‘Whoa!’ Juleen exclaimed, and went quiet for a mo-
ment, as if remembering something too. ‘Well, people have always gone to them for advice, and also for those little wax dolls to punish their enemies and I don’t even know what else, no no no!’ Her braids flew as she shook her head. ‘Seriously, mija, around here an obiá would be the best defence against hooking up with someone else’s husband!’ As quickly as she’d started to speak, as if she’d seen it with her own eyes, she changed the subject. She tilted her head to the right: ‘Hey, see that? This plot of land here in Harmony Hall is where we Raizals want to build a cemetery.’ We drove on and instantly passed the sign pointing down an unpaved road towards the Duppy Gully.

‘Harmony Hall? That’s what this is called? Mexican Hill?’

‘Say whaaat? No Mexican Hill, no Mafia Hill, no nothing. And where we’re going isn’t just “San Luís, donde vive la gente feliz”,’ she teased, the rhyme mocking the area’s well-to-do reputation, ‘but Lickle Gough! Places around here already had names from before, you know.’

She swayed back and forth on the motorcycle. Her pronunciation was less formal than Maa Josephine’s: Lickle Gough, she called it.

‘Yeah, down with the pañas!’ I said, giving her a pinch on the side, and we both burst out laughing.

‘Isn’t Duppy Gully supposed to be a swamp? Are you all actually thinking of putting a cemetery next to a marsh, Juleen?’ I asked, thinking about the basics of wetlands I’d studied towards the end of high school.

Classes in environmental education started only when San Andrés became a UNESCO biosphere reserve, in 2001. A teacher from Germany lobbied for this to be the emphasis of our graduating class, although years passed before other schools followed suit. By then, of course, all the ecosystems had been endangered for years.

Juleen’s answer shocked me. ‘Mangrove or no mangrove, a duppy is a duppy. It’s the swamp of the spirits. There are already ghosts in there, more in some than in others, so what does it matter?’

The roar of a muffler interrupted us – two mufflers, actually. A pair of guys overtook us in a frenetic downward race. Juleen honked back and yelled ‘All right!’ It was her cousin, she said, a guy with cacao-coloured skin like hers, his long dreadlocks swishing in the wind.

‘So there are ghosts in the Gully?’