Central Village's rumblings

It's funny how much life a Monday morning brings to Central Village in St Catherine. It's, of course, normally a busy place, what with four lanes of highway, a tax office and the Registrar General's Department (RGD) all packed into a relatively small area. But residents, vendors and even motorists say Monday mornings are, by far, the worst.

And so it happened to be on a Monday morning that I found myself outside the gates of the RGD in Central Village recently, in the midst of a crowd of anxious, and seemingly impatient, people from all over the country.

I was standing on the sidewalk across the road from the large building, where vendors of banana chips, phonecards and bottled water had gathered.

"Sell yuh a phonecard, friend?" a woman sitting behind a large blue igloo asked. I declined.

"Any juice, banana chips, Cheese Trix?" she pressed.

I told her I was fine and was about to walk away when she spoke up again.

"Any bubblegum, water, umbrella?"

I paused a moment to see if there were any other offerings, but the woman went silent. So, politely I reiterated that I was in need of nothing at the moment and made my way closer to the shade of a nearby tree.

It was then that a fellow in a red shirt and black trousers caught my attention. He was wearing a badge on his shirt pocket and sported a mean expression. I was too far away to make out what was inscribed on the badge, but I supposed he was a security guard of sorts, monitoring the parking of vehicles outside the building. He was, after all, armed with a pen and clipboard.

Clarity

Now in the interest of clarity, I would normally have asked him, but the look on his face just seemed to scream, "What you looking at, fool?!"

So I stood my ground. The trouble is, it appeared the good fellow was convinced I was up to some manner of malfeasance and kept his icy stare on me the whole time. It was perhaps because of the fact that after parking my vehicle in the area in front of the fence, I didn't follow the crowd directly to the entrance. I had, instead, walked a few feet away. I imagine he was watching to see if I was one of those rogue parkers who, under cover of doing legitimate business, leave their vehicles in parking lots and go off gallivanting. A noble job, I'm sure, but there seemed little need for the stare-down. I walked closer to the gate, thinking that would ease his mind.

A buxom woman in a body-hugging, leopard-print dress glided over. The dress had no sleeves, in direct contravention of the rules, clearly stated on a sign near the gate. I braced myself for a reprimand, surely to come from one of the female security guards manning the gate. All eyes followed the woman as she bounced her way up to the entrance. As she approached the security guard, she suddenly stopped, stuck her hand into her handbag and pulled out an orange T-shirt. She pulled it on over her head and continued without missing a beat. This brought smiles to the faces of those around. All but the stony-faced parking guard whose grimace never faltered.

A black pickup with a 'For Sale' sign hanging from the rear window sputtered up and pulled into the last available space. The vehicle seemed to die just as it arrived. The driver, an elderly man with grey hair, sighed.

"Well, at least mi reach," he said.

The crowd near the gate of the building had, by then, diminished significantly and without incident.

I walked a bit farther down the road, but not too far, since the red shirt wearer still had me in his sights. He was distracted for a moment, though, with the old van that had just pulled up, so I managed to slip away without him noticing.

About 30 feet away, the heart of Central Village was at its most vibrant. There's a stretch of roadway there that, each morning, is packed with trucks from a number of biscuit and drink companies. They park there for a few hours and the owners of shops, people on their way to work and children heading to school, converge to make purchases. Breads, buns, juices and other snacks were going fast. The sellers clutched folded bills like bus conductors, as cars and trucks headed for Kingston sped by.

Bag of chips

A woman who had only just bought herself a large bag full of smaller bags of chips walked by me. I said hello and made a joke about all the food she had purchased.

"Hee-hee!" she laughed.

"Not at all. I am a teacher, you see, so I buy these for the little ones sometimes," she said.

I told her it was a nice gesture. "Well, some of them don't have it, you know, so when I get a chance I like to pick something up for them."

The woman was close to being late for work, so we said our goodbyes and she walked off.

As I turned to walk back to the RGD, I noticed a shadowy figure glaring at me from behind a large bushy plant. It was the man in the red shirt again. I put some haste to my steps, hopped into my car and drove off. It was when I glanced in my rear-view mirror that I caught my final look at the man with the icy stare. He had walked out on to the sidewalk to watch as I drove away.

Where should Robert go next? Let him know at robert.lalah@gleanerjm.com.