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:
Post a Comment