British Invasion

After four-and-a-half months with nothing much more than phone calls home, e-mails and football to remind me of home, Britain has crash landed in Old Harbour in a flurry of Yorkshire accents, beer and banter. Four more EVS volunteers sent here by Everything Is Possible in Leeds - Andy, Simon, Dan and Amy - landed last Friday, and it’s fair to say, hot on the heels of Joanne’s arrival the week before, things have changed quite a bit at Mighty Gully.

Living it up at The Pegasus

It was never my preference to come here and volunteer on my own for so long, it was just how things panned out, and truth be told, before I came here I was quite nervous about it. Moving to a new country is pretty daunting, and I reckon having the safety net of being with people who are going through the same experience would have made things easier – as they say, there is strength in numbers. As it is, I think being on my own has probably meant I’ve been immersed in Jamaican life even more than I would have been, and I’ve loved that experience. But although I’ve not exactly turned into Kurtz stuck out in the jungle, I have missed contact with people from home, and I’ve been looking forward to having a group of volunteers with me ever since I was told they’d be coming, because I knew it would give me a different experience again for my last month here.

We were to meet the new arrivals Friday tea time in Kingston, so after a busy day in school, loaded with buns and pears for the journey, Joanne and I set off for Half Way Tree via Spanish Town. The four volunteers bound for Mighty Gully were travelling with Godfrey and Clair, directors of Everything Is Possible, their three children, plus two more volunteers and their support worker who are heading up to Albert Town. They’d booked rooms in the posh Pegasus Hotel for the night, so I was quite excited about getting a little luxury (especially the swimming pool) as well as meeting the group.

Awesome Dentists's sign, Kingston

The journey to Half Way Tree in Kingston brought back memories of the Groundhog Day-like experience of getting my visa extended, but this time at the bus terminal we walked in the opposite direction towards the high rises of New Kingston. It was a busy Friday evening and the city was teeming with traffic, and not having a local guide, our navigation tactic boiled down to picking a tall building in the distance and walking towards it hoping it was the Pegasus. I don’t think Joanne was as confident as I was in my sense of direction and memory of how the building looked from a picture, but she needn’t have worried, in about 20 minutes we were walking past Emancipation Park and the iconic statue of two giant naked Jamaicans, straight up to the towering hotel.

Ten minutes later, the group arrived and introductions were being made. I recognized Godfrey first, looking at home with his dreadlocks and laid-back gait, until his broad Yorkshire accent gave away the fact that he was a visitor. After months of battling with the funny-sounding vowels and syllable emphasis of Jamaicans, it was like being back in Leeds – Andy, Dan and Simon are all proper Bradford lads, while Amy is from Hull. By contrast, the two volunteers going to Albert Town, Charma and Maz, and their support worker Janet, are all Londoners, Janet in particular having the kind of accent you usually associate with Dick Van Dyke. The group was completed by Paperfoot, who I was pleasantly surprised had made the trip to meet the new volunteers, too.

New Kingston

Godfrey checked us in and I was roomed with Dan, so got chatting to him first. If his red hair and leprechaun tattoo didn’t give away his Irish roots, his love of a story and a joke did, and I quickly remembered how much I’d missed good old fashioned British humour, in all its crude piss-taking glory. Dan told me he was a youth worker who’s recently moved back to Bradford from Sunderland after being laid off, a victim of the relentless cuts being made to services for young people by a government more interested in bailing  bankers out of their own mess than providing opportunities to the next generation. Him and Andrew are old friends who know Peter Tate from doing youth work in Bradford, and they’d also both met and worked with Lance Bryan before he died. They are both just a bit younger than me, while Simon and Amy have both just left university.

We had a couple of hours to spare as Godfrey was off to pick up Clair from the airport – she’d traveled separately from Godfrey and daughters Kiki and Aurora with her youngest, Malachi, on a whistlestop tour of volunteer projects in Costa Rica and Mexico via Miami (Clair told us later that Malachi as now been to 11 countries in 11 months since he was born!). The only sensible option was to take a dip in the pool, and I wasn’t going to let some sign saying it was closed stop me. The Pegasus is what you’d expect from a famous old hotel in a capital city, big, comfortable, and bloody expensive if the bar prices are anything to go by. On the way down to the pool, we passed an art gallery selling local Jamaican crafts to guests, and me and Paperfoot recognized some lignum vitae carvings very similar in style to what gets made at Mighty Gully. Sure enough, Paperfoot knew the carver who’s made them, and the woman behind the desk had heard of Danito and Jayvan, too. What amazed both of us was the price they were going for – the biggest was $1000 US. Selling through wholesalers, I know the carvers are lucky to get more than a couple of hundred quid for even the biggest and best of their work, but what does hard work and skill matter next to knowing where to find the rich people who have cash to throw around, huh?



Joanne, Amy, Dan, Maz and Godfrey



After a late meal in a jerk joint across the road, we had a pretty early night, although I can’t resist the novelty of TV at the moment and sat up watching Anaconda on the US cable we had in our room. Another novelty was the temperature – the a/c in the room was turned right up and I actually felt cold for most of the night, although the comfortable double bed meant I still managed to get a good night sleep. God knows how I’m going to face a UK winter when a/c set to 20 degrees makes me shiver. I even had a lie in, waking up at 8am rather than somewhere between 6 and 7am like I do most weekends now. By that time, Dan had already been for a walk round to find some cigs, and managed to get propositioned by a prostitute and a taxi driver selling weed who gave him his business card – I pointed out that’s more action in one early Saturday morning than I’ve had in four months in Old Harbour, but having known Dan for a few days now, I realize this is just the sort of stuff that happens to him.

The plan for the day was to do some sightseeing coupled with a bit of on-arrival training for the newcomers. I was regretting not taking better advantage of the buffet breakfast almost as soon as we checked out – it was a hot day and we had a lot to take in, and I knew two plates just wasn’t going to be enough. Godfrey’s uncle, Henry, is a taxi driver and owns his own MPV, so we all piled into that while he played tour guide for the day. We went to the Park of Heroes first, where there are monuments to all of Jamaica’s National Heroes, but I can’t say I was that impressed by the weird abstract monuments – what’s wrong with having statues that actually look like the people being commemorated? Then, after a drive round Downtown, we went to Port Royal, and although I’d already been there it was still worthwhile because this time I got to go inside Fort Charles and learn about the various earthquakes and hurricanes that have repeatedly decimated the once-wealthy town, plus the story-telling guide who claimed he was a pirate because he had blue eyes was pretty entertaining, especially for Aurora and Kiki. I also managed to get filthy following the kids through a collapsed tunnel I had to crawl through into a sunken gun battery – so much for being the oldest of the volunteers.

Andrew in the Giddy House, Port Royal

As we drove around Kingston we all got to talk more and it felt like we all got on as a group pretty quickly. Maybe when you’re thrown together with people into these sorts of situations people do get on better because you have all stepped out of your normal lives, but it was a relief to me that everyone seemed sound and had a similar outlook in terms of why they were in Jamaica and what they wanted to take from it, as well as the fact that everyone was up for a laugh. Dan, Andy and Simon are all qualified football coaches at youth level, and Simon seems to have spent most of the last year abroad coaching football in various capacities. Amy is a fellow veggie who studied applied drama and despite her relatively tender age has already done some pretty awesome things in her life such as doing stand up at the Edinburgh Fringe. As I was to find out in due course as well, she also enjoys the odd drink and isn’t shy of a party, which is good coz I need to get back up to match fitness before I get home and attempt to go out. It was also good to speak to Clair and Godfrey about my time here and my views on the projects, because I do feel if anything volunteering in Jamaica gets undersold and I’d love to see more people coming over from the UK to volunteer through Mighty Gully as I think it’s critical to the project surviving.

I’d been looking forward to going to Hope Botanical Gardens, mainly because there was an Ital veggie restaurant there that got great reviews in the tour guides I’d read, so I was disappointed when we got there and we found out it had closed down. On the plus side, at least I didn’t pay in to see the zoo – Amy and Joanne came out of it not knowing whether to laugh or be seriously pissed off, because there were barely any animals left in while some major renovation work was carried out. As they left, a woman at the gate told them to come back in December when all the animals would be back – nice of her to tell them that after they’d paid in and walked round for half an hour! Before we left, we did some ‘training’ on understanding Jamaican patios, which involved splitting into teams to match some patois phrases with English translations. Embarrassingly, after accusations that it wasn’t fair me being on one side because I had the advantage of five months listening to patois everyday, my team lost, the other side getting all answers correct. What can I say, it looks different written down.

Devon House I Scream

After a drive round the plush hilly suburbs surrounding Kingston overlooking the sprawl of the city below, we stopped for tea and then finished off the day at Devon House so everyone could sample the famous ‘I Scream.’ It was pretty late by the time we arrived  back in Old Harbour, and there was some debate about whether we should bother going out and, if so, where. The consensus that a few civilized drinks in the yard might be a pleasant way to get further acquainted, but by that time all the shops around Marlie Mount were shut, so we had no choice but wander into Old Harbour in search of a bar. It turned out to be an eventful evening for Dan in particular – after spending about ten minutes chatting to Kaya’s friend Pebbles, she was telling people she had a crush on him, which has led to a pretty constant barrage of wind ups from Andy in particular (and after bearing the brunt of attention from the girls here for so long, I think it’s pretty hilarious, too). Worse, on the way back to the yard, Dan somehow managed not to spot the yawning great drainage gully down the side of the road, and nex thing we knew there was just a ginger head and a pair of arms poking up over the sides. stepping off the ramp heading from the road into the yard and straight down into it. Considering it’s a good four foot drop, he was probably lucky he got away with a sprained ankle. Still, the injury wasn’t enough to stop his eyes lighting up when Jayvan told him the club over the road was a go-go bar, so off we all headed, bar Joanne, who opted for bed instead of watching semi-naked girls gyrating. The place was pretty much deserted except for us, which might explain the pretty lethargic approach to dancing the girls on stage were taking, in stark contrast to a couple of female members of the audience who obviously fancied themselves as go-go-dancers-in-waiting and put on a far more impressive display juking and thrusting around the dance floor with a couple of stools.

Dan with Jason, Chad and Alex

I had an idea in advance how some things would change by having a group of volunteers with me – for example, going from having my own room to sharing with three lads means a sudden and complete loss of privacy, and I knew the house would be a different place with mostly Brits in it as opposed to me being the sole non-Jamaican. But other things I guess I hadn’t anticipated, or rather hadn’t thought about, the main one being the sense of responsibility I feel for the others. For most of the basic stuff you have to do when you first arrive in a place – changing money, buying food, finding your way around, and, in our case, making arrangements for work at the school – I either had help from Paperfoot or made do asking the people at Mighty Gully and Marlie Mount. But for this group, most of the ‘orientation’ stuff has fallen on either me or Joanne, and she had already said she was glad I was already here when she arrived as she didn’t even meet Paperfoot and had little contact from back home. I wouldn’t say it’s a stressful situation to be in, but I am suddenly conscious of things like the water running out in the house and there being enough food to eat for everyone, because I want everyone to have as good a time here as I have. So whether it’s getting up first to put on a big pot of tea or frying their eggs because no one else can bloody cook (true!), or taking care of changing everyone’s accommodation money and having the teachers at school half-jokingly telling me its my responsibility to make sure everyone is ok and happy with what they’ve been doing, I feel busier than ever. The flipside of that is having people to have a beer or two with on a nightly basis, people to share the workload with at school, and as I’ve mentioned, proper Northern humour. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of being on my own out here, but I’m glad I’ve got a gang with me now.

Simon, Kashawn, Ryan and Dan

Things have changed at school, too. For one, I’m not doing so much PE now as Andy, Simon and Dan are all keen on that as well so we’re sharing the work around a bit. Mrs Mapp has got me back doing some admin work, so I tend to spend my mornings in the office while the others go to class. Dan has found himself an adopted class and spends as much time as possible with them – he even stays behind with them after they finish school at midday to help with their homework, and feels guilty if he turns up late. Being short and ginger also means he gets some fantastic banter from the kids, who have taken to calling him ‘Short Man’ or ‘Seamus’, and asking him which grade he is in. He’s also regretting showing a couple of kids the old trick where you pretend to remove your thumb on the first morning – news of the white man who can take his thumb off has spread like wildfire, and he has spent most of the week swerving kids begging him to show them.

Amy rocking the netball

Amy is the only one of us not interested in teaching sport, but with her experience doing drama workshops with kids and her artistic skills, she’s in plenty of demand. Mrs Mapp assigned her to the ASTEP class straight away, a special programme for kids who have not done well enough in their GSATs to get into high school. As some of them are seriously behind in their reading and comprehension in particular, a lot of their classes involve creative arts and role playing, and Amy seems to be in her element – nearly as happy as she looks with a beer in her hand back in the yard. Amy, Joanne, Andy, Simon and me have also been trained up to do the diagnostic reading tests that determine whether each kid is behind or ahead of the average reading age for their grade, which I’m really happy with as one of the things I wanted to get experience of while I was here was doing some reading tutoring. Afternoons see most of us out doing some kind of sports training, Andy and Simon joining in with football, Joanne netball, Dan basketball and me cricket. With not so much PE to do, I’ve started doing cricket every day and for longer sessions. It’s also better now we have some proper windballs the others brought with them, as before I was having to ration the two baseballs I had and sew them back up as the stony ground was tearing up the stitching.

Me and Simon with les infants

We seem to have developed a good team ethic working and living together as well. Because we have quite a bit of freedom at school choosing what we want to do, it means we can go off and do our own thing or work in groups as we see fit. On Wednesday, for example, we all went to the infant department to spend the morning taking all eight classes for PE, splitting into pairs to take a class at a time. I had a great time, trying to keep a hundred-odd three and four-year-olds in some kind of order on a massive field is pretty hard work but lots of fun, and considering that the little ones hardly get any PE because there just aren’t the resources to make it regular, it felt like we were genuinely adding something to the school as a group. Away from school, everyone gets on fine too, we’re doing things like having communal meals which makes it feel like we’re all here as a team, and of course the free flow of beer has helped some with bonding and socialising.

I’m probably yet to see the biggest advantages of having this lot with me, i.e. getting out and about on weekends. There’s already talk of heading to Negril for a weekend, it’s Amy and Simons’ birthdays in early November and we’re planning on all going to big Halloween party on Saturday night. So long the quiet life!

And Then There Were Two...

So six months has all to quickly become just six weeks (and counting) remaining on this beautiful sun-kissed island, and as each day passes my thoughts are turning homewards more and more, mainly because it has started to dawn on me how much work is involved in picking your life up again after you decide to park it for half a year and do a runner to a tropical country. I have, for example, discovered that if I want to do my teacher training at primary level next year, my application has to be in by December 1, two days after I land back in the UK. Reality bites, as they say.

However, there’s still a lot of living to be done in six weeks, and things are gearing up for the living to be good. The last week has been full to say the least, but I shall start at the beginning and try my best to include all the important bits.

I'm well handy, me

Things started taking a detour from the usual routine early last week. The guys here had been on about tidying up the house a bit in time for the next set of volunteers (glad they made the effort for me haha!) and needed to get a couple of extra beds to accommodate all six of us who will be here for November. When I told them the next group of four after Joanne were arriving on October 21^st and not early November as I’d been told, this sent everyone into a bit of a panic, and by the time I got home from school on Wednesday, not only had two new beds been purchased and delivered, but the house was in an advanced state of redecoration, with paint and furniture everywhere and a large chunk of the extended Bryan family clutching a brush. There was nothing else for it really but to grab a roller and pitch in. By Thursday evening, the whole house was painted, save a shower block where Crazy was meticulously chiseling a shower pipe out the wall to replace a broken tap, and by the time Joanne arrived mid-day Friday, the place was spotless. But more about that anon.

Alex dressed as Alexander Bustamante

It was a bit of a different week at school as well as Jamaica celebrated Heritage Week in the run up to National Heroes Day on 17^th October, a public holiday dedicated to seven individuals honoured for their role in creating the modern free, independent Jamaica. The celebrations included each class performing dramatic scenes from key moments in Jamaica’s long and painful road to nationhood – the Maroon Wars fought between escaped slaves and the British, the civil disorder that led to Emancipation following the abolition from slavery, the political struggle for independence itself – culminating in a morning of singing, dancing and performances about the lives of the seven heroes on Thursday, which was also dubbed ‘Bandana Day’. Being a bit of a tit, I thought when the kids were told to remember to wear their bandanas, the teachers were referring to the pieces of patterned cloth that people wear around their head, neck, arm or sticking out their back pocket, and promptly rushed to Old Harbour to buy one in a fetching purple so I wouldn’t be left out. It turns out that ‘bandana’ is actually a traditional Jamaican costume comprised of a red check pattern. Thankfully I hadn’t walked to school with my bandana on my head and it stayed safely in my pocket out of sight for the day.

Bandana!

Coming from a country where anything resembling patriotism immediately gets horribly knotted up with debates over racism and the artificial conflicts between right- and left-wing politics, the uncomplicated attitude taken towards teaching kids to recognize and celebrate their heritage and national identity were at the same time refreshing and also a bit weird. It was really good fun, with all the kids dressed up in their costumes and fried breadfruit and bammy for lunch giving it a proper celebratory feel. But I realized as I watched that we had done nothing like this when I was at school  – all our holidays are religious rather than having anything to do with the heritage of our country, and then as now, St George’s Day was barely acknowledged, let alone celebrated. British history was still taught, but it had become terribly unfashionable to imply there was anything special or, god help us, to be proud about in our country’s past. In the performances the kids gave, I was watching one very good reason why – the history they acted out was British history, too, and their heroes throughout the ages had one common enemy, the British settlers, planters and colonial authorities who enslaved, degraded, impoverished and dispossessed the ancestors of the vast majority of today’s Jamaicans. Not much there to be proud about I agree, but are the evils of the Empire really reason enough to abandon British/English heritage to the bigots and idiots who use it as a tool to divide rather than unite?

I like the fact that Jamaicans are, on the whole, proud of being Jamaican. I don’t like the idea of people being ashamed of where they come from, or feeling awkward about their pride, nearly as much as I can’t stand people claiming that they have some kind of ownership over a particular lump of land that gives them the right to lord it over other people. It isn’t about countries, nations, us v them, ‘belonging’ to one place or another. I see it as being proud of one of the fundamental things that make us human, the things we share in common with other people – the landscape we grow up in, the way we talk, the food we eat, the shared histories of our communities. That was what I was watching in the children’s performances on Thursday, not some mindless, tribal flag-waving – it wasn’t about defining ‘us’ by also defining a ‘them’, the way the shithouses in the BNP, EDL and all the rest try to do by describing who does NOT qualify as British in their blinkered eyes. It was about Jamaicans of all backgrounds – African, Indian, Chinese and European – learning about and acknowledging the often painful facts of their island’s past as a source of shared pride and strength. I think we miss that badly in Britain – it’s like we’re so paranoid and obsessed about issues of identity that we forget the whole point, that it’s all about shared, communal experiences, bringing people together, not forcing them apart. If you take any kind of pride in your own personal history as the product of your family, your friends and the communities where you have lived and grown up, is it not just as ok to occasionally acknowledge and share the history of the country you live in, no matter how made up national borders might be?

The Marlie Mount Cub Pack

And as I was to find out, it’s not like anyone is excluded, not in Jamaica anyway. Despite my obvious association with the nasty white British men who most of the heroes were pitted against in the dramatic scenes unfolding on the quadrangle, I was afforded the honour of leading the cub scouts on their march up to the flag pole for the ceremonial unfurling of the national flag. Unfortunately, I had missed the practice drill two days earlier when a soldier Ms Frith knew had come in to put the boys through their paces, although his intervention didn’t have much of a noticeable impact – when I ran through it the next afternoon, the boys still couldn’t decide as a group which leg was definitely left and which was definitely right, with the result that I had about as much chance of trying to get a bunch of wild cats to march in time through thick fog. So I was feeling pretty self-conscious about leading a raggity group of boys in front of the entire assembled school to salute the flag and sing the national anthem – it was like a test of my worthiness to be considered a citizen, if I screwed it up I’d not only embarrass myself, Id be insulting the heritage of an entire nation during a solemn and important ceremony. As one teacher kindly put it after we’d shuffled and stumbled our way through the march and grand unfurling, it was ‘a little rough but we got through’. I’ll take that and run, thank you very much. And hey, this is Jamaica, it’s not like any one minds – no problem, man, welcome to the party.

So much for my contributions to Jamaican heritage and the worldwide cub scouting movement – on the flipside, I might not be able to march, but I’m proud of the fact that I’ve written and taught my cubs a new song, a re-write of ‘In the Jungle’ from The Lion King to tell the story of The Jungle Book and cub scouting (not quite as good as Captain Hotknives’ classic about the racist jungle, but slightly more suitable for 8 year olds). I’m toying with the idea of learning to play Bare Necessities for them this week.

Jayvan & Joanne ready to party

School finished at lunchtime Thursday for a four-day holiday weekend, with the imminent arrival of Whitey 2 the following day. After four-and-a-half months out here on my own, it had crossed my mind that it might feel strange having someone from back home here. There were no guarantees that I’d get on with another volunteer, and besides, I was facing an invasion of my space – I’ve carved out a neat little niche for myself here, why would I want anyone else coming in and disrupting it? I even had to move out of the room I’ve lived in for the last four months to make way for the new arrival, as I will be sharing the big room with three other lads who arrive next weekend.

Fortunately, I knew from the previous weekend in Black River that I was not going to have any issues getting on with Joanne, she’s a lovely, warm, genuine and outgoing person, easy going and happy to take the experience here at face value for what it is, without and expectations or prejudices - exactly the sort of person you’d want to meet in these circumstances. And I’ll be honest, having someone from back home to talk to and hang out with feels good – the facts of geography and culture will always mean you share more in common with people closer to home, it just makes conversation flow that little bit easier. It is also nice to have someone to share the experience of volunteering with, to laugh with when strangers chat you up in the street and kids tell you you look the same because you’re white, and to get out and about to do things with. One thing I’ve found difficult in seeing the rest of the island so far is that I’ve usually had a choice between going off on my own or paying for someone to go with me, neither of which have always been feasible or appealing. And even the house feels different – it doesn’t feel like I’m living with a Jamaican family so much, and although I’ve enjoyed that, little things like the water not running out and the dishes being done more often are very welcome.

Bad Bwoy

As luck would inevitably have it, hopes of throwing off the shackles and welcoming Joanne with a bang were dampened by the fact that she arrived in the middle of a torrential two-day downpour which ruined any chances of doing much. If you’re wondering why a little rain should stop us going anywhere or doing anything, the truth is that in Jamaica there is no such thing as ‘a little rain’ – it only has one setting and that is absolutely lashing it down, the kind of rain that soaks you as much from the splashes made by the giant-sized droplets as they land as by direct contact. You’re only choice is to sit tight indoors and wait it out, which is what we did until Sunday, giving Joanne ample opportunity to meet the family, learn about Jamaican food, drink rum and be bugged to hell by the kids. The rain did stop long enough to go next door on Friday where a party was being kept – I say ‘party’, but in truth me, Joanne, Jayvan and Crazy had the place to ourselves, huddled under a tarpaulin and singing along to Mavado songs as they were belted out full blast on the sizeable sound system just for us.



You're On TV, Love...



By Sunday, the clouds were cleared and the sun was hot once again (the previous two nights I’d slept without a fan AND with a sheet over me, a sure sign of the onset of winter), and we would have gone to the beach if it wasn’t for the fact that my laundry situation was now critical, having been delayed for several days by the rain, and needed to be addressed immediately. The rain had also brought an unexpected guest – after all my efforts to see a crocodile in Black River the week before, by Sunday there was an excited clamour that a croc had been found in the gully that runs at the back of our yard. It was true and all – small and very much dead, but definitely a crocodile washed up on the bank near the bridge yards from our house. I’d previously taken stories about crocs being seen in that gully with a pinch of salt, but now I might just be a bit more careful where I walk at night.

Any feelings of guilt I might have been harbouring about Joanne being stuck in the yard for most of her first weekend were dispelled by news of a pool party on Sunday night. I’d been to a pool party at the same place before – no one bar the hostess got into the pool, and few people from the small crowd bothered to dance – but beggars can’t be choosers, and we needed something to do. Being the night before a public holiday, it was actually quite busy, although no one went near the pool this time. After my enthusiastic descriptions of the ‘dutty whine’ and other such dancehall mating rituals, Joanne was understandably disappointed by how little x-rated dancing went on, mainly because the girls seemed unusually shy and reluctant to gyrate their posteriors in the general direction of whatever members of the opposite sex happened to be at hand. It was instead left to the boys to get the party started, first with a group of three or four lads doing some pretty impressive synchronized dance routines, then copied by groups all around the place. They all must practice for hours to get so good, and there’s obviously a lot riding in terms of local pride on being the crew with the tightest and baddest moves (it probably also helps get girls – one of the only lads lucky enough to have it ‘backed up ‘pon him’ was a little chap of about 15 whose ability to throw shapes in times with his mates earned him the amorous attentions of one girl). Anyway, it was a fun night, and I got more drunk than I’ve been in a while, probably something to do with the fact that I decided to buy a flask of rum for the road and promptly downed it with Jayvan in about 10 minutes. Well, I’ll be home soon, I need to get in pub shape again.



Hellshire Beach

What wasn’t quite so much fun was getting up early the next morning after about four hours sleep to go to the beach. I’ve been wanting to go to Hellshire Beach, the other side of the Portmore Bight isthmus from Old Harbour, ever since I arrived here, as it is both the nearest beach and the beach of choice for Kingstonians, with a reputation for some serious weekend partying. Waking up with a fuzzy head and a bad case of rum mouth wasn’t ideal preparation, but I took strength from the fact that Jayvan had suffered far worse, his night having ended in him being sick on the kitchen floor, and he only just managed to drag himself out of bed at the last minute to come along with us.



Hellshire, again

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, Hellshire Beach isn’t well served by taxis or busses from anywhere except Kingston, and is a bit of a mission to get to. It is well worth it, though – the beach itself isn’t the prettiest or the biggest you’ll ever see, but it is uniquely Jamaican, with nearly the whole length of the beach crammed with brightly painted bars and fish joints packed tightly together, hand-made rough wooden loungers huddled in the shade under their awnings to be used by proprietors to lure in their punters. The beach is protected by the current of the open sea by a small reef a hundred yards or so out, while over to the left, beyond the small promonotory where the coast curves round out of sight, you can see Kingston spread out under the Blue Mountains out across the bay.

Ice Jelly (fresh coconut water)

It was a gorgeous day, a strong sea breeze taking the edge off the heat of the sun, a soundtrack of 90s club classics and disco anthems thumping out of the soundsystem at Prendy’s Bar. While Joanne and Jayvan treated themselves to a full fried fish dinner (or, to be more accurate, Joanne treated Jayvan), I got sweet-talked by one of the bar owners to get some food at her place. Explaining I didn’t eat fish or meat, I instead ordered four huge festivals and bottle of cold Guinness, a more than satisfactory meal as far as I was concerned. However, still incredulous that I could turn down his wife’s fish, the owner’s husband started to quiz me in depth about my diet and why I didn’t eat flesh. Finally, still not satisfied with my answers, he got down to the nub of his concerns – ‘But him CYAN’T fuck him woman if him no eat meat!’ Enlightened, I hurried back to call my brother to boast about being sat on the beach while England shivered in the first cold snap of the coming winter.

By the time we left at about 4pm, Joanne having successfully disengaged herself from the attentions of a middle-aged shop owner from Spanish Town, the beach was absolutely heaving, the rum was starting to flow freely and there was a carnival atmosphere that I reckon will have lasted well into the night. If only I could spend every day on the beach.

Crocodile Safari

September flew by as I adjusted to the pace of working life at the school, and I didn’t really have the inclination or the energy to do much else besides work. But after a particularly quiet weekend as the month ticked over into October, I realized my time left here is starting to run out, and I should make the most of it while I can.

Joanne and Lando

I decided to go on a trip the following weekend and see somewhere else on the island, as I hadn’t been out of Old Harbour since I got back from Albert Town. A guy from Leeds I’d been put in touch with while staying at CCCD, Steve Burnell, had recommended visiting Black River, a small coastal town built around the mouth of the eponymous river, which is one of Jamaica’s longest and the main water way in a large swamp called the Great Morass where around 600 wild crocodiles still live. He’d given me the name of a good, cheap guest house and the number of a guy he recommended for going on a crocodile safari up the river.

Black River is about 60 miles west of Old Harbour in St Elizabeth, but the route taxi journey takes you way in-land, avoiding the still fairly remote coastline in Clarendon and Manchester, to Mandeville via May Pen, before heading through Santa Cruz on the way to Black River. As I was passing through Mandeville, I thought I’d see if Joanne, the EVS volunteer who is at CCCD at the moment, fancied coming along. As it turned out, it was her birthday on Monday and a trip sounded like a good way to celebrate, so I arranged to meet up with her as I passed through.

Mangrove mangle

 Knowing that the six-stage journey, if you include the taxis up to CCCD and back to collect Joanne, might take a little while, I forbade myself even the briefest lie in my aching, tired body pleaded for to get up at 6am and was on the road at 7am. For once, the morning was cloudy and pleasantly cool – in fact, it occurred to me a bit later that this was the first time I’d seen cloud before noon in weeks. However, although I don’t have many definite beliefs about matters spiritual or beyond the universe we can observe, I do believe in a law of life variously attributed to a couple of fellas named Murphy and Sod (who knows, maybe they’re the same person). This law proved itself true once again as it started to pour down as the bus pulled in to May Pen. An area of low pressure caused by the fringes of a storm way out to sea had settled over the island for the weekend. After weeks of waiting for the promised rains which would bring genuine relief to the sapping heat and humidity, I’d got it right when I was heading for the seaside.

It felt a little chilly up in the rain-soaked hills of Mandeville (a cool low 20 degrees C, I reckon) as I walked between taxis, and the rain just made this very English town seem more familiar than ever. It was good to visit CCCD again, even if I didn’t see anyone because everyone was inside sheltering from the rain. – anyone, that is, except for Spike the dog, who seemed to recognize me as he wagged and came for a stroke when I said his name.

It was THIS big...

This was to be Joanne’s first experience of the wonders of the route taxis, and I was pretty pleased when the guy who took us from Mandeville to Santa Cruz turned out to be the kind of skilled lunatic who enjoyed racing on-coming traffic to complete overtaking manoeuvers – especially good fun when hurtling through the spectacular switchbacks of Shooters Hill on the way down into the St Elizabeth plain. We got to chat properly for the first time and in one of those bizarre coincidences that always seem to crop up in far-flung places, it turns out she knows a good friend of mine, Ben Hague, through her brother who, like me, has played in a band with Ben. Maybe the world isn’t all that big afterall.

Black River is one of the oldest continuously inhabited town’s in Jamaica, dating back to the end of the 16^th Century. It thrived as a port for the export of logwood and sugar, was the first town on the island to get electricity and was the birthplace of such luminaries as politician and hero of the independence movement Norman Washington Manley. Given its history, I was slightly surprised when we finally arrived at about 12.30pm at how small it is – even on a Saturday afternoon, there was no bustle, no hurry, as if the pace of the 21^st Century hadn’t quite reached the old-fashioned wooden colonial houses as they sat like tired old couples looking out over the sea.

Waterloo Guest House

First mission was to check we had somewhere to stay for the night, so we headed along the main street just out of town to the Waterloo Guest House. It’s easy to find – there’s a wrecked boat stuck in the shallow water a few meters from the shore right opposite the front gate (although the wreck is no so rusted it might not be there as a handy landmark much longer). The hotel itself is a lovely old wooden mansion, with a wide veranda running all the way round on the first floor, sat in a large garden full of massive breadfruit trees. At the back was a second, modern block of rooms with a small swimming room in front. There didn’t seem to be many other guests, and for just over a tenner each we got a decent first floor twin room in the old building, all creaking wooden floors and polish, just down the corridor from the veranda as it looked out over the sea in front.

It was cloudy and a little dull, and the sea looked like glass it was so still, but at least it wasn’t raining, so it was time to go and find some crocodiles. Steve had given me the number of a guy called Lando, a local fisherman, who he said would be able to take us up the river and, if we wanted, out to sea to the Pelican Bar, a bar built on stilts on a shallow sand bar a kilometer off the shore. I’d phoned Lando the day before to check he was ok to take us on a trip, and, as they do here, he said no problem. I’d said we’d arrive about lunchtime, and by the time we reached the iron bridge over the river and called him, Lando was already waiting for us, waving us down to the quayside.

Joanne and friend

Without any discussion of money or what we wanted to see, Lando greeted us and handed us a pair of bright orange life jackets As he brought his boat round, Joanne made friends with a friendly old chap who told us about his times in America working as a migrant labourer picking fruit. As we got in, Lando gave what I reckon is probably a common greeting by seafarers to land lubbers, jokingly rocking the boat from side to side to scare us. All it did for me was get the song “Don’t Rock The Boat Baby” in my head for most of the trip.

A minute or two upstream and both banks of the wide rive were already clogged with mangroves, impossible-looking tangles of thousands of aerial roots growing down into the water from the large green trees they sprouted from. It was like seeing trees grow upside down, as you could see some of the younger branches hanging half way between the river and sky, having not yet reached the water to drink. This was crocodile habitat,  but Lando had some bad news – he explained that because of the recent rain and relatively cool, overcast conditions, crocodiles were less likely to be out and active, as they need the heat of the sun to warm their cold-blooded bodies into action. On the plus side, the combination of the grey sky and black peat-bottomed river, the water took on the properties of a mirror and gave spectacular reflections of the trees above.

Not sure the orange suits me

Lando talked us through some of the birds we saw, as well as the water lilies and water hyacinths we passed, and explained that the large clumps of plant matter floating down the centre of the river came from work to clear some of the banks upstream, following the same route on the wide expanse of water the logwood did in the town’s heyday. The mangrove swamp gave way to high, reed-shrouded earth banks as the river widened then forked off into two and veered sharply to the right, before narrowing into a corridor where the mangrove grew up and over to form a corridor. But still no crocodiles. As we turned around and headed back, Joanne questioned whether we were likely to see any now, only for Lando to reply with some conviction that we would. I wasn’t so sure and had enjoyed the trip anyway.

The croc

We arrived back in the harbour area and I was about to start feeling smug about not trusting Lando’s promises that we’d see a crocodile when suddenly he pointed over to the left to a big ugly brute laid up on the quayside, utterly motionless with its mouth open. It was so still that Joanne asked if it was real – the thought had crossed my mind, too – so to prove it was, Lando decided to pull up close to it and start splashing it with water. It moved, not much, but it moved. So we had seen a real life croc after all – on the quayside outside the crocodile nursery. Does that count as wild? Well seeing as it was free to jump in the river and swim where it wanted, I’m having it.

By this time we had talked money with Lando, and, finding him reasonable, and with the afternoon still pretty young, we asked him if he’d take us out to the Pelican Bar as well. Again I shook a mental fist at Messrs. Murphy and Sod – all those hot, sweltering, sun-drenched afternoons I’d have killed to be heading out to a quirky bar in the middle of the sea, and here I was, speeding across the sea with storm clouds on the horizon and unbroken grey overhead. Oh well, it was still far from cold and there was always beer to be had…

The Pelican Bar

The Pelican Bar is touted in the guide books as the coolest bar in the world. It isn’t. Ok, so it’s in a pretty amazing location on a just-submerged mini-island off the shore, and the way it had been built out of rough and sometimes quite random lumps of wood nailed together had its appeal, but a good bar needs atmosphere. This had three bored-looking Jamaican guys playing dominoes and no customers. It wasn’t as if they were expecting many visitors, either – the cool box was devoid of anything better than Red Stripe Light, the usual watery piss that gets fobbed off using the ‘light’ label. You got what this bar was about by the pile of tourist tat for sale in the corner and inflated bar prices. But all the same, sitting on the pier sticking out the back of the bar looking through the cracks down at the sea and watching the birds wheel around wasn’t a bad way to pass an hour. While we talked and drank, Lando got a call and quickly headed back to the near shore to pick up a couple who seemed to stay at the bar for about 10 minutes before asking Lando to take them back to shore, That was how impressed they were, then.

By the time we reached Black River it was starting to drizzle – not the torrential downpour I’ve come to expect in Jamaica, but a light drizzle that made the place feel a bit like Whitby. We said our goodbyes to Lando and with nothing much else to do headed back to the hotel to collect our room key (it was still being cleaned when we arrived). I was just happy to have a pillow, never mind a TV, which was a rare luxury to be savored. After a short while it became apparent that the rain had stopped and the sun had finally put in an appearance – just in time to watch the sun go down over the sea, as Joanne pointed out. We took a walk round town as we waited, the sky over the horizon perfectly clear, our trigger fingers itchy on our cameras. Somehow, from somewhere, in the minutes it took to walk up around the market and back along the high street to the sea front, a mass of clouds had risen up on the horizon, blocking our view of the sun. To make matters worse, the restaurant advertising pizzas we’d spotted round the corner turned out to be shut. Darn and drat.

I was quite glad we ended up eating at the hotel, actually – with no veggie option, I just asked for some steamed veg (just softened in garlic, scallion and seasoning), rice and peas and bammy (which was boiled, a new one for me, and in a gorgeous pepper gravy) and got a pile. It seemed like the only party in town was going on in the hotel bar, with music blasting out at usual Jamaican volumes to the handful of people (including the bar maid) in the small room, but even cold Guinness couldn’t keep me away from my bed for long, I was exhausted (even though I did manage to watch half of Die Hard on some US cable channel).

Sunset from Black River

I had sworn I was going to go for a swim in the pool the next day, but awoke to find it pouring down, with that same, persistent coastal rain that reminded me of home. Looking out from the veranda, there was barely any life to be seen in town or in the sea – there was barely a sound apart from the steady drumming of the rain, save the tolling of the church bell, which only added to the eerily gothic atmosphere. As we left, we crossed the road to walk on the path next to the sea, and just as we passed the shipwreck, Joanne suddenly stopped and shouted ‘Look!’ pointing out to sea. I just caught a fin disappearing into the waves in a ripple of water – a dolphin. We stood and watched it for a few minutes as I tried my hardest to get a photo of it, but the stupid delay on my camera from pushing the button to the shutter closing meant that every time I saw the dolphin surface and pressed, it was already under water by the time the picture took. An unexpected bonus though, My First Wild Dolphin to go with My First Wild Crocodile.



View of the boat wreck



We waited ages for a taxi in Black River, this sleepy town apparently shutting down more than most on a Sunday, and as we passed through the rain-soaked St Elizabeth countryside on our way to Santa Cruz, passing high hedgerows and open fields, I again got a strong feeling of how English it all looked. I dropped Joanne off in Mandeville and then got soaked walking all the way to the bus park only to discover buses don’t run on a Sunday and I’d have to walk right across town again to get a route taxi. Back in Old Harbour, I stopped to buy some veg off a lovely old woman who kept forgetting the prices she’d told me for the different vegetables I was picking up, giving running totals that I knew were below what she’d told me each cost, before trying to give me back too much change once we’d finally agreed the price it all should have been. When I handed her back a $100 bill, she thanked me like I’d just returned a precious piece of jewelry she’d lost.

Nice Up Yuh Pot, Bredren and Sistren!

Thought I'd have a go at writing down some of the Jamaican recipes I've been trying out, enjoy!

Rice & Peas

You know when a particular dish has become a truly fundamental part of a culture when people use its name (or variation thereof) as a curse word – ‘Peas and Rice’ being used by Jamaicans as a polite replacement for ‘Jesus Christ!’ in an exclamatory context. Rice & Peas IS Sunday dinner in Jamaica, usually served with stewed or curried chicken (replaced with veggie chunks for ital eaters like moi), and for all its simplicity is totally addictive, the kind of food that you want to eat until you are sick because it just tastes so right. The trick is to get the quantities of liquid just right to the rice cooks but does not start falling apart and going sticky – it should be dry but somehow still creamy from the coconut. I freely admit this isn’t an art I’ve quite mastered yet, but I’m rubbish at cooking rice anyway. This is how it’s meant to be done.

Ingredients: (I’m guessing this will make enough for about four people)

4 cups of white rice

1 cup dried red peas (red kidney beans – DO NOT use tinned you lazy sods!)

1 coconut, de-shelled and grated (ok, you may use a tin of coconut milk for this one)

Pinch of salt

Sprig of thyme

1 large spring onion

1 small hot pepper (Scotch Bonnet chili – use any type of chili you have)

Method:

Boil a pot of water, put in the red peas, turn off the heat, cover and leave to soak for one hour. Return to heat and simmer for an hour and a half, until peas are soft (if you have a pressure cooker, use it and reduce time by about half an hour). Leave cooked peas in liquid and set aside.

While the peas are cooking, de-shell and grate the coconut (this is a real pain of a task, which is why I said you can use a tin of coconut milk if you want, seeing as that is what we’re trying to make). Mix the shredded coconut meat with the coconut water and blend, adding more water to get it to the consistency of double cream.

When the peas are cooked, wash the rice, put in a large pan and add coconut milk and peas with their juice. Bash the spring onion with the end of a knife and throw in whole, along with the whole hot pepper, salt and thyme. Add cold water until there is about an inch of water above the top of the rice. Bring to the boil, cover and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the rice is cooked but still firm.

Irish Jerk

A dish of my own invention, to make up for the fact that authentic jerked dishes are very vegetarian or vegan non-friendly, the principal ingredients nearly always being chicken or pork (maybe it’s also to atone for my moment of weakness in sampling the jerk chicken – I offer this dish up for your approval and forgiveness, oh lord Kev). The name? Well it’s because Jamaicans call potatoes ‘Irish’, so I was being funny, like…

Ingredients: (again, would hopefully serve about four)

2 medium –sized potatoes

1 sweet potato

1 onion

3 cloves garlic

1 small chunk of hot pepper/Scotch Bonnet (if you us Scotch Bonnet, seriously, keep the chunk SMALL, these things are killer. Otherwise, use whatever chili you prefer in your usual quantities)

2 teaspoons Jerk Seasoning (dry powder form – whatever you do, DON’T use the Maggi/Nestle brand one, it is essentially just spicy MSG and tastes nothing like real jerk. If you want to get all posh and make your own seasoning, mix together pimento, crushed chili flakes, garlic powder, thyme, celery salt)

Oil for frying

Method:

Chop the potatoes roughly into half-inch chunks. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and fry the potatoes with half the jerk seasoning. Don’t stir too often – the idea is to cook the potatoes through but give them crispy, jerk-flavoured edges, so a bit of sticking and burning is good (just ignore the way the scorched spices make you cough, it tastes awesome.

Chop the sweet potato into larger chunks and add when the potato starts to brown, along with the rest of the jerk seasoning. Cook until potato and sweet potato are browned on all sides. Slice the onion, finely chop the chili and stir in both. Crush and chop the garlic and fry for a minute.

Gradually add cold water to the pan, a few drops at a time, stirring constantly and waiting until all the water is absorbed by the potato before adding more. When no more water is absorbed and a sauce starts to form, take off the heat and serve with rice.

Dumplings with Brown Stewed Veggie Chunks

Dumplings are to Jamaicans what potatoes are to the British – they are eaten with everything, boiled, fried, cooked on their own or with soup, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And for what are basically just balls of flour and water, they are strangely moreish, maybe because their texture – thick, chewy and heavy – gives you a reassuring feeling that you are going to be stuffed silly after a few of them.

Brown stew is one of the various ubiquitous Jamaican cooking styles that can be adapted to pretty much any main ingredient, and like most Jamaican food, is based on a handful of key flavours – hot pepper, garlic, onion/spring onion, thyme and tomato.

Ingredients:

For the Dumplings:

8 cups flour

2 cups cornmeal (optional)

Water

Pinch of salt

For the veggie chunks:

2 cups TVP/soya chunks

1 large potato

1 onion

1 carrot

3 cloves garlic

Half tin of chopped tomatoes or passata

Quarter of a hot pepper (Scotch Bonnet chili)

Fresh Thyme

Teaspoon Soy sauce

Teaspoon Browning (optional)

Teaspoon jerk seasoning (optional)

Oil for frying

Water

Method:

To make the dumplings, mix the flour, cornmeal and salt in a large bowl. Fill a cup with cold water and add a quarter, mixing with your hands until no more dry mixture sticks together. Repeat, mixing the flour thoroughly each time you add a little water, until all the dry mixture has been combined into a dough. Getting the amount of water just right is important as you don’t want the dumplings to be either too soft and sticky or too dry and crumbly. Add gradually less and less water at a time as you go on, kneading the dough thoroughly each time, to avoid making the mix too wet. The finished dough should be smooth with the consistency of plasticine.

Boil a large pan of water (if you like you can add your own flavours to the pot of water which the dumplings will absorb as they cook. Roll the dough out into a large sausage and break of golf-ball sized chinks, flattening each ball into a disk about half and inch thick. Throw the dumplings into the water once boiled and cook boil for about half an hour.

Peel and chop the potato into small chunks. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the potatoes, in the jerk seasoning if you are using it (same way as the Irish Jerk recipe). Once the potatoes have started to brown, add the chopped onion and carrot, hot pepper and thyme. Once the onions start to brown, add the chopped garlic and soy sauce, and fry over a high heat for another minute. Reduce the heat and add the veggie chunks, tomato and browning. Add a little water to thin the sauce out and simmer for five to 10 minutes, until the veggie chunks are tender (keep adding a little water if the pot dries out quickly.