Watch De Ride

Recently while giving this child a ride home from school and that neighbor a lift, I was struck by how my car resembled a good old Jamaican Robot. For those unschooled in yard transportation ways, the Robot was an unmetered mode of transportation - more than a taxi but less than a bus, or for terms that anyone who has been through Brooklyn NY can identify with, the Robot was the more unruly grandfather to the dollar van. I say was because I’m not sure if they still ply the streets of Jamaica, but when they did they were menacing!

My friend and neighbor and I reminisced on our childhood experiences with catching minibuses plying any random route in Jamaica. We relived how the robot was almost always was a Volkswagen panel van which had both a Driver and a Ducter. The Driver’s role was simple; get the vehicle from point A to point B, stopping to pick up twice or three times the van’s capacity in passengers, break or flout all of Jamaica’s road laws as often as possible and scrunch over on his seat to allow a schooler a kotch while maintaining enough space to aide his control of the vehicle.

Now a Ducter was always a very important character, he kept the day’s intake lodged between his fingers in fan like configuration dispensing change at will while holding the string that both opened and closed the door. Minibuses were never empty but no matter how filled they were the Ducter was always calling out to anyone who would listen and was willing to take the chance “...two more”. When he was not doing that, he was hanging out the vehicle in periscope fashion, calling to all the young girls and trying to touch pedestrians as the “bus” wheeled past, door open, carrying him squinting into the breeze.

Additionally, I am sure the Ducter’s job description required he be able to bang on the side of the van to signal the needed start or stop of the vehicle and if he cared not to bang he could simply sound off, “one stop driver” – he was key personnel. In a traffic snarl it was not unusual to see a Ducter get out of his bus and take his banging talent to the next level as he slammed his hand on the hoods of cars that dared to block the way of his bus leaving a wake of unsuspecting drivers wincing as they crushed their brakes and envisioned phantom impact only to hear, “watch de ride” or get out the way!

The trip down memory lane was interrupted by my eldest calling out in subway fashion “next stop, neighbor’s house, keep please move to the front of the vehicle,” mimicking that eerily mechanical voice piped through the trains she has ridden in. At that juncture I was struck by how different our life experiences are. How sad it is that she will probably never know what a minibus is. Hey, I don’t even know if they still exist!