When I arrived on Bequia in 1977 the road from Port Elizabeth to Paget Farm was far different than it is now, mainly because there were few vehicles. Dollar vans didn’t exist, I could count the number of taxis with five fingers, and private cars were pretty much unheard of. School children from Paget Farm either walked all the way to the harbour and back each day, or took the old green school bus.
I lived at Friendship Gap above Guildford Stowe’s rum shop, and the early-morning walk into Port Elizabeth was pleasant. The hot afternoon walk on sun-baked cement was another story, and I quickly learned to carry a bathing suit to school with me. I would scramble up a goat path behind the Sunny Caribbee to Tony Gibbons beach then work my way home slowly, treating myself to cooling dips in the sea along the way.
One day it was rainy, so I decided to take the school bus home. This would be my first and LAST time taking that particular mode of transport, and after my terrifying experience I seriously worried about the students who went to and from school each day on the bus. The problem didn’t lie with the ancient vehicle, rather the driver, and the complaints I indignantly lodged about the man’s dangerous driving fell on deaf ears.
The driver was fine during the morning run from Paget Farm to the high school, but the afternoons were a different kettle of fish! There were an awful lot of hours between dropping the students off and picking them up for the return trip, and it appeared that those hours were largely spent in rum shops. I wasn’t aware of this rum shop habit, and innocently boarded the bus believing it was safe.
Hah! Bequia’s main road back then was in terrible shape, and the few vehicles on the island had to be driven with care. Not the bus though, that driver attacked the road with a mighty jerk before I had found a seat, and I was hurled on top of a row of students who, of course, found my predicament hilarious. It didn’t take me long to realize that the driver was seriously inebriated; he was driving far too fast, and my screams of “slow down! Slow down!” made the students on board laugh even harder. The children were obviously used to this type of reckless driving, and squealed with glee as we rounded “jumbie corner” with the starboard tires in the air.
The first stop was Friendship Gap, and the students who were laughing so hard were soon scowling. I made each and every one of them disembark as I berated the drunk bus driver amidst howls of protest – they had to walk the rest of the way home in the hot sun and were not happy campers. My complaints about the driver were dismissed with a wave of the hand, and comments like “you’re too Canadian” or, “don’t worry, they always reach OK”. I was obviously being unreasonable, and more than one parent complained about their children having to walk home in the hot sun.
Being so new to the island perhaps I HAD appeared unreasonable, but in my book ANY vehicle rounding “jumbie corner” with tires in the air is unreasonable too, and I never rode on the school bus again!