road trip full of flooded roads, lengthy detours, quick visits, unexpected gatherings of people, … we waited hours for sarge. he wasn’t answering his phone. we tried everyone and nothing. so we made our way to lambs river to hunt him down. we learned he had been dropped off at grasspond to spend his day fishing. so.. we did the obvious; we made the trek to grasspond to find him and drag him away. we scoured the area until we spotted a striped shirt and a line. together we all shouted for his attention and marie refused to lose sight of him, in case he would try to run away and hide. so we literally drove around the pond, on the main road, ever so slowly and cautiously, and there he was, walking towards us, a bag of fish in hand and a wicked smirk across his face. we soon were on the road for malvern. little did we know what awaited us on our journey…

the previous week’s downpour of rain and heavy winds had left most of jamaica underwater and in disrepair. every route we attempted to take left us figuratively high and dry, but literally far from. what would normally take a 2-3 drive tops, took us an eternity. we passed several flooded roads, a couple funerals and several dancehall sessions, all of which cudjoe and sarge swore we would return to on the way home. we passed through petersville on the way and drove by thinh. they were in the process of setting up the notorious petersville dancehall session for the night (many weekends spent at thinh’s included boisterous weekend long dancehall parties, all of which we only listened to, but never actually attended). to make a very long story short, we finally showed up to munroe, 5:15 pm. visiting hours end at 6pm. needless to say it was a quick visit… just enough to get a hug from jessie, hear about the past week and see him walk off for dinner. we left him with a huge bag of food and provisional items, and we all stared at him walk off to the dining hall for about 10 minutes. we then made the trek over to bethlehem to see yanique quickly and we had to figure out the best way back home. it was already night and in passing one of the munroe bus drivers, we asked him about the road conditions… nuf detours. so we opted to head another way back, which led us to more flooded roads and yes, detours. we ended up passing again through petersville and we did what was said, we stopped briefly; so now i can check off the notorious petersville dancehall from my list of things to do. after an hour or so we decided to head back home, it was getting late. we dropped off sarge and made our way back to seaford and then home.