Hungry, broke and home again

Sangster International Airport (SIA) was partially damaged, and so too was the Knutsford Express (KEX) depot located on its property. I waited at the depot for three hours for my pick-up driver to arrive, but he never appeared.

I suspected a connectivity issue. Still, I had no idea the situation in Montego Bay was so dire – especially since I hadn’t heard from my own folks for three days. All calls to them and the driver failed, returning bizarre messages from the provider. Emails and Messenger messages sent via KEX Wi-Fi were equally futile.

With no functioning ATM services at SIA’s Arrivals, I returned to wait at KEX. I remained calm, though patience is not one of my virtues. Check-in time at my accommodation was 3 p.m., so an hour earlier, I called Uber. Within minutes, I arrived at my accommodation on Jimmy Cliff Boulevard – formerly Gloucester Avenue – popularly known as ‘Bottom Road’ and referred to in tourism circles as ‘The Hip Strip’.

While waiting to be checked in, I was shown an ATM. It dispensed only US dollars! After check-in, I left the property to find a Jamaican-dollar ATM. That’s when my eyes began to pop out again – Melissa had ravaged the hip from the strip.

Though my accommodation stood majestic and clean, other structures were strewn with debris – broken, torn, shattered, and abandoned. This was the heart of MoBay’s tourist mecca. A place I frequented as a child, travelling to and from beaches, sometimes half-naked, barefoot, and hungry after being scorched by the sun.

I found an ATM not far from my accommodation, but it was out of service. Ah! From there, the walk to downtown MoBay became a journey through decadence and destruction. I was calm, but cashless and hungry. The only ATM at Baywest Mall was surrounded by a throng. I pressed on to Sam Sharpe Square—where Sharpe was initially buried; where Michael Manley announced the 1980 general election date, October 30; and where my mother was nearly crushed in a stampede during the visit of the late Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Square of Struggle

Sam Sharpe Square was, and still is, ‘charge central’. People bustled about, trying to power their devices as generators droned. It was Monday, but the atmosphere felt like Friday or Saturday. My eyes darted everywhere – then I remembered I was searching for an ATM.

I moved off, spotted the entrance to Scotiabank, and the crowd that surrounded it. I dislike crowds – especially desperate ones. The area was noisy and congested, while police lounged in a vehicle near the fountain. Sam Sharpe Square weighed heavily on me, and my legs carried me back to my accommodation – 45 minutes away.

There, I ate and felt guilty, relaxed and felt guilty again. I didn’t sleep soundly. The images of carnage haunted me, and I needed money to escape the mess of MoBay. Up to that point, I still hadn’t heard from the pick-up driver. One entire day was wasted.

At 5:30 a.m., I left the accommodation in darkness, heading back to downtown MoBay in search of an ATM. I saw the silhouettes of four people in a group. I passed them briskly—I wasn’t going to wait in any line. When I reached Baywest in the twilight, the crowd had already gathered at the ATM. I headed to Sam Sharpe Square, to Scotiabank. The crowd was there too, but there was no money.

I didn’t linger. My legs carried me towards the place where, in my youth, we fought to get into taxis and buses. I found myself at MoBay’s first KFC store, and a Go-Go Club nearby at the foot of Orange Hill – over which I walked to and from Cornwall College (CC), my alma mater, for five years.

When CC came into view, bittersweet memories gripped me. Melissa had ravaged it – an entire roof of a classroom block was gone. Across the road, Mount Alvernia High School had lost some windows. Farther along, the massive CC pavilion – painted in red and gold in parts – still stood. Brilliant! No other school in Jamaica boasts such a structure.

Home at Last

I was now sauntering deep into my past, my strides shortening, so much to see. There was ‘Johnny Shop’, the bread-and-butter place; ‘Ball Grung’, where I came last in every sports day race; the dreaded tenement yard across from Johnny Shop; Albion Primary School – my first primary school – which botched my first chance at passing the Common Entrance Exam; and the place where I was baptised at age 10 in a deep-freezer-turned baptismal pool under a massive Seventh-Day Adventist crusade tent. The scent of Dettol disinfectant still lingers in my nostrils.

And there was more: the site of the 1970s Agriculture Marketing Corporation shop; the Glendevon Branch Library, where I spent summers reading and dreaming of becoming a famous writer.

Across from the library stood the postal agency, where I visited for weeks to collect letters from my pen-pals – Tracy Green from England and Priska Mememger from West Germany. I cannot forget the once-popular shop run by Chinese nationals – the red herring and paradise plum shop; Sun Valley Road Crossing, the scene of many a high drama; and Shorty Shop, still standing, broken and painted brown.

And then, the ‘Rough Road’ sign appeared. It marked the road to my mother’s house, which had survived Melissa’s wrath. I was home at last – older, cashless, empty-handed, but grateful. I knew there was money tied up in a handkerchief, hidden deep in somebody’s bosom. So much for the ATM!

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