Chronicle sports reporter Stephan Sookram recently travelled to Westmoreland, Jamaica for a Caribbean motor racing meet. He did not bargain for the “taxi” ride to the event’s venue.“Unah affi not worry bout de boyz in blue!,’’ he said.
“Meh breddah, ah iz the bass round dis here parts!” As if that was supposed to ease my mind from the fact that his faded black and mud splattered Jialing motorcycle was barely evading the resident dogs and the intermittent pot holes that seemed to appear almost out of nowhere.
This was a taxi ride in Westmoreland, Jamaica: A Rasta man half trying to sell me a stake in his “blooming” herbal business and half explaining why his five “child mothers” always hounded him for a small “bly.”
I mean, sure, when in Rome do as the Romans, but this was crazy! Here I was, backpack in one hand and camera bag in the other, pelting down the winding access road to the Jamwest Raceway.
Not sure it was the “lil” Jamaican Pearl emitting from his blunt or the sound of “nah far mo fuh go man!” that eventually comforted me, but it sure kept my mind off the fact that his front wheel had more wobble than new-born Bambi.
According to the proprietor of the house we had rented, “Garvey solid! Him gun tek yuh way safe safe tuh unah racetrack,” and while there was a car outside the house waiting 10 minutes after my phone call with the owner, that was only his son collecting spares from the Garage.
“Bless!” Garvey first said to me and for the next five minutes. He bent my ear with his business plan to transform his “herbal plot” into the next largest Jamaican export, with the explanation interrupted intermittently by his irritable expression of “Bumbaclaath taxes!”
I learnt that taxis in Jamaica meant motorbikes, and the best place to hide your weed stash was behind your bike’s number plate.
Though his tales came to an end due to the fact that I’d reached my destination; it was a brighter spot on account of the fact that his rolling death-trap, which idled as though the cylinders were arguing, got me there safely.
I paid him his 300 Jamaican dollars and thanked him; not for the drop, but for keeping my mind off the bloody shoddy state of his taxi.