Accommodations

If you are planning a visit to our fair island, I am sure you will want to know what you are getting yourself into. That may be why you read these, or you may want to see what we have gotten ourselves into. Regardless, today’s rant regards housing.

If we cannot meet you at the airport, you may have to take a taxi or rent a car. Not that anyone has yet had to do this. With a big international airport like Sangster, we would hate you to get lost between the nine gates and three (one working) baggage carousels, so we try to pick everyone up eventually. In the off chance that we cannot, we drive on the left here, so be careful. As you leave the airport, you will enter the first of many roundabouts (the word will make you out and out). Enter to the left, of course, and get off at the first left. Drive west until you are almost past the airport, but not quite. You will pass the jerk stand that is never open, and pass the Ministry maintenance yard with their hectare of rust. Just past the broken water main that is never fixed, and opposite the football field there is a turn to the right up the hill. Do not make this turn. In fact, these directions are wrong. Go back to the roundabout at the airport and try again.

Had you turned, you would have ended up in a neighborhood called Flankers. I know very little about this place except that we were told explicitly to never go there. These are the slums of Montego Bay. Potentially as bad as a West Kingston Garrison, it is controlled by rude bwoys. The residents do not take kindly to strangers, or so I hear. For all I know, it could be nirvana up that hill, just a nirvana camouflaged with tin shacks, stick shacks, blue tarped shacks, and scattered herds of rambling goats.

Better to head into town for now.

So instead, take the high road, upper road, or Queen’s Drive out of the airport roundabout. It is all the same road, anyway. At the next roundabout, turn on Sir Howard Cooke, then through two roundabouts down to Alice Eldermire, then to the roundabout at Southern Cross, then turn on Sunset and proceed to the last complex on the right. In the last klick and a half, there are a dozen sleeping policemen for your driving pleasure. A dozen in,... a dozen out.

One of the benefits of living on the tip of a peninsula is that there is little through traffic. Yet, when the peninsula is largely landfill, it may end up as flat as ours, which leads to excessive speeders on the lightly traveled roadway, and the eventual placement of, what we call in the industry, “traffic calming devices”. The speed bumps do quite the opposite, annoying the hell into me, and I curse them daily. The Dogwagon has a stiff and poorly refined suspension, so I must cross each bump in first or second gear. Some of the neighbours though, with their Rovers, Lexi, and gold plated SUV’s, can afford to run the bumps at 80 kph and not feel a thing.

The resultant speed differential would be hazard enough, except that the road is also well used by the local driving schools. With their large red “L(ame)” mounted on the rear bumper, the instructors do not allow the students to exceed a forward velocity above idle. Three abreast is not uncommon, as I pass the learners and get passed simultaneously. The oncoming traffic may notice and pull left at the very least.

The bumps are a hassle, but one which will soon be eased. Only eased, mind you, as we are only moving four speed bumps down the road. Yet four speed bumps each way every day yields an almost three kilobump reduction in the next year.

We like our current apartment. For one, we live there now. As well, there is a great view of the marina and the hills between Bogue and Reading. Two pools, well landscaped, good security and quiet neighbors have great appeal. However, our landlord has not owned the place for six months, so it is probably time we stopped paying him and move on.

He told us seven or eight months ago, one month prior to lease renewal, that we would not be renewed. “Fine”, we said, “just give us six more months”. So, six months later, and we had yet to find a new place to house our guests. Our plan is to move to the complex next door. It is only a three bump reduction, but the apartment is nice.

We will still take it eventually, but only after the second segment of this project is underway. At that time, the current occupant, one of my coworkers, will move on to the next phase and a new place to live closer to the nexus. In typical Jamaican fashion, the start-up of Segment Two has been delayed,... again. Originally, it was to have started two years after Segment One started, and Segment Three two years after that. Since each project was to have had a two year duration, the Segment One staff was to have followed the work across the island, leaving dust and pristine asphalt in their wake.

But that was not to be. By the original schedule, this segment was to have been completed eighty days after the wife and I got to the island, and will probably take five years to complete. It is no surprise that further segments are also delayed. For the most part, the foreign funding folks saw the problems we had here with relocations and utilities and threatened to withhold the money until the problems were resolved. In addition, the apparent low bidder for Segment Two was declared naughty, so there was much last minute contract wrangling.

So we wait and wait for an apartment which fails to materialize and we get left inside a thirty cubit lurch. We had looked for housing out of the neighborhood, but the downside of those residences was that they were out of the neighborhood, and the Freeport peninsula really is the most western place to live in Montego Bay. ...and twelve speed bumps and three gatehouses go far in reducing the general riff raff quotient.

So, with just a couple weeks until we would be out on the street, our penultimate plans failing, and I resolve myself to find a place to live for the next quarter by nightfall, and we do, and we move in two days. This will give me little time to repair the major damage in the current place and to steal the fixtures.

Oh, our current contract with the Company has expired, but we will re-up.

How could we not? It be life in the tropics, mon.

Cazart! Read More......