A lot of weird things happen here. Not really weird in a universal sense but just weird to me because I'm not from here. A lot of these things I've gotten used to in the 344 odd days I've been here but something happened this last weekend that was really out of the ordinary.
I was visiting Kelsey in Trelawny. I think it was a Saturday. We had just spent a really nice day shopping in Falmouth for her new place in Bunkers Hill. We ate some Chinese food, went to the market for fresh veggies - you know, cool stuff like that. The weather was really nice too.
Somewhere about 3 or 4 o clock it was time to head back up to country. We loaded up in the mini bus with all our goods and shoved off.
For the first 25 minutes the ride was fairly normal. The common conversations of politics, the heat, the poor condition of the roads, more politics and sex filled the bus as we rumbled along. I rarely chime into these. Most of the time when traveling on a mini bus I keep to myself - sunglasses on, facing forward or out the window, pretending to be anonymous. Kelsey and I carried on a few quiet conversations, pointing out the scenery to each other, or chuckling at some of the conversations occurring in the background. Taxi/Bus drivers know everybody's secrets.
We had just passed through Wakesfield which is about the halfway point between Falmouth and Bunkers Hill when somebody in the back yelled out "One Stop!," the signal to tell the driver to pull over and let you out. The conductor opened the door and let out the passenger. Something happened in the proceeding seconds that remains unclear to me. Whatever it was really irritated the driver so he turned around and snapped at the conductor "yuh show off too much!". The conductor, who also happened to be the owner of the bus, didn't like that much. Understandable. So he snapped back with the usual cus words "bumbaclot!.... backside!.... bloodclot!" etc etc etc...
Well, this went on for some time and evolved into a completely different argument about money and how one of them owed the other a thousand J (11 bucks) and things started to get real heated. Soon, the whole bus started to get involved and what started as an argument between two turned into something that more closely resembled a family meeting that just got out of hand. I love that about Jamaica. The older women started to assume their motherly roles and pleaded for the bickering to stop. The real older women scolded, the rasta man and the young men blurted out a few "chill nuh man!"s as a third brother would do and a few embarrassed people in the back kept saying things to the affect of "not in front of the white people!".
Well, all the pleas didn't help and this argument continued to get out of hand. Amongst the chaos the driver decided he had had enough so he pulled over, flagged down an oncoming taxi, and drove off in the opposite direction. The looks of disbelief popped up all over the bus - except for the rasta, he just smiled and shook his head. Disbelief was quickly replaced with relief however because at least we had the conductor, and he could drive the bus.... right?
The conductor got out of the side door and walked back and around the bus to the drivers door and reached for where the keys should have been... It didn't take long for all of us to figure out that the keys were still with the driver who was in a taxi headed in the other direction.
So there we were, somewhere between Wakesfield and Bunkers Hill without a ride. Most of us were laughing. Another reason why I love this country. Really, no matter how bad it gets, everybody just says "give thanks" and laughs. Those who weren't laughing were apologizing to the white people for the embarrassing display. We tried to tell them it was ok... and that we like Jamaica... and that we weren't really there visiting but that we lived there. They still felt really bad.
Thankfully, the whole thing was resolved very quickly. The road between Wakesfield and Bunkers Hill is reasonably busy so the bus load of people were able to flag down a few different drivers and within 10 minutes or so everybody was on their way again.
Never, ever, a dull moment.
"Give Thanks"
