Yard Life

I wouldn’t even like to guess at the number of hours I’ve spent in the yard here at Mighty Gully over the past month, watching, talking, laughing, listening, playing and (occasionally) working. The yard is the centre of everything, work place, playground, garden, meeting place, family home. So I thought it was about time I had a go at describing what yard life is like.

Days here start early, typically 6am or thereabouts (the Jamaican habit of rising early is not something I’ve latched onto all that well yet), signaled by one of the carvers turning up the radio, setting the rhythm to which the day will be played out to. There are about 15 carvers working here. Most of them live elsewhere in and around Old Harbour, with Jayvan, Stone, Stretch, Buju and Crazy living at the yard. Of all of them, Jayvan, Stone, and perhaps Sean and Junior too, are recognized as the best of the bunch, the ‘master carvers’ and tutors to the rest.

Shame about the shirt, Jayvan

As Mr Bryan’s step-son, Jayvan carries the weight of his father’s legacy on his shoulders and is nominally the boss man here. He is a brilliant carver, he has had a chisel in his hand since as far back as he can remember and is the one everyone looks up to as capable of making practically anything out of a lump of wood. He also has an artist’s temperament – sometimes he sounds and looks like the entire world is against him, and regularly confides in me about the frustration he feels about his surroundings, his family, his work mates. He is a dreamer struggling to find a way of shaping life around him, and particularly the project he has inherited, as easily as he can shape pieces of wood into beautiful works of art.

Saying that, however much his nature might not make him a born leader, he doesn’t shirk the responsibility. Last week a truck turned up with a huge load of wood, big thick chunks of lignum vitae which took two or three men each to shift. Jayvan had been toiling away all week in Kingston chopping up this year’s supply of wood for the yard, only getting help when the pieces needed moving to the yard. After the pile had been unloaded, bathed in sweat, he confessed to me that he’d been working so hard all day all he’d had to eat was a cup of tea and a mango.

Mr Conard Stone

Stone is a workaholic. A country boy, he moved to Mighty Gully to study under Mr Bryan when he was 15, to realize his dream of becoming an artist. He talks about carving with a big grin on his face, admitting he simply loves what he does. He is usually the first to start work and will sometimes work late into the night, alone with the radio sat under a solitary light bulb. He is also a very good draughts player – I’ve yet to beat him. His work tends to be delicate and intricate, as if he is always trying to push his boundaries. He is level-headed and talks passionately about the importance of Mighty Gully and his determination to help keep the project going long into the future, describing the problems it faces as challenges that will ultimately make it stronger.

Aza whips up some callaloo

The carvers spend a lot of time together, maybe 12 hours a day six days a week, although some will come and go more frequently than others. The working day is broken up with conversation, banter, occasional arguments, smoking and cooking. Many of them are Rastafarian, and most pitch in to prepare food in the cookhouse, with not a scrap of meat or dairy produce in sight. Cooking over a wood fire, on some days they will make food for the whole yard, maybe 20 people at a time, and if ever I’m sat outside at meal time, a plate will always be handed to me whether I’ve asked for a share or not. The food is always great, with typical meals like red pea soup and dumplings, spicy steamed callaloo and rice and ackee with rice and peas.

Freshly plucked ackee

The arrival of ackee season has been a culinary revelation to me. The yard is bursting to the brim with Jamaica’s national fruit, with six or seven trees laden with them. Ackees are orangey-red in colour when ripe and shaped a bit like pears with three or four distinct, rounded segments. They are harvested by someone climbing high into the tree and knocking them down one by one, causing them to split open when they hit the ground to reveal marble-sized black seeds that look like alien arachnid eyeballs. Only the cream-coloured flesh surrounding the seeds is eaten, usually cooked by frying with a little garlic, pepper and onion, and the result is like a better, creamier version of scrambled egg. The first time I was given some, chopped up in some rice, I’d not have known the difference if someone had told me I was eating egg fried rice. What I don’t understand is why it only seems to be Jamaica that has latched on to how awesome this strange fruit is, especially as it is far and away the best egg substitute for vegans I’ve ever come across.

Fruit picking is an important yard past-time, and a kind of rite of passage for the boys in particular. Bam-Bam, the son of Mr Bryan’s eldest daughter Marsha and 13 this week, is now old enough to climb the guinep tree (guineps are a small sourish fruit something like a cross between a grape and a mango), whereas cousins Jason, 8, and Alex, 7, jealously watch him go about this manly work from the ground, sometimes sneaking half way up the ladder before they are screamed at to get down. Guineps and mangoes form a kind of yard currency, being shared out on a daily basis by whoever has taken the time to get a decent harvest and ensuring a temporary halt to all work and play.

Bam-Bam, Jason, Austin and goat

Playing with or watching the kids play takes up a fair chunk of my time. There are plenty of kids to play with – I’ve joked about setting up my own summer school in the yard for them all. Bam-Bam and Renae (known as Mumsil), Alex’s sister, are the oldest kids in the yard and spend much of their time working for and with the adults and looking after the younger ones. Bam-Bam is the entrepreneurial type, collecting empty beer bottles to earn the deposit you get for returning them to the recycling truck once a week. He’s quickly latched on to the fact that I’m a steady source of income. Him and Jason are also in charge of herding the goats owned by Jason’s dad, Buju, back to the yard every afternoon, which is usually a good laugh watching as the goats slip their ropes while the pair of them chase them round haplessly.

Alex busting some moves

Jason and Alex are inseparable and make a good double act. Jason is cheeky and cock-sure, delighting in winding up any and everyone, and always has an answer, usually a funny one. Alex is the entertainer – all the kids love putting on a show by singing and dancing at every opportunity, but Alex is the star. His dancing has me in stitches - he does an awesome body popping kind of thing where he makes his eyebrows go up and down in time to the music which is so stupid it’s genius (and saved by the fact he has good rhythm). He also does magic tricks, builds kites and wants to be a cricketer, although when it comes to singing he has to play second fiddle to Bam-Bam’s younger sister Whitney, who has a lovely clean voice and a whole stack of songs she knows by heart.

Probably the most entertaining of all the kids, however, is Austin, Jason’s three-year-old brother. Known as Brown Man, which in itself makes me giggle, he looks like an angel – big bright light brown eyes in a head too big for his body that gives him a funny wobble when he walks – but behaves like a little devil. When he’s not spitting, swearing or throwing rocks, he might suddenly decide to show off a bit of his whining technique, except he does the girls’ part where he bends over and shakes his backside up against whatever happens to be close. He also has an anger problem – when he gets told off or smacked (quite a lot given his behaviour), he’ll quite often fly into a blind rage, screaming and running around looking for something to bite to take his frustration out on, usually poor Jason’s arm.

Whitney shows off some licks

Kids being kids, as soon as they cotton on to the fact that I have something of interest to them, they badger me for a ‘turn’ until I end up giving in and letting them have it. This tends to end in one or two ways – either whatever it is gets lost or broken, or they all argue so much over whose turn it is I take it back. My chess set now only has enough pieces to play draughts while the cricket bat first broken at the deaf school is now officially an ex-bat. My MP3 player is now on strict rationing it caused so many arguments and I’m taking the same approach with the guitar I’ve borrowed from Marlie Mount school on the pretext of fixing it up – not only do I not want it mashed up any more than it already is (it’s missing two strings and tuning pegs), after seven weeks of having no guitar it is very much my toy and I want to play with it.

With all the attention from the kids, I’m usually grateful for some adult company. Once the sun sets and the carvers start to drift off home, I’ll spend a lot of evenings sat outside chatting to Joel. Joel is a mad keen footballer and has dreams of one day playing abroad. Last season he played for Jamaican Premier League side Boys Town’s youth team but after being told there would be no money to pay him next season, he’s currently training with another Premier League team in May Pen, hoping to earn a contract.

The one time I’ve seen him play, however, is probably not something he’ll want to remember. He also turns out for a team in the local Old Harbour Bay Community League, the Black Survivors, so one afternoon I decided to head down with Bam-Bam to watch him. Considering this was just a local amateur league match, it drew a great crowd – there were perhaps three or four hundred people sat or standing around, with stalls selling soft drinks and beers out of ice boxes, making for a really good atmosphere. Unfortunately, Black Survivors didn’t rise to the occasion – their opponents, Cave United, recognized as one of the strongest in the division, demolished them 10-0, and it could have been more. It’s no exaggeration to say that I haven’t ever seen a team defend so badly in all my life, every time the ball was pumped forward the Black Survivors’ defence would be nowhere to be seen as two or three Cave United forwards had a free run on goal. Maybe they couldn’t handle the searing afternoon heat – why anyone would want to play football at 3pm in July in Jamaica is beyond me, but there you go, I only had to watch the carnage.

Crazy the rat catcher

Another regular evening companion is Crazy, who works as a welder when he can get work and carves when he can’t. He is always good for a chat over a glass or two or rum, he really knows his music and is happy to educate me to fill in the wide gaps in my knowledge about reggae. I did wonder, however, where he got his nickname from, as he comes across as more sensible uncle than crazy man. That was, however, until one evening when a few of us were sat outside and suddenly had our attention diverted by a series of loud bangs coming from the direction of the carvers’ workshop. No one had a clue what was going on, until a minute or so later Crazy emerged carrying a mallet in one hand and a dead rat in the other, looking incredibly pleased with himself. His reflexes must be so good he should change his name to Chris the Cat instead.

Partying with Kadaye

When they’re not making me food, sisters Kadaye, Kayah and Kara take great delight in trying to set me up with their friends. So far they’ve been better cooks than matchmakers. Sundays in particular are all about one of them spending the afternoon cooking up a huge meal for the house and extended family. Although it is a close-run thing, so far Kadaye stands out as the best of the bunch – I have to admit the smell of her fried chicken had me considering jacking in 13 years of vegetarianism, and how she got rice and peas and steamed callaloo to taste so good I have no idea.

Marlene (right) with strange polo man

The sisters have also become my main party companions, letting me tag along whenever they’re off out. Last week they took me to the birthday party of one of their friends, Marlene, which was mainly notable for a guy turning up in a welders’ mask, jodhpurs and polo shirt and carrying a golf club to do nothing much more (that I could see, anyway) than lead the cutting of the birthday cake. This Sunday just gone we also went to a pool party, which consisted of an oversized paddling pool set up in front of a new set of shops just up the road. When I passed it being set up in the afternoon, with the hot sun beating down, this seemed like an awesome idea. It was unfortunately a bit of a let down – by the time we headed over at 8.30, most of the water had already seeped out of the pool and someone was desperately trying to re-fill it with a trickle of water spouting from a pathetically limp and tiny house pipe that looked like a wet noodle hanging over the side of a wok. The pool action consisted of two girls (one being the aforementioned Marlene) splashing around a bit and going through the motions of the now familiar dancehall moves – not a bad sight, I’ll admit, but not quite the bikini-and-rum orgy I’d hoped for.

Rasta Vibrations

Pick a person at random anywhere in the world and ask them about Jamaica and I reckon they’re most likely response will be to talk about reggae and Rastafari (not Rastafarianism, by the way). But what most of the outside world knows about Rastafari is limited to its outward symbols – dreadlocks, red, green and gold, Bob Marley and ganja. I for one only have a very vague grasp of its inner workings as a religion, its belief systems and its values – I know it’s based around believing the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is a human incarnation of Jah (God) and steeped in the ideology of black emancipation and even repatriation to Africa, but that’s about it.

The weekend before last I was extremely privileged to be invited to a Rastafari ‘nyabinghi’, an all-night spiritual ceremony. I’ll be honest and admit I didn’t have a clue what it was exactly I was going to – I’d been told it would involve music and assumed it would be some kind of concert or dance, so off I went loaded up with rum ready for another party.

Stretch at Salt River

It all started because all the heat and sunshine was giving me a yearning to hit the beach and have a swim. I’d got talking to Stretch, one of the Rasta guys who lives in the yard and owns a car, asking him if he’d be up for driving me out somewhere one day. The next morning he came up to me asking if I fancied heading out for a swim at Salt River in the neighbouring parish of Clarendon – if I paid for some petrol, he’d also take me along to a ‘singing’ that same night where some ‘big man’ was making an appearance, and that way we could kill two birds with one stone.

So me, Stretch, Bones, Kara and Stretch’s baby daughter Akeeba piled into his old Nissan and hit the road, with a pumping soundtrack of Dennis Brown and, aherm, Celine Dion (with Stretch and Bones wailing all the words like a pair of neutered cats). I still thought we were heading to the beach – I knew Salt River was right on the coast – and to be fair our first stop was the beach, a flotsam-strewn narrow strip of neglected sand backing onto thick mangrove which wasn’t exactly your typical idyllic Caribbean bathing spot. We took a quick walk along it as Stretch explained that the beach had been ravaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2007, and had never been properly cleared up. It was then that he explained that our final destination was a mineral pool a couple of miles up the road fed by the eponymous Salt River.

Bones doing some dodgy dancing

Too small and far away from the main tourist trail to make it into any guide books, the Salt River pool is actually pretty beautiful and popular with the local community. The main pool is perhaps the size of a typical swimming pool, with warm, shallow, crystal clear water letting you see the rocky bottom and the usual Jamaican shacks selling snacks and drinks all around. Even prettier is the small tributary from the river proper which feeds the pool, shaded by thick mangroves and trees growing out at bizarre angles into and out of the water. We spent a relaxing few hours swimming and playing a bit of football, while the hills surrounding the thin strip of coastal plain were regularly lit up with lightning, despite the blazing sunshine and clear blue skies above us.

Me looking pasty and pale

That evening we returned to Clarendon, but this time headed out further along the coast road, down the hook of land that sticks out from the middle of Jamaica’s underbelly. Our destination was a place called Portland Community, not far from a lighthouse bearing the same name that marks one of Jamaica’s southern-most points. Here we really were getting off the beaten path – most of the coastal road we took was little more that a rough single track hemmed in by high hedges, with little sign of life on either side. Then, out of nowhere, we came to cars parked on the verge on either side of the road, people walking and milling about, and then lights at what looked like some sort of small community centre (I never did work out where the rest of the village was).

The nyabinghi was being held in the yard of this building. Under a small open-sided marquee stood and sat a group of Rasta elders, dressed in brightly coloured robes and with their grey dreadlocks and beards flowing, beating drums and chanting. People were stood or sat all around, swaying gently in time with the steady, hypnotic beat of the drums or singing along, while others either milled about the yard or stood further back at a couple of fires, smoking and ‘reasoning’ in the typically animated Jamaican style.



Grade 6 cricket at Marlie



To be honest, nothing much else happened for the rest of the night, which kept going until dawn. There was one extended gap in the music while passages from the scriptures were read, but the main focus was the drumming and chanting. I didn’t follow a lot of the significance of what was going on – I never did get a proper explanation of who the old guys were and why they were important – but the repetitive, syncopated rhythms of the drumming and low, gentle, sometimes mournful singing had a very otherworldly feel to it. I can’t think of a better way of explaining it - with the effect of still-persistent lightning in the distance and a strong wind making the palms trees in the yard dance as if they too were swaying along to the music, it did kind of feel as if something profound and mystical was happening. Or maybe that was just the effect of the ganja and rum.

Seeing Rastafari for what it really is, a living, breathing religion and not just a fashion statement, made the night probably the most interesting I’ve had here so far. I didn’t learn much more about the belief system per se – from what I can gather, it borrows elements from Judaism and Ethiopian Coptic Christianity, using the Old Testament as its main religious text and throwing in a lot of West African spiritualism. But I got to see its role in a social and cultural context, and one of the things that struck me was that the event wasn’t just attended by people sporting dreads and African robes – most of the people there were ordinary Jamaicans in their designer T’s and jeans, suggesting how deep an influence Rastafari still has on society at large.





Although I couldn’t buy into the main ideas of Jah and Haile Selassie being an incarnation of God, a lot about Rastafari appeals to me. I loved listening to the ‘reasonings’, the continuous, lively debates about religion, philosophy, morality and politics that took place round the fires – they were certainly more interesting than your average Saturday night conversation down the pub back home.

I also really like the strong value placed in natural living, using what the land can provide, particularly in terms sticking to a vegetarian diet free from artificial additives and eschewing modern medicine in favour of the age-old skills of the herbsman. I love the fact that people here eat and use so much of what grows around them, varying their diets with the seasons, and knowing exactly what plants and fruits have different beneficial properties. I’ve had direct experience of this in the past few days after picking up a cold – needing a vitamin C fix, I’ve only had to step out the door to pick limes off the trees in the yard, making a spicy and invigorating tea out of them, ginger and lemongrass. Considering how green and fertile Britain is, our knowledge about and use of what grows around us is pathetic.

On the flipside, Rastafari seems, like many religions, to have some confused views about equality. Although it preaches equality for all, there were some mutterings about a ‘whitey’ being brought to a spiritual gathering. I should stress that the complaint came from one guy, that he was quickly put in his place by the guys who were with me, and that the Rasta guys who work in the yard here have gone out of their way to explain that we are all ‘bredren’ and they all reject notions of division based on skin colour. But it was interesting that it cropped up, and although I have no doubt that the Rastas I’ve spoken to do genuinely believe in racial equality, the fact is that Rastafari symbolizes the evil, oppressive world of ‘Babylon’ as Western and white, while the promised land of ‘Zion’ is African and black.



French Cricket



Attitudes to racial difference are difficult to unravel generally here. Despite being a colonized country made up of different immigrant communities, Jamaica is much less cosmopolitan than the UK. I do feel quite literally like the only white guy in town in Old Harbour – there are no other white faces to be seen, and only a handful of Chinese and Asian. And yet I’ve come up against virtually no animosity, no sense of resentment that I’m a stranger in town, no evidence of prejudice. One guy shouted ‘cracker’ after me after I declined his offer to sell me some weed outside the local grocery shop, and some kid in school, no doubt feeling the safety of anonymity as he shouted it from a crowd, called me ‘white nigger’ on one of my first days at Marlie Mount, but that has been it.



Bam-Bam, Jason, Austin and a goat



On the other hand, labeling people according to the difference in the colour of their skin is just a normal, everyday thing here. I am just ‘whitey’ or ‘white man’ – there’s no malice or intent in it, it’s just what I am. It makes me wonder why or when terms like ‘darkie’ or ‘brown man’ became so socially unacceptable back home. Jamaicans believe in calling a spade a spade (no pun intended) – an overweight person is ‘fatty’, a short person ‘shorty’ (also a general term for an attractive girl), etc. The attitudes of the kids at school are pretty funny – a lot of them assume I’m American and therefore must speak Spanish, so a lot of them still say ‘hola’ to me when they pass me, while some of the younger ones call me ‘Chiney Man’, probably because Chinese are the only light-skinned people they’ve seen before. I had to laugh last week when two American boys arrived, what we’d call mixed race – there was great excitement as kids kept running to me asking me if they were my children.

Akeeba and Mumsil

The other thing you can’t escape from, an insidious hangover from the deep-seated racial hierarchies of slavery, is that light or white skin is still widely associated with privilege and success, to the point where a lot of people still see having light skin as being an indication of being better somehow. Bleaching skin is not uncommon, most notoriously in the case of current dancehall superstar Vybz Kartel. This is just bizarre – next to all the rich and varied hues of black and brown skin I see everyday, I’ve never felt so self-consciously pasty, pale and sickly. They look strong and healthy, I just go red if I stay in the sun too long. Go figure. But it’s not how a lot of Jamaicans see it. The kids at school want to touch my arms or stroke my hair because they think it’s softer than theirs. Women want to talk to me for no other reason that I’m white and they see me as rich – I’ve been told straight out that white men make better husbands than black guys, by a girl who admitted she’d never even dated a white guy.

Anyway, on the school front things have improved since the first week of summer school. I spoke to the principal and I’ve had more to do, be it sitting in with classes in the mornings or taking longer PE classes. I even got to try out my grammar bingo (I wasn’t going to let that go to waste the amount of time it took to make the bloody cards), although I think it was probably a bit ambitious trying it out on Grade 3. Although we spent time running through what prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs were before the game started and they all seemed to know well enough, about half the class failed to grasp that the point of the game was I’d read out a word, and they had to cross out the type of word it was on their bingo card, if they had it. Most of them just ended up guessing and I got inundated by people calling ‘house’ at random times, just in case they had fluked a win without noticing.

As I’m writing this I’ve only got two days left of summer school, and then I’m a free man until September. I’ll miss the kids at Marlie Mount, even if I haven’t felt I’ve had the sense of purpose I had at the deaf school – despite driving me to distraction at times by their inability to stand or sit still for two seconds and their insistence on arguing over everything, most of them are very warm, engaging, sweet and often very, very funny. I know there is a lot I will miss about Old Harbour in general, and I have wavered about going back to Mandeville because I know it will be lonelier up there and I’ve had a lot of fun here. But I didn’t come here for a holiday, I came here to do something useful and to learn. There’s a definite objective to me going back to the deaf school, something I can put in place and leave behind, whereas at Marlie Mount I’d just be lending a helping hand they could do just as well without.

Overproof

During my volunteer training, I was told that people working overseas tend to experience, to varying degrees, a pretty standard pattern of emotions - initial excitement and thrill giving way to a sense of displacement and homesickness as the novelty wears off, followed by periods of frustration and exasperation at what becomes everyday routine, before finally you end up worrying about going home and leaving behind what now seems normal.

Jayvan in action

Five-and-a-bit weeks in and the lacquer of the honeymoon period is starting to lose its shine. I'm thinking about home more, wondering what people are doing, wondering what I'd be doing if I was there. I can think of a couple of explanations for this. For one, the first week I moved to Old Harbour I found getting in touch with home difficult and it started playing on my mind. Access to the internet became more sporadic and it took me over a week to work out where to get cheap phone credit to call the UK. I went nearly two weeks without speaking to Daisy and my mum and dad had got to the stage of checking my bank account to see if there was any evidence that I'd been robbed and sent for a swim wearing concrete armbands. Feeling cut off made me miss home.



Grade 1 PE

The second reason is that I haven't got much to do and boredom is starting to creep in. After really enjoying my first week at Marlie Mount, summer school has been a disappointment so far. It only runs 9am til 12am Monday to Thursday, so it leaves me with a lot of time on my hands. But what is frustrating is that I'm only doing about an hour every morning actually working with the kids. I've been asked to help out with PE and that's all it runs for each day. The rest of the time I feel a bit like a spare part. It is also slightly annoying that the Principal asked me to draw up a plan for what I could/wanted to do during summer school which I spent ages on, doing it completely blind as I hadn't been given a timetable or any idea how summer school would be run. I had some good ideas - I spent an entire Sunday night making cards to play grammar bingo and I wanted to film the kids reading out a news script to practise their reading and speaking skills. I doubt the plan has been read, even though I've printed it out and given it to her twice.

Making Porridge...

On the plus side, at least this didn't happen at the deaf school, where I really would have been climbing the walls if I'd not had anything to do all day. At least here there's always someone to pass the time of day with, I can walk into town if I want to or just kick back in the yard and listen to the radio. Days are filled with simple pleasures - books, cups of tea, games of draughts, walks to the shops to buy a bag juice (sweet syrupy drinks that come, you guessed it, in a small plastic bag) - and setting myself small challenges - learning to make corn porridge, trying wood carving, and doing my washing by hand (ok, so this was more a necessity than choice, my first mistake being to put far too much detergent in the water, which promptly took a layer of skin off my knuckles when I started srcubbing clothes like the women do. At least it killed nearly three hours).

On my second Saturday here I was up at 5.30am to go for a walk. I'd mentioned that I'd like to see Old Harbour Bay, a small fishing village about three miles from Old Harbour itself, and Joel, one of the late Mr Bryan's nephews who has just left school, said he'd walk me down there on the proviso that we went at dawn. I had no idea why, nor am I in the habit of rising at such an hour to take a morning constitutional, but I agreed anyway. My reward was to get to see the land at its most beautiful - whereas Jamaican sunsets are short and abrupt, dawn comes on languid and graceful, giving you plenty of time to watch the sun lazily stretch its arms over the misty green landscape while the sky drifts from purple to pink to blue. Now I know what people mean when they talk about it being the little things that count.



Joel at the Bay



Having far too much time on my hands, I've done some thinking about time and how we occupy it. I've heard the theory that leisure time is a luxury of the privileged, but I wonder if it's not more accurate to say that it is the ability to afford to fill your leisure time that is the real privilege. Back home, I can barely sit still for ten minutes without needing something to entertain me, and I don't think I'm abnormal. We all seem programmed to be constantly hunting the next stimulation fix, there are whole industries dedicated to meeting our thirst for entertainment, flogging us hundreds of crap TV channels, 24/7 wi-fi internet access, CDs, DVDs, gadgets or satisfying our huge appetites for food, booze and sex. Our boredom thresholds are miniscule, and it costs us to make sure they aren't crossed.

...And washing

The lifestyle in Jamaica is very different. Here, people talk openly about their biggest concern being to have enough food to eat on any given day. I've heard more than one person talk about living hand-to-mouth, with jobs scarce and wages piss-poor compared to the high costs of basic necessities like food and fuel. It isn't that people don't like to enjoy themselves and have nice things (Jamaicans are obsessed with mibile phones for a start), it's just that entertainment is really treated like a luxury, not a daily right. Just watching the way people will simply sit around, sometimes talking, sometimes not, for ages at a time because when all is said and done, they can't really afford ot do much else, has made me think hard about how much I take enjoying myself for granted.

Take drinking, for example. After not minding the novelty of very little alcohol while in Mandeville, since I've been in Old Harbour I've definitely rediscovered my thirst and started wanting a drink again. People here drink, but alcohol is very much a luxury, a rare treat to be enjoyed as and when you can afford (and alcohol is far from cheap). By being around people who don't regularly head off to the nearest bar as soon as they've had their tea,
I've realised how much of a ritual drinking is to me, almost a default response to avoiding boredom - if I haven't got anything else to do, I automatically start thinking about booze. And I'm far from alone in this back in the UK - let's face it, prowess in the rites of Bacchanalia are a considerable source of national pride.

Young Jason gets an introduction to punk rock

Anyway, enough philosophising - let's just say I haven't exactly gone thirsty the past few weeks, even if I have been mulling it over some. As I've said, Jamaicans are not averse to what they'd call a good 'mash up'. First and foremost, I've been initiated into the secrets of overproof white rum, Jamaica's infamous contribution to distilled sugar cane beverages. The name is self-explanatory - overproof has not been put through a secondary refinement process which lowers the alcohol content to between 40 and 50%, meaning it is literally 'over' the typical strength or 'proof' of most rums you find. As 'raw' rum, you can smell and taste the molasses it is made from, thick and treacly, and at 65% it packs a healthy kick, giving your mouth and throat the sensation of having important layers stripped away if you choose to drink it neat. It is best enjoyed with two parts cold pop to one part rum, the Jamaican boys preferring Boom!, a local version of Red Bull, while I personally go for ginger beer. The other great thing about overproof is that it is cheap - a 200ml bottle plus chaser is about three quid and will see off a couple of you, a 500ml bottle is about a fiver with chaser and will easily get five people bouncing. Buying a bottle to share in the yard has quickly become part of the routine on a Friday and Saturday.

The Yard

After my wholesome dawn walk on my second Saturday here, I got to enjoy an entirely different experience (and equally little sleep) that same night. Kara was tagging along with her sister's boyfriend, Sean, and some of his friends to a 'party' up in Old Harbour, a party being what we'd call a club night. I was invited and jumped at the chance to see if Jamaica lived up to its reputation for knowing how to let its hair down. My first lesson was that Jamaicans don't do early when it comes to going out. At 10pm (a late start for me) I was stationed in the yard armed with a bottle of white rum ready to get the pre-loading going. Everyone else was locked in their rooms resting ahead of the frolics to come. By 1am when everyone was finally ready, I'd polished off the (small) bottle of rum with some belated help from Sean and was starting to wonder if bed might not be the best idea.

I had a quiet word with myself, pulled myself together and we were soon in a taxi which turned out to be driven by a friend of Sean's from Kingston, with another mate riding shotgun. The ride was in itself an interesting start to the night as our driver decided to drag race a much flasher vehicle, proving he had less respect for his car's engine by flooring it in first and winning the day. I got out at the club smiling - I've always liked driving fast. The party was at the back of a large plaza in an open court yard. I was let in for 300 dollars instead of the advertised 500, Kara reckoning it was because I'm a 'whitey' - I guess standing out pays off sometimes. At first, nothing much was happening, 1am still apparently being early. But I soon clocked that it was nothing too unfamiliar - very bass-heavy soundsytem blasting out dancehall, some of the guys in particular dressed far flashier than you'd usually see back home, but nothing to make me gawp. Yet.

This was where I found out Jamaicans really do know how to party. For the first round, Sean insisted I try Magnum, a local tonic wine that tastes a bit like a sweeter Buckfast. Then it was in for the serious stuff. After handing over money to buy a Dragon Stout and a drink for Kara, Sean instead returned from the bar sporting a full bottle of Apple Smirnoff, lemonade and more Magnums. Let's just say I was soon pretty drunk. Kara could barely stand up.

By this time, Crazy had turned up and the party was really starting to bounce. I can't say I dug much of the modern Dancehall stuff that was being played - the DJ would cut songs really short and just seague them into eachother on his laptop with little finesse, and also spend a considerable time talking over them. But a fair few reggae classics were being thrown in and that kept me moving around a bit. However, by this time there was more to the entertainment than the mere music. I'd heard plenty about how overtly and showily sexual Dancehall is, but the 'dancing' has to be seen to be believed. This wasn't just your average grinding, where female buttock and male lunchbox get more closely acquainted. The 'moves' on display wouldn't have been out of place in a cheap British porn film - I swear to god, there were girls in the tiniest hot pants bent double so their hands were flat on the floor while their partners gripped their hips and did a good imitation of a Jack Russell in heat. The lot with me were laughing at me as I just stood and watched, no doubt with a look of bemused astonishment on my face. I couldn't help it. There was nowhere else to look. I wish I'd taken my camera.

We left the party proper just before dawn but stayed sat outside for about an hour until it shut down while Kara tried to sober up/slept. I did pretty much the same thing all of Sunday, bar an abortive and still drunken trip to try and get on the internet at about 10am, which only resulted in me getting the hell bitten out of me by mosquitos as I tried in vain to get a connection. And despite the heat and the sweat, I still didn't have a hang over. It's good to know I've still got it.

The Sun Smells Too Loud

I've been in Jamaica for a month but somehow it feels much longer. Instead of the old cliche that time flies when you're having fun, I'm finding exactly the opposite - the barrage of new experiences, sensations and situations seems to be making time slow down. Or maybe it's just my perception adjusting to a more laid-back pace of life.



Tatiana rocks out



The past week has been a case in point. I arrived in Old Harbour a little over a week, but as I sit here and think of all the things I want to write about, I've got enough for about three entries. So bear with me, this might be a long one.

 The last few days at CCCD had a touch of sadness about them. No one seemed to want the academic year to end and the sumer holidays to start, nothing like the air of open celebration I remember from school at this time of year. Teachers spoke with concern about sending the children out into the big bad world for a couple of months, some of the pupils openly made it clear they didn't really want to go home (understandable when you think that, for deaf kids, home might mean somewhere where few people can communicate with them), and as the students began to trickle home from Thursday afternoon onwards, the school started to feel empty, quiet and a little folorn.

Ready to zip slide

Nonetheless, an atmosphere heavy with goodbyes and the return of the rain clouds wasn't going to stop the group from Florida making their trip to YS Falls, and with nothing much for me to do on the final day of term, I once again tagged along. It was a bit like deja vu from the week before - after torrential rain all night, the clouds lifted just in time to give us a hot sunny day to enjoy the water, only to return as soon as we got back to the school. With longer at the falls this time, a fair chunk of the group decided to try the zip lining over a series of five slides, the longest and most spectacular of which sends you whizzing down the gorge high over the falls, giving you awesome views. I was definintely in, but having discovered I hadn't brought enough cash to cover the hefty$20 US cover price, group leader Ted insisted on paying my share. Again, I felt humbled and grateful for the generosity of the people I've met so far on this trip.

Saturday morning quickly came and after saying final goodbyes to the dorm parents and remaining pupils at breakfast, I was surprised to get a call from Paperfoot, the main contact/mentor responsible for looking after me over here, a full hour before the time we'd arranged to meet. I hurriedly got in touch with school manager Nicholas, who had kindly agreed to run me into Mandeville to meet Paperfoot, to ask if he could drop me off early, and off we set to the rendevous point outside the police station, where we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Gabe in action

Apparently Paperfoot hadn't been ringing me to say he was near Mandeville, but to make sure I got there early and he wasn't waiting for me. Someone must have tipped him off about my time keeping. But all was quickly forgiven when he turned up in a friends car - I had been expecting a rough journey in a crowded route taxi with two huge bags all the way down to Old Harbour, but instead he had convinced a lady he knew from Kingston called Pat to drive all the way over to Albert Town where he lived (in the north west of the island, Kingston being on the south east coast), pick him up and then drive him down to meet me and run us both to Old Harbour. I wasn't about to complain.

After three weeks perched high up in the serene, breezy, sleepy seclusion of the Manchester mountains, landing bang in the middle of hot, bustling, noisy Old Harbour certainly woke me up a bit. Here was the so-called 'real' Jamaica I'd read about - hot sunshine, reggae blasting from all corners, dust, people and the smell of smoke (of various kinds) filling the air. The 'yard' I am to call home for the next month-and-a-half is a large open space filled with a thick covering of fruit trees and five buildings (three homes, a wood-carving workshop and a cookhouse). At any one time it is usually filled with wood carvers working, women washing, a gaggle of children playing, dogs barking or sleeping, goats chewing on anything and everything they find, and chickens clucking and crowing. The permanent soundtrack is a continuous mix of reggae and dancehall courtesy of the excellent Irie FM, blasting out from dawn til late at night from a stereo in the carvers' shed.



Tatiana, Jonelle, Sam, Mr Herbert, Ted, Ordaine and Me on last night at CCCD



All of this belongs to the Mighty Gully Youth Project, the brainchild of the late Lancelot Bryan. Mr Bryan's legacy hangs thick over this place - a talented and renowned wood carver who, from very humble beginnings, ended up having work commissioned by the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he turned this yard into a training centre for aspiring young artists keen to follow in his footsteps, offering young men and boys, many with few other prospects in life, a place to learn a skilled trade, a way to express themselves, and a sense of belonging.

As his daughter, Kara, told his story to me, Mr Bryan started out camping in a large mango tree by what is now the gate to the yard, before building the small bamboo structure which now serves as the cook house for the Rastafarian members of this small community-within-a-community. As he developed his reputation as a carver, he began to teach local youths the art, eventually earning notice from the Jamaican government, who helped fund development of the facilities. In the mid-1980s, My Bryan's work was spotted by Prince Charles. Funding from The Prince's Trust helped additions such as the construction of a large, central house for the use of visitors from England from the youth exchange programme, now also occupied by members of Mr Bryan's immediate family.

Some carvings in various stages of completion

The Mighty Gully Youth Project is very much a family affair. I am living directly with his first wife, Althea, daughters Kara, Kayah and Kadaye, and son Jayvan, who is now in charge of the project, as well as 'Crazy' Chris, Kadaye's baby son Keshaun (not sure of spelling!) and Ryan, the five-year-old son of a family friend. Across the way live Mr Bryan's elderly parents, brother, sister-in-law and sister, plus assorted neices, nephews, and grandchildren, while in the third house in the yard live another of Mr Bryan's daughters, Marsha, her partner Stretch (also known as 'Rasta' and creator of some awesome vegan Ital food) and their children.

The rest of the extended family is made up of the wood carvers. They spend their days, from morning until sometimes late in the evening, transforming lumps of lignum vitae, the hardest wood in the world and known as 'iron wood' for its durability, into fantastic works of art - birds, animals, portraits and, frequently, beautifully executed and stylised female nudes. Watching them work is an education in patience, precision, skill and vision - the wood is notoriously difficult to work so the job can be physically demanding, but one false move can ruin an entire piece. And once happy with the carving, each piece has to be meticulously course sanded, fine sanded and polished by hand until it literally shines in the sun. They are the proteges of a recognised master and it shows.

Me sporting Breadfruit

After the quiet nights at CCCD, it's good to have people to talk to and hang out with, even if I am still trying to get my head round patois ('Yes Paul, wha' gwaaan!!'). Even if I can't always follow the conversations, everyone has gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, often through the medium of food - Kara has taken it on herself to teach me how to make authentic Jamaican dishes like turned corn and spicy steamed callalloo (a kind of cabbage), while Jayvan is constantly bringing me fruit from the various trees in the yard, mainly mangoes and delicious, watery Ethiopian apples at the moment as they're in season, and I've already mentioned the fantastic Ital food from the Rasta cookhouse. As a side note, I've gone vegan again now I'm cooking for myself (well, unless someone insists on cooking for me!) and it's surprisingly easy over here, plus it gets me serious props from the Rastas. And seeing as everything is laced with searingly hot Scotch Bonnet chilli peppers, I'm in my element food-wise.

After CCCD with it's hundred-or-so pupils, the school I'm working at Marlie Mount Primary and Infant School - is HUGE - well over a 1000 pupils, making it as big as most UK high schools. With just 50 staff and not enough space to accomodate all pupils at once, the school runs a shift system - the first lot of pupils come in at 7am and leave at midday, the second starting at midday and leaving at 5pm. It must be exhausting for the teachers - with it being the last week of term and things easing back a bit, the longest day I worked was 7am til 4pm and that absolutely knackered me. But, through a lot of dedication and hard work, they make it work, and the school has a very proud record for achievement in all areas of school life.

Marlie Mount Infants performing at graduation

I arrived first morning not really knowing what to expect, having not even spoken to the principal yet as I had kept missing her the previous week when I'd been trying to call. As it was, she wasn't in that morning, but the deputy principal welcomed me kindly and quickly gave me a class to go and 'sit in with' - 5.3 (they 'graduate' at grade 6, which is 11-12 year olds here). No sooner had I walked in the classroom and the teacher, Mr MacIntosh, had introduced me than he sat down to mark some books, giving me a quizzical look -'they're all yours to teach, Mr Newham'. Clearly he wasn't expecting someone with absolutely no teaching experience or training to his name to walk into his classroom.

Somehow I felt like I'd be letting him and the class down (given as they had all cheered in unison when he told them I'd be 'teaching' them) if I explained that I didn't have a clue what I was doing, let alone a lesson plan, and had never taken a class before. It was all too sudden to be nervous about it anyway, so I just decided to go for it - I asked them what they had been doing in English, they said 'nouns', so away I went - nearly two hours later, I had somehow managed to take them through the distinctions between common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns, spent some time on adjectives and the correct grammatical ways to describe things, and also touched on verbs and tenses, before finishing off with a quiz about where various countries are using a map I'd brought. The fact that I more or less held their attention all that time seemed to make it a success.

Graduation crowds

The thing that impressed me most in class, and has continued to do so all week, was how well behaved and respectful the kids are. There was no back chat, no smart alec remarks, no tantrums, no attention seeking - yeah, they talk and fidget, fool around, bicker and sometimes whack eachother, but when a teacher raises their voice and demands attention (including me), they listen. It's probably worth pointing out that corporal punishment is still very much part of school life in Jamaica, and I've seen a fair few kids get hefty whacks off teachers. But as someone who has always thought the backlash against smacking in the UK is ridiculous and is a direct reason why so many kids grow up thinking they can behave as they please, I don't think this is a bad thing at all.

And anyway, it's not like the kids are unhappy or live in fear of getting beaten - just the opposite, they seem really happy, and the enthusiasm they have shown towards me has made me feel like some kind of pop star at times. The troop of students, mostly girls, I have had literally hanging off my arms and fighting eachother to stroke my hair has made me feel like a cross between the Pied Piper and Justin Bieber. I have had classes arguing with eachother and begging me over who I teach next, the best being 3.1A (who I have to admit are my favourite class) trying to put me off taking 3.2A instead of them by telling me they 'all like to use cuss words and tell lies' and that '3.2 acting up on you would be my worst nightmare, sir!' Another reasons I get on with 3.1A so much is that their teacher, Mrs Smith, has been teaching them sign language, so I've ben able to pick up some of that with them and had a lot of fun.


Bruce Golding, Jamaican PM



As school wound down to the end of term, class time increasingly became play time and I started spending most of my time out on the playing fields trying by best to avoid sun burn and not sweat so much. But this was not before the showpiece event of the week - graduation. I've never heard of a primary school having a graduation ceremony in the UK before, but I already knew these things were a big deal over here from the one at CCCD I went to the week before - there were only 7 students graduating then, and the ceremony still lasted well over three hours, with an array of sermons, speeches and dancing. The Marlie Mount event was even more grandiose - it seemed like everyone in Old Harbour had turned, all dressed to the nines as if they were on the way to a wedding. Then when I saw a police motorcade enter the school gates escorting a plush-looking car, I guessed some local politician must have been invited. It turned out to be Mr Bruce Golding, prime minister of Jamaica, whose father it turned out had been instrumental in opening Marlie Mount school when he was a constituency MP. The whole thing was accordingly filmed for national TV.

Well I think that's about it for now, thanks of you've stuck with it this far!