Dutty Whine

When it comes to matters of courtship, Jamaicans have a preoccupation so widespread it should probably be given a name and recognized as a national sport – something like Tapping Whitey, maybe. I’d had a good education in the basic rules of the game from months of dodging ‘Psssts! Come here, white boy’ and ‘Hey pretty boy, why you no wanna talk to me?’ (plus one or two more blunt propositions), but since the arrival of the other five, the bar has been raised a notch or two.

Ladies Love Cool Dan

Last Friday we girded our loins and headed off into Old Harbour to do our duty in the name of God and country on the battlefields of the town’s dance floors. As I’ve explained before, Old Harbour isn’t big (by British standards anyway), but although the nightlife isn’t quite what we get in our bigger cities, you can normally find a decent party somewhere, especially if you’re prepared to wait until the early hours when things start to get busy.

There was already the promise of romance in the air courtesy of Pebbles and Dan, Pebbles having already declared her interest in the white man (and at the same time admitting that, if he wasn’t interested, any of the other three of us would do). But Dan was playing it cool, no doubt aware that all the winding up he was already enduring would only get worse if he did anything about it, so it was worth him weighing it up to make sure it was worth it.

We almost didn’t make it out – just as we were all walking out of the yard, the heavens opened and we had to take temporary shelter in the cookhouse while we debated whether we should hold on and brave heading out. It proved to be just a shower, and within half an hour we were waiting on the side of the road for a taxi. Because of all the standing water on the road, there was little traffic and it looked like we weren’t going to get a lift, until Kaya flagged down a pick-up truck apparently driven by someone she knew and beckoned for us to all clamber up into the back. Now there’s arriving in style for you.

Pick Up Back Up

Our first stop was the square just off the clock tower crossroads which stands in as Old Harbour’s official town centre. The yard behind the row of shops on the corner of Darlington Road and North Street had a large stage and lighting rig set up, and we arrived to catch the last half hour of a dance competition, pretty similar to the one they had at the same place on Independence Day but this time with adults dancing instead of kids. Dance-offs are amazingly popular here – the place was packed, and as usual the standard of the dancers was excellent.

Next stop was the small lawn/club at the back of Gateway Plaza. I hadn’t been here since the first night out I had in Old Harbour, which I still remember as one of the best because the place got so busy. Having had our appetites whetted by the stage dancing, we all agreed each of us had to get it on with some proper Jamaican dance moves during the course of the evening, with a Jamaican – if we didn’t get a proper whine off a Jamaican, we’d be letting the side down. We weren’t just going along to be played – whitey was in the game too.

Partying like only Brits know how

Truth be told, the Bryan sisters had promised before we even set out that they’d make it their mission for the night to get girls to dance with all of us boys, so our chances of getting some action were fair to middling from the outset. Joanne and Amy, meanwhile, were never in any danger of not getting multiple requests to back it up – the trick for them was picking a guy who didn’t view agreement to dance as consent to a shag. There was no question of us being shrinking violets reluctantly responding to the attention out of the awkward sense of cultural politeness foreigners tend to feel in different country, however/- we had a secret weapon, alcohol and our in-bred ability to consumer large quantities of it (with the exception of Andrew, who is Muslim and therefore doesn’t drink). I had, I must admit, already polished off a fair quantity of white rum by the time we arrived, and as the place was pretty quiet when we arrived (it was only 1am, after all), we soon had mastery of the dance floor, shaking our un-rhythmic collective white asses like the drunken English tarts we are while a growing crowd of bemused onlookers stood around and wondered what the hell had landed in their town.

Although certain recollections from the evening are a little hazy, I do remember a hell of a lot of laughter watching what unfolded around us. What really kicked things off was Pebbles deciding to do her bit in the spirit of Youth Exchange and giving me a whine, I half suspect out of either irony or sympathy, seeing as by this point I was drunk enough to be doing a pretty terrible imitation of the swag and cow foot. At some point either just before or after this, my efforts even got a shout out from the DJ – ‘Big it up, check white man on the dance floor’ – and that was it, everyone and their dog wanted a piece of us then.

Jayvan, Amy and Joanne

Two things I’ve probably already pointed out about Jamaican dances are worth reiterating at this point - a) people really aren’t shy about coming up to you and either making you and offer they clearly think is too good to refuse or rub themselves up against you in some way, and b), as the latter suggests, dancing is a little more, er, physical than back home. Nor do you do a lot of dancing face-to-face with your chosen partner – it’s mainly male-crotch-to-female-butt, which takes a little getting used to, plus there’s plenty of picking the girl up as she wraps her legs around you and that kind of thing – it’s a damn good workout if nothing else. The guys will stand in little half-circles around the girls as they dance, like vultures waiting for their turn to peck the carcass, every now and then reaching out a hungry claw to see if they can get a quick grab and thereby get the girl to dance with them. Joanne and Amy had all this to deal with, but I guess the thing is to take it in the right spirit, which they did admirably, kindly accepting the invitations of various pleasant young gentlemen to teach them a dance move or too, and then laughing and telling them they were married to one of us as soon as the approaches became more than just friendly. It worked a treat, although no one believed for a minute they were actually married, probably something to do with the fact that all the lads were at various points dancing with other girls in ways you just don’t do when you are hitched.

Simon and Rochelle get acquainted

They say it’s always the quiet ones, and it turned out that Andrew, the non-drinker with a steady long-term girlfriend back home, was the dragnet that pulled the fishes in. Not only did Kaya’s mate Therese take a liking to him, it was also because of him that we got introduced to the lovely Rochelle from Manchester (the Jamaican parish, that is). Now Rochelle, blond wig and tiny shorts and all, definitely wasn’t what you’d call a shy girl – after dancing with Andrew for a bit and making him offers I couldn’t possibly repeat, she then did exactly the same with me, Simon and Dan in turn. By the end of the night she insisted on taking my phone number (I’m the only one with a Jamaican phone) and was promising Andrew she’d call (she didn’t, which was a shame).

Sadly, the Dan-Pebbles romance wasn’t meant to be, and lasted until she asked him to give her 20 quid for a hairdo – not the best tactic with a Yorkshireman, poor lass. It wasn’t much of a set-back for Dan, though – within 24 hours, the bar maid at the bar next door, Kim, had made her intentions clear, and that was it, Dan had a Jamaican wife.

Andrew and Joanne at Salt River

Saturday turned into a bit of a non-event, which wasn’t surprising seeing it was well gone 5am by the time we got home. We had been planning on going to a Halloween party a few miles down the road at Thetford Great House, but a combination of everyone being rinsed from the night before and not really knowing how to get there put the chop on that idea. The party was a bit of an anomaly, though – Jamaica doesn’t celebrate Halloween at all really. What we did manage to do on Saturday was take a trip to Salt River for a swim, which is an excellent remedy for the afternoon after the night before. For the second time in less than 24 hours, our transport was a pick-up truck, which was very cool until it started raining on the way back and we were all sat in the back with towels on our heads looking like fools.

Sunday brought one of those experiences you’re hardly ever likely to get on the tourist trail – a visit to a ganja farm. It came out of the blue, as well. I’d spent the morning doing some shopping and had just started cooking a late brunch when Crazy asked ‘Are you coming to the farm too, Paul?’ I didn’t have to ask what kind of ‘farm’ he meant – I didn’t think going for a Sunday afternoon stroll to inspect chickens and pumpkins was quite Crazy’s style. I quickly finished off my breakfast and hopped into Crazy’s mate’s car, crammed into the back with Dan, Simon and Andrew.

We headed out of Old Harbour on the main road to May Pen, passing Sandy Bay before taking a right and heading up into the hills on the border between St Catherine and Clarendon. I love the Jamaican countryside and it wasn’t long before we were rattling along the kind of pothole-scarred road through densely overgrown hill country I’d seen in Trelawny and St Anne – it doesn’t take very long in Jamaica to feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. We stopped the car and the silence was all-consuming – bar the occasional bird call, and the sudden, hysterical hee-hawing of a jackass somewhere near by, there wasn’t a sound to be heard, no cars, no hum from electrical wires, nothing.

On Pick Up on way to Salt River

We left the road and started climbing up a rough boulder-strewn path that looked a bit like a dried-out river bed. There was little sign of anything man-made around (except the path itself, maybe) – no fields, no fences, no signs of cars or machines, just thick, sweltering vegetation. After maybe a 15 minute climb, the path came out of the jungle onto the rounded top of a bare hill. Bang in front of us was a mini-forest of mature female marijuana plants, maybe 50 or so of them, each taller than a man and well into bud. We could smell them before we could see them. Behind this first cluster of plants, as the small hill started to slope away downwards on the other side, was a strange conical hut made of bare tree branches with no obvious entrance. Next to the hut sat a solitary guy, probably somewhere in his 50s, sat with a spliff in his mouth cleaning the leaf off a huge pile of ganja stalks lay on the ground in front of him.

Sweet Leaf

This small, remote farm, probably no more than four or five acres scattered across a stony hill face, all belonged to this one guy. As well as ganja, he also grew crops like yam and sorrel. But like many Jamaican farmers, although it’s easy enough to grow enough food to subside on, it is very difficult to make enough money from a smallholding to have cash left over for the little luxuries we take for granted, like buying new clothes or having a meal on weekends. Ganja is the Jamaican farmers’ most reliable cash crop, the difference between scraping by and actually having a bit of coin in your back pocket. There is very little organized, large-scale ganja farming in Jamaica – the vast majority is produced on humble little farms like this one, way out in the remote hills, and operated by loan farmers. Which makes it even more farcical that this plant, which would grow here naturally without any assistance from man and which so, so many people here use, remains illegal in Jamaica, because all it does is punish men who’s interests in life, far from being criminal, revolve mainly around working and toiling and sweating in the blazing sun to keep a little food on their family’s table. I have a lot of admiration for the guy sat there patiently picking leaves out of his precious pile of dried weed – as if farming wasn’t hard enough as it is, he painstakingly went about the business of moving his entire operation roughly once a year to avoid detection by the authorities. Not an easy life at all, although as I sat up there looking out over the coastal plane below in the hot sunshine and silence, I could see it had some attractions.

Coach Simon shortly after going 1-0 down

It hasn’t all been partying and galavanting across the countryside, of course – in between times there is still the business we’re all here for, volunteering. Godfrey and Clair made a brief stop at the school last Friday on the way to the airport to see how we were doing and made sort videos of us all talking about our time in Jamaica so far, so somewhere on the internet there will be a video of me looking sun burnt and talking about how much I love the place. I hope they left satisfied that everything was good with the project because, as far as I can see, it is. Everyone has now found their little niche at the school and I think everyone has got plenty to do. Amy in particular seems to have found herself in huge demand with her drama skills – she’s getting personal requests from all sorts of teachers to go in and help out with their classes. Joanne is busy getting the netball team ready for its now imminent first fixtures of the season, while Andy and Simon have been doing plenty of PE and helping out with the football team. Last week, each took charge of an ‘A’ and ‘B’ team from the squad for the practice match which drew a pretty good crowd at the school. After cruising into an early two-goal lead, Andrew’s team looked all set for an easy victory, until complacency set in late on and Simon’s side pulled a goal back before snatching a draw with a last-gasp equalizer. The smile on Simon’s face was so big you’d have thought he’d won the World Cup.

Grudge match action

While I’ve been happy to tke a back seat so the others can get the best of their time at Marlie Mount, practically giving up on PE and just concentrating on cricket coaching, being stuck in the office typing up lesson plans and letters was starting to get a bit boring by the start of the week and I wanted to find a way to get some more experience back in the classroom. I struck on the idea of asking the Grade 6 teachers if doing some stuff about journalism and story writing might be useful and got talking to Mr Fogarty. He said composition was one of the things the kids he taught struggled most with in their GSAT exams, which they sit next year, and said any extra help they could get would be great. So with less than a day’s notice, I had a stab at planning a two-hour lesson on story writing, looking at how you structure stories into paragraphs with a beginning, middle and end, and all the different information a story should tell you – who, where, when, what, why and how. After PE, I found being in the classroom very pressurized – as well as getting the kids to be quiet and concentrate, I always felt I was up against the clock, trying to get certain sections of the lesson finished so you could move on to the next. I also thought the main work I set everyone in groups went over their heads a bit – I gave them stories cut out of newspapers and asked them to draw ‘story pyramids’, answering the who, when, where etc questions for each paragraph to show how stories (especially news stories) build up the information the communicate in a very ordered way. In any event, Mrs Ellis asked me to come and give the same lesson to her class the next morning, and it went much better when I changed the task to giving the kids pictures from the paper and asking them to make up stories in groups to explain the pictures instead. It’s given me an extra job anyway, and next week I’m teaching descriptive writing.