Preparing to leave took days. Our tiny apartment needed to be cleaned up and all our stuff stored away in preparation for subletting. We also packed up two huge trash cans to be shipped down as unaccompanied baggage. (Shipping barrels are not to be had these days. There is a shortage of them as there is a shortage of shipping containers, I suppose.) Those two barrels were filled with all kinds of goodies: a vacuum cleaner; shoes from the recycle store, including kids soccer cleats; used and new clothes for friends and neighbors; food; a Hilti hammer drill; all kinds of tools. Alas, the shipping company quoted $2000 to send them! Have times changed so much? Have prices skyrocketed to this extent? Any information from a person-in-the-know appreciated!

Bobo is not your “seasoned traveler.” This must have been his 5th trip on an airplane. He likes to pretend that he is cool, calm and collected but he isn’t really. Plus, it is so stressful traveling these days.You are always worried that some arbitrary something is going to stop you! In the panic of unloading at the airport, he left a huge suitcase in the trunk of the car. I noticed the creaking noise from the open trunk as I went to park it. Had to run back to retrieve the suitcase and close the trunk. The suitcases, three huge ones, were all full of car parts to repair our poor vehicle, that got rolled off the road, victim of a hit and run.

The day before leaving we had to get Covid tests. We drove by the place at the first go, Bobo scolding that I hadn’t used the GPS. But we found it. They make you stand outside in the cold and talk through a grill to a guy in a cozy office with a little fake Christmas tree. Then you move over to another window and Nurse Ratchitt swabs your nose through a hole in the plastic. This cost $300. The free tests wouldn’t work because it takes three days to get the results and Jamaica wants the tests within three days of arrival.

We got the bags checked without issue. Security, not so much. A prison-guard-like-person barked at me and I got flustered and lost Bobo. He got held up to be searched head to toe, have all his cash counted and his carry-on totally taken apart. “You shouldn’t have left me like that,” he told me. “Don’t forget I’m BLACK!” So much for the “Black Lives Matter” signs in every shop window in Burlington. I think those signs have been a cold comfort for Bobo.

He got a job working for a moving company during the summer. At first all those red-neck Vermonters were stand offish. “People don’t even say, ‘mawnin’ when you get in to work,” he told me. But now he’s been there two years and he is liked and appreciated. Someone who shows up, follows through, works hard and is not addicted to anything is a commodity. He worked 8-to-12-hour days, six days a week straight through. We saved all the money to fix the car and to put a roof on our place.

So we are out of the North where it is all dark and drear and impending doom. The farther South you get the more people talk to each other and smile. (Although you can’t see the smiles much because of the masks.) Flying has not changed too much. You are still treated like livestock and herded here and there in to holding pens, but the stewards and stewardesses and staff people at American Airlines were nice and kind. The pilot to Jamaica announced that we all had to wear masks but that that is ridiculous because the air on the airplanes is the most fantastically filtered in creation.

The trip was from 3:30 AM. all day with no time to even get a cup of coffee. We rented a car in Kingston to drive to Port Antonio. Kingston business people sharpen their shiny white teeth and file their nails when they see a foreigner and a “countryman” show up. It cost twice as much as advertised because of the insurance. Then the phones wouldn’t work and we needed the GPS to find the Junction Road to Port Antonio. We had to drive via St.Thomas which is all under construction and in terrible condition and took forever

I got into an advanced state of exhaustion. I told Bobo that I was long past the stage where I should have stopped. At one point, driving around trying to figure out which of three SIM cards was the right one with no rest, no food no drink and Bobo pressuring me to figure it out so we could use the GPS, I wailed, “ Bobo, I’m OLD!” He stopped and got me a water coconut. It helped but of course after that I needed to pee to the point of exploding and there was no place on that terrible, “mash-up” road to stop. If we stopped for a minute, all those trucks and caravans of cars he had managed to pass would get ahead of us again!

But we made it. The house was in good shape with only the slightest odor of mildew. The dogs were not at death’s door this year.

It was a long trip, and it was tough on poor old me. But I was glad to be back. We drove along under the blue sky with the little intermittent fluffy clouds, through the powerful and ferocious Jamaican greenery. De people dem, ambling around doing their thing, looked healthy and strong. They have chi coming out of their ears and prana oozing from every pore and they are nobody's fools. I’m glad to be back.