Some Like it Hot
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 09/Apr/2011 18:51, 34 days ago
The idea for these comments gradually evolved. Occasionally I would be getting quite hot just sitting in a bus on Old Hope Road that was not air-conditioned on the way to or from volunteering at DRF, the Dispute Resolution Foundation. I would be able to feel the perspiration trickling down my forehead, something you don't feel that often in Greenland, or even in Canada.Then sirens were heard and a fire truck roared by with the fire crew standing up and wearing their heavy, heavy protective gear. How could they survive? In Canada it would be easy to work in a fire brigade because I'm sure on a -20 degree day in winter, a trip to a large fire would be most welcome. Obviously the Jamaican fire crews do not mind heat, one might even say they are some of those people who like it hot. So I decided to investigate.Here are some of the gentlemen at the Half Way Tree fire station in Kingston, Jamaica standing around relaxed and cool. They kindly consented to have their photo taken. They are Sgt R. Forte in the middle and firefighters K. Powell and M. Christian. But do they like to be cool?Sometimes the alarm goes off at the fire station, so they don their heavy, heavy protective gear and jump onto the fire truck and head off on the way to the fire. This is probably not a favorite part of their job - the wind blowing along the outside of the fire truck must cool them down a bit.But not too worry. When they arrive on the job, they start to warm up a bit and get rid of any feelings of coolness.The above was the recent major fire at Wray& Nephew, the well-known Jamaican distillery, where burning containers of alcohol added more than the usual amount of danger for the Kingston fire crews. But they remained cool in a professional sense, while thankfully moved away from coolness in a body temperature sense.But life is not all work, sometimes there is play, but the overall consideration is to make sure they don't get cool, or heaven forbid, cold. So they might decide to run a race:It was a day of learning for me. I looked at the Jamaican Fire Brigade web site and wondered where all the photos of fires in their Fire Break newsletter went between March 2005 and January 2011. I should have guessed - FaceBook.Finally I took this photo of flowers at Devon House on the way home to the apartment. Here is a skill-testing question. a) Did I take the photo because the flower colors remind me of flames? Or b) because I was so hot with my walking around that I needed to drop into the Devon House ice cream shop and have a delicious fruit cocktail flavored orange-colored ice cream in a sugared waffle cone to cool off?The answer has got to be b). Not everyone likes being hot. If they did, I would have had to change this article's title to "All Like it Hot".