Sunsets, Rum, Sand and Gizzadas 97 Days in Negril

[Dana1]

We taxied up to Seastar to watch the game...good crowd up there as well
and the beer was a helluva lot cheaper!

Oops...wrong game...meant the gold medal game! Nothing better than cheering on our country in sunny Negril

[Kahuna3]

I was hoping to be able to run into you again, but I guess next time.

Yah mon, it would be nice to see you again and meet your family. Next December, maybe?

[Kahuna3]

Wish I would have kept up better reading the board while I was on the beach as never realized you returned and continued your report as your last couple weeks seem like a report of our trip but with better writing! We seem to have been everywhere you were including unfortunately where the guy drowned! Tough picture to get out of our heads.

We probably passed each other 50 times on the beach, by the sounds of it.

[Kahuna3]

Street Theater #2 – Jango’s and Myrna’s Shop

I love just walking around Negril and seeing what happens right in front of me. I’m never disappointed. Here are a couple of recent incidents of Negril Street Theater . . . . .

Jango's . . . .

Jango’s barber shop is located on the street just behind Scotia Bank. Walking by there one morning I heard a commotion coming from within. I peered into the darkened interior of the shop. A small Jamaican man with long dreads was shouting at one of the barbers. And this guy was really leaning into it; his dreads were whipping around as he waved his arms pointing this way and that. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, except, of course, for the obligatory ‘clatts’ that he liberally employed. Neither the man he was hollering at nor the other barber or any of the customers who were in the shop paid the guy the least bit of attention.

I paused on the road in a little piece of shade under a bush and unshouldered my backpack. Here was an opportunity to watch another act of spontaneous Negril street theater. There was a guy sitting on a scooter just outside the shop. He too was observing the confrontation within, laughing quietly to himself and slowly shaking his head.

After about thirty seconds of non-stop, but totally ignored diatribe, the dread-headed dude gave up and exited the shop. Outside, he paused, looked around and then walked nonchalantly around to the side of the shop where he stopped and talked to a woman who was sitting there. He spoke in a completely normal voice and acted as if his recent rant had never occurred.

This act, a mere interlude, was over.

Even though it was a minor confrontation, if a scene like this had taken place in my home town, say in a barber shop in a small mall, it would have drawn a crowd of onlookers and the police would likely have been called.


Myrna’s Shop . . . .

There is a classic scene in Western movies where a fellow gets tossed out of a saloon – A big guy throws someone out through the swinging doors and he lands on the dusty street.

Much the same thing happened at Myrna’s Shop the other day. This event was observed from the bench at Sunnyside. A troublemaker was bodily ejected from the store. He skittered out over the concrete steps, slid across the wooded decking and tumbled out onto the sand. He stood up, brushed the sand from his clothes then turned to the doorway and let loose an emphatic stream of cussing. The guy that had thrown him out was inside the door and was thus out of sight.

Upon seeing this, one of the local girls sitting on the Sunnyside bench started to laugh so hard that she doubled over. She sat up straight to catch her breath, said, “Oh Lawd!” then laughed even louder and bent over again.

The man inside the shop must have made a threatening move toward the guy he’d thrown out because the guy suddenly stopped cussing and scrabbled his way out of there like a sand crab being chased by a beach dog.

This brought another outburst of laughing from the local girl at the bar. When she stopped laughing I asked her, “What’s so funny?”

“Oh my Lawd!” she said, “Him try to tief sumting an him get what him deserve.” She shook her head and chuckled as she wiped her eyes. “Dem tief in Jamaica so tick dem like sand on de beach.”

Sometimes Jamaica is like the Wild West.

Likkle more . . . . .

[Bluez]

Street Theater... LOL

Kahuna, you have such a way with words... and it's point on. I'm really gonna miss reading your reports when you return to the cold.

[Lady Jane]

Bluez, I was just thinking the same ting. I totally visualized that guy being thrown out of Myrnas. I was hoping it was Myrna herself, throwing him out. She may be small but I bet she is mighty.

[Kimbobwee]

I like to call it "Free Entertainment"!

[Bluez]

Bluez, I was just thinking the same ting. I totally visualized that guy being thrown out of Myrnas. I was hoping it was Myrna herself, throwing him out. She may be small but I bet she is mighty.

I love Myrna, she's awesome and support her a lot during my stay. I see we will be in Negril at the same time would be nice to meet up

[Lady Jane]

Ha, our tickers are very close. Where will you be staying Bluez?

[Kahuna3]

Portia vs Michelle

I was considering renting a scooter but decided against it. In the last two weeks I’ve seen four people (tourists) who’ve been mashed up while riding scooters. They all claim that they were riding safely and it was through no fault of their own. Three of them had bad cases of road-rash, while another had his arm in a sling with a cast up to and around his shoulder.

When I told a local guy that I was thinking of getting a scooter he grimaced and said, “Very dangerous, mon, me ‘ave lost so many friends who rode dem an’ many, many people get damaged. De car-men ‘ave no respect for bikes. Dem is killing machines. Get a car, safer.”

After having seen the injured people this came as no surprise to me, so no scooter for me this trip.

My time is short so early last night I decided to get back up that horse and venture into Redground. I took my mini MagLite with me and went up to Renkie’s Bar, which I’ve also referred to as The Dominoes Bar. It was busy as usual. When I asked him when he closed Renkie told me he stays there until the last game is completed, whenever that may be. Often, he said, the games continue until dawn.

It’s an hour after sunset. I’m leaning on Renkie’s worn linoleum bar top studying the checkerboard pattern and sipping on a JB and pipe wata, A.K.A. ‘buzzard’s ass’; the Jamaican-style rum drink. Like they say, When in Rome . . . Renkie is behind the bar rolling yet another cigarette in what seems to be a long, seemingly endless series. He rolls his cigarettes deftly, using extra-large papers and short strips of whole-leaf tobacco.

Outside the bar, under the corrugated zinc stoop, several energetically executed games of dominoes are under way. At a longer table four players are engaged in a card game of undetermined nature. A small pile of rumpled bills occupies the center of the playing surface.

The old-school TV that sits on the bar top is turned on. It’s two feet away from my elbow. The picture is fuzzy, the sound is muted. I assume it’s tuned to an American channel because a long drawn-out puff-piece on the Obamas is being aired. On screen, Michelle is being featured. It’s a close up head shot. Michelle smiles into the camera and says something; her lips are moving but there is no sound.

I’m aware that Jamaicans, in general, dearly love the Obamas – and I totally understand why. (As a Canuck, I’m agnostic on them.) Knowing how much the locals adore the 1st Family, I decide to have some fun.

“Hey, Renkie,” I say, “who do you think is better looking, Michele Obama or Portia?” The latter, of course, being the current and first female Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Renkie regards me as if I’m several coconuts short of a cart load. “Michelle or Portia?” he asks, disbelievingly. Another guy at the bar and a petite, thin woman called Slim who is drinking JB and Redbull, turn to look at me. “Are you serious, mon?” Renkie says.

“Yeah, I was just looking at Michelle,” I nod at the TV, “and I think Portia is much prettier.”

“No, mon! Michele is prettier, trust me!” he retorts.

The other guy at the bar joins in. “Yah, mon, Michelle is way nicer - an’ Portia, she mash up de economy,” he adds forcefully. He glances over at Renkie who slowly nods his head in agreement. “Fe true,” he says, then gives his just-completed cigarette a thorough licking.

Slim pipes up, “An’ look at Michelle’s hair.” She raises a thin arm and points at the TV. “It is always so nice an’ always in diff’rent style. Portia’s hair, it always de same.” She flicks her hands around her own head, miming Portia’s hair style – a page boyish look with mid-forehead bangs. “Always de same,” she says again, shaking her head sadly as if wearing one’s hair in the same style from day to day was a major transgression. Although, given the amount of work that Jamaican women put into making their hair look good, I get her point.

“I don’t know,” I said, “that Portia is a fine lookin’ woman.”

“Mon, yuh wanta nuther drink?” Renkie says, thereby officially ending the Michelle vs Portia conversation gambit.


POWER STRAP! and two of the Minnesota Triplets