Woodside offers pothole tour

The Editor, Sir:

Here in the village of Woodside, St Mary, highlighted in a letter to the press of Saturday, September 3, we have an educo-tourism product. Students, mostly foreign, visit to experience rural Jamaican life.

This product has a strong heritage tourism aspect to it. We have been preserving sites which we consider to be of historical and environmental interest. Thus students are taken to see the great house in which the slave master lived, the steps built by the Tainos and 'One Bubby Susan', pictured and referred to by Frank Cundall in his Historic Jamaica (published for the Institute of Jamaica by the West India Committee 1915) as an Arawak rock carving.

Students try their hand at farming in traditional ways, bathe in our rivers and navigate our caves, some of which are pictured in Alan G. Fincham's 'Jamaica Underground' (The Press University of the University of the West Indies, 1997) pp 59, 153, 237 and 317.

We hope you will excuse our use of your medium to let our potential clients know that we are adding another item to our offerings - potholes. It amazes locals and foreigners alike that what could easily be mistaken for the display area of a hardware store specialising in bathroom appliances is really a road which pedestrians and vehicles are expected to use.

Mystic Mountain has nothing on us! You lurch this way and that as the taxi drivers, all PhDs - pothole dodgers - try to avoid these holes, as big as Roman baths and located inches from each other.

What a delight when the back wheels drop in the hole and you are lifted out of your seat, your head hitting the roof of the vehicle! Dear pedestrian, you are not left out of the fun. I share with you an experience. One morning taking the walking exercise mandated for people of my age, I felt at one point that the earth was no longer under my feet.

I came back to consciousness to find myself lying foetus-like in a hole in the road. How many of us have experienced levitation and the rebirth in short passage of time! As I uncurled and got ready to leave this womb in the earth, I wondered, as I still do, whom I should pay for this exhilarating experience. A small tip to those responsible for this delight, I think is enough, though since we cannot find them, I don't think they really care whether you pay or not.

We here in Woodside are 'turning our hands to mek fashion', 'being Jamaican and buying Jamaican', buying local and rebranding, so instead of complaining, petitioning or blocking roads, we have taken to seeing our potholes as tourist attractions. We issue a general invitation for all to visit. We charge a modest fee for our services, but viewing and experiencing our new tourist attractions is free; it is brawta.