Field of Greens

Jamaica is not what you'd expect during Christmas. A few bits of Christmas lights dangling from the doorways and an occasional Black Santa is about all you'll get. It's not idyllic according to any Northern standard. But it wasn't exactly the decorations that were throwing me off. There seemed to be a curious lack of solo travelers like myself. I found the streets were dotted mostly by estranged, hippie families away on some crackpot Christmas vacation, or young married couples eagerly planting their matrimony deep into the coral sand. This was not the place for a loner. And definitely not the place for a person freshly mangled by airline seats, dressed for the fall harvest, hung-over, and most likely irrational. 

The streets were cracking. Full of dogs. Animals fed by the steady flow of the dollar into their bellies. If it's one thing the ghettos of Detroit taught me it's that there's nothing more dangerous than a puppy dog who bites. And as I stared out at these perfect strangers opening this car door for me, I suddenly felt the urge to walk away, quickly. But something kept me there. Fear. Intrigue. Naivety. Whatever it was, I didn't move. My shoes were lead. 

"Ay mon. Relax yourself. We could walk there, but it's quicker just to drive," the tall man says to me. I look to my right and see a hippie family all wearing the same matching, cheesy Jamaican t-shirts. The car revs up and my attention shakes back to the open door, which suddenly seemed more enticing than before. I could feel the scales tipping in my gut as I ask them, "Can I trust you guys?"

Both of their arms flailed up at the same time as the tall man shouts, "Of course you can. This is Jamaica mon." It must have been the way he said it because after that I watched myself walk up to the car and say, "Okay, but I don't want any surprises." 

The car zipped away through the streets, quickly leaving the sight of any foreign travelers behind me. We turn onto a narrow road jammed with cars. We're stopped. The tall man gets out of the car, visibly frustrated, and disappears behind the traffic. The sidewalks were crammed with people all walking to or there with arms full of bags and babies. As we sat idling, passerbys dipped there heads down to the window to look in. All I could do was stare back. Suddenly the cars in front us start parting and pushing their way into the crowds. The tall man emerges down the middle directing traffic aside, giving us room to drive through. He climbs back in and we race back down the street, making up lost time. 

We drive in silence over a time-battered dirt road. I look outside at the passing huts and see children playing in the yard with scrap metal. These people had nothing. It reminded me a lot of the way of life I witnessed in Africa. Poor, but simple lives. 

"You like reggae music?" I hear the tall man say, jarring me from my thoughts. 

"Yeah. I love Bob Marley." 

"Oh, Bob Marley?" the man with big eyes says. "He is good."

"He is king," the tall man adds, "but that was yesterday," he says plopping a cassette into the stereo. "This is Isasha. And this is today." The jovial rhythms and pure tones sooth my nerves and put me at ease. 

"Why did you come to Jamaica, mon?" the man with big eyes says to me. 

"It's kind of a spiritual journey for me."

"What does that mean?" he asks.

"I think Jamaica is a place a lot of people go to to lose themselves. But I think this can also be a place where you can come and find yourself."

He nods his head and says, "All the way from California?" 

"That's right."

"You go to Hollywood and see the stars and all that?"

"I have. It's not as nice as you might think."

"Really?" he grins. "So tell me. How are you going to find yourself?"

"I'm not really sure how."

"No? Then that's something you should probably think about." 

The car steers off the road and we stop. The tall man turns around and tells me this is it. I'm led up a hillside towards a clearing in the trees. In the distance, I can see a sun scorched Jamaican with billowing dreads, holding a rake to the ground. 

"Ay Rasta!" the tall man shouts. "Mind if we show him the fields?" The Rasta waves us on muttering something in Patois. I'm taken along an improvised trail to a small plot of land, probably 10' x 10', carved out with baby marijuana plants. The man with big eyes directs me down to the juvenile crops and begins describing their gestation. 

"These are 3 months old. They'll grow for the rest of the year. By next year they'll be as tall as you," he says pointing to me. 

"That's ludicrous. And is it just the one kind of marijuana?"

"No mon. There are six different kinds of marijuana here. Purple is the best." 

"They're selling brown at the airport," I tell him.

"Geez ma'an. Don't tell me you bought that?!" he blurted. "That's the shit weed. They spray it with chemicals and shit and sell it to the tourists. You gotta come to the farmer."

"So is this the purple?"

He stares at the crop for a moment and says, "No ma'an. Come with me." 

We push our way through the jungle and walk back to the car. We climb in the wagon and drive away, narrowly missing a goat loitering in the road. The man with big eyes rolls a joint on his leg and tells me this is purple. With a grin as wide as the Potomac, he holds the bag up for me to see. "Look at that," he says. "No seeds." 

He puts the bag back into his pocket and asks me again, "So why did you come to Jamaica, mon? Was it for the blow?"

"No man. I don't do that."

"You've seen our women. Cute, huh?"

"Yeah, they're real cute." 

"I can arrange something."

"No man. I didn't come here for that."

"What about the ganja? Do you like ganja?"

"Yeah, it's alright. It's relaxing." 

"Well now that you're feeling a bit more relaxed with us, here." 

He hands me the joint and tells me to smoke it. If it's one thing you don't have to try to appreciate, it's that driving down some forgotten road in the backwoods of a foreign country with three unknown men offering you drugs is not the place you want to be to lose your mind. But with each consecutive time he told me to light it, his tone became incrementally more severe. I had a choice to either light up the joint and smoke or risk losing any credibility that I took each of these three men very seriously. I decided to accept the joint and light it up before matters got worse. I take shallow puffs, barely inhaling. The mood was changing in the car. I could feel the car tightening around my chest as if I was being coiled up in the body of some ridiculously large boa constrictor. 

"I think I should be getting back to my hotel," I say. "They'll be dropping off my luggage there pretty soon." 

"Yeah, mon," the tall man says. 

"Can you take me there?"

"Yeah, mon."

The next 20 minutes was spent in silence as the two men talked in Patois to one another. Their words were tossed back and forth as they disagreed about something I would too soon come to know. The car veers from traffic and pulls into an abandoned shipyard. We park in an empty dirt lot surrounded by the carnage of hurricane force winds. I feel my heart get kicked out my ass as the driver turns the engine off. 

To Be Continued...