Bun and Cheese

“Don miss mi a bun an cheese”, was the reminder from the woman who sells me a newspaper each morning.

With a nod and a wave and a Gleaner, I eased the Dogwagon back into my own lane and continued the drive to work, adding this new task to the scores of others that fill my to-do spreadsheet. This was a short week and I had enough on my plate as it is.

Easter weekend was fast approaching, and you could sense that special something in the air, that special kind of chocolate rabbit, plastic egg, stale peeps, and bun and cheese something. It moved towards me like a sheet of chocolate glaze on a frosting line in a doughnut factory. Unavoidable, saturating, sugar coated and made with real lard.

The Jamaicans love this holiday.

The Jamaicans love the religious aspect, although the predominantly Christian population never appears more than dutifully pious. There are more churches per capita here than anywhere else on the planet. If I was out in the church districts that Sunday morning, I may have seen them packed to overflowing with believers, anxious to renew their faith on their holiest of days.

I was instead worshiping the gods of fish and coral, rejoicing in the miracle of the sponge. I was witnessing the annual rebirth of the tens of thousands of thimble jellyfish which cover the reef this time of year as I contemplated another Earth Day past.

The Jamaicans love Carnival, which begins on Easter. This is an annual festival liberated from the Trinidadians. It is one big Socapalooza, with parades and bands, skimpy costumes and wriggling dancers, steel drums and lawlessness for an entire week. We do not see much of Carnival on the north side of the island, as most of the celebrations are in the urban areas around Kingston, where it provides a week of release from the dictates and traditions of Lent.

The Jamaicans love the fact that Easter is a four day weekend, with Good Friday and Easter Monday designated National Holidays. It also heralds the start of spring break for the schoolchildren, who will spend the next week doing what school kids always do when given time off from school – they forget everything they were to have retained since the term began.

And, for reasons unexplained, Jamaicans love the bun and cheese, the national Easter dish.

Bun is the Jamaican equivalent of fruitcake. It is a quick bread, barely leaven with either baking powder or baking soda, made with flour and fruits, flavored with allspice, molasses and sugar. This time of year, the Easter Bun appears in the bakery aisle, augmenting the everyday styles of bun that usually reside there. The Easter variety bun usually has more fruit, but otherwise tastes exactly the same as the pedestrian bun.

At other times of the year, bun and cheese is a poor man’s lunch. At about the same cost as a meat patty, you can get a little protein and some carbohydrates at any bakery and at many of the snack vendors. The wealthy Jamaicans never eat bun and cheese for lunch though, as it is a poor man’s food, not suitable for the working man fully able to afford the noontime purchase of curried goat, chicken foot soup, ox tail, or cow skin.

Of course, this changes at Easter, when everyone will eat the bun and the cheese. Mostly because it is free, provided by your employer by tradition. On Wednesday evening, my grateful and generous boss provided me with the largest of the Easter buns, weighing in at some kilo and a half, having the density of wet laundry. With the bun came a quarter wheel of mystery cheese. “Now, what am I to do with a kilo of cheese and a lead brick of a bun”, I said to no one in particular.

Then I heard a voice in my head. “Don miss mi a bun an cheese”, it said. Was it a memory of the newspaper woman, or was it just a convenient and well timed literary vehicle? Regardless, I gave my bun and cheese to the newspaper woman at first light the next day. Not unlike how I may treat a gifted fruitcake, should I ever be so fortunate as to receive one.

Working in my own space later in the day, I missed the day-before-the-holiday bun and cheese spectacular in the Contractor’s office. Apparently, they had for distribution ample buns and cheeses for each of their two hundred fifty staff and employees, packaged with their glad tidings, good will and redundancy payments.

For those with little time spent in the Commonwealth, you get redundancy payments when you are made redundant, and being made redundant is the British equivalent of being laid off,... all two hundred fifty of them,... effective immediately. Have a happy Easter.


The weekend was exceptionally quiet. Driving to work on Tuesday was unbelievably quiet, with none of the Contractor’s vehicles on the road, and none of the usual throngs of children standing on the verge, waiting for rides or for school to start. I had the feeling that, when the Contractor had abandoned the project, they sucked all life out of the project limits. I could already see the cobwebs collect on their materials and machinery. Failure appeared across the wide expanses of uncompleted highway.

“Anywhere but Muscatine”, I wailed to no one in particular.

There is never much snow here, as Jamaica is an island in the Tropics, yet there were flurries on Tuesday. Flurries of phone calls, a flurry or two of activity, and flurries of mood swings amongst the local staff. The Ministry needed answers, as did the press. We listened to the Ministry. We ignored the press, barring their entrance to the camp. We tried to be supportively non-committal to our local staff, who each saw their jobs going the way of the Contractor. We found some finalization tasks to keep them working for a week or two, but then our staff may be unavoidably unemployed.

Redundant.

There is a possibility that the Contractor will be able to successfully renegotiate the balance of the work on the project, in an effort to not lose any more money and to stay on the job, but this possibility is slim. A more likely possibility is that what remains of the contract will be retendered, in which case our expatriate staff will need to process the new and revised Contract Documents and ultimately manage the new Contract. This could stretch into months or years of work. Another possibility is that the entire project will be abandoned in place, and we will all be sent packing. The next few weeks will be a challenge.

In the early 1980's, there did exist a somewhat entertaining Midwestern punk band. With Joey Destroi on guitar, Bif Blammo on bass, Retch Gurgle on throat, and some character named Joel as the percussionist. I believe that their name was No Future For Me. I was just thinking about them, humming a few of the old tunes, wondering why they never recorded anything called “Effigy Jello Head”. Anyway,...

Pops once told me that international work was never assured until you actually stepped off of the plane and onto the tarmac at your destination.

Hmm. Almost. Only change is assured.

BA often tells me that challenge equals opportunity.

Yeah, mon.