Westmoreland

Recently, the tourist town of Negril held its Reggae Marathon. So after Carter and I dropped off some Peace Corps racers in town, he and I backtracked to meet up with Jennifer (who had been out on site visits). We're meeting at a place in the hills, a funky retreat known for its open-kitchen dinner demonstration featuring farm-to-table organics grown there on the property. This is all courtesy of an anniversary gift-certificate from my dad and his wife. I've passed through Little London before, but this time instead of turning towards the sea, or proceeding on to the tourist town of Negril, we turned north into the cane. As you can imagine, sugarcane has an ugly history of enslavement, but it is also Jamaica's biggest export, and it takes up much of the flat, arable land. It is an ongoing topic here, valued for the income it brings, but sugar has also squeezed small farmers up the hillsides and, ultimately, Jamaica is forced to import much food that its own earth could produce. So we drive through the corridor of cane until we turn up a rough lane, exchanging greetings with machete men on the road, "alright," "blessings," and "yes, boss." It feels like country. Rough-hewn fences, a donkey, boys at the creek in their underwear, a shack that serves as the local bar.

Early morning start to the marathon.

To get to Westmoreland parish from Kingston, you follow the sun towards the west until you run out of island. We were there because Jennifer was doing the half-marathon in Negril but, because we had opted to stay farther inland, we all had to be up at 3:30 am to be sure Jen was in Negril for the 5:15am starting gun. After dropping her off, Carter and I started walking along the dark course. There were not a lot of spectators along the way, in fact there were probably as many people still walking on the road after a night of partying. Carter took a cat nap on a store's porch, but eventually the runners came, padding in the dark, and we found a steel-drum band. Several Peace Corps volunteers were running too, so Carter and I had plenty of people to cheer for in the 10k, the half and the full marathon. At the finish line, with the sun now up and a reggae band playing, runners took their medals and happily plunged into the sea. One Peace Corps guy took 7th place in the marathon and the Peace Corps women took 2nd as a team in the 10K. Perhaps most impressive was not a winner at all, an overweight volunteer who determinedly finished the marathon just 10 minutes before they closed the course, at 11:50am...almost 7 hours of running, much of it in full tropical heat.

"It's like a treehouse!" -- hanging around on the balcony

The volunteers all went off to enjoy themselves, while our family headed back to our retreat in the hills. The place is a handful of simple huts on a hillside, owned by a white dude with dreads and his Jamaican wife. "It feels like a treehouse," said Carter. Upon our return, we discovered a group of 7th Day Adventist ladies and children at the gate, all dressed to the nines despite the dust, wanting very much to pray with us. Jen and I availed ourselves of massages, though Jennifer's was rather comically marred by a marital spat between the owners in which the wife called him out for trying to act too Jamaican. The neighborhood is small, a community of small one-room homes tucked in foliage, and everyone seems to have their role to play. A man named G.G. showed Carter and I the way to the local swimming hole, where the water is crisp and the mud is squishy, and along the way he called out to folk invisible to me and pointed out hallmarks of the place: Mama Pinky's bodega, the ackee tree, the benches by the painted bridge where the people come together on Sunday evenings.

Dinner at the kitchen.

Evening brought a farm tour and then dinner in which the chefs prepare everything in front of you and talk about the local ingredients. The "sushi roll" appetizer, for instance, substituted shredded, fresh coconut for rice and plantain instead of fish. All washed down with fresh sorrel punch...made from ginger and sorrel (a dark, red hibiscus brought over by West Africans during the slave trade).


I snuck away Sunday morning and drove myself down to a rustic bay well off the beaten path. Snorkeling around the little reef was satisfying, though I did not see all that much, and I was back in time for breakfast at the retreat. And then it wasn't long until Carter and I were back on the road, driving the 4 hours back to Kingston. We stopped for patties, turnovers of flaky crust and savory filling, Jamaica's fast-food...and thus satiated, a fun weekend came to a close.

A Night in a Kingston ER

I think that when I got groggily out of bed at 1am, my thought was that I was up just to go pee. But 30 minutes later the pain was so blinding that the drive to the hospital is only a blurred memory. Which is not to say I neglected to offer Jennifer my idea of the most efficient route (I think I could be crossing the river Jordan with the specter of death and still be cocky about the best route).  Anyway, looking at the little kidney stone now, it's hard to believe the bastard capable of inflicting such pain. But upon arrival, the doctor's blasé demeanor was so profound that I realized I was probably not going to die. I was, however, destined to sit there in a chair for the next 13 hours.

First-world eyes are apt to recoil from what healthcare in developing nations looks like. Dingy tiles and rusty railings, with jerry-rigged wiring and bare bulbs. Yet I was in so much pain, that the nurse who put a shot of painkiller in my ass seemed like the pristine angel of Florence Nightingale. Yes, I was seen to relatively quickly: examined, blood drawn, pain-killer administered, and finally shunted over to sit in one of 7 chairs for those of us not deserving of a gurney. Later I would come to appreciate my luck in getting one of the 3 slightly padded chairs, for it was my new home for every excruciating micrometer of my stone's passage from kidney to bladder.

Through it all, I could not fault the staff; they did what was necessary for me while juggling the considerably more serious emergencies that emerge out of the Kingston night. Of those on the gurneys was a gunshot (stabbing?) victim who screamed in pain when treated and had periodic visits by different wailing women. There was a loco tied to the bed who sat glaring for a couple hours, then began to holler obscenities and pleas while his mother tried to get him to shut up. Constables brought one in and fastened him to the gurney with handcuffs. Over in the non-critical, seated section, there was me, groaning and spasming while some people snored, until the stone passed and they gave me some morphine and I joined the snorers as the sun came up.

Daylight brought a shift change and my family of compadres on the chairs seemed to be suddenly gone. New folk came, but it wasn't the same...I was strangely comforted by the loco who continued to yell, for it meant my night had not been a dream. There I stayed, in my chair, for many more hours while I was given several bags of intravenous hydration, waiting for lab results that would not come until 2:30pm. Jennifer brought me food and chocolates that I shared with my new friends on the chairs. The embassy nurse and doctor stopped by, and I couldn't help be embarrassed by their attention, their efficiency, the fact that two well-dressed white women were swooping in make sure the one white guy in the ER was OK. Don't get me wrong, if I ever really thought I was in danger, I would have gotten over my embarrassment pretty quick.

Then I was shunted off to the non-emergency room next door for a couple hours. It was just me with mostly old folk. At one point, a lady was wheeled in a chair next to me, and she was groaning and spasming and crying in pain. I waited a long time, but finally could only imagine she too was passing a kidney stone (she wasn't) and asked if she wanted to hold my hand. It was a relief when they took her away to get a dose of morphine and by the time she returned, dozing, they were finally ready to let me go home. That was yesterday at 3pm. This morning I went pee and heard "tink" as the little bastard ultimately found his way out of my body and into the porcelain bowl.

Kumina and Glistening Waters

A Night of Kumina

One of the very interesting things about Jamaica is that many distinct traditions live on, often parish by parish. The scrubby, windward parish of St. Thomas, is known for kumina, a culture of spirits and ancestors as brought over 150 years ago by indentured workers from the Congo region.  I felt lucky that a Peace Corps volunteer invited me up for a night of kumina, all to honor the passing of a founder of a local organic cooperative. Under a canopy of stars, with flashes of lightning off in the hills, the drumming and dancing lasted all night. Or so they tell me. It's not like I can stay up all night any more. 

As with much of Jamaica, once you turn off the coast road, things quickly get rural as you climb up the winding, single-lane roads. This time I was doing it in the dark, my headlights illuminating the foliage around the road like I was in a tunnel. When I parked, I could only hear a faint murmur of drums and walked in inky darkness until I emerged into a clearing strung with blue and white ribbon (considered positive kumina colors) and lit by several candles on the ground, as well as a bright floodlight that one man held, it seemed, for most of the night.

Looking for Julia, the PC volunteer, I greeted some of the 20 or 30 people there in the shadows. This cooperative is no stranger to gringos, so I only felt somewhat the outsider. When I found Julia, I was introduced to the man who had made the drums. Kumina rituals like this are long nights of drumming and dancing and rum-drinking in order to channel the spirit world. The drums are very specific, played with the hands and adjusted by the feet, with a low-pitched drum considered the male (kbandu) and a higher-pitched drum considered female (kyas). A player also sits behind and uses sticks (katta tick) to beat a clicking rhythm on the wooden back-end of the drum. People lean in around the drummers, singing and chanting in a call-and-response style, sometimes in a kumina language, sometimes in English. The group seems to decide what to sing on the fly, and I saw them argue a couple times about it during the interludes. Dancers turn circles around the drumming group, shuffling their bare feet because contact with the earth is crucial.

Rum is a large part of the ritual, ceremonial and celebrational, with the drummers calling out for more in between sets. At one point, people began setting rum afire and dancing through it (which is much less dangerous than it sounds). I shared some of my Dominican mamajuana rum, sipping and standing to the outside with the other watchers or people taking a rest. Every now and then we would have to dodge a wild dancer, though I did not escape getting doused by flying rum shaken out over our heads. We were joined in the outer ring by a handful of local teenage girls, indulgent of the proceedings, but not above a wry comment or two, or even, it seems, a game of Clash Of Clans on her phone.

In kumina, the spirits are always close and, on nights like this, they will possess people (myal). Sure enough, we had some folks go into myal, toppling onto the drums, spinning violently, rolling in the brush. When this happened, there was always someone who acted as minder, keeping the possessed from hurting themselves, even tying a sash around them to hold on to. One lady began rubbing peoples arms with some liquid. At another point, the drum circle called out for a sacrifice, specifically wanting the sacrifice of a troublesome rooster I am here calling Frank. He escaped 2 weeks prior, had been molesting the hens, and seemed uncatchable. Being uncatchable spared him, of course, and no other candidates were volunteered for sacrifice.

In all honesty, this was probably kumina-light. The myal possessions could just as easily been a kind of personal rapture. But out there under the stars, with the rum and candle light, even a cynic like me figures it's all as real as anything else in this world. The drum-maker told me that there are dark kumina ceremonies ("...if you see them wearing red and black, walk away, walk away..."), and I don't doubt that farther back in the bush, the possessions take on more and more powerful qualities. At one point, a lady in myal danced for over 15 minutes with a bottle balanced on her head. That may or may not be possession, but it's certainly a level of focus that's pretty strong.

I was done by 1am, pitiful considering that when I returned at 8am, there were some who had not yet been to sleep. In daylight, I could see that the cooperative is a friendly cluster of buildings on a ridge with views to the ocean in the distance, with a little school room and composting. They fed me a breakfast of salted sprats and plantain, supplemented by a local farmer who came by with a bucket of fresh breadfruit.

A Night at Glistening Waters

You may already know about the nighttime phenomenon in which ocean plankton will sometimes, when jostled, light up like stars. Twice, as a California teen, I had a chance to enjoy the effect. One time it was the glittering wake behind a sailboat I was on, and another time it was during a dive, during which every wave of my neoprene hand was glittery magic.

It is notoriously hard to photgraph the effect,
I had to copy this photo from Google.

But neither compare to the show put on by a mangrove cove off of Falmouth, Jamaica. We went out on to the dark bay in a 20-seater wooden boat. Almost immediately we were in it, our wake didn't simply sparkle, it lit up as if by floodlight. The glow is produced by dinoflagellates, a neon green like fireflies make, and you see it wherever the water is disturbed. Each time our boat spooked a fish, a bright green slash would would streak away. Jennifer, Carter, and I slipped into the black water along with several others, splashing, laughing, and experimenting with our own luminescence. We felt like aqua sorcerers, summoning light at will, floating on our backs and waving our limbs to create illuminated snow-angels. Carter and the kids were giddy, hollering, panicking, happy. The water in the bay is shallow, with several feet of gelatinous silt. I decided to stand in it and it was so fine that I sank almost to my knees. There, weirdly planted in the muck like a mangrove, I lifted Carter up out of the water and I swear it was like my boy was made entirely out of stars. I know how dopey that sounds, but that's what it was like.