Happy Birthday Uncle Martyn!

The main reason for our visit to Jamaica was to celebrate Uncle Martyn’s 70th birthday. He’d organised a massive party for over three hundred people, at an old youth-camp site, right on the beach. Uncle Martyn and Jenni gave us an opportunity to get intimately acquainted with the site beforehand, by getting us to help out with the setup. We moved some tables and chairs around, and Jason and Susan offered Jenni some of their event planning advice; but Dani was the real star of the show, weaving palm fronds into a nice roof for the food huts!

It was extremely hot in the sun, so it didn’t take long to work up a sweat. One of the locals cut us some fresh coconuts – turns out coconut water is extremely good for you, as well as being extremely tasty! And fresh coconut jelly is better than eating ice-cream! (Well, better than coconut ice-cream, anyway.)

The party started mid-afternoon, and we rocked up around 4 PM to find the place already filling up. It was a bit strange being the “delegates” for Mom, as heaps of people kept coming up to us and saying things like:

Lady: Are you Kay’s son?
Me: Errr, yes, yes I am.
Lady: Oh! That’s wonderful! I’ve known Kay since she was 3 years old!
Me: Wow, that’s quite a while!
Lady: Ohh, yes. You’ll have to tell her that I said hello!
Me: Err… ok… and you are… ?

By this point though, most of the people had unhelpfully walked away. Later on, I figured out a better tactic – as soon as someone started talking to either Jason or I, we took a photo with us and them to later send to Mom for facial recognition. I’m not sure how well it worked, but I maintain that it was a solid idea. On the upside, it was fantastic to catch up with so much of our extended family – some who we had never even met before!

The party itself was a roaring success. Uncle Martyn had arranged heaps of food, including jerk chicken, jerk pork, tempura prawns, fried conch (tastes kind-of like calamari), and prime rib. It was a vegetarians worst nightmare, so suffice to say we were in flavour country – and it’s a big country!

As the alcohol flowed, the dancing began, and sooner or later just about everyone had a stint on the dancefloor. Young Sam and Dani were rather obviously the best dancers – so much so, they somehow developed a cult following of children – but it was great to see everyone giving it a whirl.

By 11 PM, things seemed to be winding down a bit, and we turned in about half-an-hour later. I’m sure that some of the “hardcore” folks would have been there until the wee hours of the morning, but at that point we were certain that Uncle Martyn would get his birthday wish – that we’d all wake up with a hangover. Yes, really, that’s what he asked for.

Some more photos from the evening in the photo gallery.