And so ! Hurrican Dean came and went and so did my latest attempt at working in the ground transportation sector. I hate to whine as a past friend has accused me ofbut why cant people pay people for doin a decent job ? Why must i use all my skills knowledge and experience to be continually underpaid. No more.
I am going to take the plunge and absolutely broke as i am I am going to start an Everyday Education Shop in Down Town Kingston. I am going to work because I want to . i am going to design the curriculum to suit each individual. we will draw, paint, act, mime, recite poetry written by Caribbeans, Africans and others even Shakespeare and Movado. I need stuff like PCs that are modern and art supplies fashion and hip hop magazines. Send then come please and dont forget to pay the duty.

waiting on the elections to happen is rather like another hurrcaine it could be hit or it could flop and quite possibly flip or even not change its course .It is just another excuse to have a party political or otherwise , play loud music and take a day off work. Currently wondering if there are any white folks that came to Jamaica in the 1990s that are actually still in Jamaica and have been successful whatever that is! i cannot measure my success or failure by recognition or bling or even my own home or car or even another piece of academic achievement. I am alive and breathing and sweating profusly cant be bad. As yvette would say ,'Its all good.' Later. Thank Almighty Jah jah for tall taureans.

Wednesday oops Thursday 6th another 22 days before the 59 earthday give thanks that i have made it this far. Spent the day scrubing the floor of my new venture the Personal development place in Down town kingston. I am very excited and positive even though I am very very alone. I know there are people in UK who will be proud of me and who will send pencils that do not break and water based markers that really write. SEEN 

Saturday 8th september

tomorrow would have been my daddy's earthday . bless up daddy cos well that is another story.

it is not good when the latest SUVs are parked outside or inside the backdoors of shops and business place and a young girl of about seven or eight years old has to bring her baby sister to 'use the bathroom' right there on the pavement/sidewalk in full view of any passer by . I cannot get the image out of my mind or the expression on the older childs face when I said, ' oh dear why do you have to do that there?'

'me will clean it up miss'

I felt so bad . I thought immediately of my hatered of the school bathrooms at my country primary school and of my unwillingness to use them and the multiplicity of effects on every aspect of my well being since then. my well being

'Dont you have a bathrom at home?'

'Yes miss but we come to sell'

'cant you go to the patty shop and use theirs?'

'You need to show the receipt miss'

'OK well next time do it on a piece of card in a bag or something'

'yes miss me will clean it up.'

What did I just say ? I looked at the vehicles and then looked at the volume of people and the mountains of rubbish and thought about the one and only public toilet in Down Town Kingston,that cost twenty dollars for a surly woman to tell you to 'dont make a mess' and hand you some rolled up toilet tissue. The toilet is situated about 500 yards or more away and it is reached through a living battle ground of cart men , stuff laid out all over the road, impassable bottlenecks and a wonderful array of street side sellers who block all means of exit/escape  to the centre of the road. Your are trapped behind displays of school bags and back to school, shoes, underwear , books and pencils that break as soon as they are sharpened. Geometry sets with compasses that do not work and have no point. Although I

The expression on the little girsl face as she strained quite badly to defacate was understandable. How could she relax and go about her business in full view of a somewhat potentially awful old white woman who for all she knew was the devil incarnate. The one troublsome stool that she had manage to free from her little bowels was lumpy and practically white. Rather like the stools of the street dogs who have not seen any thing to eat  or than small already chewed bones and pot water. I thought of this dehumanising situation for the little girl, what a start to the elimination situation how will this effect this little girls digestive system and pyschological well being. Stomache cancer, diviticulosis , chronic constipation , migrane headaches? retention of all emtions and poisonous substances.

Somebody out there PLEASE come and build some publc conveniences in down town kingston so that human beings will not have to behave in such demeaning manner. Talk about bus station , theatres and car parks for the wealthy minority.  Huge and ugly hotel for southern Europeans who begin their second coming in search of US Dollars , Euros and further exploitation and conversions. A triple emslavement begins here. It will most certainly get much worse .

If the new government wants people to behave in a better way then they should live up to their public duty and build some properly tiled and monitored toilets.

Some nice indestrucatable, stainless steel automatic flush (cant steal the water) like you get in UK prisons that have relinquished to bucket system.

What do I do about this now? take a supply of plastic bags , tie them on a hook and write a sign that says please shit in this bag or collect each days dropped patty receipts and distribute them to the children and the ladies who do hair dressing on the road?

I have not been very disciplined where this blog thing is concerned by the time I have reached home after all the scrubbing, scraping and shovelling I am so  exhausted I go through the motions and fall asleep watching the box.

A most interesting character is passing by each day at  about lunch time. Most mornings I wash off the sidewalk to remove the urine stains from the previous night.  However it seems that the cleaner the place  is the nicer it is to piss on.
When humans have been dehumanised for so long they seem to take up habitual places to pee in a similar way to some animals who love mark up the place with their scent. Last week Monday morning I could not believe my eyes when a middle aged woman , who dressed like a 'Christian' (Born again type) with the long skirt , crisp spotless white blouse and cane rowed hair hiked up her skirt , squatted down, sticking out her shinning black bottom for all to see and did a wee wee.   In about an hour two more ladies followed suit. The last one had on very tight, three quarter jeans pants however that did not present any problem for her . when you have to go you have to go. Monday morning three ladies all went in the same spot.

NOW I noticed the dead animal smell from early on but did not noticed the spot from whence it came. The mad woman ,who to me looks like a cross between a very trendy vivienne westwood model and malnourished rather grubby  teenager, strides down the street with her big flour sack bag on her shoulder , lime green mini dress and white trainers complete the outfit. Without breaking her stride she stoops down and picks up something and  places it deftly into the bag. YUK what is that smell that is worse than ten garbage trucks at midday,the decaying  rat  is now snuggled down in the bag and the aroma follows the mad woman like a train of green chiffon.  It would seem that the mad woman , who they call Sharron, was born in America and her mother found her to be unmanageable so she shipped her down to Jamaica.
I forgot the Fish man on Friday.
This chap really did look like a vagrant , he was very very grubby indeed and his hair was quite curly and pretty. He had a scandal (black plastic) bag in one  hand and an old cardboard box in the other. He sat down next to the light post and proceeded to tear up the box. he made two rectangular pieces of cardboard of the same size. He took a bigger piece of box and then emptied the contents of the scandal bag on to it. The fish glistened in the midday sun. The man very very carefully began to arrange the fish on the first piece of card. He laid them out head to tail , just like slaves in a slave ship, squashing them together so that they fitted together perfectly . This took abot 15 minutes . when he seemed satisfied with the way the fish arrangement was, he took up the next piece of card and did the same thing . He then placed one card on top of the other and put them  carefully back into the scandal bag. For the rest of the day I wondered if he was going to sell them somewhere. Was he going to eat them? Did he catch them in the harbour ?  Did he used to sell fish . I noted the care and precision that he took to arrange the fish so perfectly and wondered why and how did he go mad.
It is quite easy to go mad in Jamaica Yes you've got to be strong as Sizzla sings cos if you are weak , soft (saaft) they call it, you will go down. You have to think on your feet , keep your secrets to yourself, do not talk your business to even your best friend as they WILL steal your ideas and if you can be got to work without a contract or job letter you will not get paid. 

The mad woman will from here on be known as Sharron till I get to talk with  her which I feel will happen soon. After abusing me on Tuesday I will not disclose what she said at me and I never even looked up from my daily scrubbing of the sidewalk, On wednesday she was kicking rocks again and sticking her toes into holes in the road as if looking for hidden treasure. Each day she has a different bag and different shoes. I can remember seeing a long wig that one of the hairdressing girls must have discarded on the ever growing rubbish heap at the top of the road and thinking I bet my girl picks that up today and low and behold what did she in her hand yep yep - the wig!. NOW on saturday I had just finished cleaning the 'toilet' (sidewalk in USA pavement in UK) and along comes Sharron she utters only one word that actually made my whole day . 'Better' she says as she walks down ,barefoot today, still kicks a few rocks for good measure and sticks her bare toe into a couple of holes and digs out some dirt.

Saturday I thought I might loose the space as somebody came to look at it and was supposed to be going to share my little section. Did I cry Friday night its always the same I fix up somewhere make the changes and then it is taken over by someone else . This building had not been used for five years and now since the white woman has single handedly laboured for three weeks to clean it up sidewalk , roof, drainage pipes you name it . somebody else wants a piece. I must get something on paper that tells me I am safe.