A week in Jamaica offered more than a vacation for a group of Cornell students this semester.
As part of professor of history 鈥檚 course Understanding Global Capitalism through Service Learning, the class lived and worked over spring break in rural Petersfield, in Westmoreland parish, about an hour from Negril.
鈥淔or hundreds of years the backbone of the community has been sugar,鈥 Baptist said. 鈥淥ne of the biggest sugar refineries in Jamaica and the world鈥 is nearby, and 鈥渋n 1935, a labor conflict at that refinery launched the Jamaican independence movement.鈥
Working with community partner the Association of Clubs (AOC) in Petersfield and with U.S. nonprofit Amizade, the 17 students lived for a week with local host families; worked alongside community members on service projects such as building sidewalks and painting walls, renovating playgrounds and bus stops; and assisted in schools and at community centers.
鈥淥ur students actually do some good in the classroom, some that have 40 or 50 students,鈥 Baptist said. 鈥淛ust having more adults with one teacher in the room can have some results. It鈥檚 a positive impact that goes both ways. It鈥檚 through these human relationships that you learn, being side by side.鈥
The week in service helps students to see global economics historically through one community.
鈥淔or a while Jamaica was the crown jewel of the British empire before it got hold of India,鈥 Baptist said. 鈥淚t was the most important sugar-producing slave plantation colony in the world. 鈥 After emancipation, a lot of Jamaicans fled sugar work but workers were pushed back into it by economic conditions 80 years later.鈥
Today, he said, 鈥渢he Jamaican economy hasn鈥檛 seen any real growth since the 1970s. It鈥檚 been really affected by global forces.鈥
鈥淲e spent the first half of the semester talking about that history, from slavery to emancipation to the revival of sugar to the advance to this neoliberal world economy at which Jamaica finds itself at the bottom,鈥 Baptist said. 鈥淔or the most part I don鈥檛 think they really get it until we go to Petersfield. They see people working, who at the same time don鈥檛 have many of the things our students take for granted.鈥
Biology and society graduate Elsie Ikpot 鈥15, a post-baccalaureate public health fellow at Cornell Health, took the 2015 course for credit and returned this year, staying with the same host family.
鈥淲e got to see everything we learned about in class; and the trip makes it a more real and in-your-face experience,鈥 she said. 鈥淪eeing the sugar cane workers, learning more about the Chinese Jamaicans and Indians who came and opened different businesses. More personally, my host family, from May to September, has to travel outside of their city or the country to find work."
The AOC grew out of a sugar workers鈥 cooperative and, as an umbrella for neighborhood organizations, works with Cornell and several other universities coordinating service visits.
鈥淭hese kinds of classes are important economically to that community,鈥 Baptist said. 鈥淧art of the program fee goes to the house mothers providing the homestay, who have to put back into a micro-lending fund. It gets money circulating in the community, and people coming there not only see Jamaica, but a different view of the place.鈥
Community members are glad to 鈥渟hare their rich culture,鈥 Ikpot said. 鈥淓veryone is happy, so high-spirited. We learned so much about their culture 鈥 their music, their religion, their food.鈥
This is the third year for the service learning course, which is aligned with Engaged Cornell and Cornell Abroad. Students raise funds for the trip, also supported by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Cornell Public Service Center and Department of History.
Baptist said some students prepared video final projects to 鈥渉elp preserve the experience.鈥 He wants to develop a three-week January course, and 鈥渨e hope the next time to be doing some kind of oral history project through the community partners.鈥
Communication major Grace Lyman 鈥18 had some familiarity with the culture from five summers spent working alongside Jamaican migrant workers in her family鈥檚 orchard in Connecticut.
鈥淭heir unwavering work ethic and appreciation for the natural world ultimately became the subject for my college essay and my inspiration for taking Ed鈥檚 class,鈥 she said.
In Petersfield, however, 鈥渢he circumstances were not quite as happy. The cane cutters were essentially working on commission, being paid per ton and making no more than $30 a day. Because labor rights are virtually nonexistent, much of their wage is dictated by the price of sugar on the world market,鈥 Lyman said. 鈥淚 then got to thinking about my friends on the farm, and realized their annual migration to the United States is not one of choice, but out of economic necessity. 鈥 Moreover, the brief moments I spent in the sugar cane field taught me infinitely more than a semester鈥檚 worth of lectures in an auditorium.鈥
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