In Other News

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It's only 8:30am and already it's been an interesting day. Police shot and killed the most wanted man in Jamaica last night - a gang leader from Spanishtown, which is about 20 minutes from here. Now, you'd think people in the town would be happy about it, since he's been killing people and dealing drugs for well over 20 years and he's been on top of the most-wanted list for 10 of those years. But instead, people are revolting and shooting at cops and they've taken it upon themselves to close down Spanishtown. They put wire across the roads so people can't drive in our out and anyone who does try to go in or out is shot at and then their car is stolen. In retaliation to that, the police reclaimed the city and put it into some kind of "lockdown" state, so that instead of being shot at, anyone who tried to drive in or out of the city is arrested instead. I've been to the Spanishtown jail, so believe me when I say that you'd almost rather be shot than arrested. So this is the hot story of the hour!! Oh, and just to showcase some of the native patois, the Jamaican Gleaner (the local newspaper) quoted a neighbor of gang leader who was killed: "Mi neva know sey is a criminal live there. Mi neva know seh a dis a big ouse a build. De workers have access to everywhere in di house but when it paint up it lock up tight." Charming, eh?

This past weekend, Nancy and I had the distinguished pleasure of accompanying some of the gentlemen from St. Pius church for a night on the town. We went out with Bigga, Sam, Andrew, and Chase, and we ended up at some rooftop birthday party with a DJ spinning all the local hits so that every time a favourite song was played, all the guys in the crowd would hold up two fingers (kind of proctologist-style) and yell out "whoop whoop" which apparently means "Yeah mon - we like this song!" Nancy and I started to join in with the whooping, even though we didn't know any of the songs, but we looked grossly inconspicuous. Even uglier than our attempt at whooping was our attempt at Jamaican dancing. Jamaican dancing looks a little bit like a guinea fowl caught on fire and waving its sorry little wings in the air while its feet do some sort of strange, haunting shuffle. And that might be giving it too much credit. Several nights before our infamous night on the town, Nancy and I had dinner with some of the Passionist volunteers here in Kingston, and dinner was followed by dance lessons from Howard who happened to be a professional dancer. (Note: "professional" means he dances in Jamaican music videos, which might be ranked alongside my own home videos in terms of professionalism. Jah Cure, one of the most famous performing artists here, even made one of his videos from his current residence, which just happens to be a prison.) So anyway, that night with Howard we learned a great many of the thrilling dance moves, which are strikingly reminiscent of dance moves from the 1960s/1970s era. (Think "the shopping cart" or "the sprinkler" or "the twist" but with black men in tight jeans and mesh tank tops.) We were able to master "the willybonks" "the sesame street" "the swing" "the cyar" and, my personal favourite, "the superman," and we put all of our new talents on exhibition during the rooftop birthday party. At the very least, we were tremendous entertainment for the many men who though they were going out for a regular night of drinking Red Stripe, smoking ganja, and dancing. And speaking of ganja, I'm pretty sure I had a second-hand high from all the smoke on top of that roof. At one point, I was uninhibited enough to showcase my "Superman" for all to admire....or, rather, laugh at. But I didn't care!!

SO, after we got tired of standing on the roof - or after the gentlemen were embarrassed enough by mine and Nancy's "dancing", we hit the road for another establishment. Upon arriving, however, we were shocked (SHOCKED!) to see an armored truck blocking the gate and a man in army fatigues, a hard hat and a giant rifle sitting on top yelling at me "Naw, ya cyan't come in ere!" Upon further speculation, we discovered that all the people currently at the establishment were being herded out like sheep by more men in army fatigues with hard hats and giant rifles. In fact, these men were everywhere and were pushing everyone into giant lines in the parking lot. I felt like I was watching Schindler's list. I mentioned the fact that I wasn't entirely comfortable staying there and they gentlemen said they just wanted to find out what was happening. After some questioning of passersby on the street, we found out that everyone was being searched for weapons and drugs, etc. which was a bit of a relief, but on the same token, we decided we didn't want to be there in case a riot were to break out. (People aren't typically very welcoming of the police around here.) The long and short of it is that we dropped the men off and went home to enjoy nice, comfortable sleep without the presence of 4-foot rifles in our faces.

Funny that that sort of thing doesn't really faze us anymore....

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