21 March 2006 19:48
There and Back AgainA story of conquest and victory: How I confronted the monolith of the Jamaican Public Transportation System and survived to tell the tale.
Part 1
I hang out with the Salters all the time, but in the last year and a half I've never ridden public transportation here--something they do on a daily basis. So when I found out that they were planning a trip to Long Bay, I invited myself along. I was a little surprised to find out that they still wanted to hang out with me even when I didn't bring my car along, but maybe they had another ulterior motive (an extra head to split costs with perhaps).
So Saturday morning a got a ride with Wayne as he went into the airport and he dropped me off at Ron and Gussie's. We were scheduled to leave the girls' house at 0800, so I was planning on killing the hour and a half with Ben at Ron and Gussie's. Ben had just gotten up, so we relaxed through a light breakfast and a casual perusal of Gussie's library collection (which is decently extensive for Jamaica).
He introduced me to "Ishmael" by David Quinn, so I took it out on the veranda and knocked out the first fifteen pages enjoying the light breeze and the birds chirping as the city woke up.
Quarter to eight was upon us so we walked the two and a half blocks over to the girls' house. Ben and I met Ryan for the first time, he'd gotten in the night before. He was on spring break, visiting Diana and touring the island. Everything in place we set off for Halfway Tree (this one) to catch our ride.
There were five us all told; Ben, Diana, Leah, Ryan, and myself. The walk over to Halfway Tree and then up to the "bus station" took about ten minutes. Calling it a "bus station" conveys the idea, but not the literal reality. It's simply an area where one lane of three on the public thoroughfare is crammed with buses, coasters, and taxis all awaiting passengers. You know you've arived when you're accosted by five different people trying to sell you a ride to wherever you're going.
One man would have been happy to give us a ride to Annotto Bay, he gestured wildly with his arms (he couldn't actually grab anybody's arm because he had a guinness in one hand and a spliff in the other) towards his car. A little bickering followed, he wanted $250 a head, Leah claimed she'd gotten $150 last week, he'd do it for $200, Leah was still adamant about the $150. He questioned her, she admitted it'd been a coaster (between a mini-bus and a bus, seats 24), he said she was out of luck...no coasters til noon on Saturday. It was odd that he said that, since a coaster pulled up right at that moment; one would almost be tempted to believe that he wasn't telling the truth.
viola! a coaster.
The coaster was happy to take us for $130 ($2 US) so we filed on board.
We had a wait of about 15 minutes as other passengers got on board, listening to southern gospel at loud volumes and with frequent skips in the CD. It was clear that our driver was upset about something, but it was unclear what exactly it was. We finally started moving, but very slowly--he kept checking his mirrors as if waiting impatiently for someone. It was an easy assumption that he was waiting for the conductor, whom we hadn't seen since the very beginning. Eventually, after an angry conversation with his cell phone he accelerated out of first and we headed up towards Constant Springs.
There was still something fishy going on, along with a few more shouted conversations, but I had no clue what was up. Patois is hard enough to make sense of when it's spoken calmly. Then we caught up with the coaster ahead of us. Who should be hanging out the door but our conductor! When both coasters reached the next stop, he jumped off and ran back. It was some time before I got the story straight (ie, after we got off in Annotto Bay and I could ask the others what happened), but here's the jist of it ran along the lines of:
Some time after the conductor told us $130 for a ride to Annotto Bay, the taxi driver we'd been haggling with pulled a knife and started going for the conductor. Our guy ran across the street (since he didn't have a knife) and the taxi driver followed him. Eventually the taxi driver hopped into a second taxi to catch up, so the conductor jumped on the other coaster and the taxi driver eventually gave up. Apparently this went on for a little time though, since we waited probably 10 minutes more than we normally would have if we'd had a conductor ready to go from the start.
Meanwhile, all I was getting out of the monolouge from the conductor was bits about whitey's and knives and the little reenactments Jamaicans do when they're excited: pantomining jumping onto coasters, running away, etc. He was a likable guy, but he kept pointing at us and I wasn't real sure about what exactly we'd done wrong. But the Salters hang out with excited Jamaicans all the time, so I followed their lead, looked bemused, and watched the scenery go by.
Eventually things settled into a rythymic cycle. In Jamaica you don't stick out your thumb. Instead you stand lacadasically under the shade of the bus stop and when you see your potential ride coming you stick one arm out while flopping your wrist in a "slow down" motion. (The idea is minimal expenditure of energy). Then you step back as the coaster arrives in a screech of brakes and dust. But be prepared to get on quickly. The driver has just passed two or three slow trucks, he wants to be off before they pass him again. Or alternately, he's just passed a competing coaster and want's to stay ahead so he can get all the fares. In reality, they just pass each other alternatively so that each picks up passengers at every other stop.
Theoretically you get on and off of the coasters and busses at official "bus stops" of which there are plenty. But a paying passenger is a paying passenger whether they're at a bus stop or not. As the bus coasts the last few feet to the stop the conductor leans out his door and yells "Castleton! Broadgate! Annotto Bay!" in loud and commanding tones. I'll have to find you a picture of a coaster. The passenger door is set in the left hand side, one third of the way from the front. It's a bifold door like a bus has, this particular one stayed open most of the time--though the shock was shot, the conductor was fighting a constant battle to keep acceleration from closing it if he didn't get his foot propped against it in time. Meanwhile he's hanging onto the door with his right hand and leaning the upper half of his body out into the slipstream to yell at the people standing at the stop.
If we did stop, then he'd take a running leap before we came to a halt to help usher people on board, then he'd jump on again as we started moving. In his left hand he kept all his bills, folded in half lengthwise to help stiffen them, and then sorted by denomination. Coins he kept in the pockets of his jeans, grabbing them with his right hand if need be. In Jamaica (and I've noticed this in Central America and Mexico as well), it is best to have small change always on hand. $1000 bills are very common here (approx $16 US), but sometimes even fast food joints will have trouble breaking them for a $200 order. With five people we did fairly well, between us we were always able to make change when somebody was out. But we were also prepared in the first place (I had brought a grand in small bills along, though next time I'll take two).
In some places there were stretches of several miles between stops. At these times the conductor would nurse the CD player a bit further along, stretching out full length over the sack of potatoes in the center isle to reach the radio. We ran the gammout of music from Celine Dion to Gospel to Dancehall to R&B. Eventually he gave up on the player (which had major skipping issues) and we listened to Irie FM for the last chunk.
The drive itself is pretty, following the Wag Water River as it winds its way from below Stony Hill all the way down to Annotto Bay. The vegetation is green and lush, the houses are more spread out than Kingston, the people seem more carefree, the diesel fumes are overwhelming...oh well. The Salters unanimously declared our driver "a good one", though I don't know exactly what that means since I've never expereinced "a bad one". The phrase "scared for your life" was tossed around, but the conversation might have shifted to my driving by that point. For me it felt very relaxing to have somebody else doing the driving. That stretch of road only has two or three places to pass and I all too easily lose my goodwill toward mankind when I get stuck behind somebody who falls under my somewhat ungenerous definition of "slowpoke".
Conversation was next to impossible over the music and engine noise, so we spent the hour contemplating the scenery and partaking of the mandatory isometric excercises required to stay in your seat on every corner. Later I heard a few horror stories from the others about sitting next to overweight people who made no effort to resist centrifugal force on the corners. All in all our coaster ride was very descent since we never had to sit more than one to a seat. Maybe because it was the weekend.
We reached Annotto Bay around ten and disembarked, the coaster was turning around for a run back to Halfway Tree. Working our way through a crowd of taxi drivers at the "station" (I should call it the "bus area") we headed down mainstreet towards the Catholic church. Nick is unique of the Salters in that he lives by himself in Annotto Bay with no other Salters near. Therefore he is having the most "Jamaican" experience of them all. Walking down the street with him everybody knows his name and says hi to him. He's immersed himself in several outreach projects there (I don't know what his official SALT job is) and happened to be at the Catholic church this morning.
He met us on the street before we got there and we stopped in at his apartment to have a look around. A small one bedroom apartment, it was definately lived in by a bachelor (although "lived in" is probably misleading). Diana had brought banana bread, which he sliced with his leatherman (lacking a kitchen knife) and he served water to those who wanted it using all three of his cups.
We spent probably twenty minutes there catching up and trying to talk him into coming along for the day. He was very tempted but ended up opting out after some thought. We walked back towards the center of town to catch a mini-bus to Port Antonio. Even though we were headed for Blue Lagoon which is only seven miles east of Port Antonio, route taxis and coasters run between major towns where they turn around--going back and forth on one leg instead of a circuit. So having caught one ride to Annotto Bay, we'd catch another to Port Antonio, then another for the next leg...and so on.
I'm working on actual pictures taken by yours truly. There are some technical dificulties, but there is still a little room for hope.
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