I at first thought that his name was “Blocks.” That from listening to my Jamaican family talking about him. I thought ‘Blocks” like cinderblocks, which we were certainly dealing with a lot. But no, no, no, his name is “Black” or “Blacks.” I’m not sure which. I asked and Bobo repeated it out loud a few times, but he wasn’t really able to say.

Blacks is a welder and gate and burglar-bar maker. And yes indeed, he is very aptly named. His face reminds me of the austere, stylized ebony masks that we used to go look at in the Congo museum when I was a child in Brussels. He had been in a hit and run accident out riding a bicycle and part of his face is bashed in and repaired and there is a big cavity in the side of his head. He is a Rastaman, a Bobo, and wears his locks wrapped up in a black turban.

A couple of years ago he stayed at our place while making our two entrance gates. At one point he got drunk and complained that Bobo, “treated him like a dog.” Bobo deals with so many workers I suppose his tone was getting too bossy. After that he was more careful how he treated Blacks and spent time going to the bar at night with him for a drink. Once we ran across him at Carrie’s bar on Cottage lane in Porti. He was in that white rum induced altered state of consciousness again and told me, “I love you.” I was touched and pleased. The only other profession that came close was when “Doctor,” Bobo’s uncle remarked, “Becky cook good.”

When we were at our place in Sherwood just now there was a lot of grill work to be done. We needed gates for the garage, two small gates to keep the dogs out of various places, and Bobo decided to make grills for the whole side veranda. He was worried about some agile “teef” jumping the wall and making off with a guest’s laptop. Blacks came and started the garage gates but disappeared and did not come back for weeks. Bobo decided that once he got hold of him to keep him on the premises if he could. Blacks moved in to one of the rooms upstairs and we had this intense person living with us for about five days.

I have a theory that you can have a Phd in philosophy but if you wind up in a situation where you are judged by how well you can wash clothes on a stone it’s not worth much, is it?! Blacks required dinners and it couldn’t be quiche Lorraine or pasta salad or pizza. Nope. It was straight curries, vegetables and saltfish, Jamaican style soups, rice and peas and big pots of “food” or yams, cassava, green bananas, plantains, koka and so forth. I hope I did all right. I'm sure he was too polite to say.

Often his son Christopher would be there as assistant and apprentice. One friend of mine who is a tradesman himself and saw a picture of the finished gates remarked, “Christopher is lucky because he is learning from a master.” Christopher, a serious young man of I guess about 18 or 19, fetched and carried and held things steady, kind of like a surgical nurse attending a master surgeon. I was impressed by his kind patience when his father was drunk and expounding in a loud voice. (I have some PTSD around drunkenness and would go inside and hide in my room.) Sometimes Blacks would go to the shop at eight in the morning and come back with a flask of white rum. Other days he would not drink at all. But drunk or sober, he got the work done and well done, too. It was impressive to watch him measure and cut and weld things together, peering through his little pane of tinted glass. He worked fast and accurately and never made a mistake. A master craftsman indeed.

I learned that Christopher is still in school. “Isn’t he going to become a welder then?” I asked. Blacks looked a little embarrassed, I don’t know why, “Yes, he will be a welder, but…”. “Oh, he will be an educated welder, then,” I supplied. (I’m not sure I got that right, but we are all stuck in our own paradigm.)

I think we were so far apart culturally that I might have been a Martian. A nice Martian but a Martian, nevertheless. I appreciated that Blacks tried to speak to me in standard English. A lot of the time I can’t understand anything anybody is saying, their Patwah is so fierce and so fast. It is starting to open to me though, just as it did when I was a child in Constant Springs playing with the neighborhood kids. At first, I couldn’t understand anything but one day the comprehension just opened like a flower. It happened again when I was a pre-teen and got thrown into a French school in Belgium. Now that I am an elderly person I thought my brain too un-flexible, but it seems to be happening.

When the work got done and Bobo was getting ready to drive him home, I got a glimpse of Blacks with his hair down. Bobo had told me that he had impressive locks and that day he had them out of the tight, black turban. They were stunning. Beautiful, uniform locks down to his knees. A “crown” indeed! He was transformed from a skinny, austere looking guy to a black archangel. “Wow! Blacks! Look at your locks!” I said. He was clearly pleased and smiled modestly as he got into the car to leave.