First of all, the street was PACKED with people dancing and beer tables and a van stacked with speakers. At one point there was a "kitchen" band drumming in the street with pan lids, pots, even a cheese grater, and it sounded awesome. Orlando took us to the Clipper Club - and this is when it starts getting disturbing. This apparently was a regular bar/club, but there were women pole dancing half-naked (with the "wrong" half naked). One cool thing was Orlando used to DJ there, so he took us back to the DJ booth (a tiny itty-bitty room and they still used 8-tracks!) and he did some DJ-ing (or whatever the 'proper' name would be :). It's so different from America's DJs. He was actually on the mic talking or rapping during the songs. We couldn't understand a word he was staying because he was speaking Patuois (the Jamaican language/dialect - it's like Creole), but it was still sweet to be back there. Learned that Jamaicans like chopping up the music - only playing a little bit and then changing the song. It annoyed me at first because I'd just get into the rhythm and then the music would change or stop. (We got a little more used to that though - Mary and I were listening to a CD in the airport and we kept skipping the songs forward pretty often :).
James was quite valuable during this little escapade of ours. He grew up here, so he knows the culture and could explain some things and give advice. The hardest part is figuring out the party scene. Everything is so sexual (especially the dancing) and blunt, and it's like all bets are off when they get to a party - they'll dance however they want with whoever they want regardless of if they're dating someone else. Mary got swarmed when dancing in a crowd once, and someone propositioned Ken to trade a couple Jamaican women for Mary and me (he didn't thank goodness. He told the guy we were too expensive lol).
I think having two girls along opened the guys' eyes to a few things regarding women in the culture. The boys were supposed to take care of us girls, but they really had no idea what they would have to protect us from. If we hadn't been there, it might have just been another party for the guys, but I think they learned a little about how women are valued (or not valued) in the party scene. Lindell was great though - he was always hanging onto us if we wandered off.
The last straw came around 3 AM or so when I was getting sleepy in the first place. We were dancing and one of James's Jamaican friends came up to me, apprently convinced that I was into him. He got really close to my ear and yelled (no whispering sweet nothings here - the speakers were too loud) he told me that if I dance with him he would let me feel something I've never felt before and pulled me to him. I shoved him off and told the guys it was time to go. This was definitely an eye opening experience to the other side of Jamaican culture. They're a laid-back, peace-loving people that can at times be so sexually charged that it seems to border on violating their own credo, at least to my foreign eyes. But it's a delicate balance. I think in order for an outsider to truly love a people and culture - not a mere obsession that will get old and die one day - true love comes from understanding the many facets of the culture - good, bad AND ugly.
Nothing terrible happened that night; it was mostly just a very VERY different experience that kept us on our toes. But I know we all learned a lot from it and I hope nobody is discouraged from going to a wake party in the future as long as they know how to handle themselves and can adapt to a very different cultural situation.
more to come...
