Ganja Man

By Ron McDonough, Noah McDonough and Prof. Ric Curtis

A true story of a Jamaican drug trafficker and ex-convict in the early 1970's, based on the author's two years of research in a coastal area of the island as a young anthropologist. The book is devoted to an odyssey with "Storm," an armed "Rastaman" and "obeahman" (sorcerer), from his time as a fugitive and destitute ganja planter in the Crown land mountains to his ultimate success in the newly established, burgeoning export trade in marijuana to the U.S. and Canada. Chapters chronicle police raids, reprisals against thieves and informers, disputes with ganja "partners," family break-ups, and rare, firsthand accounts of the "white and black arts" of "obeah." The book also deals with the impact of widespread political corruption on Jamaica's "sufferers" and the evolution of the island's political gangs, drug lords and "garrison communities."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Nov 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685830861

Book preview

Preface

Babylon: 1. Any city or place of corruption. 2. Any place of captivity or exile.

In 2014, I published the first edition of this book and since then have received a variety of opinions about it, including suggestions to revise parts of it. As a result, I decided to write this second version. I also decided that the book needed a preface to clarify some general points about its purpose and focus. To begin with, although its content is based on research I did years ago in Jamaica, I consciously wrote it more as a memoir than a study. It is a memoir with critical points to be made, however, which I’d thought was fairly clear in the first edition. Nonetheless, some readers have told me that the book’s argument needs to be explained more succinctly.

In wrestling with this, it occurred to me that the people I worked with there (and their counterparts across the island) had already captured this argument more succinctly than I ever could in the single word Babylon. The dictionary excerpt offered above defines it in a way, but to them it also meant the oppressors and their enforcers, the police. It meant sufferation and exploitation and all o’ de fuckery dat go on down here. That is what this book is about, and its argument (in their terms) is about the terrible wrongness of their city– which persists until this day – and how they themselves tried to battle Babylon as best they could, including the man I named the book after. He ended up winning his battle, even though I never thought he would. He did it as a successful criminal and to a large extent in response to all de crimes Babylon done to me.

And this leads me to a different set of critics: those who have told me that chapters of the book devoted to the widespread problems of political corruption there and their combined impacts on the vast majority of the people I worked with and Jamaicans generally are too distracting or get in the way of the book’s attention to the story of its main character and all the good stuff, as one put it, by which I’m pretty sure he meant guns and drug-dealing and police raids and sorcery and violence. Well, I did change some chapters to accommodate those concerns. But I have two reasons, in terms of my argument, for not cutting any other parts: (1) I’m not about to publish a book about criminals that excludes any attention to the biggest and most dangerous criminals of all; and (2) I’m sure that the man whose story allowed me to write this book would’ve been furious with me if I somehow let all o’ dem wicked bloodclot’s, as he often called them, off the hook.

There were also a few critics who suggested that the book raises a number of wider cultural and societal issues and questions that need to be addressed in terms of all of the characters and events described in it. All I can respond to them is, however true that may be, I cannot answer those questions. It was hard enough for me to answer the ones that I did.

Finally, some said I should explain why it took me so many years to publish the book. That’s a lot simpler to respond to, although it wasn’t a simple thing to go through. I initially worked on it as a Ph.D. thesis, on and off, through several years of lecturing in anthropology, but I was never able to put all of the different parts of my fieldwork into a coherent whole. That was largely because the path of research I started on there suddenly took me on a very different journey. I ended up shelving the manuscript when I left university to work on government development programs and then with Indigenous communities.

I will note, however, that I wouldn’t have been able to publish it then in any case, because even taking account of all the pseudonyms I invented for local people and places, it still would’ve been too incriminating. Let’s just say that Jamaica can become a very small island when you get as critical as I have been in this book of the powers that be. Several years ago, after our last trip to Jamaica, my wife said to me, You should dig out that manuscript and write a book about what happened down there and publish the damn thing. So that’s what I did, even though it turned out to be the least simple part of all.

Introduction

In 1969, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) initiated some intensive anti-smuggling campaigns to try to combat the massive flow of pot from Mexico into the U.S., estimated by some sources then at well over a million pounds a year. (A DEA official along the Texas border at the time described earlier enforcement efforts as like trying to catch a snowstorm in a teacup.) While these programs didn't stop the trade there, they reduced the supply significantly for at least a year or more and caused some major disruptions in smuggling operations.

The demand for pot, however, had continued to accelerate, and so many wholesale smugglers during this period looked for alternative sources of supply. Jamaica became an obvious choice, both because of its proximity to the U.S., about 500 miles from the southern tip of Florida, and the fact that superior grades of the drug, with potency levels two to five times stronger than Mexican commercial grades, were already being produced there for the island-wide market (including the hundreds of thousands of followers of Ras Tafarai).

This shift began just before I arrived in Jamaica in 1970, although it was not until the year after that more frequent news reports of seizures confirmed the increasing scale of the trade. The trade continued to flourish in the years that followed, so much so that in 1974, not long after I left the island, the DEA estimated that Jamaica was supplying over half of the marijuana imported to the U.S., whereas only three years before 90 percent of this market had been attributed to Mexico. By 1980, the Prime Minister of Jamaica claimed that the ganja trade had become the largest source of revenues in the island's history, with an estimated value of over U.S. $1 billion a year — an amount nearly equal to the country's total foreign debt and greater than the value of all other export industries combined, including everything from tourism to sugar to aluminum ore.

Eventually, if not inevitably, the trade was taken over by Jamaican drug lords, such as Lester Lloyd Coke (aka Jim Brown) and later his son Dudus. Their infamous Shower Posse Gangs brutally controlled a large share of both the ganja and cocaine trades in major cities of the U.S. and Canada, involving an estimated 1,400 murders during the 1980s alone. They also had an import trade in guns, most of which were used to arm their political gangs in the garrison communities and voting districts of Kingston, Montego Bay and elsewhere, at the behest of even Jamaica’s Prime Ministers. As the people I worked with there would say at this point, An’ so it go, up till dis very time.

But in that beginning period – at least most of the decade of the 1970s — there were no centralized organizations or cartels or drug lords that controlled this illegal and extraordinarily profitable trade. Oh, there were Kingston gangs in Town that ran a lot of the business for the substantial local market for ganja there, and I was told there were quite organized groups of producers in the country areas surrounding Town, cultivating the drug mostly in the Crown Land mountains. But this was nothing like what would come later.

During that early time, it was happening so fast and at such tremendously expanding levels of demand that in a way it was like a free for all. Added to this was the fact that the great majority of the major Yankee buyers were hardly gangsters, but rather young heepee smugglers, including many former university students, some of whom had dropped out because they were making so much money that, as one put it to me during a business trip to the island in 1973, I just couldn’t afford to go to college anymore.

And because of all that, it was the first time in Jamaica’s history that the sufferers, as they called themselves – the peasant farmers and fishermen and laborers and truck drivers and higgler women and such – had a sudden opportunity to control and operate and profit fully from one of the largest industries that had ever reached the island. By total coincidence, that’s when I was there, and if it had been five years before that or five years after, I never would’ve been able to write this book.

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What I man hear, Mr. Mac, is dat some o’ dem [small farmers] are sellin’ all bag an’ bag o’ herb to your people over dere.

I initially went to Jamaica to do a study of development programs for fishermen and peasant farmers. I was 30 years old and a graduate student in applied anthropology at Columbia’s Teachers College. My advisor had previously worked in several areas of the island and had recommended a place I’ve called Rocktown for my research. The town had about a thousand people, almost all of whom were fishing families, while another two thousand people lived in surrounding farming settlements. The largest was Farmington, which was spread across an extensive plateau high above the town. Above it loomed the vast forests of the Crown Land mountains, reaching heights of nearly 3,000 feet above sea level.

I’d done some initial work there the summer before, but hadn’t been able to get a grant for my fieldwork, which meant that my wife and I and our six-month-old son had to make do on my monthly fellowship stipend (around $300). Out of the blue, however, came another opportunity, though not at all related to my work. A research center in New York, affiliated with Columbia, had been contracted by the newly created U.S. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse to carry out cultural research on cannabis in countries where it had been used extensively, including Jamaica. For me, it basically entailed doing voluntary surveys of local fishermen and farmers about ganja use, as well as attitudes about it from both users and non-users.

While ganja was illegal, the study had been approved by Jamaica’s Ministry of Justice, and, as my advisor pointed out, it was pretty straightforward interview work and would provide me with a good grant for at least several months. He also noted that I could continue working on my main research, and I remember him adding, Who knows? You might learn something related from it.

I ended up spending a lot of time in the herb yards of the town’s ganja dealers, all of whom were among the poorer fishermen living in the densely populated squatters’ district, known as Campbells, that rose up steeply from the town’s seaside land. All were also locksmen or beards and followers of Ras Tafarai. I knew them fairly well by then from the summer before, and they didn’t mind me interviewing their customers, most of whom I knew by then, too. It was a lot easier to do the interviews that way, instead of in men’s yards or other places, and on some days I got to do several at a time. I also tried to pay my way a bit by buying rounds of ganja occasionally for their smoking there and, in the case of one major dealer whose wife ran a small shop from their yard, a round or two of beers.

Rocktown was cited by police as one of the heaviest areas of ganja use regionally. By my estimates, over 150 men smoked the drug routinely, while another 50 or more men from nearby, smaller fishing communities also frequently patronized the herb yards of the town. (Very few women there smoked ganja.) Average users smoked between a quarter and a half ounce a day, and the Campbells district was often called the chimney because of the pounds and pounds of ganja that burned through there daily.

The steady transactions I witnessed in the herb yards also made me realize that this business was more than a sideline for local dealers, whose earnings I’d previously assumed came from their work as crewmen on boats or as beach dealers for large-scale fish buyers. So this confirmed my advisor’s Who knows? comment, and this became a part of the ganja research that proved of most interest to me in terms of understanding the local economy.

The same was true, in one sense, when I learned about the small farmers in the hills districts above the town planting ganja as a cash crop on the Crown Land mountains. But this was very different in another sense. Because it was also claimed that some of them were supplying middle-men buyers for American smugglers who’d just started coming to Jamaica in small planes and boats to buy major amounts of ganja for the ever-expanding U.S. demand for better and better pot from the many millions of young people they called heepees. As one of the dealers who told me about it put it:

What I man hear, Mr. Mac, is dat some o’ dem [small farmers] are sellin’ all bag an’ bag o’ herb to your people over dere. Yes, man, is true word! I don’t know how it work exactly – who is who an’ all dat — but is your people who come to dem somehow. Now, Mackie, dat is somethin’ me could help wit’, too, man. I mean, maybe next time ya visit foreign [the U.S.], oonoo can check on any o’ dem ya know in New York or all dose places dere.

I told him I didn’t know any o’ dem at all, but it was that dimension of it, in particular, that made me think at the time – however incautiously and actually far beyond the scope of my fieldwork –Wow, this could really be something! And, as it turned out, that certainly proved to be the case, from the first day I decided to pursue it.

Chapter One

How It Began

Who are you to come here and make meetings like you say you do? Who tell you to come here? Who send you here to ask us all these things?

The first time I met him, I couldn’t see him. I could only hear his voice shouting down at Shy and me — and, as they used to say there, Dere was no words him don’t use on me. It had been a long and hot climb, and I was exhausted and angry by then. So I cursed back at the voice, and that’s when I heard the shot, and the bullet whizzed by me through the bush, and the two of us ran down the mountain from there.

Shy was his cousin, and he was the first man I’d approached to try to find out about ganja planters in the hills districts. He was a small farmer and a part-time fisherman whom I’d interviewed during the previous summer. I’d met him the Saturday before at seaside after he’d sold off his catch, and I offered him a drive to his yard in Farmington, which was otherwise a long uphill walk of about a mile and a half through the hill paths above the town. He thanked me, and once we were on our way I broached the subject of ganja planting with him. He admitted that he'd planted a crop on the Crown Land, but added: I frighten to talk about dat, sir. For it bring me a heap o’ troubles, noting that the crop had been recently raided and destroyed by the police.

He then told me that he'd only become interested in the business through his cousin, adding that I must have heard of him by then. I said I didn't know if I had and asked his name. He said they shared the same last name, but most people called him by his nickname, Storm. When he said that, I remembered that some of the ganja dealers had mentioned this man and told me that he used to live in Rocktown. But they'd also told me that he was dangerous (or a serious brute, as one put it). In line with this, some had claimed he was wanted by the police as a murder suspect and that he was an ex-convict as well. But one told me that while he was definitely a ganja man — a big one, too, he'd left the area and no one knew his whereabouts.

I told Shy this, but when I reached the last point, he corrected me and said: No, Mr. Mac, him still here, not far from me. He then told me that his cousin was the largest ganja grower on the Crown Land and had been a major organizer of local cash-cropping efforts there. He also said that he had connections with buyers across the island, including contacts with the export market to the U.S. At this point, he smiled and shook his head, saying: Him bad, sir. When it come ta ganja, him dread! But he went on to say that Storm had been camping out on the upper reaches of Crown Land for some time in hiding from the police because of a killin’ he'd been implicated in a few months before in another area of the island. While I wasn't sure about what I might be getting into with this character, I decided to take a chance and try to get an interview with him.

So I asked Shy if he could arrange a meeting for me with his cousin. But he was reluctant and (like the others) said that Storm was as dangerous as his nickname implied. He also claimed he was armed with all kind o’ gun and would be suspicious of a stranger like me. I told him that most people in Rocktown knew me, including all of the dealers there, and that everything I learned would be kept confidential. I said I'd be willing to meet Storm alone in Farmington on a day's notice, although I emphasized that there was no need for guns at the meeting.

A week later, on a Saturday market day, Shy approached me at seaside after selling off his catch and took me aside to tell me that Storm had agreed to meet with me at Shy's yard the following day around noon. I thanked him for arranging the meeting and asked him if I could bring anything for his cousin. He told me he liked Dragon Stout and smoked Craven-A cigarettes. So the next morning I packed my kit and included a few pints of stout and a pack of cigarettes for my new informant. I was uneasy about the meeting, however, and didn't tell my wife where I was going.

When I got to Shy's yard before noon, Storm wasn't there, and after two hours of waiting, he still hadn't shown up. I became impatient and asked his cousin if he knew where he was so we could go there directly. While he obviously had misgivings about it, he finally agreed to take me to a place in the foothills of the Crown Land where we might be able to find him. When we reached the foothills, about a half-mile's walk from Shy's home, there was no clear path, but only thick bush and forest rising up ahead of us. It was a hot day, and I was dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers. By the time we'd climbed our way up a half hour later, heat beat me, as they used to say there, and my legs and arms were scratched all over and covered with fly bites. As a result, I wasn't in a good mood at this point.

We finally reached a small clearing, when Shy motioned me to stop. He looked upward, cupped his hands and made a loud, cooing sound like a bird call. We waited in silence for a while, but there was no response, so he repeated the call more loudly. A moment after, there was a booming sound like a shotgun that echoed down from the forest above. He turned to me nervously and said: Is him. Him come. But a few minutes later, from somewhere much closer, a deep voice came shouting down at us, and in the foulest, threatening language demanded to know why we'd come there and cursed us for the intrusion.

For me that was the last straw and, letting anger give way to stupidity, I cursed back at the voice, saying I never would've come there if he hadn't agreed to meet with me. And, to complete my stupidity, I took a bottle of stout and smashed it on some rocks, shouting up to him that I didn't have to go through this to find out whatever I wanted to know about anything. But no sooner did I do this than came a second response, this time a much louder and sharper sound, which sent a bullet through the bush not far from where I was standing. At this, Shy grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back down the slope, saying: No trouble him now! Better we leave here! And we quickly left. For reasons beyond me to this day, however, it wasn't until I got home that evening that I finally realized, and thought to myself: Holy shit, you could've got shot today!

Understandably, I didn't make any further attempts to meet with Storm. Still, I decided it would be worthwhile to visit Shy again to do a census of his household and see if I could find out any more about his experience with ganja planting. I met him at seaside in Rocktown the following week when he returned from fishing, and he agreed to let me take his history the next Sunday morning in Farmington.

When I got to Shy's yard that morning, there was a man sitting alone on the railing of his front porch. He was smoking a spliff and staring fixedly at me as I got out of the car. I said good morning to him, and he nodded his head slowly, but then slipped off the railing, walked to within a few yards of me and began to look me up and down. Beyond being confused by this silent scrutiny, I was struck by his appearance. For while he was dressed in the same type of old clothes that most farmers and fishermen worked in, his shirt and pants were practically in rags and stained everywhere. He wore a blue hard hat cracked down the middle and badly worn rubber boots, with torn pant legs hanging above them. He was of average height and build, but stood very straight, which made him look taller. Around his neck he wore a strange-looking, black-framed plastic pendant about the size and shape of a small tin of aspirin. Completing the picture was a battered Air Jamaica flight bag hanging from his shoulder.

The most compelling thing about him, however, was the intense, brooding look on his face. The impression I had at this point was that he might be a madman or at least an eccentric of some sort. Whichever, he seemed to be singularly confident about himself. He finally spoke to me and said: Peace and love to you, brother, and what is your mission here today? But the greeting was neither peaceful nor loving; rather, it was all stated flatly in a deep, loud and direct voice – and it was also worded in what he’d later call proper English, including his carefully enunciating each word.

I said I was meeting the man who lived there and asked him who he was. He ignored my question and instead asked me again: But what is your mission here? Who are you to come here and make meetings like you say you do? I'd only been confronted like that on a couple of occasions before, and in both instances I at least knew who I was talking to. So I told him that was between me and the man I was meeting, and asked him again who he was. Still he wouldn't tell me, but continued: The way I get to understand it is that you come here to take my cousin's history and to ask him all kind of question[s] — even question about me. So what you must tell me is who tell you to come here? Who send you here to ask us all these things?

It was the cousin reference, predictably, that made me realize this was Storm. Because there was no question that the voice fit, although much more controlled now and without the cursing tirade of our first encounter. There didn't seem to be anything dangerous about him either that morning; instead, it was like meeting someone in authority.

So I began to explain to him what my mission was, but he repeatedly interrupted me, making various remarks and posing questions that clearly indicated his suspicion that I was an informer of some sort. His cousin finally appeared (who'd apparently been inside the house all this time) and tried to make some introductions, during which he called me Mister Mac. Storm shook his head at him and, reverting to pidgin, said: But, cha man! Why ya call de man 'Mister'? Him don't call you 'Mister'! Mister wha'? Mister who? I broke in at this point and told him that I never asked anyone to call me Mister, but that was what people decided to call me. His response was: That is why they are fools. What is your real name? I said Ron McDonough. He then corrected me and said: Ronald is your name. That is a bad name.

At this point, bewildered (although truthful), I agreed with him, explaining that I never liked the name myself, and that was why I called myself Ron. For the first time he smiled and asked me: But who give you that name? I told him my mother, after which he nodded and said: You should respect your mother, still. Following this, he asked me when I was born, and I told him my age. But he said: I don't ask you that. I ask you on which day you was born. I told him my birth date, and for some reason this struck him. He then asked me in a different tone, as if he'd been caught off guard, if I was certain of that. By then I was completely bewildered, so I told him that while there were a lot of things I didn't know, I was fairly certain I knew when I was born.

He looked at me evenly then and said: If that is true, then you and I were meant to meet here today. I dream not long ago about a white man like you up in the hills there [Crown Land]. So it must be you. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I told him there was nothing mystical about why I was there. I'd just come to meet with his cousin. But he dismissed this by saying that my reason for being there wasn’t important. What was important was: You and I share the same sign nearly to the day. This made his cousin look at me in awe and comment: Almighty God! But I just shook my head and said it didn't mean anything to me. Storm got visibly annoyed at this and said to me pointedly: Listen now, 'Mister' whosoever you be, I born three days past the day you born. That is to say, our signs are nearly identical! Now you call that normal, that you come to find me and I come to find you?!

In retrospect, if I'd been smarter, I would've taken advantage of this opportunity and agreed with him that this indeed appeared to be more than coincidence. But I was being subjected to this bizarre third degree by the man and had learned nothing about him — apart from, of course, his birthday. So I told him that I didn't believe in signs or dreams and, to me, the coincidence of our birth dates was nothing more than that.

He ignored this comment and shifted his attention to the bag at my side, which contained a few pints of beer and a pack of cigarettes I'd brought as a courtesy to his cousin for our meeting. He asked: What you carry there? I told him, and he replied: Beer is horse piss. Gimme the cigarettes. I took out the pack, opened it, pulled one out and offered it to him. But he simply took the pack out of my hand, gave the first cigarette to his cousin, took another for himself, put the pack into his flight bag and asked me for a light. So I handed him a box of matches, which he also kept after lighting their cigarettes.

After he'd put the matches in the bag, however, he dug deeper into it and pulled out a bottle of Dragon Stout. He opened it with his teeth, held it toward me for a moment and said: I keep this from our first meeting. (The Sunday before, I'd left the other pints of stout there with Shy, telling him he might as well drink them.) He then drank about half of the bottle before adding that I shouldn't have been so wasteful with the pint I'd smashed on the rocks. This really pissed me off, so I told him that he shouldn't be wasting people's time by agreeing to meet them and then shooting at them. But, without offering any apology, he just said it turned out to be the wrong time for him, and we shouldn't have gone looking for him after he didn't show up at his cousin's yard that day. He also noted that he didn't shoot at me, because if he had, I wouldn't be there.

He finished the rest of the stout, and I took advantage of this break to ask him what he was wearing around his neck, because my eyes kept returning to this strange pendant while we were talking. He pulled it out from his neck and told me to look at it more closely. Apart from being thicker and made of plastic, for some reason it reminded me of the scapulars I used to wear during my Catholic youth. The transparent center of it, which was about an inch square, contained what looked like a folded piece of paper with bits of writing on it in red ink. After I'd looked at it more closely and shook my head, he laughed at me and said: But you can't read that, can you? You can't understand that? I said no, I couldn't, after which he said that didn't surprise him. Because if I couldn't get any meaning out of the fact that we were born under the same sign nearly to the day, then there'd be no way I'd be able to understand the amulet around his neck. His cousin, who'd been listening to our conversation like an awed spectator, shaking or nodding his head throughout, intervened at this point and said to me: It is a guard, Mr. Mac. Him [Storm] make it himself. Him deep in science, sir!

Science was another name for obeah, or sorcery, and I knew that a guard was something used to ward off obeah. But I didn't know much else about the subject, apart from isolated instances I'd recorded where people had claimed that obeah had been involved in disputes or, in a couple of cases, suspicious deaths of the area. As for practitioners of the trade, I'd only heard of one person locally who was claimed to have these powers. He was an older fisherman in Rocktown, who was also claimed to have been responsible for embezzling a substantial amount of money from the cooperative store when he served as its manager a few years before. It was only later I learned that he was Storm's uncle.

So, for lack of anything else to say on the subject, I told Storm the guard he was wearing reminded me of the scapulars I'd worn when I was young, during which I mentioned that I'd been raised as a Catholic. He said: So you are Catholic? Catholic are Pope. I told him I was no longer a practicing Catholic, but I didn't understand his point about the Pope. He shook his head at this and said he couldn't believe I didn't know that the Pope was the wickedest bitch in science that ever existed. I had to laugh at this and told him that was certainly not something we'd ever learned about the Pope. But he said: That is the way him [the Pope] work it. That is how him control half the world! He further suggested that the Pope still have a hold on you. And it will take some powerful work to take it off [break the spell]! (It was the Pope's army, as I'd learn from him some time later, that had been responsible for the invasion of Ras Tafarai's Ethiopia by Italy in 1935, although when I noted that it had been Mussolini's forces, his response was: Him, too. Same business.)

I didn't know where to go with this, so I changed the subject and asked him how he'd got his nickname. He said some people claimed it came from the way I speak, while others say it is because of the way I deal with people who fuck 'round with my business. He then reached into his flight bag and took out a black leather pouch, adding: But I have another voice here that's louder than the one God give me. At this point, Shy rolled his eyes and laughed at me nervously, after which Storm unzipped the pouch and produced a fairly new looking pistol. He asked if I'd seen one like it before, and I said: Yes, it's a semi-automatic — maybe a .38. He replied: Good, so you know guns then. But let I tell you that everything about this cinty [thing] here is 'automatic'. Because when him speak, it bring automatic results!

I just shook my head at this and told him I had no interest in guns and had told his cousin that before our first meeting. I also got a little nervous at this point, not because he was threatening me in any way, but because I knew that gun possession was a serious offense in Jamaica, and I wasn't comfortable standing in someone's front yard on a Sunday morning with a pistol in plain view. So I asked him to put it away (which he did) and decided then it was time to cut to the chase.

I told him again that part of my work there was to do a study of ganja locally, and while I'd learned a lot about its use, I also wanted to get some information about how it was grown there. I added that few of the people I'd interviewed had any firsthand experience with planting ganja, whereas I'd heard that he knew a lot about it. So all I wanted to know at that point was whether or not he'd be willing to tell me what he knew. He said he wasn't sure if he could and asked me again how I'd come there to do this study. I told him I'd try to explain it again, but he couldn't keep interrupting me. I said: This time I'll talk and you listen, and you can decide from there. Otherwise, this isn't going to go anywhere. He laughed at this and turned to his cousin and commented: What a facety [impudent] piece o’ pork [white man] ya bring me!

But he agreed to listen, so we sat on Shy's porch and I told him the whole background to my work. At the end of it, he sat in silence for a while, then began rolling up a spliff, saying: Boy, I don't know, I don't know. What will I see out of this? I told him I couldn't offer him anything, because I didn't pay informants and didn't have any money to pay them in any case. So he asked me what I was getting out of it, and I told him this was part of the work I had to do to get my doctorate. He then asked what that was, and I explained it as best as I could, following which he said: So let me get this right. You leave here and become doctor from this and I stay here same way, just as you see me?

By then I was exhausted with the situation. So I told him that while I couldn't argue his point, that was the way it was, and if he didn't want to talk to me, so be it. He stood up then and, ignoring me, asked his cousin if he'd look[ed] ‘bout de pig[s]. Shy said no, because he'd agreed to meet with me that morning and planned to do it later. Storm laughed sarcastically at this and said: Well, de pork [me] ya bring here, cousin, don't worth de pork we keep dere, and without even looking at me, he shouldered his bag and walked off the porch toward the district road. All I could assume then was the interview I'd finally achieved with him was over, and that was the end of it. But halfway down the path from the house, he called back to me and said: Come now, man. I have plenty thing[s] to look about today, and you and I are not done yet!

So I caught up with him, and we ended up turning off from the district road onto a track heading toward the Crown Land. He hadn't said anything, so I asked where we were going, and he said: To feed pig. We walked along a fenced area of land where a few cows grazed and a short distance later reached a small, muddy plot, which was penned in and contained four pigs. Storm went over to an old, zinc laundry pan outside the pen, which had been turned upside down and weighted with stones to cover a bag of feed. He began feeding the pigs, and I asked if they were his or Shy's. He told me they both owned them and would split the profits after they were sold. So I began asking him about raising pigs, and he became much more relaxed at this point and launched into a detailed discussion of the business of pig rearing.

Not long after he got into it, I took a small notebook from my back pocket and started to record the information. When he saw this, however, he stopped what he was doing and asked me what I was writing. I said I was taking some notes on what he'd been telling me about pigs. He looked at me curiously then and asked: So you study pig, too? I said yes, because I was interested in everything people did there to make a living. He shook his head at this and replied: My God, then. Well, you will be a long while on that mission, cause for each and every man and woman in the jamdown here, there is no end to it. I asked him what he meant by the jamdown, and he said: You never hear that? Well let I tell you: it is because everyone [is] in a jam down here. That is why Jamaica the Jamdown, and so it go.

By then he'd finished feeding the pigs and covered the feed bag with the laundry pan, after which he sat on it, lit a cigarette and looked up at me. He seemed tired and asked me again what exactly I wanted to know from him. So I repeated what I'd told him before, but added that I'd also be interested in knowing his history. He smiled at the last point and said: Well, that is much deeper than what I can teach you about the herb business. But maybe better you hear it from me than from them. I asked who he meant by them. He replied in a kind of resigned tone: All of them you know down there [in Rocktown]. All of your friend, the big men [successful fishermen], who you will never know as I do, don't care how long you spend here. And the others, the 'Rascals' [Rastas] who preach Jah God and thief me to death. All of them.

This surprised me, and I told him I didn't realize he knew that much about me and what I'd been doing there. It also annoyed me a little, and I asked him: If you know so much about me already, then why have you been playing all these games with me? He stood up then, gave me a severe look and replied: Now you listen to me, 'Mister Mac'– and mark that, because it is the first and last time I will call you that – do you believe a white man like you can come here and ask everyone their business as if you are living in New York? Oh yes, I know where you come from, too. You must be some kind of r'asscloth [asswipe] fool, man! You think this business and what I deal with is a joke? You think I carry this iron [the gun] as a joke? You think I live up there [the Crown Land] as a joke? Let I tell you, man, what I feed these pig here today is more than I eat since two days' time! Yes, I check up on you! Because my hand is in the lion's mouth now, and there is not a bloodcloth [menstrual cloth] man I trust here!

By the end of it he was shouting at me, and I didn't know what to say, because by then he'd completely worn me out. I felt like I'd been hammered at by someone for what seemed like hours, and I started wondering what the hell I was doing there and why I was going through all this. So I took on the first part of his remarks and repeated that I never asked anyone to call me Mister, and he could call me what he wanted, but he had no right to call me pork anymore than I had the right to call him a niggerman. As for the rest, I told him that I'd put up with a lot trying to meet with him, including being shot at, and in my business I wasn't allowed even to mention that to anyone, let alone report it to the police, which most pork men there would've done in a minute. I also said that I didn't think his business was a joke, and I wasn't some kind of fool who didn't know the risks involved in ganja dealing there. Finally, I told him that I'd much prefer to wrap up my research on the subject and go back to the work I'd started on fishing and farming. At the end of it, I told him: Fuck this. This isn't worth it for me. If you came here to win something this morning, let's just say you won, and we'll call it a day.

He nodded his head after this and, looking away from me, said: Alright, that argument [discussion] is done. You've had your say, and I have had mine. But then, apropos of nothing, he twisted my mind all the more by asking: Is New York near to Chicago? I said no and told him dully where each was located. He said: But a man like you must travel all over. So you know people in Chicago? I said no, I didn't know anyone in Chicago, anymore than I knew any of the millions of other people who lived in several other major cities there. He said: That many then? I said: Yes, there are 200 million people in America, and about eight million in New York alone. He thought about this and said: Well, if New York is that big, there must be plenty of place there you can buy book[s] from anywhere? I said yes, there were hundreds of bookstores there, and they carried books from all over the world. He asked: Even book from Chicago? I said yes and finally asked him: Is there something you're trying to get at here about Chicago and books? If there is, what is it? He replied: I need some book that are made in Chicago, but let that rest [never mind that] for now. I will tell you that when next we meet.

This last point amazed me, and like a punch-drunk fighter, I surfaced from the mat long enough to ask him when that would be. He thought for a moment and said: In two days' time. I will meet you in two days' time at your yard there. So I told him that while I used to live in Rocktown, I'd just rented another place a few miles from there and started to tell him where it was. But he interrupted me and said: I know where you live, man, and it's not long since I pass through there. Your wife is there with the little pickney [child]. I just shook my head at this, as he added: The boy you have, is that your firstborn? I said yes, and he said: You are lucky then. So I asked if he had any children, and he said yes, two little gal. But then he laughed and added: But boys turn men, and when you are old, they've gone about their lives. While the daughter[s], them, they will stay and care for you. I said: Well, maybe you're right, and he replied: I am right, man. You are too young yet to see that. So I asked him how old he was, and he said: More than ten years past you, but twice that in what I been through on this rock here. I asked what he meant by this rock here, and he replied: Rock is prison, man. Rock is Jamaica. My God, you don't know a fart about this place here yet.

Then he said he had to leave, and I asked him what time he'd come on Tuesday. He said: I don't carry a clock like you, but I am not late at business. It is either I am there at that time or you will not see me at all. Call it mid-morning, not past ten o'clock. I said alright and I'd see him then. But before we parted, he told me: You and I may come to know each other better, but I don't promise that. I will call you 'Mac', because your other name is not a good one, and we both know that. I said that was fine and asked him what I should call him. He asked if I knew his real name, and I said: Yes, it's Aaron Thompson. He replied: Good, cause the other name [Storm] them give me, I don't much love either. So we shook hands then, and he left me there and headed toward the Crown Land. I went back to Shy's yard, made my goodbyes to him and headed home.

On the drive back down from the hills of Farmington that day, I felt like I was returning from outer space. I'd traveled a fair amount in my life by then and had had my share of unusual experiences, including some noteworthy ones during my time in Jamaica up until then. But I'd never been through anything like this. My mind was a mess, and while I was tired, I couldn't stop trying to put all of the things that had happened that morning into some kind of coherent context. But all I ended up with was a mish-mash of subjects, ranging from astrology, obeah, guards and the Pope to guns, ganja, pigs and (last but not least) books made in Chicago. I had a wicked headache, though I never got headaches, and when I reached the main coastal road, the bright sunlight on the Caribbean, which I usually enjoyed, was almost painful to look at. It was at this point I started realizing that most of the time I'd spent there up until then seemed to be, by comparison, completely superficial. I still remember saying aloud to myself in the car: You better welcome yourself to Jamaica, Ron, because you may have just landed here this morning.

Chapter Two

The Interview

"Hold him, science! Hold de man