With recent happenings in Jamaica I find myself returning to childhood experiences in an attempt to run for cover and protection.

Many mornings while I walk or do my devotion I reflect on what I used to do as a young child in the hills of Clarendon.  I seem to be running for refuge all too frequently these days.  Running from corruption; running from conflict; running from leaders who come up short; running from crime and violence.  I find my mind meandering to things that were commonplace back then.  For example, when adults wanted to talk ‘big people business’, this could be a likely scenario.  They would dispatch us to do some chore, that we had either just done or it wasn’t time for, legitimate though it may be.

‘Errol and Fae run go over common (akin to a pasture) si if di goat dem tangle (entangled) up roun di guava tree.’  We had to leave without a murmur.  We couldn’t say that we had ‘moved’ (changed their position) them only minutes before.  Although reluctant of heart we left with alacrity.  Confession: sometimes when dem tink wi gaan a bush or gaan move di goat dem wi did just crawl into the cellar or tiptoe to the house corner and get our bit of the district gossip.  That was quite rare though because should we be caught we ‘bottom would pay for roas’ and bwile’.  That means we would get a proper beating.  As a much younger child that comment would be, ‘Don’t let me lace yuh bottom’.

Let me tell you what my creative cousin Errol did one day.  My mother used to have guava switches/whips readymade for administering the ‘licking’.  Well, my innovative cousin knowing full well that it was just a matter of time before we were administered to, decided to ‘ring the whip’.  He took a knife and circled the whip at regular intervals by cutting fairly deeply into the skin.  It would not be immediately discernable to an angry person.  So, true to form, we got into trouble.I can’t recall who was dispatched to get the whip but it was Errol who got the first taste.  Well on impact with skin the whip disintegrated into several 4—6-inch pieces.

He had the whole thing planned.  Being younger I had only prepared for this moment but not beyond.  Now that there was no more whip or beating taking place and no more Errol — he had taken off at a speed that would have seriously challenged Donald Quarrie (1976 Olympic Gold Medallist), I was left standing facing an enraged mother.

Shelly-Ann Fraser (100-metre Beijing Olympic gold medallist) would have had nothing over me when I made a dash for the front yard and levitated up a very tall ackee tree.  As my spindly legs disappeared around the corner of the house, on the wind I heard, ‘When I hold you, yuh going to si which part wata walk go a pumkin belly’.  I saw it.  But that’s my secret.

My grandmother and mother coined phrases, words, complete vocabularies.  For instance when my grandmother — who was very aware of the importance of sustaining the environment — thought she heard someone felling trees or chopping wood over at the woodland without permission.  In order to hear exactly where in the woodland the incident was happening, she would announce firmly but softly, ‘ Tantuddy’.

I believe literally it meant be steady, don’t move, be still.  But it became to mean be quiet.  If one is to be quiet then clearly you have to be still, in and out.

Then think of the time my mother dubbed a member of the district who was not deemed too bright a ‘Fantefeck’.  I know what it means but I can’t explain it.  Some things are just like that.  It is clear that he also knew the meaning because although he was illiterate he got ‘hignarant’ when she called him so to his face.

He was the same one who came up with the perfect remedy for me after I developed asthma between eight and nine years old.  Everyone in the district was truly concerned for Miss Mae daughter.  (By the way, being an asthmatic was my passport to Kingston).

So he arrived in the yard one day complete with machete.  Not unusual at all.  Everybody travelled with a machete, even children.  And we were not violent; we were not planning to murder anyone.  It was just the technology of the time.  We used machetes to cut bananas, dig yam hill, cut wiss (wild vines) and chop wood for fire.  Anyway back to the asthma.

Here is the conversation:

Fantefeck: Miss Mae ef yuh want Fae fi get rid a di asthama all yuh need fi do is mek ‘ar stand up (a)’gainst a young tree; use a sharp machete and chop off the top of the tree (all the time demonstrating animatedly how it is to be done) and when she grow pass di tree she will grow out di asthma’.

My mother: (Eyes formed into narrow slits with a piercing focus).  Yes Maas…, so what happen when di machete slip? (meaning when it is my head and not the tree that is chopped).  (A look of, you tink I mad like you) ‘Get di hell ot of mi yaad.’

Were he a child she would have said, ‘If a grab yuh a whistle’ or ‘If a hold you today yuh go up a gum tree.’

Although many of these phrases were not unique to my home some I have heard nowhere else.  I must tell you though that in her eyes the ‘Fantefeck’ population has grown particularly in 21st century Jamaica where the ‘Fantefecks’ are not illiterate, nor are they contained in rural Jamaica, to the contrary.

My column is published every other week, so back with you on March 28, 2010 DV. Walk good!

Fae Ellington is a broadcast journalist, lecturer in radio and a communication consultant.  Your views and comments are welcome. Send them to fae@mail.infochan.com