Jamaica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 212

and notice-boards bear messages in clumsily-formed letters, which say 'Long live Abyssinia' or 'We are
Ethiopians.'
Among their other characteristics, the inhabitants of the Dungle are passionately anti-white, and I had
been warned by coloured Jamaican friends that it was insane even for coloured people who were not ini-
tiates to set foot inside it. It was the refuge of all the robbers and footpads and murderers of Jamaica,
and policemen, they said, could only venture there in twos and threes; a real Alsatia. Curiosity, however,
triumphed over caution, and I made an intrepid descent.
It was plain to see that the Negroes lounging among the trees and huts regarded this white intrusion
with extreme dislike. They looked a terrible lot of people with expressions of really frightening depravity.
All were dressed in the most sordid rags, and all equipped with curling black beards. Three boys of about
eighteen, of slightly less forbidding appearance, were throwing dice on a biscuit tin. I asked them for a
light and after a pause, to avoid the appearance of haste, offered cigarettes; which, after a pause, were
accepted.
'What are you looking for here?' one of them asked. I had thought out my line rather carefully, and
answered with what I hoped was a nonchalant unconcern.
'Nothing, thank you. I was just going for a walk.'
'The white folk don't come to the Dungle.'
'Where's the Dungle?'
'This is the Dungle. This is where the Rastafari live. Don't you see the beards?'
'I'm sorry. I've just got off the boat from England, and don't know Kingston at all. What are the Rasta-
fari, and what about the beards?'
Their hostility seemed to waver a little.
'Come inside,' one of them said, getting up. 'I'll tell you.'
The hut was about two yards square and constructed entirely of copies of the Daily Gleaner glued
together. Three of us sat on the plank bed that filled half of the cabin. The owner settled down on the
biscuit-tin that he had brought with him. A photograph of the Negus, nursing a bat-eared lap-dog with
enormous eyes, was stuck to the paper wall. Underneath it was written in charcoal, 'My one hope. Signed
Paul Fernandez.'
The Rastafari, he explained, were Ethiopians, and they had all come to live in the Dungle before going
back to Africa and their King—but not, he said, before they had conquered the West and driven away the
white men. But, I said, none of the slaves that came to the West Indies were from Ethiopia, which was
inhabited by a different, a Semitic race. He waved this aside. 'That's all lies,' he answered, 'that's what
the history books say, but the history books are all written by white folks to make a fool of the black men.
We're from Abyssinia. We got wise men, and they tell us the truth.' There was no more to be said about
that.
There were, he continued, only a few hundred Rastafari in Jamaica—but there were millions in Amer-
ica and millions and millions in Abyssinia, all ready to conquer the white race and make Haile Selassie
king of the world. 'Do you stand up when they play “God Save the King”? Well, I don't, no sir . I sit down
and drive the legs of the chair into the ground.' He made the gesture of doing this with his biscuit-tin. The
others grunted their agreement. 'That's right, Haile Selassie is the only king. Long live the red, yellow
and green!'
'We don't want no English king, no president of the United States, no bishop, no pope, no police, no
white men. You know what we call England? We call it Sodom, the place of the wicked. We want the