Total Experience Corner: A Year in Jamaica

by Christopher Cox

Total Experience Corner was the name of a roadside bar on the road from Kingston to St Thomas, the easternmost parish of Jamaica where few Kingston residents and even fewer tourists ever set foot. When a white English exchange teacher and his wife first passed it in the spring of 1991 they had little idea of what a total experience their year would turn out to be. From the peaceful countryside of Somerset they had to learn to cope with the heat, the humidity, the Reggae and the insects in a deprived, poverty stricken village set in cane fields and banana plantations. Add in a school staffed by underpaid, and in some cases unqualified, teachers plus a twenty-year old wreck of a VW car, christened Horatio since, like Nelson, it was lacking several important body parts, it was going to be a challenge. This is the story of how they overcame all the difficulties and fell in love with the island, its people and even, to some extent, their brave little blue car. With Chapter titles including Rule Britannia in the Blue Mountains, How Not To Make Tea, Another Lovely Funeral, Mirror on the Ceiling, Five in a Bed, Gold Teats, The Gut Buster, Taking a Machete to a Banana, There’s a Crocodile Behind You, and Birthday Suits in Hedonism, laugh along with the author and his wife as they fall in love with Jamaica and its people.

153 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 10, 2020