They taught me a lot on those journeys. Every blind corner, every bridge, every bump in the road opened up a new world to me. I cherished those experiences when I got away from the mundane chronicle of my life and was ushered on to a course, with Mas Donovan at the helm. I looked forward to those Saturdays: my grandma and I, side by side on the hard concave seats of the 'patty pan' bus Mas Donovan had lovingly named Claire. Those winding curves of the mountain road and the crisp morning breeze brought out many a story. Mas Donovan would be the first to begin, with some vulgar joke, compounded by his raucous laughter which would crackle and fizz in the air. And then the laughter of everyone else would race up to meet it, filling Claire's old hull with hilarity. And the rest of the excursion would be one tale after the next. My grandma and Mas Donovan had a love/hate relationship. Whenever he addressed her she would purse her lips and tilt her head; she called him 'No Mannas Donovan' on account of his jokes. But as the journey progressed her pursed lips would be released into a smile and before long she would share a story of her own.

Our last trip with Mas Donovan started off as it usually did. We handed our parcels to the 'loada' man and boarded Claire's rusty old steps. My grandmother did her usual meet-and-greet, for she was, as the old folks called her, 'well beknowing'. We sat in our usual seats and waited for Mas Donovan to buy his 'drop hand' and his fried sprat. He came in, bellowing as usual, a barrel of a man in a shirt two sizes too small, an old off-white merino and a cap revealing his greying plaits. After a few hails and horn-tooting, he pulled up the clutch and Claire sprang to life, throttling and jerking, awaking our senses to the trail ahead. Then Mas Donovan stepped on the gas and our journey began.

It seems while we were in the city we were silent, but as soon as we exited the bustling city streets, with people on the move and the air clogged with industrialisation, the landscape busy with all the signs of modernity and progress, we all seemed to sigh in unified relief. As though the sameness of the asphalt had somehow inter-rupted our combined energies and Claire had seemed to stagger along, slow and uncertain. But as city streets made way for rutted country trails, and Claire eased herself over rusty train lines, and the soothing country air pene-trated her old hull, Mas Donovan would find the right gear to take her over the hill; and after that our journey began in earnest.

We talked about many things on that drive; for me, my grand-mother's stories were the best. There was one she always told, about a poor black girl who worked off her dead father's debt and took over his farm, and that one made me beam with pride because I knew she was that poor black girl. Mas Donovan always told the story of his great-grand-father, the 'colon man': how he had returned from Panama a rich man and had then proceeded to drink himself and his family into poverty, swearing even on his death bed that one day they would receive reparations. Or sometimes he would tell the story of his father who went to World War One, and was always telling stories about the 'good old chaps' he served with; and Mas Donovan's chest would swell up and he would say : 'My fada was a BWIR.'

This brought out the ire of Jonas, who felt he had bragging rights when it came to WWI, for his father was one of the mutineers at Taranto. They would go back and forth, declaring the exploits of their fathers. Every story had a subtext, and my grandma happily supplied the truth to their grandiose claims. She told me the British West Indies regiment was a group of Caribbean nationals who sailed off to fight in the first World War; but she hinted with a smile that they weren't allowed to do much fighting, racism being what it was then. Jonas's story of mutiny was true; there was a mutiny at a BWIR camp in Taranto, Italy, but that was long after Armistice Day and he neglected to share that the leaders of the mutiny paid dearly for their act of rebellion. Everybody agreed on one thing: the war changed things for everyone. When they came back they had no land to cultivate and no chance of work.

'Them time, ex-soldier and war veteran was nothing special, except if you was a Manley,' Jonas declared with a grin.

'Yes, sah, the war change things.'

'The powers-that-be start look at the returning soldier dem a way,' piped Mas Larry. 'For them come back different; they get exposure.'

Mas Donovan laughed at this. 'Simple neaga bwoy feel like him can married mulatto woman.'

'But some a dem had married white women while they were overseas,' Jonas offered.

'And some a dem stay there and start family,' Mas Larry expounded. Family was a sore subject for Larry, who had lost an uncle in the Bog Walk tube drowning in 1904 and a brother in the Kendal crash. It was joked abroad that wherever there was a tragedy, there was a Jones.

'Larry, a who dead fi yuh now?' Dilbert chimed in.

Dilbert, Mas Donovan's conductor, was famous for his off-key comments and badly timed outbursts. Larry glared him down and met his awkward comment full on. 'Anybody a talk to yuh, Dilbert? Yuh nuh see nuh goat out deh yuh wah seduce?'

Side splitting laughter followed, and so did the usual Larry/Dilbert war of words and tracing of each other's ancestry: whose mother got whom in the cane piece, and whose mother didn't know church door until funeral. Mas Donovan's laughter seemed to egg them on and they traded insult after insult before dissolving into a series of 'watch mi and yuh,' and 'yuh gwan, man'.

My grandmother, the pacifier, always found a way to calm everybody down, usually by asking after their family members. 'Dilbert, how yuh dawta?'

'Which one?' Mas Larry piped up; for it was rumoured that Dilbert had 15 children with five different women in the same district.

'Miss Gatha, I know the one she asking after,' Dilbert responded. 'She doing alright, she and her husband.'

'Who dat? The one in New York?' Mas Donovan asked.

'The doctor,' Dilbert replied, obviously proud.

'The one weh meet Martin Luther King when him come here in '65,' Jonas offered.

I gasped and my grandmother looked at me. She closed my mouth, which had fallen open, and told me that Dr. King had indeed come to Jamaica. She knew I had great respect for his work and that I was especially proud that he was inspired by Marcus Garvey.

'Yeah, man, Martin Luther King come here, man.' Mas Donovan joined in. 'Him give a speech at the university, and the National Stadium, and dem give him the keys of the city.'

I let it all sink in, as I usually did on those journeys: all these fascinating places in Jamaica with all the fascinating stories that went with them. I looked out through the window as they continued to reminisce, at the rock walls and endless vegetation, and I tried to see it as it had been then, as they had seen it then.

'Him even visit Garvey grave a' Heroes Park and lay a wreath,' Mas Donovan bellowed. 'Him seh Garvey give blacks a sense of sombodiness.'

'Sombodiness,' my grand-mother repeated. Her soft-spoken comment jerked me back to the journey as Claire hit the turn of the corner shop that signaled the Jericho stop.

I thought of her gentle voice again now as I watched the men dig, the smell of curried goat and wood fire assaulting my senses. There was the hurried voices of the mourners in the distance; they had all departed to the eating area in the yard of my grandmother's old country house. I stood alone at her grave, musing on the finality of death, thinking about her 'som-bodiness' and how it had affected me. And I watched them seal her grave, sweating and grunting, the cement scraping, the faint strains of the Grace thrillers 'Homecoming Day' floating down from the open hearse doors, and I knew her gentle ways and determination would not be sealed with her there, but would return with me on my journey.

- Natalee Grant