Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
ONCE UPON a time, I used to belong to a group called the Theatre Group for National Liberation. It was rooted in the conviction that theatre should serve the interests of personal and national development. For about four years, rain or shine, every weekend a whole convoy of players would journey out to different communities across Jamaica, to engage the communities in theatre as education.
We did not miss a date and we never said no to a community. Getting to them was usually quite a production in itself, beginning with the challenge of moving sometimes as many as 40 people, sometimes more, none of whom owned a donkey. So you know, we depended on a support team of persons who were willing to part with their vehicles and another team of people who were willing to drive.
One weekend, car transportation ran short. And we who were committed to the task at hand, commandeered a little truck. We set out from Kingston early mawnin' and arrived in this little country district in good time for the performance, very proud of ourselves for getting there. The potential audience, quite a sizeable one too, had gathered in the yard. A big audience for a show is a performer's delight, so 'bout 40 chests started to swell. A roar of laughter went up from the crowd in the yard as one of the numbers yelled "Hag an goat".
Yu see ingratitude? Yu believe we still do de show? If it was ever nowadays yu see...? Well that would not happen, because not even an hakta (actor) on his first outing going anywhere like hag an goat - it's star treatment from day one. But that's for another story. This story is about how after car was invented, we relegate the poor truck to carrying of livestock of the four-footed variety. For once upon a time truck used to carry people, well-dressed in pants and shirt; well tucked in and what my Auntie Reenie call a circle skirt - on big excursions, sometimes they used to call it outing.
Little children did not go because that was big people business, at least in my house. But after a while, me and my sister never care because it seemed to us that my parents and dem excursion friends did only have one place to excurse to go - Al Terry Beach.
We believe we had a lot more fun playing donkey back with the bigger cousins and whichever aunt whose turn it was to "give a eye" till the outing come back in. Rev. Easton Lee, reminds me of the holy context of the donkey. It carried Mary to the manger and it brought Jesus into Jerusalem. So it is not merely a beast of burden and although little children have fun playing donkey ride, it's not a play-play thing. We did not have a real donkey but it was fun to imagine what riding on the back of one was like, especially with indulgent bigger cousins.
We did not have a car either so we used to walk to the bus stop to catch the bus to school. Most mornings we reached school before the bus because we left home early and my mother had so convinced us about the benefits of "fresh mawnin air". If the bus ever took too long to arrive, one or the other of us would say, "Come meck we gwaan walk ya" and before you know it, we reached school.
Some days we saved our lunch money an when school ended, we jumped on a bus and just rode roun' an roun' to see where it was going. My mother didn't know that part and we did not tell her to assume that we were at private lessons. But we loved the bus ride. It was clean and pretty, I think even nicer than the heartical millennium ones of today.
Today, you have your choice of how to get around. Some people have choice, others have none. You ever driving through a country district, where nice roads have just been laid down and seen people walking? No truck, no bus, no car, no donkey - just dem an dem two feet. A little reminder that no matter how modern we get and how we enjoy our modernity, the ancient is always immediately applicable.
The exhibition on the development of transportation in Jamaica titled "Mek We Travel" and currently on at the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, is bound to delight; it will certainly inform and educate. And, in spite of yourself, it will stir up memories. My sister will not thank me for that memory about riding up an down on a bus to see what Kingston looked like, before going home go do our home-work or stay in private lessons. If my mother did ever know, de bus fare wudda immediately get eliminate. Oh I can hear now, "Yu tink yu is Bob Marley? Well your feet shall be your only carriage". And it would have taken us a longer while to discover Kingston.
Amina Blackwood Meeks is a communications consultant and story teller.
