Getting round Kingston

Another adventure getting around Kingston. This morning I was finishing up a run on the University of West Indies campus. As I’ve discussed before, stray dogs are all over the city and it is quite distressing if you are a dog lover. But you must also be wary of them as they are wild and unpredictable. So I was running on the campus and all of a sudden, a sleek, rather healthy looking black and white mutt started trotting along beside me.

I was afraid it was going to nip at my heels or sink its teeth into my ankle, as has happened before, but neither occurred. Instead, it merrily ran beside me, right at my heels, for about 25 minutes. Once I got over being nervous about what it was going to do, I enjoyed the company. From time to time, it would stop to sniff something, and I thought it would lose interest, but it remained by my side. I got some strange looks from people walking on the campus, though.

In any case, I arrived at the taxi stand to get a ride back down to my apartment, the dog still by my side. I got in a taxi and it stayed right outside the door, staring at me. Literally, locking its brown eyes with mine for seconds at a time. At this point, I was devastated and about to ask the taxi driver if he would mind having a dog in his car (highly unlikely). But we started to pull away and the dog followed for a short while until we sped up. Suffice it to say, it was a heart-wrenching situation and I am tempted to go back up and find my new friend.

Our taxi, which was not yet full, then stopped at another loading area. There was already one person in the back, which can accommodate three people. All of a sudden, however, there were four quite large people trying to squeeze into the back seat. I’m not sure why this happened, as other taxis with free seats were right there. In any case, nobody seemed to mind even though they were literally squished up against one another and we were way beyond capacity.

I was impressed: a Monday morning, early, squished against complete strangers when it was completely unnecessary, and everyone was in a good mood. In fact, people started conversing about how terrible the Malaysian airlines crash was, then laughing about a dancehall artist’s plight with some immigration issues.

I then finally reached the corner near my home and exited the taxi, a path that takes me past several young men who wipe windscreens and sell fruit and newspapers. Because I run past them almost every morning, we now greet each other and I often buy fruit there. They are cordial and polite with me, but this morning, there was apparently an issue with the police. One of the young men was cussing the police. I asked him what happened and he said, “Nothing, it’s all good my friend,” and patted me on the shoulder.

Never a dull moment getting around Kingston.