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My Jamaica
by: George Philp (a JCOB)
PART ONE:
Despite the beauty and tranquility of the Knutsford Court Hotel, I was feeling trapped. I kept looking up at the hills, but the old "skin bag" fear returned. And reading Dennis O’Driscoll's poem over at John Baker's blog didn't help. I wanted to venture out into New Kingston, but the fear that I would become a meaningless statistic of Jamaican violence kept haunting me.
I had to admit that I was scared. Yet I kept reminding myself that this was the plan that I'd devised when I learned that I'd won four medals from the JCDC. I'd told myself that this trip to Jamaica would be much different than the five other trips that I'd taken when I taught poetry for the Calabash Literary Festival.
On those trips, I was pampered. Calabash paid my airfare and as soon as I landed at the airport I was paged, "Mr. Geoffrey Philp, please come to the office of the Jamaica Tourist Board." Next, I would be whisked through the airport and taken by a driver to the place where I would stay. In the mornings, the driver picked me up and took me to meet my eager students.
After teaching all day, I was taken home to shower, change and escorted to the theatre or similar cultural event. This usually lasted for a week, and I stuck to the schedule. But over the years, I began to ask myself if I really knew Jamaica since leaving in 1979. I wanted to test my impressions on this trip. This time I wanted to do it on my own. So, other than one friend whom I called and then learned he was leaving for England, I didn't call anyone else.
The plan had worked, but then I began to get angry with myself. I was allowing the actions of a statistically insignificant fraction of Jamaica's population to govern my behavior--to blind me to the beauty of Jamaica and to transform every poor Jamaican into a potential gunman. It wasn't fair. Still, I had to acknowledge and the newspapers confirmed these facts: the elections had just finished, a hurricane had juts passed through, and Jamaica was increasingly becoming the land of "Passa Passa" funerals.
Yet the hills, which had been an integral part of my childhood landscape in Mona Heights, kept on calling.
I walked out to the gates of the hotel and talked with two stern looking security guards. We talked about the rains and how green the island looked. I asked them about taxi rates, and then, I made the decision.
I walked out the gates of the hotel down to Half-Way Tree Road where I caught a taxi that was dropping off another customer. Using the information that I gathered from the security guards, I negotiated a price and jumped in the front set of the taxi.
As we made our way past King's House, I introduced myself to the driver and he told me his name was Minto. We talked about the weather, the recent elections, and life in Jamaica.
By the time we got to Matilda's Corner, Minto said to me, "So, you've become an American?" I'd never been asked the question so directly and there was no equivocation. I had to say yes.
We talked a bit more about the rain and the roads that were filled with potholes. I would have taken pictures but I still haven't learned how to use the panorama setting on my camera.
After dodging an oncoming car and landing in one of the craters, Minto complained, "We're too talented to be this poor!" I agreed with him and gave him a few examples of several Jamaicans in South Florida who had distinguished themselves in many fields, and many examples of students such as Lance McGibbon at Miami Dade College (where I work), who has provided outstanding leadership in the Student Government Association by involving our students in working with Habitat for Humanity and other civic organizations.
"There's something about us," said Minto, "that makes us stand out." I agreed with him again. As I got out of the taxi at the gates of the University of the West Indies, we shared a joke and I laughed as I waved goodbye and then headed towards the English Department.
None of my friends were there. They'd either finished teaching their classes or had finished their office hours and had gone home. So much for surprises. I wandered around the campus and visited some of my old haunts. Then, I went to the bookstore where I bought a few books that some of my friends in Miami had "borrowed" and were now missing from my small library. At least the morning wasn't a total waste.
I made one last circle around the campus, walked out the gates, and caught a bus that dropped me off at the bottom park of Mona Heights.
I was ready for my next adventure.
PART TWO:
It was not the manicured lawns of my childhood nor was it the world that I'd described in some of my stories that I'd published in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien in which my friends, Paul, David, Pat, Bruce, and Norman appeared in my thinly disguised fictions about growing up in Jamaica. In fact, I didn't see any children playing cricket or football as we had done at Top Park, Bottom Park, and the community center, or in front of our homes. It was a symptom of the exodus that began in the late seventies when I and many of my friends left for London, New York, Ontario, Atlanta, and Miami, and our children had grown up in these cities. This saddened me a bit because it was in Mona Heights that I developed my sense of community and learned how to foster many of the relationships that have played an important part in my life.
I walked through the streets like a ghost, unknown and not knowing anyone, until I reached the gates of my aunt who had lived in London, Ontario, and New York. I didn't expect her to be home because the process of moving her possessions from all the previous places where she had lived has been slow, and at her advanced age, she is often in transit between continents and the island.
I knocked on the gate and one of my cousins, Paul, peered up from behind his car. This was a sure sign that she was home because Paul has been charged by my uncle (her brother) with taking care of my aunt whenever she is in Jamaica. He opened the gates and went around the back to tell my aunt that she had a surprise: I was home.
Paul and I chatted for a while and he told me that his brother, Hew, had moved to Canada and that everyone in the family had seen the review of Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories in the Jamaica Observer. We continued talking until my aunt came outside to the verandah and greeted me. She was as feisty as ever and chided me (only as she could) about not calling beforehand. I accepted the mild reprimand as we sat and she asked about my family and work. We talked about my mother and she told me that she was proud of me. I accepted the blessing.
Then, she asked me where I was staying and she offered to give me a ride to the hotel. I told her that I wanted to visit my old school and she understood. I said goodbye and as I walked through the gates, I looked back at the woman who I admired for being one of the most independent of my grandfather's children. She had never got married, never had any children, never took any crap form any man, and never compromised on anything. And now she was being helped into a car by my cousin.
I crossed Daisy Avenue and then over to Hope Road to Jamaica College where I was confronted by a security guard. (So many sentries have been appearing in my life!) I told him that I was a former student and he allowed me into the school to take a few pictures, yet he watched my every move.
As I walked by St. Dunstan's, past the names of the JC Old Boys who had died in World War I, I saw behind an open window the eager faces of young men behind desks in what was once One Chambers. I used to be one of them. I snapped a few pictures of the school and felt vaguely nostalgic about the place that been the setting for my semi-autobiographical novel, Benjamin, my son.
Of course, I had to take pictures of "Holy Ground," and the Assembly Hall, and then, went back to Mona on a hunch, a feeling that Paul Smith, one of my childhood friends was back in Jamaica.
I was right. The hunch paid off. Paul wasn't home, but his helper gave me his address and synchronicity! His business, Reggae Vacations, was right beside my hotel in the heart of New Kingston. I practically ran back to Hope Road, jumped in a mini-bus that now played music videos instead of CDs, and headed off for Half-Way-Tree.
From Half-Way-Tree, I walked over to Reggae Vacations and went up to Paul's office. I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked gain. Still no answer. I went down stairs and talked with a receptionist who insisted that Paul had not left the building.
I want upstairs and knocked again. Nothing. Then, I heard a voice that I was certain was Paul's coming from an adjacent office. I knocked on the door. Silence. A voice said, "Come in." It wasn't Paul's. I backed away from the door. A moment of hesitation. The door opened and my Idren, Paul, was startled. He laughed. He immediately introduced me to his friend, and we were off to eat at one of his favorite East Indian restaurants in Liguanea.
It was if we'd never had a break in seeing each other. We picked up the conversation since he told me about three years ago that he was leaving for Dominica. During that time, we'd exchanged a few e-mails, but nothing big. We bragged about our kids and families. Paul said that he was surprised to see me because I hadn’t mentioned the trip on my blog. I knew he had subscribed, but I thought he was still in Dominica working with their tourist board. After a few laughs and Red Stripes, he told me about his work with the cruise industry and about another of our friends, Norman Pennycooke.
Paul, Norman, and I go way, way back. Our friendships started at Mona Primary. Norman's mother was our teacher in sixth grade and we were the three kings in our annual Christmas play. I was Gaspar ("Gold"); Norman was Melchior ("Frankincense"), and Paul was Balthazar ("Myrrh").
When we graduated from Mona Primary, we went to Jamaica College where our friendships deepened and was tempered by competition and cooperation.
Norman, as it turns out, was doing well in Dominica and that was expected. We'd attended the best high school in Jamaica (take that Kingston College and St. Georges!). In between clients for his reggae themed vacations, I teased Paul that he'd never capitalized on his music lessons, but he told me in some ways that had paid off. A few years ago, he was the leader of a reggae band, MLC (Mid Life Crisis) and they'd played a few gigs around the island.
We started calling friends around the island and I learned that Bruce was now a successful dentist in May Pen. I asked about Errol McDonald (Macky D) who given me the name, "Herbert Spliffington." He said Errol was in Ghana touring with a reggae band.
For the most part, most of our friends were doing well, but then the dread catalog began: those who had been killed or became killers; those who had died from natural causes or had become invisible in America; those who were on the FBI's "Most Wanted List," and those who had suffered from an extreme case of "lead poisoning" to use one of Jimmy Carnegie's favorite euphemisms.
By the time we had caught up with everybody and everything, it was dark and we decided to go to the Top Park in Mona Heights. There we saw old friends like Larry Smith, Boothes, and Peter Moses. Peter teased me about gaining the extra weight since my Manning Cup Football days, and then, he went off to play with the "old timers." Men my age or a few years older.
As we were about to leave, Paul's sister, Gail, came by and we sat down and ate barbequed chicken (Okay, Peter, I hear you!) and talked some more until nine o'clock We reminisced about the annual Christmas fair at the community center where many of us smoked our first cigarette or kissed or first girlfriend. Or got caught doing both. Sometimes on the same day and by different parents.
We finished the chicken and our beers at about ten thirty and followed Gail back to her house. Paul drove me back to the hotel and promised me he would pick me up the next day and take me to the airport.
I slept well that night and got up the next day, ready to go back to Miami and to read at the Miami Book Fair International.
As I waited for Paul on a bench near the reception area of the hotel, I looked up at the hills how much I had missed waking up every morning as Paul, Norman, Bruce and I walked to Jamaica College. I was glad that I hadn't given into my fears and that I'd seen Kingston on foot and by taxi, bus, and mini-bus. I remembered Minto's comment about me becoming Americanized and yet in some ways how I had remained stubbornly Jamaican.
I opened Kendel Hippolyte's Night Vision with the haunting phrase, "our first generation of unmeaning," and I became conscious of how much I had changed and my connection with the generations that had grown up since I had left in 1979 was tenuous at best. My impending mortality in the face of my aunt (I turn fifty next year), and that my football friends were now called "old timers" stayed with me.
Listening to the hotel workers going back and forth as they did their duties, I realized that we laugh at the sheer pleasure of being alive. No matter how hard the times, how dread the circumstances, we laugh. A lot.
I glanced across the front of the hotel. The two guards that I'd talked with the day before were outside smoking cigarettes and I told them about my adventures. One said that I was brave and one hinted that I had been very foolish to go out on my own like that. But that's Jamaica for you. Put two Jamaicans in a room and you'll have three different opinions. And all of them are right!
I sat back on the bench and looked at the hills once again. I closed my eyes and gave thanks for the good time, however brief, that I'd had on my return.
When I opened my eyes, my Idren, Paul, had pulled into the driveway to take me to the airport and back to Miami.
by: George Philp (a JCOB)
PART ONE:
Despite the beauty and tranquility of the Knutsford Court Hotel, I was feeling trapped. I kept looking up at the hills, but the old "skin bag" fear returned. And reading Dennis O’Driscoll's poem over at John Baker's blog didn't help. I wanted to venture out into New Kingston, but the fear that I would become a meaningless statistic of Jamaican violence kept haunting me.
I had to admit that I was scared. Yet I kept reminding myself that this was the plan that I'd devised when I learned that I'd won four medals from the JCDC. I'd told myself that this trip to Jamaica would be much different than the five other trips that I'd taken when I taught poetry for the Calabash Literary Festival.
On those trips, I was pampered. Calabash paid my airfare and as soon as I landed at the airport I was paged, "Mr. Geoffrey Philp, please come to the office of the Jamaica Tourist Board." Next, I would be whisked through the airport and taken by a driver to the place where I would stay. In the mornings, the driver picked me up and took me to meet my eager students.
After teaching all day, I was taken home to shower, change and escorted to the theatre or similar cultural event. This usually lasted for a week, and I stuck to the schedule. But over the years, I began to ask myself if I really knew Jamaica since leaving in 1979. I wanted to test my impressions on this trip. This time I wanted to do it on my own. So, other than one friend whom I called and then learned he was leaving for England, I didn't call anyone else.
The plan had worked, but then I began to get angry with myself. I was allowing the actions of a statistically insignificant fraction of Jamaica's population to govern my behavior--to blind me to the beauty of Jamaica and to transform every poor Jamaican into a potential gunman. It wasn't fair. Still, I had to acknowledge and the newspapers confirmed these facts: the elections had just finished, a hurricane had juts passed through, and Jamaica was increasingly becoming the land of "Passa Passa" funerals.
Yet the hills, which had been an integral part of my childhood landscape in Mona Heights, kept on calling.
I walked out to the gates of the hotel and talked with two stern looking security guards. We talked about the rains and how green the island looked. I asked them about taxi rates, and then, I made the decision.
I walked out the gates of the hotel down to Half-Way Tree Road where I caught a taxi that was dropping off another customer. Using the information that I gathered from the security guards, I negotiated a price and jumped in the front set of the taxi.
As we made our way past King's House, I introduced myself to the driver and he told me his name was Minto. We talked about the weather, the recent elections, and life in Jamaica.
By the time we got to Matilda's Corner, Minto said to me, "So, you've become an American?" I'd never been asked the question so directly and there was no equivocation. I had to say yes.
We talked a bit more about the rain and the roads that were filled with potholes. I would have taken pictures but I still haven't learned how to use the panorama setting on my camera.
After dodging an oncoming car and landing in one of the craters, Minto complained, "We're too talented to be this poor!" I agreed with him and gave him a few examples of several Jamaicans in South Florida who had distinguished themselves in many fields, and many examples of students such as Lance McGibbon at Miami Dade College (where I work), who has provided outstanding leadership in the Student Government Association by involving our students in working with Habitat for Humanity and other civic organizations.
"There's something about us," said Minto, "that makes us stand out." I agreed with him again. As I got out of the taxi at the gates of the University of the West Indies, we shared a joke and I laughed as I waved goodbye and then headed towards the English Department.
None of my friends were there. They'd either finished teaching their classes or had finished their office hours and had gone home. So much for surprises. I wandered around the campus and visited some of my old haunts. Then, I went to the bookstore where I bought a few books that some of my friends in Miami had "borrowed" and were now missing from my small library. At least the morning wasn't a total waste.
I made one last circle around the campus, walked out the gates, and caught a bus that dropped me off at the bottom park of Mona Heights.
I was ready for my next adventure.
PART TWO:
It was not the manicured lawns of my childhood nor was it the world that I'd described in some of my stories that I'd published in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien in which my friends, Paul, David, Pat, Bruce, and Norman appeared in my thinly disguised fictions about growing up in Jamaica. In fact, I didn't see any children playing cricket or football as we had done at Top Park, Bottom Park, and the community center, or in front of our homes. It was a symptom of the exodus that began in the late seventies when I and many of my friends left for London, New York, Ontario, Atlanta, and Miami, and our children had grown up in these cities. This saddened me a bit because it was in Mona Heights that I developed my sense of community and learned how to foster many of the relationships that have played an important part in my life.
I walked through the streets like a ghost, unknown and not knowing anyone, until I reached the gates of my aunt who had lived in London, Ontario, and New York. I didn't expect her to be home because the process of moving her possessions from all the previous places where she had lived has been slow, and at her advanced age, she is often in transit between continents and the island.
I knocked on the gate and one of my cousins, Paul, peered up from behind his car. This was a sure sign that she was home because Paul has been charged by my uncle (her brother) with taking care of my aunt whenever she is in Jamaica. He opened the gates and went around the back to tell my aunt that she had a surprise: I was home.
Paul and I chatted for a while and he told me that his brother, Hew, had moved to Canada and that everyone in the family had seen the review of Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories in the Jamaica Observer. We continued talking until my aunt came outside to the verandah and greeted me. She was as feisty as ever and chided me (only as she could) about not calling beforehand. I accepted the mild reprimand as we sat and she asked about my family and work. We talked about my mother and she told me that she was proud of me. I accepted the blessing.
Then, she asked me where I was staying and she offered to give me a ride to the hotel. I told her that I wanted to visit my old school and she understood. I said goodbye and as I walked through the gates, I looked back at the woman who I admired for being one of the most independent of my grandfather's children. She had never got married, never had any children, never took any crap form any man, and never compromised on anything. And now she was being helped into a car by my cousin.
I crossed Daisy Avenue and then over to Hope Road to Jamaica College where I was confronted by a security guard. (So many sentries have been appearing in my life!) I told him that I was a former student and he allowed me into the school to take a few pictures, yet he watched my every move.
As I walked by St. Dunstan's, past the names of the JC Old Boys who had died in World War I, I saw behind an open window the eager faces of young men behind desks in what was once One Chambers. I used to be one of them. I snapped a few pictures of the school and felt vaguely nostalgic about the place that been the setting for my semi-autobiographical novel, Benjamin, my son.
Of course, I had to take pictures of "Holy Ground," and the Assembly Hall, and then, went back to Mona on a hunch, a feeling that Paul Smith, one of my childhood friends was back in Jamaica.
I was right. The hunch paid off. Paul wasn't home, but his helper gave me his address and synchronicity! His business, Reggae Vacations, was right beside my hotel in the heart of New Kingston. I practically ran back to Hope Road, jumped in a mini-bus that now played music videos instead of CDs, and headed off for Half-Way-Tree.
From Half-Way-Tree, I walked over to Reggae Vacations and went up to Paul's office. I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked gain. Still no answer. I went down stairs and talked with a receptionist who insisted that Paul had not left the building.
I want upstairs and knocked again. Nothing. Then, I heard a voice that I was certain was Paul's coming from an adjacent office. I knocked on the door. Silence. A voice said, "Come in." It wasn't Paul's. I backed away from the door. A moment of hesitation. The door opened and my Idren, Paul, was startled. He laughed. He immediately introduced me to his friend, and we were off to eat at one of his favorite East Indian restaurants in Liguanea.
It was if we'd never had a break in seeing each other. We picked up the conversation since he told me about three years ago that he was leaving for Dominica. During that time, we'd exchanged a few e-mails, but nothing big. We bragged about our kids and families. Paul said that he was surprised to see me because I hadn’t mentioned the trip on my blog. I knew he had subscribed, but I thought he was still in Dominica working with their tourist board. After a few laughs and Red Stripes, he told me about his work with the cruise industry and about another of our friends, Norman Pennycooke.
Paul, Norman, and I go way, way back. Our friendships started at Mona Primary. Norman's mother was our teacher in sixth grade and we were the three kings in our annual Christmas play. I was Gaspar ("Gold"); Norman was Melchior ("Frankincense"), and Paul was Balthazar ("Myrrh").
When we graduated from Mona Primary, we went to Jamaica College where our friendships deepened and was tempered by competition and cooperation.
Norman, as it turns out, was doing well in Dominica and that was expected. We'd attended the best high school in Jamaica (take that Kingston College and St. Georges!). In between clients for his reggae themed vacations, I teased Paul that he'd never capitalized on his music lessons, but he told me in some ways that had paid off. A few years ago, he was the leader of a reggae band, MLC (Mid Life Crisis) and they'd played a few gigs around the island.
We started calling friends around the island and I learned that Bruce was now a successful dentist in May Pen. I asked about Errol McDonald (Macky D) who given me the name, "Herbert Spliffington." He said Errol was in Ghana touring with a reggae band.
For the most part, most of our friends were doing well, but then the dread catalog began: those who had been killed or became killers; those who had died from natural causes or had become invisible in America; those who were on the FBI's "Most Wanted List," and those who had suffered from an extreme case of "lead poisoning" to use one of Jimmy Carnegie's favorite euphemisms.
By the time we had caught up with everybody and everything, it was dark and we decided to go to the Top Park in Mona Heights. There we saw old friends like Larry Smith, Boothes, and Peter Moses. Peter teased me about gaining the extra weight since my Manning Cup Football days, and then, he went off to play with the "old timers." Men my age or a few years older.
As we were about to leave, Paul's sister, Gail, came by and we sat down and ate barbequed chicken (Okay, Peter, I hear you!) and talked some more until nine o'clock We reminisced about the annual Christmas fair at the community center where many of us smoked our first cigarette or kissed or first girlfriend. Or got caught doing both. Sometimes on the same day and by different parents.
We finished the chicken and our beers at about ten thirty and followed Gail back to her house. Paul drove me back to the hotel and promised me he would pick me up the next day and take me to the airport.
I slept well that night and got up the next day, ready to go back to Miami and to read at the Miami Book Fair International.
As I waited for Paul on a bench near the reception area of the hotel, I looked up at the hills how much I had missed waking up every morning as Paul, Norman, Bruce and I walked to Jamaica College. I was glad that I hadn't given into my fears and that I'd seen Kingston on foot and by taxi, bus, and mini-bus. I remembered Minto's comment about me becoming Americanized and yet in some ways how I had remained stubbornly Jamaican.
I opened Kendel Hippolyte's Night Vision with the haunting phrase, "our first generation of unmeaning," and I became conscious of how much I had changed and my connection with the generations that had grown up since I had left in 1979 was tenuous at best. My impending mortality in the face of my aunt (I turn fifty next year), and that my football friends were now called "old timers" stayed with me.
Listening to the hotel workers going back and forth as they did their duties, I realized that we laugh at the sheer pleasure of being alive. No matter how hard the times, how dread the circumstances, we laugh. A lot.
I glanced across the front of the hotel. The two guards that I'd talked with the day before were outside smoking cigarettes and I told them about my adventures. One said that I was brave and one hinted that I had been very foolish to go out on my own like that. But that's Jamaica for you. Put two Jamaicans in a room and you'll have three different opinions. And all of them are right!
I sat back on the bench and looked at the hills once again. I closed my eyes and gave thanks for the good time, however brief, that I'd had on my return.
When I opened my eyes, my Idren, Paul, had pulled into the driveway to take me to the airport and back to Miami.
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