The Ganja Fence Part 1

After a few weeks of very hard work, building my home, on the land Grandma Johnson gave me the job was finally finished. I was so happy that I had decided to design and then build a big porch around three sides of my home, so that I could always be sitting on the shady side, and at the same time use the back of the home, the south side, as my garden area. Already the fruit trees and vegetables that I had planted were all starting to grow; it seems everything grows and buds so very fast here.

During the few weeks that I worked on my own new home I saw him watching me. From time to time while I was busy building he'd sit on the other side of the dirt road, under the shade of a tree watching me. I tried not to pay much attention to him and just went about the business of building myself a home here in Negril, up on Monkey Hill, in the Red Ground of Jamaica's West side where no American man has ever built before.

I thought he may have been a cop, yet wasn't sure because he never said anything to me or came closer than the big tree on the corner of the path in front of my land. I watched him out'a the corner of my eye as he sat there; sometimes he'd roll up and then burn one and just sit there smoking it, watching me slowly working on my home, all alone, day after day.

I will never forget the first time he came to talk to me: the day after the house was finished, I saw him walking towards me slowly as I sat on my front porch, his long dread locks hanging down around his waist, his red eyes gleaming in the warm Jamaican sunshine. He introduced him self as Rasta Besford Dixon, a Holy Man and local merchant, and he went on to explain to me that he was the one man, in the small town of Negril, that could, and would get me anything that I wanted... "any ting at tall mon", he said

I invited him to sit on the porch of my humble home with me and offered him some of my iced Lime and Ganja Tea. He was very happy to see that I had ice for the tea, and eagerly poured us both a tall glass of the magical drink. I took my glass from him and we both took a large drink and smiled at each other as we wiped off the juice from our mouths.

He reached deep into the inside of his shirt, and pulled out a brown bag that was packed to the top with fresh sticky reddish gold buds. He offer me one'a the larger ones and so I took it, rolled myself a fatty, and sat back smoking and listened to him tell his tales of days gone by, back in the red ground district of Negril, just behind my house a few miles or so back in the bush land.

In many of the stories that the Rasta had told me that afternoon, there was mention of an underground complex, and fields of ganja growing for miles in every direction out in the bush, just a few miles away, behind my home. When I asked him if his stories were true, he asked me if I would like to go with him for a walk, back into the red ground bush where his stories all took place, to see for myself that his stories were in fact all true. What could I say, sure I wanted to go! We made plans to meet the next day, at sunup, to explore the land of my new friends stories.

The sun was just coming up over the eastern range of the Blue Mountains when he was knocking on my front door the next morning. When I opened the door the first thing he asked me was why I didn't meet him on the porch, like we had agreed; so I told him I over slept. I brushed the bugs out'a my hair, washed my face from a bucket of water that I had in the main room, looked up at him, and said "lets go!"

We started heading West through the bush that was in back of my home. With the warm sun on our backs it seemed as if we had walked for hours when finally he turned to look at me and said, "lets stop here for a cool down mon" We sat there on the ground, and he reached behind him near a big rock and pulled a gallon sized paint can out from behind the rock. Rasta opened the can and to my surprise it was loaded with ganja bud. We twisted up a fatty, poked on it for awhile, then we ate a few oranges that he had with him. After we rested for awhile we headed West again, walking through some of the most beautiful jungle bush that I have ever seen anywhere...

I had no fear walking out in the tall grass mostly because I knew that there were no snakes at all anywhere but in the zoo on the island of Jamaica, because long ago the sugar cane farmers brought the mongoose to Jamaica, to kill, and eat all'a the serpents, so the cane workers would be safe out in the fields all day, cutting cane. To this day the mongoose is still there, and ready to kill, then eat any snake that it might find... so stepping on some dangerous jungle snake was the least of my worries but I started to think just for a moment, that maybe this new friend was in fact going to set me up to be robbed by some rude boys or maybe even to get busted by the local law or something like that... after all I didn't really know this man.

About an hour or so later we were there. Although he hadn't said anything to me yet about being there, I knew we were there when all I could see in front of me were miles of ganja plants growing wild out in the hot Jamaican sun. I followed him to a cashew tree, that was near some breadfruit and grapefruit trees and he told me to sit down. I sat for awhile just taking in the beauty that surrounded me and then he turned, took a few steps away from me, knelt down, and started to scrape some dirt away from what look liked some kind of wooden trap door. With in a few minutes he had all the dirt removed and the door open, and he invited me to go into the underground chamber with him. I climbed down the old wooden ladder, and as soon as he light the kerosene lamp in the underground chamber I was able to see ganja trees hanging upside down from the walls and the ceiling everywhere; this was an underground room of ganja!