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Wrangling with fireworks

Ria — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:20:03 +0000

We ventured into the village yesterday to get the traditional New Year’s delicacies, olieballen and glühwein, essential ingredients for a gezellig evening by the log fire. On every street corner stood gangs of slouching and sullen yoof, sniggering and swigging beers, SMSing with a mobile in each hand, while at the same time lighting bangers

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Making light of New Year

Another don bites the dust

Ria — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:11:43 +0000

Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a wail, In Spanish Town

Another shooting, another riot, another curfew in Spanish Town, Jamaica’s former capital city, situated some ten miles west of Kingston. The town exploded in violence again yesterday following the assassination of Andrew “Bun Man” Hope, leader of the One Order gang. The leader

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Late night reading

Ria — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:55:00 +0000

Late at night, when everybody else is asleep, I reach under the bed and get out my favourite porn reading: The Rough Guide to Jamaica. Check out this extract: A mile or so past Chukka Cove, a tiny paved road cuts inland towards Cranbrook Flower Forest, an exquisitely landscaped, 130-acre nature park with several

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The customer (with a shotgun) is king

Ria — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:16:00 +0000

Antoinette is smoking again.

She works in the next office but the walls here are so porous that the smoke just leaks through. Our building was once Mussolini’s Ministry of African Affairs, a rather grandiose affair since his attempt to emulate other European colonial powers was limited to Abyssinia and Libya. The large offices

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