I have an  inadvertent relationship with Bob Marley's song 'One Love' and my visits to Jamaica.  I will try to explain it here, in two part harmony, if you will.

It was my second trip to beautiful, poverty prone, top murder rate in the world Jamaica.  I travel with a group from our church.  We join with a group from another church.  Our church is very small, so two to four of us generally travel, while the other group numbers nine or ten.  Our church pays for our trip.  We raise money by collecting cans and bottles.  It's a lot of work -- but that is something I will save for another story. 

By the way, we are not down there Christianizing the heathens or teaching anyone the missionary position.   Jamaica has the most churches of all the Caribbean islands, according to our friend Peat, who drives the bus.  (In the same sentence, he will also tell us Jamaica has the most mountains of all the Caribbean nations.)  The kids at the home know their Scripture far better than I do.  The trip is an opportunity to show love.  To show caring and concern through action.  To be compassionate.  To bring supplies.  To serve needs.  To witness to the lives of the people there.  

This was the year of the teenage girls gone wild with hormones.  We had met with the guidance counselor to ask, "What shall we work on?  Math?  Reading?"

And she replied, "We would like you to talk to the teen girls about appropriate relationships.  About waiting until marriage to have sex."

(Crap, I was thinking, who waits until marriage to have sex?  I sure didn't, and, I am not a very convincing liar. So maybe this is where the missionary position comes into play? The missionary position, in this case, being, the position that good girls don't give it away until after marriage.  It was going to be a tough sell.) 

Because, it turned out the girls were collectively in heat and all the males in the area were hip to that fact.  Now I understood why I saw strange men standing in the fields of tall grass around the orphanage buildings at all hours -- so many that the director locked us females into our building with a big chain and padlock.   Now I understood why the girls had cut slits into the front of their tight tops, revealing their cleavage.   They were sneaking out at night, they were disappearing during the day.  They were surly and uncommunicative. They were hormonal and out of control.

And we were supposed to gain their trust in a day or two so that we could talk about something so intensely secret to them and yet so blatantly visible to us?

We brainstormed for a day.  How to do this?  We decided to have a morning session centered around a wheel describing feelings and their names -- kind of a simplified emotional intelligence exercise -- and under the guise of that, get them talking about boys.  In the afternoon, we would take the focus directly off of them and have a jewelry making project, but continue the conversation as they made earrings and necklaces.  You know -- girl talk.

Of course, they all lied. (For my part, I never lied, I never once took the missionary position and said, Wait until marriage.)  But them --  they were teen girls!  I raised one!  I was one!  I know the secret life of a teen girl.  So, they said to us, No, Miss, we never go out with boys.  No, Miss, we do not let the boys touch us.  No, Miss, we do not do the things the director says we do.  She is lying.  She hates us.  She is so mean.

They tried to play on our sympathy.  To win us to their side.  I wasn't buying it, but our group leader did (she raised a girl that I am fairly certain did wait until marriage.) 

I make this sound so simple now, but this was tricky and touchy and a bit scary, for me, anyway.  The girls gazed at us with half lidded eyes and played us for fools.  They picked their noses in our presence to show their contempt.  I felt intimidated by them even as I tried to win their trust in a mere few days.  I knew how difficult that was, how virtually impossible it might be, but it was what we were asked to do.   It made for a hard week.  

So, by the time we left the home, we were frazzled.  The young men in our group didn't understand what the problem was.  Why were we so hard on the girls?  The girls who fawn all over them and delightedly hang on their every word, every gesture, every smile..... 

For our last day, we go to a small resort town the locals call Ochi (Ocho Rios).  We stay at a conference center used by Jamaican educational, professional, and church groups.   It is a place where the toilets actually flush and we can have a shower -- a Jamaican shower, that is, a solid stream of cold water coming out from a pipe above our heads.  Very refreshing in that sharp intake of breath kind of way!

We spend the morning at the local marketplace.  At noon, we gather in a central spot to meet Peat and the bus.  Only a few of us know that the teen boys spent part of their morning in a bar eating jerk wings and drinking Red Stripe.  A few more of us know that the pastor from the other church, when he travels with us, spends his morning in a bar too.  Like I said, the trip can be hard, and it does not always bring out the best in us.  As could be seen when the one legged street singer hobbled up and asked to sing to us.  

He was very  tall, and carried a guitar in one hand and had a crutch in the other.  He hopped around the streets on  his one leg all day, singing for whatever cash he could get.  His face was lean and lined -- gaunt.  He had long dreads, some of them white.  As he began to sing, the expression on his face was almost ashamed, almost pleading, something vulnerable, something very endearing to this soft heart of mine. Something very sweet.  And yet, only two of us from the group actually listened to him.  The rest pointedly turned their backs to him.  How rude!  

I wanted to say, Hey church people, hey holier than thous, hey 'I just spent a week with the poor orphans', where is your compassion now?  LOOK at this guy.  Do you think he has an easy life, hopping around on one leg with a guitar in hand?  With silly giggling white women asking to have their picture taken with him, like he is a local sight seeing event, an oddity, a Disney goes tropics character, instead of a living, breathing man?  And listen, you fools, you silly white people, listen to what he is singing:

"One love, one heart 

Let's get together and feel alright

Let's give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel alright

Let's get together and feel alright"

But, of course,  they all had their backs to him.  When he finished, one other woman and myself approached him and gave him some cash.  I held his hand, I looked in his eyes, and I told him, "That was so beautiful.  Thank you."

And he looked back at me and replied, "Thank you, my lady." 

My lady!  I felt like I had been spoken to by a king.  Really.  Cornball as it may sound.  Really.  That's how it felt.