Early in 1982 I had the idea of travelling throughout Jamaica in my VW camper, I'd been there several times as a tourist and I'd done something similar years before travelling throughout Guatemala and Mexico for about 3 months; it's the only way to travel, you're self contained, you buy and cook your own food, you always have a place to sleep and best of all you easily get to places that would be otherwise inaccessible: I started planning the trip. Basically 'planning' meant writing to various Jamaican government agencies to ask what I needed to do to import a van to live in for about three months and contacting various shipping companies to enquire about their procedures. Finally I thought I had all the answers and I made specific arrangements re. dates and times etc. I had to have the van on the docks in Miami Beach before noon on the Friday to have it shipped to Kingston on that day's sailing so finally I left LA early on the Monday morning and began my drive across the United States. At this point I should digress for a moment because there's an important element in the story. My VW camper was a rather drab maroon color, for quite some time I'd harboured thoughts of using all that sheet metal as a 'canvas' to make some sort of artistic statement, I should mention that years before I'd worked in the paint industry and had some minimal experience painting vehicles.
The way I approached the problem was to photograph side and frontal shots of the van, these I scanned into my Mac and using a tracing program I created an outline of the vehicle; I printed a dozen copies of each and with a set of colored marker pens started doodling. Nothing was working until I created three horizontal stripes, each about 15" running around the the van, one red, one gold and one green, That started to look interesting. Where the the three colors converged at the front of the van I expanded the gold until it spread over front panel. Red Gold and Green were the 'national' colors of Jamaica.
I bought a quart each of red, gold and green and spent three evenings after work in the Engineering dept yard at the university where I worked masking and spraying the basic colors and then in the alley behind my apartment I did all the detail work. I had an album by the English reggae group Aswad that had a rampant heraldic lion on the cover, I photographed it as a slide and then projected the image onto a sheet of 3ft by 4 ft tracing paper, I outlined it with a black marker and then cut out the positive image. What I then had was a very fragile piece of tissue but I sprayed it with adhesive and finally managed to position it on the front of the van centered on that big gold panel. 
I sprayed that with black epoxy, let it dry and then peeled off the tissue and it looked fantastic! The result was wonderful to behold, a mobile living environment wrapped in the flag of Ethiopia, it opened doors for me that I could never have anticipated and it became my bond with the many wonderful Jamaican and Rasta friends that I made there.I was ready to go, back to the story.
I remember that about half way across Texas on one of those endless straight highways I came to a stop sign, god only knows why and as I stopped a convertible stopped alongside me in the other lane, the occupants were an old black couple, maybe in their 70's, the old lady motioned me to wind down the window, "Me love your colours" she said, and her saying that in that location absolutely made my day! Prior to that I'd been asking myself "What the hell do you think you're up to, you're a middle aged white Englishman driving to Jamaica across Texas in a van that looks like the flag of Ethiopia? You're insane! I'd really started questioning what I was doing.
With a couple of diversions I made it into Miami Beach on the Thursday afternoon, I parked in a hotel parking lot right at the ocean. That night there was very loud reggae coming from the hotel, it was a regular weekly dance and they played a lot of Bob Marley as I lay there dozing in the van, it was a good omen. The next morning I awoke to a monsoon style deluge, it was raining buckets. I needed to get to the docks by mid morning so I headed there and once I'd parked the van and signed all the papers in the shipping company office I had to walk about a mile back to a point where I could get a bus to the airport, I wasn't just wet, I was saturated, absolutely soaking and struggling along with the baggage that I chose to carry rather than ship.
As I stood in line at the airport in the Air Jamaica line I thought I recognised the back view of the bloke in front of me, he turned slightly and it was Junior Marvin, lead guitar with the Wailers, we'd met in LA some time before so we flew down together and it was my luck that he had his car at the airport, he dropped me at a motel right across the street from his house, the van was supposed to arrive on the Monday. It didn't, it arrived a week later missing the radio and lots more.The business of actually taking delivery of my van at the docks had seemed in all prior conversations to be a simple routine procedure; the reality was a nightmare of beaurocracy, there were previously unmentioned costs and a huge cash bond. I was at an impasse, the harbor master was saying that he couldn't release the van without a $3000+ cash bond and I had nothing close to that and it had never been mentioned before. Apparently no one had ever challenged the system by importing and soon thereafter exporting a vehicle. Finally it was suggested that a call should be placed to the office of Tony Abrahams, the Minister of Tourism, since I had applied to visit Jamaica as a professional working photographer. I spoke with him and explained my dilemma and he finally agreed that he would personally cover the bond on
the understanding that I had to absolutely swear that I would ship the van out again at the end of my visit, which I did. The intervening week is a very interesting story in itself that includes my staying at the house of Basil Keene, who filmicly astute readers will recognise as Preacherman in the film 'The Harder they Come', but that's a whole separate and interesting story in itself.
Once I took possession I left Kingston immediately and headed for the North Coast, where within a few hours I'd found what was to become my home away from home in Jamaica; It was the beach at the west end of Ocho Rios where the fishermen lived, right next to Turtle Towers.
I don't know what hand of providence took me to Fishermen's Beach, maybe it was the inscription "Jah Guide" that was lettered on my van door, but to whoever, I give thanks because it was the perfect spot for me to live between my numerous forays into the country and culture of Jamaica. My misgivings about the 'outrageous' appearance of the van were short lived, it became the key item that opened doors and made friends everywhere I went, I recall one specific incident when pulling up to a stop sign in a rural county place and there was a beautiful young woman sitting on a wall off to my left, as I came to a stop she sat there and applauded me, or rather she applauded the colors.
So when I found that beautiful spot at Fishermen's Beach, right next to a freshwater stream, and only fifty feet from a natural spring which bubbled out of the rocks providing both drinking and bathing water, and just a short walk from a thatched hut that sold Red Stripe and patties; I knew I was in heaven. Of course all of the fishermen who lived there were curious about the newcomer, but the colors plus the reggae music that was piped to my van's outside speakers broke the ice, so I rapidly made friends. We often sat around talking and listening to music,
I had dozens of reggae cassettes with me, one in particular was repeatedly requested. It was a tape of the 'One Love' concert in Kingston where Bob Marley had brought Michael Manley and Eddie Seaga together on the stage, the second side however was Peter Tosh onstage with a huge spliff berating the two politicians and all the assembled police for harassing rastas over ganga, it was during his 'Legalise it' period and we got requests for that cassette everyday.On my second day there, late in the afternoon, I was standing by the open sliding door of my van talking with a group of two or three fishermen who were curious to know who I was, what I did and why had I come to Jamaica. Years before (as a
birthday present) I had treated myself to a handsome folding knife with a rosewood handle and a leather case, I'd carried it everywhere I'd ever travelled and it was a very treasured possession, it lay on the counter just inside the van as we stood there talking. From the corner of my eye I saw a hand reach in, pick it up, open it and and handle it admiringly. The hand belonged to a newcomer to the group, someone I didn't recognise. The conversation shifted momentarily to the knife, everyone admiring it and commenting and then the discussion returned to our previous subject; and just about then I realised that the knife and the newcomer were nowhere to be seen, I felt like a fool, it had disappeared from right under my nose in an instant. One of the fishermen suddenly took off running; he was a small, lithe, very black man, who's only dress was a very tattered pair of shorts, he quickly disappeared through the trees 
towards the highway, "Don't you worry mon, Blacka will get your knife back for you, you don't need to worry," said one of the fisherman whose name was Reggae. About two hours later Blacka returned, running to where we were waiting "I caught him," he said excitedly "But the policeman took him to the station, he's there now and you must come and claim your knife" Together we walked into Ocho Rios to the police station, where I was introduced to a very gruff senior officer who's hat and shoulders were covered in gold braid. I explained the whole story to him as he sat across a desk from me seemingly doubting every word I said. When I'd finished he just stared at me as I sat there expecting him to hand over the knife. "Well that's not quite how I understand it at all" he said, "in fact I've been led to believe that you're a big time ganja dealer and you're here to organize a large shipment of herb and that you're up there making arrangements with those fishermen to transport it for you!" Well that took me totally off guard, I sure hadn't expected that response. My knife thief was a quick thinker with a creative imagination. I pulled out my wallet and dropped my business card identifying me as the Director of Media at a major American university on his desk. I also reached for my passport case where I had a letter from a senior Jamaican government official responding to my initial inquiry about importing my van, plus I mentioned that he could call Tony Abrahams,
the Minister of Tourism, who had assisted me at the docks a week earlier. He grudgingly seemed to finally accept my story, he reached into a drawer, withdrew my knife and held it under the light. "Is this your knife? he asked When I told him that it was he handed it over, he told me to be careful and the meeting was obviously over.As Blacka and I walked back to Fishermen's Beach together I told him about my plans to travel throughout the island, I told him that what I wanted to do was to follow my instincts, to go to those places on the map with interesting names and to have new adventures everyday, to meet Jamaican country people and learn about their culture and most of all I wanted to photograph every aspect of Jamaican life. I told
him that there was plenty of room for two people and if he wanted to join me that he would be very welcome. Well he jumped at the opportunity and another lifelong friendship was born. The next day we set off together on the first of many trips throughout the island. We settled into a comfortable routine, Blacka had worked as a chef in a hotel so he was happy to handle the cooking, I did the driving and a typical day would begin after coffee with a search for a fisherman to buy dinner, then to locate a market for vegetables, thence to the ice factory which every community has to re-load the ice chest and finally to the local beer retailer to get a case of Red Stripe. Blacka was 
invaluable in knowing how to locate these places in every community we visited. As we travelled he would sometimes out of the blue say "Stop here mon, give me a dollar" and he'd jump out and walk to a total stranger and return within minutes with a bag of ganga; he had an eye for such things.I didn't see our "knife friend" for several weeks, but when we did meet again he was intent on robbing me again, this time at the crack of dawn. I awoke to the sounds of shouting and feet running on gravel, he had been seen looking into the van through a side window, I was saved again by the combined efforts of the fishermen who chased him with the intent of shaving his head. He was a fake rasta with locks which they thought brought disgrace to rasta and many weeks later towards the end of my visit Blacka came running to the beach one day, he'd seen the thief nearby and wanted to show him to me.
We quickly walked to where he was and as we approached he took off, Blacka had told me his name so I called out to him and for an instant he turned and I had my Nikon ready, I grabbed one clear shot of him, I don't know the circumstances but by then he'd lost his locks. The plan was to make a handbill and plaster the community with 'Beware of thief' posters but I think we let that one die.
1 comment:
Amazing stuff.
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