We are back in Jamaica! American Airlines excretes one bag at a time so we are still short three. But today the lost baggage delivery man honked at the gate at 7 AM with the one with the circular saw and another pair of Clarks.

Bobo told me he is a “foreigner” now, no longer a Jamaican. I asked if he could ever become a Jamaican again and he said the only way to do that is to get deported. Times are tough and people are desperate and he has been handing out all the tips he made working for Booska International Movers. This is a community relations exercise required of returning “foreigners.” There was a big opportunity to treat a lot of his friends at a grave digging yesterday afternoon. He came to get me and told me to get dressed up. “When you are old, you have to look hot,” is what he said. I do my best.

I had never been to a grave digging. “Ninenights,” yes, I have been to many of those. Ninenights are a nighttime funeral party with a bar and a disc jockey and sometimes a live band provided by the funeral home.

The grave digging was in the afternoon with the whole town there: all the little kids and people showing off their babies and the “youth” hanging out. It was down the road and up a lane to the cemetery on the side of the hill. You could see the Caribbean way off in the distance.

A couple of guys were working with cement and sand making the tomb for the deceased person. The tombs are all flat cement beds, some of them decorated with tiles and fancy head stones. The funeral parlor had a red canopy and two humungous speakers and a disk jockey playing what I guess the deceased “somebody” would have liked. There were a couple of paying bars and everybody was standing around on the tombs drinking and dancing. Later on, free food was served, rice and peas and chicken curry. I tripped getting up on my tomb and Bobo said a duppy had done it. You have to watch out for them duppies as they want more dead people to lie around with them. He bought a shot of rum and threw it on the ground to placate it.

It was a very nice party. The whole town was there and had fun. I drank two rum and camparis and got to dance which I didn’t think was going to happen so soon with the dance hall shut down and all. I didn't know the person who died, but they got a great send-off party!