Tenement yard living in Kingston, Jamaica was a sociological experience which required the use of higher level coping skills for survival, not to mention satisfaction. There was, and continues to be, a whole set of practices which make the lifestyle in this environment unique and complex. Unwritten rules and codes of behaviour exist that are generally accepted. Violations of these invariably lead to verbal and physical confrontations.

One frequent response to acts of disrespect and injustice or disagreement was to ostracize. Tenants stopped speaking to each other. This deliberate end to communication was called malice in the local vernacular, a practice adopted almost exclusively by the womenfolk. People in the yard would whisper that so-and-so was in malice with so-and-so. There were usually slight feelings of disappointment when adversaries resumed old friendships and the tenants realized that “dem talk back”.

Survival in a tenement environment involves walking a fine line between insisting on getting what is rightfully yours and relinquishing some of these rights through little acts of kindness to fellow tenants. It involves the experience of accepting and dealing with a clash of individual cultures and personalities in a restricted living area. It also requires the application of inter-personal skills and use of conflict resolution techniques that the participants acquire and develop in this crucible of poverty.

At 10A Hampton Street, lifelong friendships were formed while disputes, oddly, tended to be short-lived and soon dispensed with. Miss Rachael and “Little Wicked”, so named because of her small stature and aggressive demeanour, were continually quarrelling over who should sweep the yard. But when Miss Rachael became ill and had to be admitted to hospital, Little Wicked was the one who cooked for Miss Rachael’s small children and combed her daughter’s hair for school.

One important lesson learned from exposure to this environment was that human nature is basically good and the milk of human kindness flows continually in the hearts of humankind, regardless of the circumstances of life. This type of living created many experiences, reflections that qualify for honourable mention in the storybook of life.

The tenement yard at 10A Hampton Street housed seven, maybe eight, family groups, each occupying one room. There were a couple of toilets situated in a discreet section of the yard. The toilet’s water tanks were mounted overhead and flushed with a long chain attached to a lever. Toilets were smelly enclosures, usually occupied by a large, croaking lizard, whose appearance scared the daylights out of the womenfolk. Toilet paper was a scarce commodity, not considered critical by any means. The use of old newspaper, soaked or crumpled until soft, generally took care of business.

Bathrooms were nothing more than an enclosure with an overhead pipe. Showerheads were not considered essential to the process. On occasion, enterprising individuals would fashion such a device, using an ice pick to bore small holes in an empty can, which was then attached to the shower pipe with wire. This provided a spray effect, sought after by women and girly-men.

When showering, tenants stood on a wooden pallet, often slimy and slippery from soap build-up. Most people used a bar of perfumed soap such as Palmolive, Lux or Lifebuoy to lather and would take the soap back to their room, wrapped in their wash rag to prevent it being stolen. Carbolic soap was used by some tenants who couldn’t afford the pricier brands. The poorest of the poor went the laundry route and used brown soap or soap flakes.

Salt or chew-stick was a common alternative to toothpaste for brushing teeth. The use of soap for brushing was frowned on, as it was believed to cause teeth to rot. Regardless of the cleaning agent used, tenants bathed and brushed their teeth regularly.

The standpipe was a prominent and important amenity of the tenement yard. It consisted of a water tap hung over a large concrete basin cemented into the ground. Its outlet could be plugged with a wad of cloth to hold water for washing clothes. The standpipe created many arguments between tenants, since there was generally only one per yard and usage was high.

Small children were bathed at the pipe, as was the occasional dog. Water from the pipe would be used to sprinkle the yard before it was swept. This prevented the formation of clouds of dust during the sweeping process. The ground was swept in turns by the tenants, using a yard broom, whose strands were thick and wide, unlike the finer strands of the house broom.

Older children washed their feet under the pipe at night before going to bed. Going to bed with dirty feet was an invitation for a parental whipping. Anyone leaving the pipe running would be shouted at and verbally abused. Wasting water was a serious offence that would make the “water rate” go up and the landlord irate.

Verbal abuse was a common occurrence in this dense living environment. Every female tenement yard resident knew how to curse and swear, fluently and effortlessly, and would never back down from an argument. They would fight too, if provoked, but most arguments did not get to that stage. Verbal insults, name-calling and the liberal use of cuss-words were the weapons of choice.

Since there were no indoor bathrooms or toilets, utensils were kept indoors for nocturnal necessities and early morning cleansing. Tenants kept enamel containers under the bed for use as urinals when nature called in the middle of the night. These were delicately referred to as ‘chamber pots’ but this description was shortened to the word chimmey by the less cultured.

There was a larger version, the slop pail, which was more practical for tenant rooms with a higher head-count. Emptying the urine was a necessary but unpopular morning ritual that was generally assigned to family underlings or as punishment for unruly children. I recall being ordered on quite a few occasions, “go tek out the chimmey!”

The other set of utensils that all self-respecting tenants tried to have was a basin-and-goblet set, preferably in matching coloured enamel. The goblet was filled with water every evening. In the morning, some of the water would be poured into the basin for washing the face and neck and brushing teeth or dentures. Deluxe goblet sets came with a matching soap dish. Washing one’s face at the standpipe was considered in poor taste, an act performed only by drifters and other low life.

Cooking was serious business in the tenement yard. People cooked on coal stoves set on a table or bench outside their rooms and on any given day several of these stoves would be cooking food at the same time. One or two people had oil stoves, fuelled by kerosene oil, but coal stoves were preferred because of their greater heat output.

A wide variety of culinary aromas filled the air as there was much diversity on display; curried mutton, fish tea, pork, stewed beef, tripe, rice and peas, cow cod soup, corned meal porridge and beef soup, to name a few. Every tenant knew how to cook. On Sundays the stoves were fired up early so that the rice and peas and meat would be ready by early afternoon. Some single tenant ladies entertained their visiting gentlemen friends on Sundays and a big dinner, served early, was sure to enlarge their weekly allowance.

Our next house move was to 4 Laidlaw Street, which was around the corner from 10A Hampton Street. We shared the yard with four sets of tenants, including a white complexioned woman by the name of Miss Hitchman, who lived by herself. It was unusual for a white person to be living in a tenement yard and other tenants stared at her and whispered as she went about her daily routines. White people lived in upscale areas such as Barbican or Stony Hill in those days. They were all considered wealthy and did not have to live like black people in the narrow confines of communal structures.

It eventually turned out that Miss Hitchman came from the southern section of the parish of St Elizabeth and had the light skin coloration that is common to many people from that section of Jamaica. The light skin pigmentation came about because of generations of intermarriage between locals and German immigrants, who settled in that section of the island in the late nineteenth century.

copyright © 2009 Errol A Samuels – all rights reserved