Albert Town

If there was such a thing as Paradise, I would hope it looked something like Cockpit Country, an exotically stunning and largely pristine region of steep, sheer-sided limestone hills, deep valleys, rivers, caves and sinkholes situated mainly in the northern Jamaican. Famous for its yams, as the home of the fastest man in history, Usain Bolt, and as the land where bands of escaped slaves, the Maroons, built and maintained independent communities in defiance of the British Empire for nearly two centuries, most of Cockpit Country is so rugged and overgrown that there are still barely any human settlements across its 500 acre expanse – most visitors venture here either to hike or hunt the feral pigs that still run wild.

Cockpit Country

Around the region’s perimeter, the landscape softens just enough to allow small-scale farming to thrive, creating a pastoral idyll where man and nature co-exist in apparent harmony – the wild, untamed bush mingles almost without discrimination on the steep slopes with groves of yam, banana, plantain, beans, sugar cane, coffee, cocoa, avocado and citrus fruits, making it a place of plenty as well as beauty. The largest settlements are scattered in a ring, connected by twisting one-track roads embedded high up the valley walls. These small agricultural communities tend to have with strange names like Wait-a-bit, Quick Step, Barbecue Bottom, Me No Sen You No Come and The District of Look Behind, the latter two reminders of the bloody guerilla wars fought between the Maroons and the British redcoats.

One of the largest of these communities is Albert Town, which sits on a high escarpment looking down into an elongated U-shaped valley where the River Quashie runs for just a few short miles before disappearing underground into the pock-riddled limestone. Albert Town is the home of Charlton Francis, aka Paperfoot and often known simply as ‘Paper’, my volunteer mentor while I’m in Jamaica and my host for what I’m treating as my fortnight’s holiday for the summer.

Paperfoot digging me a yam

I’d been looking forward to coming here for a couple of weeks by the time Paperfoot finally arrived to fetch me last Friday afternoon, and bar all the messing about with my visa I would have come a week earlier. With little to do, the summer holidays had started to drag in Old Harbour, and I was feeling well ready for a change of scene, wandering round the countryside a bit and enjoying some peace and quiet. So I was feeling pretty contented as we headed up the winding, narrow mountain road north of Mandeville, soaking up the scenery as we passed through the big(ish) market town of Christiana and delved into the Trelawney hills soaked in late afternoon sunshine.

I was feeling even more pleased as we arrived in Albert Town and I was shown my home for the next two weeks – a very comfortable and neat apartment on the ground floor of a two-storey, split-level house built into the hillside within spitting distance of the main town square. After three months in more sparse accommodation, having a choice of two double beds, with proper pillows, a laptop and collection of DVDs, and a kitchen complete with kettle and toaster felt like luxury. And that was before Paperfoot started to bring me food – by the end of the weekend, I had my own bushel of green banana, a 10-pound hunk of yam, a dozen ripe bananas, plantains, pumpkin and papaya, plus fresh mint and lemongrass for making tea, brought fresh from ‘bush’ for me to feast on. Let’s just say I’ve been eating pretty well the past week, and if it is possible to poison yourself from eating too much banana and plantain, I’m about to find out.

View from the Aurturo Pub

The weekend was spent exploring the town and the surrounding area. The town itself has little more than a library, post office, petrol station, community centre and maybe a dozen or so shops and bars, including a bakery that sells delicious, slightly sweet fresh harddough bread (although when I asked for ‘fresh bread’, the guy behind the counter gave me a friendly lecture about how his bread, containing salt and sugar, was anything but ‘fresh’, which for Jamaicans means unseasoned and therefore tasteless or bad tasting. ‘Aks me for hot or warm bread and we a-speak the same language, my friend!’). There is also a pretty good pub, the Aurturo, which has a veranda at the back with great views over the valley below.

My guides around town on the first morning were Paperfoot’s 10-year old daughter Tanish and Yashima, granddaughter of Tanish’s step-mum, Sister, whose services came pretty cheap all considering, costing a large bag of jelly snakes and some instant corn porridge. For this they also took me down the road leading past where I’m staying and down into the valley below, past Paperfoot’s home and some of his yam fields and banana groves, and into the scattered community of Freedom Hall, named after a large Baptist Church, where most of Tanish’s extended family live, including her 104-year-old great-grandmother.

Hair-do courtesy of Tanish

The main attraction down in the valley is the Quashie River, a shallow, rocky and very pretty waterway which pours into a huge sinkhole and cave complex a couple of miles down stream from Albert Town. As there isn’t a great deal to do in the immediate area without taking a convoluted series of taxi rides, exploring this sinkhole and cave became my main ambition for the week. Unfortunately, my best laid plans were to be thwarted – twice – by one of the hazards you have to roll with if you decide to take a holiday in the Jamaican hill country smack bang in the middle of rainy season – a tendency for frequent and torrential thunderstorms to spring out of nowhere.

I made my first assault on reaching the sinkhole, which I knew from my guidebook involved a short hike through farm-cum-bush land followed by a difficult scramble down a steep collapse, on Sunday, setting out at around 1pm accompanied by Paperfoot. This, I realize with hindsight, was my first mistake – the rains here always come in the afternoon. Nonetheless, after following the road down into the valley for a couple of miles, I left Paperfoot in glorious sunshine at the house of a friend he needed to call on, with instructions to follow the road for about another half mile or so round a sharp bend where I would see a sign for the trail down to the sinkhole.

All of this was straightforward enough, and I found the sign without any problems. However, on rounding the bend I also found something else – a huge bank of black cloud towering above the hills at the head of the valley ahead, and the unmistakable misty veil of torrential rain cloaking the view. Although where I was stood was still bathed in hot sunshine, I could see the thunderstorm was headed straight for me, and was probably moving quite quickly. Not fancying getting caught half way down a steep slope on my own in torrential rain with nothing but the shirt on my back, I turned on my heels and headed back. My instincts about how quick the storm was approaching proved correct – by the time I reached the house where I’d left Paperfoot less than half an hour before in blazing heat, the sky was black and the rain was bouncing it down. I’d actually timed it pretty well – it only really started to properly rain about a minute before I arrived in the sanctuary of Paperfoot’s friend’s veranda, but that was enough to soak me to the skin.



Sheltering from the storm with Paperfoot



We waited there for about an hour for a break in the rain, knowing we had a fair walk back up the steep hill to go. Eventually, seeing the torrent slacken to a light drizzle, Paperfoot decided that the downpour had exhausted itself and we would be safe to hit the road again. It wasn’t a good guess – within ten minutes it was absolutely tipping it down again, and I was soon so wet I might as well have just gone and sat fully clothed in the river. We took a short cut up a rocky bank which now resembled a small stream, and took refuge a while in an abandoned shop, before deciding the only decent thing to do in the circumstances was to head over the road to a small wooden bar and take refuge under the tarpaulin at the back while having a beer. By the time we’d finished, the rain had slackened off and the sun was even trying to breakthrough again.

Yashima, Monique and Tanish

I made my next attempt to reach the cussed cave on Thursday, this time accompanied by Tanish, Yashima and Monique, and equipped with a bag full of food, a towel and a waterproof jacket. Learning my lesson from the last trip, I made sure we set off earlier, stopping along the way to top up our lunch provisions by picking Ethiopian apples and guava. However, lulled into a false sense of security by the hot sunshine, cloudless sky and the fact we had time in abundance, I made my second mistake. The plan was to visit the sinkhole but also spend some time lazing around next to (and in) the river itself. As we were already pretty hot by the time we reached the river a mile or so upstream from the sinkhole, we decided to stop and take a dip in the river for a while.

Despite not being very wide or deep, Quashie River is a beautiful place to bathe. High banks overgrown with tall bamboo and guava trees hanging out over the water make it a sun trap where little wind reaches, but also provide plenty of cool shade, while the water from countless mountain streams gushes over the rocks in mini-waterfalls, collecting in places in waist-deep pools just big enough to stretch out in. It’s also where local families come to do their laundry and wash – the first couple of places we tried down the bank, we came across naked and women and children in the midst of having a bath, prompting me to make hurried apologies, although no one else seemed to bat an eyelid. When we eventually did find a long stretch of relatively deep water to ourselves, our paddling soon drew complaints from a woman just downstream who was washing her clothes, as we were disturbing the sandy bottom of the river and making the water muddy.

The Quashie River

The combination of hot sun, cool water and attractive scenery was pretty hard to resist, and we probably spent longer sitting under small waterfalls and trying to catch small fish with our hands than we should have done. But by the time I decided we should head for the cave, the sun was still hot and the sky blue, with just a few white clouds starting to gather over the hills upstream. I should have learnt my lesson from the previous Sunday about how quickly weather closes in up here – by the time we reached the signs to the cave, it had clouded over and a few drops of rain were in the air. I couldn’t believe my luck – same place, same result. This time, though, sheer stubbornness meant I wasn’t going to give in so easily – I was going to see that sinkhole even if I got a proper soaking in the process. So we set off on the track from the road, prompting a warning from a bemused and slightly concerned-looking woman at the nearest house not to even try going in the sinkhole in the rain as the river flooded extremely quickly as soon as heavy rains started sending water cascading down the surrounding hills. I didn’t care anymore, I knew the weather had screwed up my chances of reaching the cave for a second time, and I just wanted to see where it was.

Monique enjoys nature's bubble bath

Following the path down and round the edge of a large yam field, we probably got 200 yards before the heavens opened. I started to feel guilty about subjecting two ten-year-old girls to the downpour, especially knowing how most Jamaicans avoid rain at all costs, but the consensus was we were miles from home, we had nowhere to shelter, and everyone was still in their swimwear anyway, we might as well keep going. About 15 minutes later, after battling through some thick overgrowth in unrelenting rain, we reached the top of the descent into the sink and I realized I wasn’t going any further – the sides are sheer and in that rain, far too slippery to risk taking the two girls down. So back we headed, but, to my surprise, not dispirited – everyone was enjoying the stupidity of hiking half-naked through the bush in the kind of rain that takes just seconds to soak you to the skin.

Typically, no sooner had we got back to the main road than the rain started to ease and the sun came out again. I knew there was no point going back – the slopes down to sink would be too wet to climb down for hours – and everyone wanted lunch. Seeing as we were all wet through anyway, why not head back to the river to eat by/in the water. So it was that we managed to squeeze in a picnic of banana, banana fritters, bread, guava and Ethiopian apple, washed down with home-made grapefruit juice, before the rain returned with a vengeance. The downpour that engulfed the valley for the next half hour or so is probably the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen, and certainly walked in. We rigged up towels, t-shirts and the one waterproof jacket I had with me the best we could to keep the rain out of our eyes, me and Monique opting to make pretty ridiculous-looking hats out of black plastic bags, and trudged back up the hill, laughing and enjoying the exhilarating feeling of no longer caring how hard it rained because we couldn’t possibly get any wetter. God knows what people in the houses we passed thought of our motley crew.

Kitted out for the rain

Eventually, the heavens relented and the sun came out to dry us out on the final stretch of our journey, which was probably a good job as it was starting to feel a tad cold. On the way back, I got accosted by the kind of gentleman of senior years who back home could be assumed to sleep on park benches and stink of piss – a toothless, sun-dried old man who came lurching out of a rum shack towards me, carrying a huge joint and so drunk he could barely walk. I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but at first I gathered it was pretty friendly, peppered with the usual ‘Respect, whitey!’ and elbow touches. But then he gestured towards Monique and said something about white men and black women and suddenly had this wild, infuriated look in his eye. I tried to walk away, but he kept grabbing my arm and facing me, suddenly asking me ‘You hate black people, huh?!!’ Then I knew it was time to get away, and fast – despite being old and half-cut, the guy had had a machete tucked under his arm the whole time, which made me feel kind of nervous. Monique and the two girls weren’t much help – they’d sped up to get away from the madman and had got a fair way up the road while I conversed with my new friend. There was nothing for it – I picked up my pace to a near-trot I calculated the old get wouldn’t be able to keep up with in his state of inebriation, and left him cursing in my wake. I guess every town has one.

On Monday I braved the mountain roads to head to Christiana to meet Monique, who had decided to come visit me. The journey there was yet another education in the game of sardines that is typical of Jamaican public transport – the driver of the route taxi managed to squeeze SIX people into his Toyota Corolla, a new record for me, by making two people share the front seat. I’m not sure exactly how he managed to change gear, but the woman sat in the middle didn’t seem to be complaining.

The Blue Hole

I managed to survive the journey with just an aching kidney (thanks to a stray elbow from a fellow passenger) and stiff hips to show for being bounced around in a human crushing machine for the past 40 minutes, and had time to kill. I’d arrived in Christiana early to go on a walk I’d seen in my guidebook down into the valley below to a swimming pool known as the Blue Hole. I set off with only the vaguest directions, and was very grateful for a couple of young boys who asked me where I was going, telling me I’d passed the track into the bush I needed to take. They kindly offered to take me, leading me down a red dirt path through some yam fields, and then down a tall flight of natural stone steps in the steep valley wall.

Christiana boys, erm, 'posing'

Despite the stream which feeds it being little more than a trickle, the Blue Hole is a sizeable pool, and deep enough in parts to allow for some good diving off the 10-foot rocks surrounding it. This I gathered straight away from the large group of teenage boys swimming there and taking it in turns to show off their best twist, pike and bombing routines from the high ledges. As I’m becoming used to, the scenery around the pool was like something out of a fairy tale, all glistening rocks draped in lush, hanging vegetation, and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours there swimming in the icy water and chatting to the boys, who were particularly keen to discuss the comings and goings in the English Premier League transfer window ahead of the new season.

Right now I’m sat writing this while a particularly loud thunderstorm rages outside, full of plantain porridge and avocado, feeling extremely relaxed. Not 20 miles away, the bars, discos and go-go clubs of Montego Bay will be gearing up for another weekend of all-night parties and unbridled hedonism. You can keep them – to be able to walk and pick what you want to eat from laden trees and rest in the shade with your feet cooling in the current of a cool stream is happiness enough for me right now.

Buccaneers and Buses

For once when I’ve sat down to write this blog I’m having to wrack my brains for something to write about – not much has happened in the past week or so, bar a trip out to visit the former pirate hang-out of Port Royal, and the continuing and frustrating saga of getting my visa extended, which has delayed me heading up north to Albert Town. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered.

Kashawn, the latest Bryan dynasty carver

It could have been a different story this week – had things gone to plan, I would have made a trip up to visit Bob Marley’s mausoleum in his birth town of Nine Mile, St Anne, and then last Sunday gone to a free concert to mark the anniversary of the birth of Jamaican national hero Marcus Garvey, whose teachings, writings and activism in the cause of black empowerment have had a huge influence on everything from Rastafari to the American Civil Rights movement. Unfortunately, both trips fell through for the same reason, my prospective companions being flat broke.

Home has been on my mind quite a lot, partly because of a mixture of good news and bad news, but also I guess partly because of boredom. For a couple of days at the end of last week, I felt as homesick as I’ve been so far, I really, really wanted to be home seeing family and friends and just getting back to my old life again. But then there have been reminders of the things I won’t enjoy one bit when I do return, and I remember how lucky I am to be here with a little bit of distance between me and the hassles of normality, taking a pit stop before I have to return to the rat race. I hope the next three months drag like crazy.

Meeting a salty seadog

Port Royal was the first town built by the British after they invaded and took over control of parts of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1654 (Jamaica was not formally ceded to Britain until 1670). Then an island at the mouth of Kingston Harbour opposite the present capital, Port Royal was seen as strategically important for protecting the recently won prize of the world’s seventh-largest natural harbour, and the British built five separate forts there. To man this growing fort town, the British administration hit on an ingenious idea – instead of shipping over soldiers and civilians from home, they began to encourage the Caribbean’s growing armies of pirates and buccaneers to use Port Royal as a base for launching their attacks on Spanish gold ships heading back from South America to Europe. Within a few short years, legendary privateers such as Henry Morgan (who was later made lieutenant general of Jamaica with a mandate to eradicate piracy from the colony) and Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach had helped turn Port Royal into a city renowned as ‘the richest and wickedest on earth’, awash with plunder, rum and prostitution. As if divine judgment had ruled it such, the booming port was destroyed by an earthquake in 1692, plunging huge chunks of the island into the sea.

Marcus Garvey statue, Liberty House

I loved pirate stories as a kid. I even have a soft spot for the Pirates of the Caribbean films, so the chance to see the original pirate town was quite exciting. It took a while to get to, what with Sunday bus services not being so regular, but the hour wait in downtown Kingston at least gave me a chance to see more of the Parade and walk up King Street, past the Ward Theatre and Liberty Hall, headquarters of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association. The wait finally over, the bus headed east out onto the coast road I’d last been on my first night in Jamaica when I was picked up from the airport, past the huge Caribbean Cement factory where the green hills come tumbling down within spitting distance of the shoreline. As we headed out along the causeway past Norman Manley Airport, it occurred to me that I’d be making this same journey in another three months, only then I’ll be heading home.

The Ward Theatre

Port Royal itself was a bit of a disappointment for the simple reason that there’s nothing much there – it’s more sleepy fishing village than historical pirate fort these days, with only a scattering of large, mostly disused buildings suggesting its maritime and military past. I didn’t bother paying in to the museum at Fort Charles as from what I’ve read it’s main attraction is a collection of old canons, and you can see some of them outside the gate anyway. Instead I settled for a relaxing walk in the late afternoon sunshine, while a vicious-looking thunderstorm raged over the water over Kingston and the hills behind, the inky clouds making the sun-soaked island seem all the brighter. Lunch was the Jamaican equivalent of fish and chips (not that I had the fish) – fried fish (fried whole, head and all, without batter), festival and bammy, or cassava cakes, topped with amazing chilli pickled cabbage and washed down with an ice cold Guinness. As we sat by the shoreline next to some fishing boats, we watched some tourists heading off by boat to one of the nearby cays. We got talking to one of the fishermen and he quoted us a price of $5000 – about 40 pounds – for a two-hour boat trip to one of the little sand spits, the largest and nearest of which I could have swam to. Needless to say, I didn’t take up his kind offer.

In the sea, finally!

Besides, if you wanted to go swimming, there’s a perfectly good beach at Port Royal itself, although I guess for your average tourist it isn’t pristine enough to fulfill their fantasies of tropical beach luxury – annoying details like flotsam that doesn’t look like it has been cleaned up in years probably spoil the dream. But that wasn’t going to put me off taking a much-anticipated dip in the Caribbean, although typically, as soon as I stripped off the storm clouds reached Port Royal from inland accompanied by a surprisingly chilly wind. Not that that mattered much once I was in the sea – it was a temperature I’d be quite happy to have a bath in (I was later told warm sea is usually a forewarning of hurricanes). I could have stayed there all day, except I had to get the bus home.

I’m starting to feel like I’m becoming more closely acquainted with the bus service between Old Harbour and Kingston, via Spanish Town, than I ever needed to be, and sure enough I was back on it again the next day to go and finally try to sort my visa out, at the third attempt. For whatever reason, the buses were unusually crowded, and that seemed to make everything take twice as long as normal. In Spanish Town, the big yellow JUTC bus to Half Way Tree must have started to leave the depot and stopped again to pick up more passengers about six times, until you couldn’t have found standing room for a sardine. This cramming process took a full 20 minutes, and although I’d left Old Harbour in what seemed plenty of time, I started to doubt that the Immigration Office only closed half days on Fridays.

Monique on the beach

It didn’t, and getting my visa approved was relatively straight forward, even though they did question why the organization that had sent me over had not applied for a work permit exemption for me, which strictly speaking was required even to carry out work on a voluntary basis. However, it was obviously not that a big deal and they duly granted me the three month extension, before delivering the coup de grace – for some unfathomable quirk of the bureaucratic process, they wouldn’t stamp my passport there and then and I would have to return to collect it on Thursday afternoon, which would be journey number four. As you can imagine, I was overjoyed at this news.

View Kingston Harbour from Port Royal

The buses hadn’t got any quieter by the time I returned to the Half Way Tree depot at about 3pm, and the line for the Spanish Town bus was horrific. After waiting for the first bus to fill up and depart, Monique insisted I forgo 30 years of indoctrination in British etiquette and follow her out of the queue to the front, ready to pounce once the next bus arrived. What I witnessed next was all the vindication I’ll ever need to know that queuing is good, proper and right. In the maelstrom that erupted as soon as the next bus pulled up, I saw children and old women rudely shoved aside in the free-for-all to get on and get a seat. But the best of it was, no sooner had this scrum started, than another empty bus bound for Spanish Town pulled up right behind the first – there was no need for anyone to push and wrestle, there was room for everyone. Now if everyone had just stayed queued nicely… Once on the bus, however, I saw a much better side of the Jamaican character summed up in the use of public transport. A young mum with a rather tubby little girl of about five had got on too late to get a seat – to save her daughter’s legs, she simply asked Monique if she minded if the girl sat on her knee, who said yes, no problem. Somehow I couldn’t imagine the same kind of spirit of helpfulness existing between strangers on a bus back home, where people seem most intent on staring straight ahead and avoiding any kind of interaction with human beings. Moved by this spirit of camaraderie (and realizing that the plump girl was sending Monique’s legs numb before we’d even left the bus terminal), I gave up my seat to the mother so she could have the pleasure of letting her own baby block off the circulation to her lower limbs.

However hectic that journey was, I’d picked the right day to go to sort my visa out – the next day, bus and taxi operators in St Catherine and St Andrew, the parishes where Spanish Town and Kingston are, went on strike calling for the minister of transport to resign, over what dispute I don’t know. The action apparently brought both major cities to a standstill and left hundreds of people stranded. It also caused some tension – Shawn, Kadaye’s boyfriend and baby Kashawn’s dad, works on the buses and came home that night saying one of his work mates had been shot in the foot after a car driver lost patience with the strikers blocking the road in Linstead with their picket and decided to open fire.

A final note on the use of buses in Jamaica – if you ever do get to use one of the large yellow JUTC buses in and around Kingston and Spanish Town, don’t be surprised to be treated to an impromptu sermon from some wannabe preacher. On the way back from finally collecting by newly stamped visa yesterday, I was treated to a middle-aged man in glasses belting out a series of hymns in one of the worst singing voices I’ve ever heard – if there was a God, surely he’d have done something to this guys larynx to prevent him torturing the unsuspecting public so. Monday’s highway testament was much better, however – I actually agreed with a lot of what the earnest-looking young man had to say, bar all the bible quotations. His theme was people ‘wanting things there own way’, and he went on to explain how this was at the root of most of Jamaican society’s ills with a careful dissection of politics, popular culture, domestic arrangements and much more besides, all delivered in the typically Jamaican blunt, no-bullshit style.

By and large, I have found Jamaican people generally much more switched on to the political and social circumstances surrounding them than back home – there’s none of the burying your head in the sand, it doesn’t affect me, I find all that stuff boring attitude that you get in so many Brits. And I have to admit religion plays a key part in that, both Rastafari, which ensures that a radical, anti-state, pro-revolution ideology is pretty mainstream here, and Christianity, which serves as a kind of collective moral conscience people aren’t afraid to talk about in public. As with the guy on the bus, I found myself agreeing with an article written by some prominent Christian or other in Wednesday’s paper about a Jamaican guy who’s just been jailed in 30 years in America for running a Ponzi scam worth millions of dollars. Minus all the biblical references, his arguments about greed and selfishness were spot on.

The flipside of the tight grip Christianity has on the moral consciousness of many Jamaicans remains all too apparent, however. Pro-life anti-abortion posters are dotted all along the main highway into Kingston, and most obvious of all is the deep-rooted homophobia whish seems nearly universal. The same paper on Wednesday ran a front page story about how a gay rights group had had an advert refused by Jamaica’s main TV company. The story quoted company officials citing prominent Christian pastors who in recent weeks had spoken out about the evils of homosexuality as evidence that a pro-gay advert would cause too much public offence. Whether they remain a practicing Christian or not, these attitudes are engrained in most Jamaicans from birth, and while the Church keeps its influence, I can’t see that changing. It’s one example of where the influence of a reactionary and conservative religion is holding this country back.

England is a Bitch

On Wednesday evening, Irie FM ran a special half-hour feature dedicated to the rioting in the UK over the past week. In typical Irie style, there was no hard-nosed discussion or critical analysis with a bunch of dubious ‘experts’ dragged in to give their two penny’s worth on what was happening – the point was made, simply, humorously and brilliantly, by playing several records by legendary Brixton-based dub poet Lyndon Kwesi Johnson, offering his own scathing assessments of everything he saw wrong with Britain. It was one of the best pieces of radio I’ve ever heard.

Hearing and reading about what is being described as the worst civil rest to hit the UK in living memory from the vantage point of Jamaica has been slightly strange. It is big news here, with updates on all the hourly news bulletins and big sections in the newspapers, evidence that a lot of people here still feel a strong connection with the UK through family and friends living there. The riots are hot topics of conversation, and the general opinion is one of disbelief. ‘Me a cyan’t believe what I’m a-hearing is happening in England,’ was Jayvan’s verdict. ‘I never believed tings like that happened there’. To many Jamaicans, the UK remains a promised land of wealth, opportunity, jobs. Ask them to swap places with the ‘disillusioned youth’ venting their anger on the streets, most would snatch your hand off.

This had a big influence on my reaction to the riots. What exactly are people venting their anger about? What’s the point? Let’s face it, what’s going on isn’t anything like the focused, coordinated protests aimed at achieving genuine social change that have taken place in North Africa and the Middle East this year, as well as in Greece. And do these angry youths really have something to get into such a big beef about? It looks to me suspiciously like old fashioned British hooliganism, violence, robbery and destruction just for the hell of it.

When I first heard the news, I posted on Facebook that it sounded like a bunch of spoilt brats throwing a tantrum. I stand by that. There’s a reason why Australians call us whingeing poms – we British really do love bemoaning our lot in life, always wanting and expecting more. It makes us look pretty ridiculous. Put yourself, for example, in an average Jamaican’s shoes and look at what reasons British youth have for being disillusioned to the point of smashing up their own communities – UK unemployment levels pale into insignificance compared to those here, if you’re lucky enough to get a job wages are poor, there’s no welfare system, no dole. I find myself wondering sometimes how the people around me get by. And as for ‘police brutality’, well one writer in the Jamaican Observer summed it up by pointing out that every Jamaican understands the consequences if people took to the streets here to confront police who carry automatic rifles just when carrying out safety spot-checks on taxis and buses.

As British Citizens, we have life pretty damn good – too good and too easy, perhaps, because it seems the whole country takes its privilege and comfort for granted and is always on the prowl for more. But this is a fundamental part of the shared psychology of British social life, a key organizing principle. Like it or not, Britain is a self-centred and greedy country, where individual rights are emphasized over collective responsibilities. It is a deeply hierarchical society where status and power are achieved through material wealth – how it is achieved is of little concern, hence the rise of the cult of celebrity which represents the complete fetishisation of wealth and fame for their own sakes. Our conception of ‘freedom’ is the ability to gain wealth unhindered by concerns about other people, creating a society riven by competition rather than cooperation seen most clearly in the amoral, dog-eat-dog world of big business. Our economy depends entirely on consumption, so we are brought up with a neurotic need to take, take, take – we demand constant entertainment like it’s our birthright, but are programmed to never be entirely satisfied, ensuring we keep on spending.

Another important factor is that the wealthier a country is, the more obvious the gap between rich and poor. I’ve seen this for myself in the USA, still the richest nation on earth, most starkly in the dozens of destitute homeless I saw living on the streets within a block or two of San Francisco’s glitzy and extravagant Hilton hotel. Britain’s poor might be relatively well-off on a global scale, but in a society where the worship of wealth has become the new religion, reminders of what they don’t have are constant. The resentment those living at the bottom of the pile feel towards those living at the top, and the reciprocal feelings of dismissal, disgust or patronizing pity felt from the top downwards, is a fundamental and inescapable flaw inherent in any hierarchical social system, always simmering beneath the surface, capable of exploding at any moment, and usually only kept in check through calculated, often violent, oppression and indoctrination of the masses by the few. This tension and instability is in fact a necessary condition of the existence of a hierarchical society – the rich need to simultaneously exploit and retain the complicity in their own exploitation of the sections of society they see as justly inferior in order to maintain their superiority. It is a paradox, a sham, that cannot long be upheld without descending into violence one way or another, and why, in terms of human evolution, the hierarchical model of society is primitive and past its sell-by date.

So yes, I still can’t help but see the riots as the actions of a bunch of spoilt brats. But that is to be expected in a culture where we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, spoilt and believe we have some divine right to all the blessings life can bestow on us. Humility, community, awareness of collective responsibility and respect for others are values dangerously lacking at all levels of society, from the rich bastards who dodge paying the same share of taxes the rest of us do to the posturing kids who think it’s cooler to get a criminal record than an education. Maybe it’s a symptom of our now lost Empire – collectively, we can’t quite shake off the Victorian belief that being British means we’re better than everyone else, except now we’re incapable of going out and just taking it, we sit and moan that the world owes us something. Maybe it’s a symptom of the country’s odd mix of a rapaciously capitalist free market economy, liberal culture and socialist welfare system. What should be the crowning achievement of capitalist ideology – what other country has used the profits of global trade to fund universal education, healthcare and state benefits for the sick, unemployed, very young and infirm elderly, to the extent the UK has? – has instead helped to expose the contradictions and inconsistencies in its own system, the paradox of building a social system on greed, self-advancement and the rights of an individual over many, because people expect to be looked after, rather than being thankful for the privilege.

Whatever the reasons, what we’ve seen this week is stark evidence that British society is not happy with its lot. The never-ending cycle of competition and consumption which keeps the greedy heart of our society beating condemns many of us to a painful awareness of the disparity between what we want and what we have which drives us to neurotic, destructive and downright stupid behaviour – I know because I’ve done plenty of it. Ultimately the riots won’t make a blind bit of difference – there won’t be a revolution (I don’t think the British are capable of effective revolt), we’ll have a thousand-plus kids handed punitive criminal sentences to make an example of them and ultimately the powers that be will use it to strengthen their argument to keep things exactly as they are.

Of all people, it was David Cameron who got me thinking of rights and responsibilities by claiming the riots showed ‘sections of society’ wanted the claim the former without recognising the latter. He’s wrong – all sections of our society fail in the responsibilities to one another, Cameron and his rich Eton elite more than anyone. If he was serious about his responsibilities, maybe for a start he’d like to try redistributing wealth from the top down, abolishing the centuries-old bias towards private property on which our legal system is built, encouraging the setting up of community-run cooperatives to replace private with shared ownership (thus instilling values based on communal responsibility), and reforming trade policy to end our centuries-old exploitation of poorer nations. Maybe then he could claim to be taking serious steps to addressing the divisions in our society, replacing greed, selfishness, competition and want with values like cooperation, sharing, inclusion and involvement. Maybe by giving people room to work together to shape their own lives rather than compete to have their lives shaped by what they can get, we really would have a society where people recognized and respected their collective responsibilities. But hey, I know I’m wandering into the realm of fantasy here - we’re more likely to see rioters fire bombing 10 Downing Street from the backs of flying pigs than we are to see that happen, in which case Cameron and all the other clowns can pout and posture all they want, laying down the law and expecting everyone to fall in line with the flawed vision of a ‘good’ society he shares with millions of other brainwashed fellow countrymen because it suits them. The basic truth is this – while you keep people poor while constantly rubbing their noses in what they could have won had their luck been a little different, you will always have to face the prospect of their anger and resentment exploding in your face.

Tales of Town

Ok, so it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve found time to update the old Joe Blog - what can I say, I’ve been busy. Well, I use the word ‘busy’ in its loosest sense, enjoying as I am the first extended period of having absolutely nothing to do I’ve had since I left university, and believe me, it feels fantastic. Besides, it is getting seriously hot here now. Getting out of bed is enough for me to get a sweat on, never mind actually doing anything.

Dodgy tash courtesy of barber

I have, however, managed to drag myself out of my semi-permanent siesta long enough to hit the road and leave Old Harbour a few times, which, after five weeks with only a day and night in Clarendon to show for  it, was long overdue. My adventures have taken me east to Kingston and Spanish Town, Jamaica’s current and former capitals, the largest settlements on its industrialized southern plains and as (in)famous today for their ‘garrison’ gang-run ghettoes as their historic and economic significance.

The trip to Spanish Town came about out of the blue. My original plan for the Emancipation Day holiday weekend (first weekend in August) had been to hit the beach, but on the Friday evening, just an exhausting marathon game of football was winding down in semi-darkness, the fringes of Tropical Storm Emily, which had swept over Puerto Rico and Hispaniola that week, decided to start dumping her load over the southern Jamaican parishes, signaling the start of a pretty stormy and soggy weekend. With the beach not looking such a good idea, my friend Monique invited me to spend the holiday with her family in Spanish Town, where she had just moved from Old Harbour.

My first piece of carving, a Calabash bowl

Spanish Town was founded as Jamaica’s first capital by the original Spanish colonists in  1534, under the name of St Jago de la Vega, and remained the island’s first city under the British until 1872. A century-and-a-half later, it’s hard to believe that this was once the administrative centre of one of the British Empire’s wealthiest colonies – bar some old-looking stone and brick buildings, it looks and feels like a typically Jamaican market town, i.e. ramshackle, noisy and with little of obvious immediate interest to see or do apart from shop and people watch. It is also notorious as the one place outside Kingston with ghettoes to rival those of the capital.

Before I came out here, I had promised myself (and my mum) not to take risks while I was here. Visiting one of Spanish Town’s tough residential neighbourhoods was perhaps not exactly following this advice. The week before I went, Spanish Town made the headlines for three gruesome murders in which the victims, including a middle aged female pastor and her daughter, had been beheaded. Rumours were that a particularly nasty gang called the Klansmen were behind the killings. But one thing I’ve realized in the time I’ve been here so far, if I’m going to get the most out of this experience, I have to trust people. I knew Monique was not someone who would put me in any kind of danger, and her invite to visit her family was so kind I would have felt rude refusing anyway.

Marlie Mount car stereo clash

We took the bus on the Sunday morning, my first time in one of Jamaica’s crowded minibuses, passing east through what is mainly sugar cane country with the strangely haphazard St Catherine hills abruptly closing the horizon in to the north. Being a Sunday, Spanish Town’s normally bustling centre was relatively quiet, with dozens of route taxis waiting lazily in the hot morning sun for the slow trickle of custom coming through. We caught one heading for Gordon’s Pen, where Monique’s family live, winding through what I guessed must be the start of the foothills of the ‘country’ to the north, a semi-rural landscape of gullies, fruit tress and large, zinc sheet-enclosed yards. Then we hit a problem – just as we reached Gordon’s Pen, the road was blocked off by yellow scene-of-crime tape.



Bop! Bop! Bop!



I’d caught enough of the conversation in patois between the driver and the other passengers to understand there’d been a shooting somewhere up along the road that morning and part of the road was blocked off. It turned out it had happened right on the turn off for the track down to Monique’s family’s home. She was distraught – the shooting had happened while she was on her way to fetch me from Old Harbour, and she couldn’t stop apologizing, clearly worried about the impression this was having on me. Quite frankly, I wasn’t bothered – I didn’t feel in danger, I wasn’t in the least bit scared and I certainly didn’t want to turn back for Old Harbour. As they say, shit happens.

After an aborted attempt to sneak through the crime scene to the turning on the other side, halted quickly by a police photographer, we had no choice but hop in another taxi and take a circuitous route round to the other side of Monique’s home. As she wasn’t familiar with this way, we got out too early had to walk five minutes or so along white chalk tracks enclosed on both sides by high zinc fences. I was very aware that I was now as far off the tourist trail as I was likely to get in my six months in Jamaica.

Shopping Downtown

The two days I spent with the Brown family will be among my best memories of my time here. I met Monique’s mum, Cherie, her older half-brother Pim, two younger brothers Kineal and Davian, younger sister Latoya and baby nephew (Latoya’s son) Anjay. Another brother, Oneal, was staying with relatives elsewhere in Spanish Town, while her step-father was in hospital after accidentally slicing his hand pretty badly. Their home, a reasonably sized two-bed bungalow, sits in a large yard that at the back seems to open directly onto common land scattered with other homes, again giving the impression that this is a half-way land between town and country.

The Brown family’s story is probably typical of thousands throughout Jamaica fighting a daily battle against poverty. Just under two years ago, Cherie went into hospital to have gall stones removed. Over the next few months, she gradually started to lose feeling in her legs and now can only move around with great difficulty using a walking stick. In her early forties, she has gone from being the main bread-winner to relying on her young family for support.

Monique outside Juici Patties near The Parade

At the time Cherie’s illness began to affect her, the family were living ‘up country’ in St Anne’s parish, where Monique and her siblings grew up. A year ago, Kineal and Oneal got into some trouble after being (wrongly) accused of stealing a neighbour’s DVD player. To get their own back on the neighbour, they blockaded the road outside their home to stop them passing through. This led to a confrontation with other neighbours, and a fight broke out in which Kineal was hacked in the neck, back and chest with a machete.  The wound in his chest punctured his lung and he was apparently lucky to survive, spending two months in hospital. The episode led to the family fleeing to Spanish Town to avoid further trouble, with the younger sister staying behind to have her baby and the mother and second oldest brother (only 19 himself) too sick to work.

Moment of non-vegan weakness

With no one in the household currently working, it’s obvious life isn’t easy for the Brown family, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to them. With no welfare system, a shortage of jobs and high cost of living, they get by the way many Jamaicans get on – doing whatever they can here and there for a bit of money or food, be it odd jobs, swapping favours with friends and family, living hand to mouth. And they do it with a laugh, a smile and their heads held high and proud. Monique spends her Saturdays working on the stall of an aunt in Kingston’s sprawling Coronation Market in return for a couple of bags of food and a small share of the takings she makes during a day. She also has a three-year-old son of her own to support.

I know I keep saying it, but the way the Brown family welcomed me into their home and treated me was truly humbling. The two days were passed being quizzed all about England, my family, my friends and anything else the brothers and Latoya could think of to quiz me about, playing draughts, playing with tubby seven-month-old Anjay (or ‘Mojo’) and watching TV (after two months without, I actually enjoyed sitting back in front of the idiot box, especially Kineal and Davian’s choice of Jet Li and other Kung Fu DVDs). And best of all was the food – I feasted like a king on rice and peas, steamed callalloo, dumplings, veggie chunks and pumpkin, avocado and mango (picked by the dozen from a huge tree in the yard), mainly prepared by Kineal and Dave, who excelled themselves as chefs cooking on coals or wood.



Monique in catalogue pose



I was only allowed out of the yard during daylight hours, and was taken down the road to visit some of the extended family in the ‘Big Yard’ Monique had spent her early years living in, a long rectangular space reaching down a gully containing six or seven buildings housing various cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. On the Monday night, Monique announced she needed to head to the shop to buy some rice – when I offered to go with her, I was told flatly to stay where I was, Dave would go with her (I didn’t bother questioning why it was any safer for a 15 year old boy to venture out after dark). About half an hour later, they arrived back, Monique looking flustered and excited – about to leave the shop, they’d heard a commotion outside, and stepped out to see a group of armed police chasing some youths down the road. A standoff ensued, again blocking Monique’s way home. She said at one point she wondered if she’d be able to get home at all if both sides dug their heels in, and was relieved when the youths jumped a fence and disappeared, taking the chase away in a different direction. Monique later told me that she’d recognized one of the youths, armed with a gun, as her cousin.

The following Friday found me once again on the road to Spanish Town, this time on route to Kingston, changing from crowded minibus onto one of the bright yellow, air conditioned JUTC coaches that serve the main routes into the capital. The plan was to head to the Immigration Office to sort out the three-month extension to my visa I need to complete my placement here and then have a look round.

Tourist moment

Kingston’s status as Jamaica’s one real metropolis owes much to the biblical destruction by earthquake of Port Royal, the original British port located on an island opposite the current city infamous for its lawlessness, pirates, rum shacks and prostitutes, in 1692. Its natural harbour saw Kingston grow rapidly to be the biggest and richest city in the Caribbean, eclipsing even Havana as a strategic port on the route to Spanish South America, although Kingston nowadays lacks the faded beauty of the Cuban capital (mainly due to another devastating earthquake in 1907). The division into ‘downtown’ and ‘uptown’ roughly follows the boundaries of the original 200-acre settlement laid out by the harbour, with wealthier residents gradually heading north out of the crowded and bustling port town towards the cool mist-shrouded hills that rise up suddenly around the flat plain of the city. Nowadays, despite containing the city’s main business district, downtown is a place where even most Jamaicans would not consider wandering around at night, penned in on both sides by volatile neighbourhoods like Tivoli Gardens, Trench Town, Rae Town and Vineyard Town, while uptown is by contrast a place of shopping malls and leafy parks.



Devon House



Unfortunately the trip to get my visa extended was a waste of time – I’d been tied up that morning helping Stone get his passport signed, scanned and sent off to Everything is Possible ahead of a trip he’s meant to be making to England next month, and not realizing the Immigration Office closes at lunch time on a Friday, missed it by 15 minutes. On the plus side, it was a good excuse to make a return trip to Kingston the following Monday and see more of the city. Monique agreed to come with me again on one proviso – Monday we could go sightseeing, but today she wanted to take me downtown to go shopping, Jamaican style.



So no sooner had we arrived at the crowded main uptown bus terminal at Half Way Tree, where dozens of guys stand on the street corners calling out ‘gold me a buy’,  than we were jostling to climb on another minibus. As we were doing so, I felt a series of sharp tugs at one of my pockets and then watched a guy quickly melt into the crowd and walk away – an attempt at picking my pockets, but although whitey might not be from round these parts, he’s clever enough to wear trousers with button-down pockets when heading to Town. Having escaped still in full possession of all my possessions, my luck quickly ran out when I wasn’t able to get a seat on the bus. The ten minute journey seemed to take an age and left me with arms feeling like I’d just done a weight training session – the driver had a foot like a brick on his brake pedal and seemed intent on revving up to maximum possible speed at the smallest break in the heavy traffic. Stopping myself collapsing into the lap of some unfortunate fellow passenger every few yards was seriously hard work and I was very relieved when we could finally get off.



Half Way Tree



Like Spanish Town, the main clue to downtown’s historic credentials is the number of brick buildings enclosing the narrow streets, which is not typical of most Jamaican towns. We arrived at the Parade, a park area which serves as the main landmark and transport hub in this part of town, crowded on all sides with traffic and street stalls and a couple of pretty-looking churches, with statues of independence movement leaders Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante, as well as Queen Victoria, marking the entrances. A short walk to the south west corner brings you to

Beckford Street

and the start of the main shopping district, stretching west to Coronation Market, the largest on the island.

I’m no stranger to big, busy shopping districts in the UK’s biggest cities, but I was still swept up in how crowded, colourful and noisy this place was. Maybe it was the narrowness of the streets, maybe it was the booming sound systems and near-hysterical Revivalist preachers, maybe it was the fact that as well as regular shops you had street hawkers jammed together on every available inch of pavement trying every trick going to attract the attention of passers by. It felt like you had an entire city’s worth of trade crammed into a few small blocks, and more than enough customers to fill every shop to capacity. And this was just the clothes district – food stuffs were concentrated in Coronation Market itself. I’ve never seen so many T-shirts, dresses, trainers, bootleg Ralph Lauren polos, Calvin Klein boxers, cheap football tops, jeans and assorted sandals, accessories and underwear in my life.



Dragon Stout on Independance Night



We caught the bus direct back to Old Harbour from just outside Coronation Market on a route that took us directly through Tivoli Gardens, a gritty scheme famous for its football club and legendary

Passa Passa street

party. Just past the football ground, which is within walking distance from the market, we passed maybe 10 or 12 policemen sat around on the edge of an open yard containing several rundown-looking four-storey tenement blocks, each carrying a huge automatic rifle and dressed in full body armour. I was told they were waiting for night to fall, when they would go on patrol enforcing a curfew aimed at trying to quell a recent flare-up in gang violence in the area.

The return trip to ‘Town’ was no more successful than the first in terms of getting my visa sorted – my heart sank when I was handed the form I had to fill in and saw there was a 10,000 Jamaican Dollar admin fee (about 80 pound), which I didn’t have on me, although it did explain why I was only given three months leave to remain in the first place – making visitors pay the extension fee is easy money. Anyway, it left plenty of time to wander around Uptown, although the searing heat didn’t really make it a day for sightseeing. In stark contrast to Downtown, Uptown is a place of wide-open boulevards and modern shopping plazas and malls crowded around the concrete sprawl of Half Way Tree. It is also deceptively big – I’d figured we’d be able to walk down to the high-rise district of New Kingston and maybe catch a taxi out to Hope Botanical Gardens, where there’s a small zoo and famous vegetarian restaurant. But by the time we’d walked round Halfway Tree and out to Devon House, a tranquil and shady park set around a stately home built by Jamaica’s first black millionaire, afternoon storm clouds were looming over the nearby hills and threatening serious rain.



Bam-Bam, Joel and Stone on Independance Night



As expected, the back-to-back holiday weekends of Emancipation Day and Independence Day brought a couple of good nights out, starting with the Marlie Mount Car Stereo Clash within spitting distance of Mighty Gully over the road at the Marlie Mount Plaza. A car stereo clash is pretty self-explanatory – people turn up with their over-sized car stereo sound systems and compete for who has the best, judged by crowd reaction. After negotiating a reduced price on the set menu for the fish fry on the grounds that I don’t eat fish, and getting an incredible pile of fried breadfruit, bammy (fried cassava cakes) and festival (sweet fried dumplings that taste like fresh doughnuts), I stood back to watch the seven contestants battle it out. Judging was based not just on sound quality but on song selection in a number of different musical categories (lovers’ rock, roots, dancehall, soul etc.), with the idea being to get as many ‘forwards’ (a sign of appreciation from the crowd where people literally run forward on hearing a good tune, usually making gun gestures in the air and shouting ‘bop bop bop’) as possible. Straight away it was obvious based just on the quality of the sound systems that there were only really two crews in the contest, a bunch of older guys in a pick-up truck from Old Harbour and a group in a boy-racer hatchback over from Portmore. My appreciation of good stereo systems was vindicated when these two were voted through to battle it out in the grand final – personally, I thought the pick-up was the best, but the younger kids wiped the floor in terms of crowd reaction when it came to the dancehall section and they ended up snatching the title.



Purple Team dancers



I hadn’t really heard of much happening on the night of Independence Day, which fell the following Saturday, until Joel and Stone asked if I was walking up into town with them. After cooking up some soup and dumplings for them and getting gently told off by Joel for not dressing flashily enough for the occasion (even though he’d borrowed one of my T-shirts!), we wandered town-wards and I quickly caught on that this was a pretty big deal – Old Harbour was heaving. The centre of the action was the ‘Boardwalk’, a stage set up in a space off the main town square where dance competitions were held for kids and teenagers until about 1am. As well as some excellent organized dance groups, this was an opportunity for all the kids in the town to get up and show off their moves – the latest craze being the ‘cowfoot’, which involves putting each foot forward in turn while making undulating movements with your body. Alternative entertainment, for Joel and Stone anyway, came in the form of one particular girl who took something of a liking to me and wouldn’t leave me alone for love or money, earning me the unwanted nickname of ‘Sugar’ from my sniggering companions. I’m getting to be pretty good at turning down advances from women.

The other news from the last couple of weeks is that I’ve changed my mind and decided to stay in Old Harbour rather than return to Mandeville and the deaf school. The turnaround came after a conversation I had with the deputy principal at Marlie Mount Primary School at the end of summer school – she explained summer school was never the best time to host volunteers because the days were short and number of kids attending small compared to school proper, meaning there is not much need for an extra pair of hands. She told me that if I wanted to come back in September, I’d get a completely different experience – with two sets of six grades all needing PE at least once a week, plus football, cricket, basketball, netball and track and field teams to coach, there was a real need of help for the lone PE teacher, and there would also be opportunities for me to help with reading tuition. With reassurances that there was plenty for me to do at the school and that my help would be appreciated, it was an easy decision to make – my concern about spending an extra three months at the deaf school was that I would start to feel isolated and bored out of school hours. In Old Harbour, I’m starting to feel like I’m not just passing through visiting – I have made friends here, I have fun here, I get calls of ‘sir!’ when kids from school pass me in the street, people whose name I don’t know now say hi when they pass me in the street. I’m starting to feel like this is home.