The South Sea and How A Bus Fills Up

The view from the veranda of our host families' house provides a great view of the sea and the sky to the south. Therefore, Scott and I hurry outside to watch storms approach and pass from the veranda-- a pastime that we both are familiar with from our childhoods. I should mention that this is not a pastime for Jamaicans. When it storms here, people immediately seek shelter. Granted, if you don't follow that advice you are likely to get soaked to the bone in a matter of seconds if you are caught when the rain begins. Regardless, the veranda is covered, so it is not a matter of getting wet. This picture was taken of a storm well to the south of the island.


On an unrelated note, I have noticed that buses and classrooms seem to fill according to the same philosophy. If there are zero to very few people seated on a bus that is waiting to depart, no one else wants to get on that bus. However, once a critical load (probably about 75% capacity) has accumulated in a bus it fills very quickly indeed. This normally is not a problem unless there are several empty buses to choose from. Then the time it takes to reach the critical load is quite long and only made worse by the bus drivers' and dokta's (conductor) attempt to reach critical load before any other bus in the vicinity-- by aggressively recruiting the few people intending to travel that direction and very efficiently ensuring that they are evenly distributed amongst the empty buses. Perhaps the goal is not to fill up your bus first, but rather to make sure that no one else can fill up theirs.

It also seems to apply that if there are zero to very few people in a classroom, it is also not desirable to stay in that classroom even if the person is precisely on time for the class to start. This means that even the people who are arriving late can make the same argument. I have yet to figure out how to keep people in an empty classroom in order to reach critical load. As long as there are no other empty classrooms in the vicinity to fill, maybe I should hire a dokta.