Melissa and the Pink Prison

Melissa and the Pink Prison
Immaculate Conception High School
January 1985

Two weeks ago was Stephanie’s Story about the special school God allowed her to start in Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica soon after we moved there as missionary pastors of Bread of Life Church in 1984. Last week I told about my experience doing “Devotions at Dinthill” and how God used that experience to bless in so many ways. This week is another School Story: How God provided for Melissa’s education from eighth grade through high school at Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston, Jamaica. ICHS remains to this day one of the top Secondary Schools not only in Jamaica, but across the Caribbean.

Here’s Melissa to tell her story:

Our family made the decision to move to Jamaica when I was in seventh grade at Hedrick Junior High, in Medford, Oregon. I had an amazing Social Studies teacher, Mr. Perkins, who I told about our move, and he let me do a self-guided project for the last semester of my seventh grade year that involved learning all I could about Jamaica and doing a presentation about it. I spent my social study periods in the library researching – can you say Encyclopedia Britannica? Google didn’t exist! I was so excited for an adventure!

It was great preparation for me as we prepared for our move to Jamaica. Sidenote: I kept in touch with Mr. Perkins for years, into my adult years, but by the time I returned to the states and moved to Bend, Oregon, we had lost touch. Imagine my surprise, when I was leaving the post office one day, and I saw him standing in line! He had retired from teaching and moved to Central Oregon. It was amazing to reconnect.

That Summer we headed across the US to Springfield, Missouri to set up a base before our move to Jamaica. The process took longer than we expected which meant that I had to sign up for school in Springfield. I was ready to get to Jamaica! I spent a month or so at Pipkin Junior High, and I wasn’t thrilled. I also had to ride the bus for the first time in my life instead of walking to school and it was a bit scary – I even missed the bus on my first day, because I didn’t understand how it worked. Little did I know that a school bus would soon be a big part of my school life! I turned 13 shortly before we made the move to Jamaica.

We moved to Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica in October and spent some time getting the lay of the land and figuring things out. That meant that for a while I was “homeschooled” which meant Mom and Dad gave me math problems to work on, and some reading to do.

We needed to find a school for me, but it was a whole new world, and a whole new school system and way of doing things. The leaders that Mom and Dad were working with at the church in Linstead had a sister-in-law who had been the assistant to the headmistress at a school in Kingston. We didn’t know much about it, but heard that it was a good school. It was an all-girls, catholic school, but it was a public school. Our friends were able to get us an interview with the headmistress, so we thought we’d give it a shot. We arrived at Immaculate Conception High School – a beautiful campus with pink buildings, gorgeous grounds, and an amazing garden in the middle. We were shown into the office of Sister Maureen Claire, and I, for one, was immediately intimidated. She was a formidable woman in a Franciscan habit.

She told us a bit about the school, but focused on the fact that there were waiting lists to get in, it was the middle of the year, and they didn’t have space for me! Mom and Dad shared our story, and what we were doing in the country. Then there was a general sense that it was time for us to go. But something happened and the next thing we knew, she was telling us where we needed to go to pick up uniforms, what time I needed to arrive the following Monday, and what the dress code was (uniform – white shirt, white skirt, blue tie, brown shoes and socks, no makeup, no jewelry, and only brown, white or blue hair ties and barretts). As we were walking out the door, we were all a little in shock as we mumbled our thanks!

Then it was a mad dash around Kingston to get uniforms – the everyday uniform, plus PE clothes, a swimming costume and swimming cap, and appropriate shoes. Not only that, we had to figure out how I was going to get from Linstead to Kingston (about an hour drive by car) five days a week.

The school had a boarding house down the road a ways from the school, so that was our first solution. My parents would take me there on Sundays and pick me up on Friday afternoons. At first, I was excited about it. It was like something out of a book – a girl attending boarding school in another country. Reality set in quickly though, and neither my parents nor I enjoyed it. We were soon looking for an alternate solution.

There was a woman named Valda in the church, whose husband, Stedman, drove a juice delivery van from the Trade Winds Citrus production plant in Bog Walk, St Catherine, near Linstead, to Kingston every weekday. He offered to take me in the delivery van, drop me off at school and pick me up and bring me home. That involved him backtracking a bit to Linstead to pick me up.

So began my juice van adventures. I would sit on an upturned juice crate in the front of the van between Stedman and his helper. We would drive through the countryside and cross the Rio Cobre Flat Bridge. If the river was flooded, then we’d have to go the long way through Spanish Town. It was an hour’s journey. I got to hear a lot of Jamaican music in that van, and grew to love reggae and dancehall music. I also quickly learned to understand Jamaican patois. It was quite the sight – a young, white girl sitting between two big black men in a juice delivery van – all singing along to We Are The World. They really looked after me and I always felt so safe!

Meanwhile, we learned that there was a bus that the Alcan Aluminium Company ran for students from our area who attended ICHS. Someone put us in touch with them and we were placed on a waitlist for when space might open up. I don’t remember how long it was until a seat opened up, but one eventually did and for the rest of the time we lived in Linstead, that bus would pick me up and drop me off at the end of our driveway. I made some really good friends on that bus, including friends I am still in touch with today. We shared a lot of experiences and laughs on that bus. Then when we moved to Kingston, Dad dropped me off and picked me up from school every day.

How all those connections and opportunities came about kind of felt like magic – we didn’t chase them down, but through relationships I ended up at one of the top high schools in the Caribbean, on a campus that was once a hotel and resort. It wasn’t something we were aware of when I started school there, but we soon learned what an amazing gift we had been given for me to attend school at ICHS! Parents enroll their daughters in ICHS almost as soon as they’re born – that’s how good the school is and how long the waiting list! ICHS was “old school” in terms of discipline. We fondly called it the Pink Prison! I received a top notch education, and learned so much, not just educationally, but through discipline, friendships, and sometimes through hard situations and being a teenager in a completely foreign culture. I was a student from eighth grade, when I was 13, until I graduated in 11th grade at age 16.

I learned to trust God to provide. It became a natural thing for me – I know I didn’t see the stress and worry that Mom and Dad experienced – I saw the outcomes, the provision every step of the way. Those travel and cultural experiences cemented a love of travel, new experiences, and “the road less travelled” in me. Someday I’ll tell you the story of how a Keith Green Memorial Concert in Medford Oregon, and a day on the Mercy Ship Anastasis, in Montego Bay Jamaica figured into my journey with YWAM in Cardiff, Wales and London, England! Here’s a link to the ICHS web site.
https://immaculatehigh.edu.jm

Jim Here:

Thanks, Melissa! It’s so amazing to see and hear the ICHS “Pink Prison” story through your eyes and in your voice!

Friends, as always, I’d love to hear from you! You can reply to this email or post a comment on the “Notes From My Journey” page on https://jimastephens.com