Accompong Town.... Going Home.

[JitterBug]

hey bill, glad you made it . . . love reading about your adventures!

[Accompong]

After about a hour on the Internet with several young children leaning on my shoulder watching the multi-tasking screens switching from MS Word to Yahoo to a thumb drive where all my stuff is stored thinking they were witnessing magic of some kind. I decided right there and then to teach some of these children how to use a computer for more than just playing games but this will have to wait for a later time.

The rains have stopped and it was time for me to make my way back to the house. The streets were still wet and anyone with any sense was still indoors but the town looks so clean with any dust and dirt that had accumulated having been washed away by the heavy rain. There were still some patchy clouds in the sky but no imminent threat of rain; just enough to obscure the sun’s rays evaporating the residue from the storm.

My friends Fire and Piaki have stores across the main from each other and Fire’s store has a slab in front big enough and tall enough to make for a nice stop to rest my knees a bit before moving on. As I sat on Fire’s slab, I took this picture of Piaki’s store.

Fire heard me outside and came to sit and reason. Fire is a Rasta who I have known for about 20 years (much like most adults in town) and I always look forward to his countenance and reasoning ability whenever I need some guidance. I decided to ask a simple question that I was sure would take me down a rabbit hole of Rasta-speak. Fire, I asked “Do you ever feel bored living here in Accompong Town?” While he was in thought, I added “after all, every day is pretty much like the one before”.

“Mi Breddren”, he began “Whaa gwann Babylon dat mek it soh?” He was asking me what it was about the world beyond Accompong Town that keeps it from being boring. I knew that it was incumbent on me to try to describe that world if the talk were to continue along that line of thought. “Well, as an example, some of the people on Negril.com talk about days and nights of drinking, partying and sexing while never mentioning being ‘bored’….” He stopped me short. (translated from Patois to English) “I, as a Rastaman, don’t have time for much of that foolishness.” He went on to tell me about the days before Rastas were generally accepted in Jamaican society. Days when the police would beat them and cut a man’s locks as soon as they had a chance. He went on to say that what one person would call “boring” was another man’s Garden of Eden. Just look at the beautiful hills and the abundant fields. Getting up each day and praising Jah for putting food in the belly and peace in my soul.

He went on for about an hour painting a picture of Paradise when he suddenly asked me if I was ‘bored’? If I were bored before our talk, I certainly wasn’t now. I felt buoyant and rejuvenated to continue my trek to my house. I got up and thanked Fire for taking time to reason. As I walked away, Fire called after me, “Where can I find this ‘drinking, partying and sexing’?” with a huge grin on his face. “Negril!”, I shouted over my shoulder.

I hadn’t noticed the gathering clouds while reasoning with Fire but now I was feeling a few drops from a particularly angry looking cloud. I snapped a quick picture of Rubber’s yard before putting the camera safely away while I pushed forward.

The rain was getting harder and I was rapidly getting wet but I felt so good and in tune with Nature that I actually started to anticipate and enjoy every raindrop even as people sheltered in doorways bid me to come and ‘cool yu foot’ with them.

The dark cloud finally moved on both actually and metaphorically as I just realized that the smile that Fire placed on my face had become a permanent fixture. This place is this man’s “Garden of Eden”.
Here is a picture of a "Rat Bat" (actually a very large moth) on my wall when I got back


Peace and Guidance.

[Accompong]

A Portrait of Nanny of the Maroons on the Wall of Heroes in Accompong Town

In Jamaica, nothing is quite as easy as you expect it to be. Now, multiply that by a factor of 1000 and that, in a nutshell, describes living in Accompong Town. Now, I don’t mean to imply that life here is more difficult emotionally or security-wise as that is quite the opposite. What I mean is that I am used to “quick quick” and when in So. Florida I make a list and the majority of the items are completed before the sun goes down. Here the clock seems to run a likkle slower and you could easily swear that there are more than 24 hours in a day while you patiently wait for things to get done.

A good example is my Internet Connection I want to purchase so I can use it at my house. After 3 or 4 days of mostly helpful input from computer-savvy residents, it was nearly a unanimous opinion that the Digicel 3G thumb drive was the best option. There is only one in the town and its user says the connection is okay but less than 3G. Okay, where can I get one? I went to the Yellow Pages and found a Digicel Page with about 100 suppliers. I called a couple in Santa Cruz and they said they haven’t seen one in nearly a month. One person finally volunteered that Mandeville would be the place to go. “To go?” Mandeville is over 50kilometers from here and up a tough hill called Spur Tree. I went back to the Yellow Pages and picked out the suppliers in Mandeville that sounded bigger so they would more likely have one in stock. After two $100 phone cards all I learned is that they sometimes get them on Thursday and they don’t have any in stock and, if they do get some, they are only on “first come, first served” basis and that they couldn‘t hold one so a trip could be in vain.
After another three days, I finally learned where the only unit in town was purchased but they would have to get me a phone number as the place is not listed in the phone book. I have been patiently waiting for that phone call going on 3 days now. The most frustrating part is that no one thinks it is unusual to have so much difficulty. All I get is a shake of the head slowly and “((kissteet)) Jamaica noh easy.”

Well, at least, I have access to the Computer Center on the other side of the village which is about a mile from my house. The only problem with this is that it opens at about 3 or 4pm 6 days a week and the summer rains begin about 2:30pm 7 days a week and I have no car or even an umbrella.

Today I woke up to clear blue skies and a pressing need to use the Internet so I decided to head out around noon and stop along the road to visit a friend or two so that when the rains came, I would be safely inside the Computer Center. What could go wrong? How about at 12:15pm (15 minutes after I leave) the time it takes these old knees to negotiate nearly half a mile, the skies open up and a torrential downpour catches me out in the open between houses without even a bare branch to impede the onslaught.

As quickly as the rain came, the clouds rapidly moved to the West and the unbearably hot sun soon mixed my sweat with my rain-drenched clothes giving a cooling effect that felt quite pleasant. Now, I didn’t want to stop with clothes that could wet up my friend’s furniture so I pressed on to a shady spot at Cudjoe’s Monument across from the Community Center and the Computer Center where I took the following pictures.



Peace and Guidance

[Lola]

Some beautiful places, businesses and buildings!

[Big_frank]

Bill; you continue to out-do yourself. Wonderful descriptive narration.
I'm sure you are well loved in Accompong.
Enjoy sir; enjoy.

[Sam I Am]

Thank you for sharing with us.

[FeelinIrie]

Thanks Bill. So happy to see some photos!

[goldilocks]

So nice!

[Accompong]

Masonry work is the predominant form of construction currently being used in Jamaica and the finishing of the outside of a structure takes a person with a high degree of skill in working with concrete in its many forms. Basically, there are three main finishes used over concrete block buildings; “pebble dash”, “splashing” and “rendering”. These may be called different names in different areas of Jamaica but they are used here in Accompong Town.

All these finishes use cement in high percentage and the coarseness of the material used in the mixture is determined by screening or filtering its size down from pebbles to very fine sand. The finest coating “rendering” is most common on interior walls and more popular on exterior walls like the example in the photo below of “Bits and Pieces” Variety Store on the main.

A make-shift concrete pad in the middle of our road left over from previous work on our house provides the palette for preparing the concrete mixture. My neighbor Rani (we call him “Boss”) mixes the fine sand with the concrete and after blending it together, runs it through a finer screen to get the desired texture for rendering.

Boss and Marshall work together to wet the mixture and use a shovel to mix it into a thin paste to be carried by bucket onto the scaffolding where the finish mason applies it to the wall. A good, experienced mason can render a wall of a house in a day’s work with good ground support.

Just a day’s more masonry work and the rendering of the house will be complete inside and out.


Building a house in Jamaica and, most often in Accompong Town, is a multi-year endeavor and our house is no exception. Since the original house slid down the hill in pieces after Hurricane Ivan, the construction has often been slow and painful but now the end is in sight.

When you are a tourist and interact with your Jamaican friends for a week or two each year, you learn a little about them and about the Jamaican Culture at the same time but nothing can compare to actually living in Jamaica and having to deal with and work alongside your Jamaican friends and neighbors to accomplish a goal like in this case building a house.

A person you would like to share a Red Stripe with is not necessarily the person you would want to work with you to get a job done. Serious work takes serious people. Thankfully, I live among some of the most serious workers I have ever met in Jamaica over my 30 years of being in Jamaica.

Peace and Guidance

[Accompong]

My side of town is mainly a farming community. I get up and get dressed before 6:00am each morning so I can sit on my verandah and watch the sun come up over the mountains and to greet the majority of my neighbors as the pickney pass to go to school and the adults on their way to the bush. It is the custom here for everyone who passes you, whether pickney or adult, to acknowledge or greet you verbally in some manner.

This seems to be little of a problem for the town’s citizens as they know my name as well as every other citizen of Accompong Town but to me it is more of a challenge. With a pickney, a simple “morning” or “afternoon” will suffice and will get you the similar response in return. With an adult, the acknowledgment usually contains “Bill” in some context and often will be mixed within some Patois phrase I may or may not quite understand but they appreciate it if I use their given name or most often their alias name in my return answer.

My usual practice is to spot them when they first turn the corner onto my road and then run through my mental rolodex until I come up with the name or, if I can remember or just plain don’t know, I take a cue from Marshall who uses “king”, “champ” or the ever appropriate “breddren” for a male and “diva” or “queen” for a female and a non-personal “miss” or “misses” for an older woman.

Personally, I love this custom as it fosters further interaction and allows everyone to get to know each other a little better. This time of year, everyone seems to be farming something or other out in the bush so the traffic on my little road can sometimes get a little congested. This morning is not a bush day as the constant “likkle likkle” work on the house continues as time, money and weather permit.

Cont’d