and detailed conversation with some Jamaican agronomist all about soil pathogens, solarization, nematodes and other totally arcane subjects, to me at least. How a city girl, raised in an apartment with not a house plant in sight--I banished them once they got bugs--metamorphosed into someone who teaches others how to farm is still a mystery to me.