I didn’t have much to write about Jamaica as Bobo and I were in Burlington Vermont all summer. In Burlington, we live in a tiny apartment in a big old art’s and crafts house that belongs to one of my daughters. We are fortunate to pay a low rent... for Burlington, anyway.

Bobo has been working for three years for a moving company. He would get up at 6:30 and go over to their warehouse in Williston, Vermont and work all day moving heavy objects. Previously there had been a bunch of other black men working there but they all quit and moved on and he was the last holdout. It was hard work. When he got home, he would lie down on the couch and falls asleep.

I would not call the moving company racist, but how would this white lady be able to judge one way or the other? I think one of the daughters married a Jamaican. Akeem, another black man who was driving a truck for them and doing the estimates, said that there was no possibility of getting ahead because they are a family run company and for sure nobody from outside is going to get into management…black or white. He quit a few times but they always persuaded him to come back. The only thing he asked was that he be able to get off on time to pick up his son from preschool on certain days. He has a particularly difficult “baby mother” and this was extremely important for him, but the company kept screwing him up and getting him into trouble with his ex. Mighty, another Jamaican, got a better job where they seem to appreciate him more. Hopefully Bobo can work at this new place next summer.

After Mighty and Akeem left the moving company, only gnarly, old, redneck Vermonters with substance abuse problems were left, and Bobo had to work under them. The job had been worth doing because of lots of overtime and tips from customers, but as soon as it was just him and the gnarly rednecks, his tips disappeared. The driver cum account person would go into the house and settle with the customer and pocket all the tip and not share, a loss of hundreds of dollars. We were close to leaving for Jamaica so Bobo quit. Too bad for them because they lost a very hard working person, but some of those gnarly old rednecks had been with the company 30 years! I think it is just great to move on. We’ll see what next summer brings.

We sent 4 barrels down, loaded with stuff to use and sell. You can only figure out if doing something like that is worth it by trying. Driving it down to Dennis Shipping in Brooklyn was quite the adventure. We both of us kind of loved Brooklyn after living in staid old Progressive-college-town Burlington. There is something wonderful about all that humanity and I could see Bobo felt at home doing U turns in the middle of the street. I don’t think he feels too comfortable in Burlington, in spite of the “black lives matter” signs all over the frigging place. Plus Dennis Shipping is run by Jamaicans. There was a big old Rastaman who showed us where to park, behind an exasperated lady whose elderly mother was v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y filling up a shipping barrel with big Costco bottles of spaghetti sauce.

It has become more difficult to fly now. You don’t have to stick your nostril through a porthole and get a stupid, expensive test anymore, but the airline companies have put in a whole lot of sneaky new rules. Used to be I could count on bringing 4 big suitcases bought second hand at the thrift store. You were allowed 50 pounds in those and your carry on was not weighed, so, you would put your cast iron skillet and the Instant pot in the carry-on and then pack the suitcases very carefully, stepping on and off a bathroom scale. Now there is no more carry-on. Those days are over, you must book everything through.

I broke up the trip this time by spending the night in Miami. I was just trying to hang on to my limited stamina, but it turned out that you can’t book your bags straight through if you do that. And when we showed up at Frontier Airlines to fly to Jamaica the next morning, lo and behold, the weight limit on the bags was 40 pounds rather than the usual and expected 50. We wound up paying 300 plus dollars in overweight! “This is the wickedest airline mi never buck up pon!” Bobo told the gestapo agent who oversaw this robbery. On top of this, just before boarding, the same agent came to the gate and made people put their backpacks into a medieval looking, measuring device and if they wouldn’t fit, they got charged another $90! I was able to jam ours in, but it was a plane-full of chastened and disgruntled passengers that Frontier flew down to Kingston. All their marketing brags about how this is to “reduce emissions.” I don’t know any Jamaican, certainly, who would believe that. Maybe a Vermonter from Burlington would. The only satisfaction was that they sent me a survey to fill out, so I had a little fun with that.

Thank God Jamaica is back to normal after the awful lockdowns that robbed people of their livelihoods and the kids of two years of education! (Two years of education in a country like this is no joke!) Jamaica lives by music and parties and that was all stopped. People felt all gloomy and crazy. But we just came through the holiday season and people have been making up for lost time! We went to a party put on by some vendors from Musgrave Market in a new restaurant on the way into Porti from the East. I wanted to go home but Bobo made me wait because “Di hot gyal dem” were just showing up. And indeed they were hot! All dressed up skin tight in sequins and glitter. The place was packed to the gills, the bar making money hand over fist. On the second story, things were quieter as it was for smokers. (Ganja is legal now in Jamaica, thank goodness!) The bargirl upstairs was a creature of surpassing beauty, with long fake eyelashes and thick locks way below her waist.

Yesterday we went to a grave digging party in Windsor, out in the country. Funerals got shut down during Covid but they are back on line now! They are a big deal here and involve at least 4 events with people getting together with music and free food. The “grave digging” is a daytime event and then there is a “nine night” which is more music and takes place at night. I wrote about the epic one I went to in Windsor Forest. This one was for our neighbor, Cowboy’s mother who died just recently in her nineties. There were two grave diggings going on that day same time so we got double our money's worth.

Bobo brought a bottle of rum and a bottle of Pepsi and we located ourselves on a little cement porch and people came round. (Bobo was also discreetly selling shoes.) I figured out that people with money to spend bring their bottles of booze and hold a small court where people stop and visit. There are ad hoc cash bars, too.

Notably I noticed this elderly lady carefully gardening around a quite nice tomb with her machete. She had a very fetching sequined baseball cap and a bottle of something in a plastic bag which she doled out to a select few who dropped by.

The day after the grave digging, we drove Cowboy and his son back to Windsor so they could “paint up” grandmother’s grave in preparation for the actual internment. The two of them jammed in the back of the car next to Bobo’s suitcases of clothing and shoes and we were off. Windsor is up in the hills and the road is very windy and dangerous with few guardrails and steep drops into ravines. There is a memorial plaque halfway up there to “14 hardworking farmers” whose truck pitched over the side of one of these ravines when the road gave way. It was a sad and terrible event.

At one point a kind of decrepit vehicle playing very loud music started tailgating us, suing to pass. Bobo let him go by when he got a chance and the kid in question revved loudly and sped by. About five minutes later he had had an accident with one of Mr. Chili’s (who owns most of the sand and gravel and hardware business in Portland) trucks. It was a huge, beautiful, pristine red truck and sustained zero damage but the noisy kid got the side of his car ripped off. There was no way to pass as the two vehicles waited for the police. The car person was holding out for it not being his fault. Anyone watching him drive previously would know for a fact whose fault it was, but that was his story and he was sticking to it.

This accident attracted a whole lot of people who stood around and discussed the details looking like they were enjoying themselves a lot. Everybody was there, including a teenage boy with a baby on his hip. Maybe he just liked to carry around babies. Or maybe his mom said, “take this baby and get out of here while I make dinner!”

It was a Saturday afternoon so there were many, extremely respectable looking Adventists walking home from church

Everyone looked so cheerful and vigorous. Jamaica has its problems, but bad health, depression and anxiety do not figure among them. Not so much, anyway. At least not up here in the country.

Fortunately there was a shortcut that went around the accident and Cowboy was able to complete his mission and Bobo and I went swimming in the river where Bobo washed his locks, a big undertaking.

To get to the river we drove through a couple of miles of banana plantations. Bobo used to live up in the area and work for various owners. There was one place that had a sign that warned to not use their road to access the river. “We don’t want to mistake you for a thief,” it said. Bobo said those particular landlords would shoot you if you got caught on their property. He explained to me all the aspects of the banana growing business and he showed me a stretch of road where he and his buddies used to race mules.

I am not the best photographer but I got some pictures.

If you are looking for an interesting vacation consider booking with us. We have four rooms finished and ready to go. Each room has its own bathroom and there is a full kitchen for every two rooms. We just got STARLINK for the internet. The booking info is on the landing page of this website.