Of Chicken and Men

“You didn’t know they don’t lay eggs in the winter?”

I looked at him, a bit embarrassed.

“You must learn more about animals. In the winter they expend their energy on growing more plumage; so they don’t lay any eggs.”

He was an old man in a blue bucket hat, with Jewish features, and a quick laugh. He wanted to demonstrate to me the importance of studying animal behavior, so as the chickens approached the patio table where we were enjoying our lunch, he grabbed ahold of a piece of bread and held out a crumb between his thumb and index finger.

“Lets see who comes and gets it first.”

Between the group of chickens, a couple were of the ordinary variety (the type one usually has a clear mental image of in their head) while the rest were Chinese chickens, who have extra feathers on their heads that make it look like they are wearing extravagant “Sunday Church” hats. The first to approach him was an “ordinary” chicken, which is slightly larger than the Chinese chicken, and perhaps, as a result, a little less shy. The old man tried to get one of the Chinese chickens to eat from his palm, but they hesitated.

“It’s because they don’t know you,” he remarked.

Then he began to throw the crumbs out on the patio to see who would grab them first. The old man wanted to show me something about the two Chinese roosters that were in the crowd, which he called “the bosses.” As he threw crumbs at them, it became clear that they would approach the piece of bread but would always be too slow on the uptake; a female chicken would come in and snatch it from them immediately. Not only that, but at times it looked as if they were simply waiting for the female chickens to arrive and take the crumb from right under their beaks.

As the man explained: that was precisely what was happening. “It’s chivalry,” he explained. The more I observed, the more convinced I became that he was right. The roosters would head to the crumb, stand over it, and let out a cluck to announce to the other chickens the food's location, while never reaching down to peck at it. The rooster was instinctively awarding the food to the female chickens, under the assumption that they needed it to produce eggs.

Soon a regular rooster arrived at the scene, larger and more majestic than its Chinese counterparts. The old man explained that this rooster had actually been given to him by one of his grown children, who had had it cooped up inside his family’s house until the animal became too much of a burden. When he threw crumbs at this rooster, it did not hesitate and quickly snatched up the free food without even considering the female chickens around him.

“That’s because he grew up in isolation and was never socialized. It’s not chivalrous. It’s a ‘modern’ chicken.”

21 Things I don't want to forget about Jamaica

1. Listening to Spice sing about her needle-eye "pum pum" at insane decibal levels on a minibus packed with elementary school children.
2. Elementary school kids who are insanely good at adulting; traveling across the city in overcrowded public buses full of peddlers, with their little siblings by the hand.
3. A taxi driver explaining that the reason Jamaicans don't share their marijuana spliffs is because you never know whether or not the person you pass your joint to has performed oral sex on a woman. (He may have been making direct reference to this song.)
• Many Jamaican men oppose performing oral on women and find the practice "unhygienic", although the jury's still out on whether or not they truly abstain in the privacy of the bedroom.
• Other potential reasons that I've heard for Jamaicans not sharing spliffs: Rastas refuse to share their spliff with "meat eaters" (as true Rastas are devout vegans), or perhaps it has to do with men believing that sharing something that has touched another man's lips can be perceived as "gay" (Jamaican men adhere to strict homophobic norms).
4. Jamaican superstars being treated as regular people who seem able to just chill amongst the crowds and enjoy everyday delights.
5. The dance scene: students that dance as part of marching band crews in high school (and have dance offs with rival schools); young adults in crews that perform every night at different dance hall parties; the dance crazes that sweep through the scene (Puppy Tail, the Jamaican Thief, etc.).
6. The sheer amount of playful, mischievous fun that goes into a dancehall "performances" which party-goers take in with critical gusto, as if an audience at a play.
• The staged dispute between a dancer and the DJ (or "selecta") over the kind of music being played.
• A random elderly man pretending to force himself onto one of the young dancers before going into a "Daggering" dance routine.
7. Being called "mi boss", "mi general", "chief".
8. The slow buildup to parties and its different phases of music: starting with ska and rocksteady, followed by roots and dub, 80s dancehall, up to the latest hits by Vybz Kartel and Mavado.
9. The young men carrying huge sound systems on dollies with boxes full of pirated CDs on top, who walk around playing tunes on the street to attract customers.
10. The minutes (and sometimes hours) long shouting matches over an uncalled foul in a pick-up game of basketball, or over the rightful place of Alkaline within the dancehall greats, or over a cab fare. 
11. The sucking of one's teeth to demonstrate displeasure.
12. The night scenes: the Rastas and their nightly dub parties and live musical events; the dancehall scene with it's numerous "yard" parties and after-parties; the uptown nightclubs.
13. The Rasta men at dancehall parties roaming around like popcorn vendors at a ballpark, with trays full of lighters, open packs of cigarettes, gum, rolling papers, and long branches covered in marijuana buds, which they distribute to customers by picking chunks off like grapes and plopping them down into people's palms.
14. The large black plastic bags full of marijuana branches that many small shopkeepers keep stowed away, in case a shopper comes by and asks to buy a little.
15. The Chinese shopkeepers behind the barricaded counter whom the Jamaicans treat with a certain amount of disparaging indifference (calling them "Chin" or "Chinaman"), who set up shop in neighborhoods even the Jamaican entrepreneurs avoid.
16. The unlit spliffs hanging from the mouths of young laborers as they deliver merchandise to the different "wholesale" storefronts.
17. The diversity of hairstyles: wigs, extensions, straighteners, braids, cornrows, dreads... 
18. The complex gradient of English and Jamaican patois spoken around the city, with distinctions between "downtown" and "uptown" patois coupled with the formalized use among the bureaucratic and upper-class establishment of the "Queen's English".
19. The centrality of music to people's every day lives: spilling out from cars, buses, churches, bars, homes, businesses...
20. The Rasta culture of sitting down, smoking a spliff and "reasoning" with a group of friends and acquaintances.
21. The legendary studios and streets in the downtown area that have slowly disappeared or gone into disrepair.