Christmas in Trench Town

December 23rd, 2014

We drive down Collie Smith Drive. It is a wide road with a median and a gully down the middle, where people sometimes set up chairs to sit and watch the world go by. There is never much traffic. Goats rummage across a dark patch of thinly spread garbage in an area of open ground. There are apartment blocks, and much older houses grouped together in yards festooned with washing lines. Zinc roofs held down with building blocks. Children are playing, dogs wandering, women stopping to chat at the roadside. Young men lean on their bicycles.

Houses on Collie Smith Drive.

Here and there along the way are small shops. Two square, painted block buildings, an Internet café and a rum bar, sit side by side. On the corner of First Street, where we are heading, there is a chicken and chips establishment. It has a line of hungry customers by the time we leave the Trench Town Reading Centre’s annual Christmas Party.

Happy People Sports Bar, Collie Smith Drive.

At the bottom of Collie Smith Drive we do a “U” turn – right there, where a black, leafless tree stands alone in May Pen Cemetery, across the road. I have never seen a tree like this one anywhere else in Kingston, its branches piercing the light. I must photograph it next time.

We stop and buy corn. Tucked inside the husk are three neatly cut pieces of dry coconut. The combination is juicy and sweet.

Children wait for their dessert course – sticky cake and ice cream.

The scent of fried chicken, rice and peas drifts across to us as we arrive, rather belatedly, at the Reading Centre. The children, sitting in the community classroom, lean across the table tops chatting and calling out to each other. Christmas music plays softly in the background as Sweets and Auntie Joan and other grownups assisting in the festivities organize an extended photo-op session. The Christmas tree in the center of the room twinkles brightly, decorated with big bright stars created by the children.

Give us a kiss! Sweets gets a dazzling smile from this young lady.

Each child holds up a colorful T shirt – gold and green, scarlet and blue – designed and painted by another child and given as a Christmas gift. The gift exchange is very important, encouraging children to understand that Christmas is not just about what you can get for yourself, but about the happiness you can bring to others. Some of the children appear shy – especially the boys. We call out “Smile! Say cheese!” but some cannot quite manage it, despite our coaxing. Others giggle self-consciously, smile or burst out laughing.

Christmas comes but once a year…

As we leave, there are more hugs and kisses (there can never be enough) and the children (aged roughly four to fourteen) are wriggling around in their seats, getting ready for dessert and then, perhaps, more fun and games. A “bounceabout” beckons!

A full-blown photo op! (Minus several smaller children, including a little boy in a green polo shirt who walked determinedly in front of every photo and was dragged out of camera range every time!)

Merry Christmas, from the children of Trench Town!

If you would like to know more about Trench Town Reading Centre – which is twenty-one years old this month – visit their Facebook page – Friends of the TrenchTown Reading Centre and the website at www.trenchtownreadingcentre.com.

Tags: children, education, Kingston, NGO, Trench Town Reading Centre