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.