Cape Cod Voice,  Number 8, August 16-29 2001

Getting used to the cold, and the flatness

It was cold, really cold, remembers Elaine Shepherd, who arrived here for the first time on May 23.

That more than anything was what took getting used to at first–that, she says, and the flatness. It was flat in Miami, while she waited at the airport after clearing customs for the next plane trip to Boston. And it was flat and sandy here on Cape Cod, where she arrived late that night after a bus trip to Hyannis and a car ride to Orleans. 

She was a long way from the high mountains and rolling tropical greenery above her home in Port Antonio, on the eastern end of Jamaica.

That was a Wednesday. She started working on Friday at the Whalewalk Inn, housekeeping with several other Jamaican women who also share a place to live.

“It took me about two weeks to get my second job, at the Christmas Tree Shops,” she remembers. “And so at first I was home at night, and that was boring. But now I work six days and six nights. I make as much as I can and then I’m going home.”

Home includes a family with three sons, two of her own and one adopted (the nephew of the father of her boys). Her oldest is 15 (her age when he was born), her smallest “turned six this January gone.” She calls Jamaica two times a week and is glad to hear that all is well, but at the same time “you have to forget about home, you can’t think about it too much because you miss your family too bad.”

Then again, it also wants to hear how things are going on at the house. “It should be complete by the time I get home,” she says. “I’m sending the money back.” And so work this summer will produce a very tangible result.

Elaine uses a Jamaican turn of phrase to describe what work is like here: “It’s not that easy, but it’s not that hard.” Then again, she explains, she comes from a family of hard workers: Her father has been a baker in Port Antonio for 25 years, her mother a cashier with the same bakery for 15.

Chambermaiding at the inn is very similar to hotel work in Jamaica, so that was no surprise. But “the Christmas Tree Shop, that was different. I never did cashiering before. They taught me for about 20 minutes and I was on my own! I wasn’t used to the checks, the silver (Jamaican currency is different than ours), and the merchandise credits. But in two days I got used to it, and it’s easy now.

She starts in the morning at around 8 am, works at the inn until mid-afternoon, comes home to rest and eat for a few hours, and then goes to her night job around 5 pm. The latest she is home again is midnight, usually earlier. And then the routine starts all over again.

This is Elaine’s first summer; she hopes it’s not her last. She’ll be returning to Port Antonio on November 28, so she’s going to have to deal with the cold again. She’s going to take a week off at the end of her time here, before she has to go back. “I wanted to go visit where Disney is,” she laughs. “But that’s not possible. So I’m going to visit my auntie in Connecticut.”

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