Title: Eating as a child in Jamaica

As I sat back with a hometown friend today reminiscing about our youth, I am reminded effortlessly about how we were socialized. Eating was a big part of our socialization.

It appears to me today how loose we were with cleanliness. Yes, it is what it is and we have passed through rough times. Not sure if we fell ill after some of those experiences of eating back then, but I sure know today that I would fall sick.

Going to shop was a chore (mom sent me), playtime (it’s where we played dominoes, ludo, or Draft), or it could be transactional (I’d go to buy foodstuff for myself). Today I want to focus on the latter.

If I found myself with extra cash the first place to go is to the nearby shop that has an attaching bar. First, let me say this; Where I grew up running water was not a normal occurrence. Water came to our pipes only at nights. So we had to fill various containers to keep us for a day. Sometimes we will see a water truck if the water is absent from those pipes for too many days. This means that both the bar and the shop were operating with no running water.

But as my friend and I discussed further, I can recall, inside the shop, atop the counter, a small square glass case that is stocked with bread, buns, cut-cakes (mattress), bulla and cheese. Remember now, neither the bread, bun, cake, bulla or cheese was covered with plastic or paper. They were just nicely stacked inside this glass case. If I chose to buy bread and cheese the clerk or the owner never had a plastic glove or a tong to get the bread. They would draw for the knife, hold the bread in one hand and cut the bread in quarters or halves. Then move for the cheese; cut it, open the bread for me and place the cheese in the middle.

The only time that bread or cheese was protected was as it passed to me in a piece of brown paper. The same thing happened if any one of those other items in the cabinet were sold.

Similarly, when salt dish, salt mackerel, salt beef or salt pork were sold they were cut on the same piece of wood (plank from a tree). That piece of wood was used over and over and over without being washed.

The same process existed for flour, sugar, oat, cornmeal and water crackers. All were kept in a trough, close to the ground, where hand after hand (possibly unclean hands) dug from trough to trough, serving 1 pound or two of each in a brown paper bag.

The point is, I am not sure since there was no running water, or hardly any water available anywhere, how we survived? Come to think of it, if you walked up to the store and the clerk is outside playing dominoes, or chit-chatting, they reluctantly got up and went straight to the cabinet to serve.

Our lives are different today. Almost anywhere I go on the island of Jamaica food handling looks safer, but what a reality check I got today?

Maybe our stomachs got acclimated to germs. Or we did get sick but we were unable to identify what caused it. Either way, I am here and I’m more aware. Today, if the Subway server is talking too much over my prepared sandwich, I can easily say “stop talking while you serve my food” or “please change your glove, you were handling money”. What a difference!