Jamaican Joy

I just returned from touring several schools and a village for deaf children in Jamaica. Interestingly, I barely got a glimpse of the “Jamaica” that most tourists see—the beaches, beautiful water, the endless rows of shops with local trinkets (stamped ‘made in Taiwan’ on the back). My trip started at the non-air conditioned Kingston airport with one broken water fountain. I drove with a handful of new friends to the urban deaf school past some Jamaican homes not fit for a dog, sometimes made out of a couple pieces of corrugated aluminum and plywood.

The school included dorms, class rooms, a kitchen and several other buildings necessary to run a small, basic boarding school. The dorms were tidy and sparse with a couple small ragged posters here and there, and one or two knick-knacks on well-used dressers. My son asked later if they had toys, and I had to think before I answered, “About one each.” (This led him to the desire to send me down with some of his toys on the next trip, which warmed my heart.)

But the most surprising aspect of this school was not the lack of comforts, but rather the presence of joy. After a few awkward moments of the kids wondering who these wealthy looking white people were, our group began playfully competing with the kids doing chin-ups on their monkey bars. A couple men kicked the (well-worn and flat) soccer ball around, making make-shift goals with shoes. As I reflect now, I don’t remember any kids arguing or complaining or fighting.

One leader was there who will be with us this summer as we take down teens for a mission trip. As we talked about team devotions on the trip, he said, “I don’t want our devotions to communicate, ‘Let’s consider how blessed we are in the US, and how much we have, and how thankful we should be.’” I understood what he meant as I looked around and noticed how blessed the kids were with how little they had.

Paul tells us in Phil 4:12, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” Surly the physical blessings in the US is very often a curse because we have grown so accustomed to our comforts and so dependent on them. A more helpful devotional study would be to consider how blessed the Jamaicans are by finding the secret of contentment no matter what the circumstances.