Monday, 11 July 2016

A JAMAICAN CHILDHOOD - THE DAY SHAKA'S GUARDIAN ANGEL, MISS DORIS, SAVED HIM FROM CERTAIN DEATH







Rafting on the Rio Grande, in Portland, Jamaica



Shaka, like many other children growing up in his native Jamaica, enjoyed a life which was not suffocated by overly close supervision by adults. He had a lot of freedom to roam about, within reason, and explore and enjoyed the flora and fauna around him. In his pastime, Shaka would spend time with his mates and notable men in the village, who would tell them Duppy and Rolling Calf stories. They would listen as these men, and, at times, the other boys, reel of stories about  people going up to Janga Gully and hearing chains being drawn on the earth, before they would be confronted by the terrifying looking and feared Rolling  Calf, whereupon they would run like hell to save their lives from the creature. 

At other times, Shaka would be listening to the story tellers relating how Obeah Men and Women would catch Duppy and put them into bottles and corked it, before taking them to the sea side and torturing them by getting them to count sand, knowing well that Duppy cannot count beyond the number 3.  Of how the Obeahmem would beat the poor puppy after he counted 1, 2, 3, and began to wail and beg for mercy, as the Obeahman lick everytime he gets to 3 and then start over again, 1,2.....   Looking back on it now, Shaka wondered why nobody ever asked why the duppy never runaway when they were taken out of the bottles. It must have had something to do with their fear of the Obeahman, as opposed to ordinary mortals who they tormented.  


It was stories like these, and the fact that dead people had been buried on the family’s land,  about 5 or so metres behind the outdoor toilet, which made it a frightening challenge for Shaka and his brothers, especial his younger brother, when they had to go out during the dark nights, with just a paraffin fuelled bottle torch to light their way. It was not surprising that they and Shaka would always be looking out for duppy,  would imagine that they were being followed by duppy, and, at times, could swear that they saw a duppy some distance in front of them, especially if anybody had recently died in the village. 

In order to protect himself when he was going out or coming home during the dark, Shaka would sing, make noise or cursed – it was ‘well-known’ that duppy, for some unknown reason, are fearful of swearing. While it could be a frightening experience going out at night during the darkness,  it was also seen as a brave thing for a young lad to do.


Shaka also remembered other scary stories he had been told, such as people going to the river to catch fish, and encountering ‘duppy fish, that, after being caught and killed by the person, would then tell the person, ‘now you kill me, yuh haf fi eat me.’ It was common knowledge when Shaka was growing up that duppy could take the form of any animal, be it a dog, a cat, a cow, a lizard or even a bird. Indeed, Shaka remembered the first and only time he killed a pigeon with a stone, how surprised he was, and how he was worried that it was ‘duppy pigeon'.

Fearful as duppy and Rollin Calf were, it was not one of them which nearly took Shaka’s life, had Miss Doris had not been washing her clothes on a certain fateful day.

As Shaka remembered it, and his mother clarified it, he was not yet 5 years old, when a family friend, Linda, send him to get some clothes she had washed at Johnson River, and spread out on the far side of the river to dry. Doing as he was told to do, Shaka approached the river and began making his way across it.  It was not long before he was drowning. Shaka remembered being washed away by the swift current, with his head breaking above water as he trashed about wildly, before being immersed by the current again. 

Fortunately for Shaka, there was a guardian angel present, in the form of a Miss Doris, who was out doing her washing, and was able to rescue Shaka from the jaws of a watery death. It would appear that she might have noticed the small child approaching the river – Shaka cannot remember whether Miss Doris might have shouted to him not to go into to water – and then disappearing before she knew what was happening. She must then have looked downstream only to observed Shaka’s head popping out and under the water, and then raced to rescue him. Having rescued a terrified Shaka, Miss Doris delivered him safely to his grateful mother



And so it was that Shaka might not have lived to give life to others and make his contribution to the common good, had it not been for the timely intervention of a guardian angel by the name of Miss Doris.

The End



The eroded landscape caused by the Johnson River and poor land management, such as cutting roads through woods and removing the vegetation that used to retain the soil.







No comments: