UPTOWN GALRY - Veronica Blake Carnegie

The five of us, retired professionals have been truly enjoying ourselves and continue to be amazed at daily changes that take place here. Our sick helper lives in Uptown Galry, a settlement sandwiched by two Kingston 6 universities and manned by women or de gal dem. We went to visit her in the informal community where they don’t pay for water, light nor land, where the 200 or so residents give their one address as Main Street and go to the nearby post office to collect their mail.  They become angry when they’re called squatters or garrison dwellers and show how they’ll fight if anybody or government try to move them off the land on which they claim to have lived for decades.

As we came off the bus, a young man grabbed Freida’s shoulder bag. Hollering and screaming we gave chase. The young man, hampered by his dropped-crutch pants, ran into Uptown Galry and women caught him, gave us back the bag, beat him up and handed him, half-dead, to the police.

‘Im is new roun’ ‘ere. Di ooman dem ‘ave very strick rules an’ regilashans. Im run inna di wrang yaad’.

We later passed a yard where the mother loudly warned her daughter, for the last time,  that no boy is coming into her house if he had no subjects. The young lady did not answer and the mother marched outside where the nervous looking young man waited by the side of the house.

‘Yu have subjects?’

‘No, Mam’.

‘Den where yu going? De girls dem in here have subjects. My daughter ‘ave 9. Yu ave to leave. Don’t come back till yu get subject’.

The shamefaced fellow walked to the bus stop, pulled out his smart phone and planned to meet the girl. We chuckled for even those who ‘occupied’ other peoples land had rules to be upheld.