I wanna jog it with you

Our sleep was broken at 5:30am this morning by a knock on the door and a voice saying, “Hello, good-morning, its time for our walk, our exercise.”
We leapt out of bed and were washed, dressed and ready to go with in minutes. Mar had promised to take us walking, which is part of her weekly exercise. So armed with a bottle of water, we made our way to Queen’s Hill at a brisk pace.

As the ladies walked, I started jogging, but kept them in sight by doing 30-40 metre circles around them. Queen’s Hill was very steep and a lot of people exercised there: jogging, walking, stretching, sit-ups etc. The views from the top of the hill were magnificent, as you can see from some photos Crecy took.

We returned via Red Hills, which was all down hill, but the road was windy, so we had to stay close to the hedges because of the cars and buses. As we walked pass the bottom of Queen’s Hill there was huge gully and some captured land (squatted land) on our left, I saw three John Crows (vultures) pecking at a dead animal, I remember hearing my dad use the phase, “you john crow,” but never really knew what it meant or what a john crow was so I took a picture and thought how it related to his saying. The homes on the captured land were make shift made from: bits of wood, tarpaulin, zinc, corrugated iron and breeze-blocks to keep the roof anchored down, in fact anything that could be used; toilets and kitchens appear to be separate annexes.

As we were walking through St Patrick’s a resident said to Mar, “You losing weight or keeping fit?”
“Both.” She replied,
To which he replied, “Thy kingdom, thy will be done, if you born fi be big, you can only keep fit.”

After a shower, I had roast breadfruit and mangoes for breakfast. At noon we walked to the local Plaza with Andre (Mar’s son) to do some shopping, but were disappointed to find there where only a few shops, the exit to the plaza was full of hawkers and taxis touting for business. Migal, Jackie’s brother drove there, which was just as well, because it began to rain and he gave us a lift home. We spent the rest of the afternoon twiddling our thumps and after the rain stopped, we stood at the front gate watching, waiting, and greeting people as they passed by. Dinner was chicken-foot soup, followed by mangoes; called Julie mangoes, much sweeter and more fleshly than the number 11, stringy or green-gauge. After dinner we checked in with England and sat around waiting for Mar to return home.

Mar arrived home about 6:30pm and took us to Emancipation Park or Penis Park to the locals, in up town Kingston. The park has a statue of a naked man and women at its main entrance (hence the locals name for the park), a 400 metre jogging path, a number of trees (coco tree, see pic) and plants from home and aboard, water fountain, concert stand and its own security guards, to ensure the park is used correctly by its visitors. It is such a beautiful park that there were two wedding parties taking pictures. An hour or so later we left for Devon House Mansion.



Devon House is the architectural dream of Jamaica’s first black millionaire George Stiebel. Stiebel was among three wealthy Jamaicans who constructed elaborate homes during the late 19th century at the corner of Trafalgar Road and Hope Road, which fittingly became known as the Millionaires Corner. Unfortunately the house was closed due to a private function. But the gardens and some shops were still open. After looking around the souvenir shop, we went into the scream shop (there spelling not mine), and order ice cream, there were 31 different favours to choose from and after a twenty minute wait, we sat in the gardens soaking up the atmosphere, whilst enjoying a delectable ice-cream. On the way home we quizzed Mar about which church we should attend, she couldn’t recommend any because she knew very little about them, so we agreed to attend the church of Nazarene.