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
