Goodbye to JA

Things end. That’s all there is to it. And one of the prices human beings pay for the gift of rational consciousness is a constant awareness of the transcience of all things, ourselves included. It’s enough to move us to profound sadness, lunacy, even religion, but as a Truth it remains immutable. So it has been a week of endings, and even though beginnings as a rule tend to be much easier to deal with than endings, I find myself struggling to begin to write about the end of my time in Jamaica, which is why I’m rambling like this.

Kashawn and Joanne, next to last day

Let me rewind ten days or so. The ‘A’ Shift vs ‘B’ Shift cricket match was played on a day of endings, the final day The Four (as Amy, Dan, Andrew and Simon will now be known) spent at Marlie Mount Primary and Infant School. But I’m going to start a day earlier, a week last Thursday, on Parents’ Day, when instead of normal lessons, all the boys came in the morning with their mums and all the girls came in the afternoon with their dads. Without really knowing what other schools do, I’ve been impressed by the way Marlie Mount  regularly holds different events to get parents and members of the wider community involved in school life. It gives the kids a break from normal school routine which they enjoy, and it makes a nice change for us too.

The format was pretty similar to the Heroes’ Day celebrations, with the kids putting on performances in the morning and afternoon, ice cream on sale and, allegedly, games being run by us six volunteers. I say ‘allegedly’ because no one had really told us what was going on until Mr Thomas informed me the previous afternoon that he wouldn’t be in all day, and did we mind doing some sports for the kids and parents? We didn’t, but with no time to prepare we weren’t really sure what we were meant to be doing. As it happened, it didn’t matter much, because the parents showed absolutely no interest in joining in and the kids just treated it as a mass PE lesson.

Final 'A' Shift cricket practice

By the late afternoon when the girls were doing their singing and dancing for their dads, there was really fun party atmosphere. One of the dads did the MCing and was great, getting all the girls involved like a kids’ TV presenter, and soon everyone was dancing and singing and having a good time. It was the perfect way for the departing Four to hang out with the kids and have a laugh before they went, and the party vibe continued through the next day. There was an inter-shift netball match to go along with the cricket, and a couple of impromptu additional PE lessons as that lot made the most of the last day with their final classes. I unfortunately missed the highlight of the day because cricket was over running – during afternoon devotion, Mrs Mapp and Miss Cross had The Four up in front of the school to show off their dance moves. I’m reliably informed Simon’s cowfoot was awesome while Andrew just completely cut loose and showed everyone how it’s done. I just wish someone had filmed it.

The day ended in a flurry of hugs, handshakes, thumb touches and farewells, and it was hard not to get caught up in it all, even though for me it was only a practice run for the real goodbyes I’d have to say a week later. As we walked away, it was hard to tell whether everyone was feeling happy or sad – all of us I’m sure have come to feel genuine affection for a lot of the kids at the school, and even though it was obviously sad to see four of us saying goodbye, no one was walking away without a smile on their face. How could you not, all the laughter and enjoyment we’d had all day? The kids in Jamaica definitely have sunshine in their hearts.

Warming up with 6R...

That night we’d arranged to meet Mr Fogarty in Juici Patties for a game of pool after missing him the week before. We ended up carrying on from there to a bar in Old Harbour I’d not been to before, and had one of those nights that started out as a few quiet drinks but ended up with flasks of rum being bought and yet more sampling of local dancing customs. The night could well have continued, with party animal Amy insisting on heading over to the go-go club when we got home at 1am. I opted out – we had bigger fish to fry the next night, and anyway, I needed to get up earlyish to get my laundry done.

There had been talk of going up to Ocho Rios, one of the two major tourist destinations on the island’s north coast, for the weekend. But Andrew returned from the party he’d been to in Kingston the previous week with news – the following week his mate was putting on Mavado at the same venue. Mavado is currently as big as it gets in Jamaican dancehall. Known as ‘The Gully God’, the rivalry between his ‘Gully’ crew and Vybz Kartel’s ‘Gaza’ posse dominates Jamaican popular culture at the moment. But whereas Kartel is all image over substance – he’s one of these wankers that can’t help take the gangster posturing to its logical conclusion and is currently banged up awaiting trial on several murder charges – Mavado is actually quite good in as much as he can sing and his songs are catchy. Not having had any sniff of an opportunity to go and see a big dancehall party in Kingston with a big name performing, I was well up for going along, and so it was we all set off for another big adventure into the Jamaican night.

... then posing with them

It started well enough – I didn’t know if busses still ran past 11pm when we finally set off, but after standing around on the roadside for a couple of minutes, a bus carrying just one passenger pulled up to take us to Spanish Town. The driver asked if we would like some music, and then stuck on a CD of current dancehall hits at ear-bleeding volume. It was like having our own party bus, and I sat back sipping my gin and juice genuinely excited about the night ahead. From Spanish Town, we took two taxis which raced each other all the way to Half Way Tree, where Andrew’s mate Pag was waiting to pick us up in his big Toyota jeep. It was a bit of a squeeze, especially with his giant boom boom box resting on our knees at the back, but I’d assumed it would only be a couple of minutes journey. Wrong. The party wasn’t in Kingston at all, it was all the way up in Stony Hill, an affluent suburb right up in the hills above the capital.

As we arrived at the venue, a large converted warehouse, Pag broke some bad news to us – there’d been some kind of mix-up over Mavado’s booking and he was out in Canada somewhere, which kind of ruled him out of performing. It was a bit disappointing because we’d all been looking forward to seeing a big-name act, but the worst thing was that word had already got round and it looked like there wasn’t going to be much of a turnout – it was 1am already and there was hardly anyone there. It was bad news in a cavernous barn of a venue that the previous week had packed in 2500 – without a good crowd, there was no chance of a good atmosphere. There wasn’t much we could do about it though, we were pretty much stuck there until Pag drove us back. So instead of rubbing shoulders with Beenie Man and other A-list Jamaican celebrities like Andrew had done the week before, we had to content ourselves with watching the trickle of outrageously well-dressed young men and women who had made it to the venue and avoiding the attentions of the local hookers, one of whom took great delight in walking over to us and pulling her top down to ‘show us the goods’. But that’s Jamaica all over, classy and seedy all at once.

Sayimg goodbye to Abigail

With the early morning air high up in the hills surprisingly cool, we had all returned to huddle in Pag’s car by about 4am and slept the best we could until he very kindly drove us back to Old Harbour at about 7am (I was sandwiched in the tiny boot comically wedged between the door and the speaker box, so it wasn’t the most comfy journey I’ve ever been on). And that was just about that as far as the Four were concerned – the rest of Sunday was spent doing absolutely nothing, and although Andrew, Amy and Simon went out that night for a last party, I really couldn’t muster the energy, and wanted to be in school early the next day anyway. They came up to school for a last goodbye that morning and in the evening me and Joanne were left to get used to having a quiet house (and a room to ourselves) again. It also meant we only had a week ourselves before we would be heading back.

I’ve always said that working at the school was my main priority while I was here and I really wanted to cram in as much as I could during my last week. Miss Ellis asked me if I would take the guitar I’d borrowed from the school to her class and use it to teach a science lesson about sound. I did some brushing up on sound waves, resonation, amplification and pitch and did my best to come up with a lesson that sounded physics-y enough, but I found it much harder than writing an English class, a reminder that I’m going to have to remember how to do other subjects if I want to teach primary. I threw together a half-hour lesson all the same, using a tub with an elastic band round it to demonstrate the effect of resonation compared to twanging a band just stretched across my fingers, but I’ll freely admit it was probably not the most enthralling lesson the kids had ever had. I ended up teaching it twice that morning though, as Mrs Samuels collared me and said her class was doing the same topic and could I help her out as well.

Marlie Mount Dance Troupe

I spent a couple of afternoons working with the reading teacher Mrs Johnson as she took Grade 2 classes. I’d only really done reading work with Grade 4 and above before so I was interested in seeing what happened with younger kids. I found out that Jamaican kids don’t learn the alphabet the way I did at school – whereas we learn it phonetically, or the sounds of the letters, first, Jamaican kids learn the names of the letters, the ‘Ay, Bee, Cee, Dee’ like the song, and then learn the sounds of the letters in school, which was what these classes were doing. It seemed strange to me to see seven and eight-year-olds who didn’t know what sound the letter ‘U’ made, I’d always taken it for granted that phonics was just how children learned to read. It was also quite entertaining listening to some of the sounds the kids made – ‘V’, for example, wasn’t the abrupt ‘va’ sound I’d learned, it was a long drawn out ‘vvvvvv’ made without opening the lips.

Ashleigh with the bracelet she made for Daisy

Taking all these classes on top of PE and cricket training meant the time flew. Me and Joanne finished a bit earlier than usual on Wednesday to go and do some present shopping, but Joanne had already been quietly collecting a hefty stash of gifts by getting her netball girls to make her bracelets. Some of them were really good so I asked if I could get some to take for Daisy, and was promptly presented with a couple made by a lovely little Grade 5 girl called Ashleigh. Then all of a sudden it was Thursday and the goodbyes really started in earnest. Half way through my final cricket session with the ‘A’ Shift boys that afternoon, me and Joanne were unexpectedly summoned into the staffroom by Mrs Mapp. We got there to find a group of teachers stood round a little table on which were neatly laid out a cake with ‘Goodbye Paul & Joan [sic]’ written on it in icing, a couple of bottles of grape fizz and two gift bags. I’ve had a few jobs in my time, but no employer I’ve ever had has gone to so much trouble to say goodbye properly. I was genuinely touched – we had speeches from the principal, vice-principal, senior teachers and even the chairman of the board, thanking us warmly for our time and the work we’d done while we were at the school. As gifts, we got a Jamaica T-shirt each, a key-ring and a Marlie Mount School cup. But best of all, I got a plaque with the following engraved on it: “Presented to Paul Newham. For your invaluable service to the school family. Thank you for your time and dedication. November 2011.” There’s nothing like being appreciated in life, is there?



Like a cat crying

Straight after the little get –together in the staff room, after saying goodbye to the ‘A’ shift cricket boys, there was a little concert being put on for the parents as a follow-up to the Parents Day the week before, so it was like we were getting a treat to say goodbye as well. But we knew the tables were going to be turned the next morning – after the other four had been made to dance in front of the whole school the previous week, we’d already been told the same was expected of us. I’m a great believer in knowing your limitations in life and sticking with what you are good at, so I wasn’t about to make an idiot of myself by attempting to dance in front of 700 giggling kids if I could possibly help it. Instead, I decided I was going to sing, which, as anyone who has ever heard me sing will know, was a brave decision if I wanted to avoid ridicule, but still a better option than dancing. So that evening I sat down and learned how to play Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ and ‘One Love’, blagging a way of playing the famous hook riff in ‘Three Little Birds’ an octave lower so I could play it on the four-string school guitar and working out a simple arrangement to make a medley of the two songs. With about half-an-hours practice, I was ready to face by far the biggest audience I’ve ever sung solo in front of in my life. We were at school bright and early, waiting patiently as the kids had their usual Friday morning sing-song belting out bouncy up-beat Gospel songs, and then it was our big moment. Joanne volunteered to go first – she’d decided to get all the kids to sing ‘There’s a White Girl in the Ring’ as she danced round in a circle shaking her thing. It was brilliant, the kids were literally shrieking with laughter and making a deafening racket clapping their hands and stamping their feet. All I was bothered about was just not being awful – as long as I could more or less hold the tune, I’d be happy. So with Miss Cross holding the mic for me, I just blasted it out. I didn’t even have to get to the end of the first line before my song selection got a howl of appreciation and everyone joined in, swaying and dancing all around me. It was a magic moment, 700 voices singing ‘Every little thing is gonna be alright’, and despite the warm morning sunshine, I felt a shiver run down my back as the adrenalin sent me soaring.

Thanks Paul & 'Joan'!!

As I stood looking round at all the little faces I’d got to know over the previous few months, I knew that I was sad to be saying goodbye, but it wasn’t a day to feel sad. It was a great day – after devotion, me and Joanne went into a Grade 1 class and got them to make Christmas cards for us to take home (saves money on crap pictures of wreathes and reindeer!). Although we were a bit gutted that Ryan hadn’t been sent to school that morning as we’d picked his class on purpose, at least we got to see Chad before we’d left, as he’d moved back to stay with his Dad. I took the ASTEP class for a final PE lesson and then was invited to have lunch with the lovely Mrs Anderson and lovely Miss Lindsay in the ASTEP room. After that, I had to try to squeeze a last cricket practice with ‘B’ Shift around going to 6R/6E’s class at 11am, where Mr Fogarty had summoned me and Joanne. In the end, I just set the boys playing a game and left them to it. Both Joanne and I have spent more time with Miss Ellis’s 6R and Mr Fogarty’s 6E than any other class, so we guessed we’d be getting some kind of special farewell. But we hadn’t really expected all the kids to have clubbed together to buy us a card, another Jamaica shirt each and a huge KFC bucket for everyone to share! In the circumstances, I felt it was appropriate to put my personal views on the Colonel’s evil empire and the morals of eating birds to one side, so I tucked in with all of them as we chatted away. Me and Joanne had both got to know some of the kids in those classes very well through cricket and netball as well as teaching lessons, so it was nice that we got to say goodbye to them specially.

 

Getting me plaque, innit

After saying goodbye to the cricketers I went straight to the cubs. Mrs Frith, the pack’s Akela, has been pretty ill and not in school for the past fortnight, which has spoiled plans for the group to go to Kingston next week for a big meeting. They had been meant to sing the version of ‘In the Jungle’ I wrote for them, but as I’d missed the last two meetings I hadn’t really been involved much in rehearsals. I decided to do a couple of run-throughs with them for old times’ sake and then just let them do what they badgered me to do every week anyway – play football. At the end of the meeting, after the house netball matches had finished, Joanne came over and videoed us doing ‘In the Jungle’ one last time. I just about had time to eat some lunch and then me and Joanne both did our last PE lesson, fittingly with 6E, while Mr Thomas was away for the afternoon with the football team. We decided just to let everyone do what they wanted, so all the girls played with hula-hoops while half the boys played basketball and the other half played kwik cricket with me.

6R and 6E

As the classes assembled at the end of afternoon lunch break, we stood in the quadrangle and said our last goodbyes to the school, but weren’t asked to perform this time. As I walked across the baked playing field under the relentless sun for the last time, I was smiling – it was hard to believe that my time here was done, but what a time I’d had. I’d told the school a few minutes earlier that I felt privileged to have been welcomed as part of their community, and that’s exactly what made it such a special place. In a place where things are far from easy for ordinary families, Marlie Mount School is a beacon of community spirit and the hope it brings.

Girls on the town

That night we’d arranged to meet some of the teachers in Old Harbour for a few drinks. For what I swear was the third time in as many months, the gas bottle in the kitchen ran out bang in the middle of me cooking curry and rice, so we were late (as usual for me). Mr Fogarty, Mrs Ellis, Mr Thomas and Miss Barrant all came out for a few drinks, and although we tried our best to talk them all into staying out to go to a dance, only Mr F took the bait. We went to the town square first, where we got treated to some more free master classes by the local all-star teen dance troop, once again featuring the skinny little wonderkid who we’ve been told is aged anything between nine and 13, but who is regardless of his age pure class to watch, leaving most of the older lads who are all damn good in the shade. Then it was on to what in the past few weeks had become our regular party haunt across the road behind Gateway Plaza. It wasn’t up to the standard of Shell Dung Thursdayz – it was full of kids, and there’s something that doesn’t sit right watching 15 and 16-year-old girls performing some of the more risqué dance moves in the dancehall repertoire. I was also starting to feel the effects of drinking Guinness Foreign Extra and white rum from 7pm, so for once we didn’t stay to the end and beat a tactical retreat at a fairly reasonable hour.

Ty in a rare moment out of the sea

Saturday was all about one thing – the beach. Me and Joanne both agreed that the number one priority for the final weekend was a last pilgrimage to the Caribbean for what would be our last day sunbathing in several months. I invited Monique to come along with Tyreen, and as we were all waiting for the bus to Spanish Town, who should pull up but the delectable duo Mrs Anderson and Miss Lindsay, who were on their way to Kingston and kindly offered to take us part of the way. Hellshire beach was a lot quieter than it had been the previous two times we’d been, which in a way was good because all I wanted to do was sleep in between swimming. I hired a big rubber ring for Ty and after initially throwing a tantrum because he was scared to go in the water, he ended up spending most of the afternoon in the sea being pushed around by Monique.

Fya picking Daisy's 'bash

Sunday was all about one thing as well – the Yard. In the past five months, everyone at Mighty Gully has been like an extended family to me. They’ve welcomed me, housed me, fed me, looked after me and befriended me, and treated me like one of them. I’ve lived with them, shared with them, laughed with them, partied with them, watched their quarrels and been sympathetic ear when needed. This place was the base for my entire experience in Jamaica, and I wanted to say goodbye properly by giving everyone a damn good feed. The night before, me and Joanne made a last trip to the busy Saturday night market in Old Harbour with Jayvan and Kadaye and bought up food for a feast  – yam to roast on a wood fire along with some breadfruit Jayvan had picked, chicken to fry, goat to curry, pumpkin and cabbage to steam, ingredients for rice and peas, and a bottle of rum Kadaye got for a fiver off a friend who sells it at wholesale prices. Kadaye insisted on doing the cooking, and from 11am her and Shawn were in the kitchen, with extra coal stoves set up outside so many pots were needed, cooking up a Jamaican Sunday lunch to remember.   

Chef Kadaye dishes out her feast

After doing some laundry, I went with Rastaman Fya to pick some calabash over by the canal behind the yard. I spent the afternoon making one into a cup from Daisy while chatting to the carvers, playing with the kids and drinking a likkle rum. I’d purposefully not eaten much all day in preparation for the feast, but mid-afternoon food just started to appear – first of all Marsha handed me a big bowl of ital stewed peas, rice and vegan coleslaw, which I shared with Joanne despite the peas being one of the best things I’ve tasted since I’ve been here, and then Shawn produced some absolutely mouthwatering fried dumplings which he’d seasoned and rather than sweetened as you’d do to make festivals. Then it was the piece de resistance – Kadaye’s masterpiece was ready. My plate was overflowing with steamed cabbage and pumpkin, rice and peas, roast yam and breadfruit, garden peas and fresh coleslaw which she’d made with lime juice and was one of the best things on the plate. Joanne’s plate was just ridiculous – she had pretty much the same quantities of everything else as me, plus curried goat and two pieces of fried chicken. I’d have loved to have seen her demolish the lot, but alas, she played the tactical game and saved half of it for breakfast. I’d been planning to do the same, but once I started eating I just couldn’t stop, it was too nice. I was pretty stuffed by the time I’d finished, but that didn’t stop me polishing off what Monique couldn’t eat, including half a chicken. Well, if I’m gonna eat KFC, it’d be rude not to sample the homestyle, right?

I don’t know if the feast knocked everyone out but the yard has been strangely quiet tonight. Right now, the girls would usually be getting ready to go to the weekly pool party, but all said they didn’t feel like it, so I’m sat here ending my Jamaican adventure as I started it in that big empty apartment in Knockpatrick, just me, myself, my thoughts and my words. There’s too much to say to try to sum up my time here, and the Yard is calling, where I can look up at the clear stars for the last time, drink a last rum and listen to Irie FM. All I want to say is thank you, thank you everyone who made this possible, at Mighty Gully, Marlie Mount School, CCCD, and Everything Is Possible. I have truly been blessed, and tomorrow, a new adventure.