Greetings from Kingston, Jamaica

I hope everyone back home is having a wonderful Fourth of July.  No fireworks for me here in Kingston, Jamaica.  Well, there were fireworks for me, but only in my mind!

When I left home on Thursday, I told myself that I would do something a little different this time, just for fun.  During this trip, I’ve been making a concerted effort to be just a little more observant of my surroundings….trying to do a better job of noticing people, happenings, things that are going on around me that I normally would probably not notice.  It’s working!  It amazes me what you can see if you just open your eyes and pay attention!

I’m not talking about the normal things…anyone will notice how full the overhead bins are on your flight, or the fact that you’ve got a crying baby two rows back on the plane that won’t be quiet, or how dirty your rental car is when you pick it up, or the hundreds of other mundane happenings around you when you’re out in the world.  No, I’m talking about the things that would normally go unnoticed.  Those little tidbits, the micro-events that you only get to see if you are truly in an observing mode.

Of course, there are things here in Jamaica that just jump right out at you!  Right now Jamaica is experiencing some of the hottest, driest, windiest weather that people here can remember in their lives.  Everything is totally brown and dried.  In the sugar cane fields, they depend on controlled fires each year to get rid of all the leafy parts of the cane.  At harvest time they start fires that burn for days, filling the air with smoke.  On the road between Kingston and Clarendon Parish, where my work is, you can see several locations where some sugar cane farmer has started his fire, but with these strong winds and the dryness, the fires have gotten out of control, burning areas that shouldn’t have burned, including homes and businesses.

But back to noticing the normally unnoticed….

This is a picture of Mr. Wray.  If you tap on the picture you can enlarge it to get a good look at him.  I’ve been coming here to work at Jamalco for something like 25 years….Mr. Wray sells the newspaper (the Jamaica Observer) just outside the plant gate, and has done so for as long as I’ve been coming down here.  I’ve always “noticed” him as I come in the plant gates, but honestly, I’ve never really seen him.  On Friday morning, I arrived at the plant and my Visitor’s Pass wasn’t waiting for me at the gate.  The guard asked me to pull my car over to the side while he sorted out my pass.  As I was sitting there in my car waiting, I saw Mr. Wray just sort of appear out of the crowd of workers waiting to go in the gate.  He purposefully made his way toward his usual place by the side of the entry road.

Mr. Wray is severely crippled, always has been, and drags a foot behind him as he walks.  Once he finally got to his spot, he turned away from the gate entry road, wiped his brow with his handkerchief, took some deep breaths to recover from the struggle of his hard walk from home.  He shook his head a little and looked up, talking to himself as if he were either cussing the pain or saying a prayer.  Then I saw him smile as he turned back around and got to work.  As I sat in my car just a few feet away, completely unnoticed by him, I was able to see him up close as he assumed his position at the gate.  His bundle of newspapers was there on the curb, having been delivered for him as they are each day from Kingston by a motorcycle courier.

Everyone knows Mr. Wray.  I would say that at least every third car would stop and buy a paper from him, while others driving by would greet him with a wave or a tap on the horn.  As each customer’s car pulled up to him, they would exchange a smile or a laugh, a few words of greeting and perhaps a handshake, before they completed the transaction.  He’d tip his dirty red newsboy cap, put the money in the pocket of his filthy and worn old work pants, and then go pull another paper from the bundle, ready for the next customer.  The whole time I was there, I never once saw him look down at the words on the front of the newspaper.  Not even a curious casual glance at the headlines.  That made me wonder if he was even able to read the news that was printed on the pages he distributed each day.

That’s his spot and always has been.  Most times he’s standing there, greeting customers.  But sometimes I’ve seen him sitting on the curb while the cars pull over to him, as if on some days the pain is too great for him to stand there, and his customers accommodate him by driving over close to him so he doesn’t have to stand up.  Notice the road sign.  Some days he leans on the sign for support.  You can see the worn spots on the left side of the sign, where his hands normally rest, supporting his body when his legs just can’t do the job.

Like clockwork, Mr. Wray is there every day, doing his job, providing news to the people, greeting them with a cheerful smile and kind word.  The words on the paper are not important to him, but they are to his customers.  What’s important to him is the job, the livelihood, the purpose.  I have no idea how far he walks from his home to the plant, on those crippled legs, to get there and back again, but he does it, each and every day.  Making a living in this harsh world.