On Another Jamaican Mountaintop

Never thought I would write about this, really only told the story when I was drunk, and it has been more than seventeen years since I last took a drink. I think about it most days, but it doesn't haunt me like it used to. It happened twenty four years ago on a lonely mountaintop in the cockpit country of Jamaica, south of Montego Bay. It began and ended in a few minutes, and I never knew what happened to the baby or her mother. I never dared return.
It was in my second year as a Peace Corp Volunteer doing literacy work on the western side of the island. I had complained a lot and persuaded a local Rotarian to help me secure a motorcycle from PC headquarters (our director was a big Rotarian, in many ways). PC did not look favorably on my assignment, as literacy work was not popular with the government at that time. But through persistence and some help, I got a nice new Honda 250 dirt bike - perfect for traipsing around the Jamaican countryside.
As in any proper myth, there was a steep price to pay for this political victory. This new motorcycle had a small glitch - the back tire would go flat every few days. I ordered new tubes, tried to get the rim fixed, everything to no avail. I learned how to remove the back tire and fix the flat in a matter of minutes, and resolved myself to my fate. Sisyphus would have been proud - I fixed that flat three times a week for a year!
Once I got the motorcycle, my work as a Field Agent truly took off. I visited remote schools, did trainings, and eventually established new classes in places few westerners had ever been. It was in one small community (about six shacks actually), that I encountered the worst experience of my life. I was on a mountain just above Horseguard, looking for a small church that had expressed interest in the program. There were no signs, and few landmarks to guide me. I stopped once to ask a older gentleman for directions. He pointed a worn hand in the direction I was travelling and said "gwan up so pas tree duppies." Now I knew the direct translation - Go on up past the three ghosts. The ghost part confused me. I smiled and thanked him and took off. About four miles up the road I saw a small house with three gravestones in the yard - the ghosts. To the north of the house was a tall slope and I could see a steeple just bobbing ahead of the crest. I put the bike in low gear and climbed a seldom used path up and over the top. There were a few shacks scattered about and one small but meticulously cared for church. I drove up towards the church when I saw a woman emerge from a shack with a small bundle in her arms. I thought she might help me find the pastor. I was wrong.
At first, the woman didn't seemed panicked. I think she was confused. She approached me and held out the swaddled bundle speaking an urgent patois (the Jamaican language) so thick I could barely understand her. In the next few minutes that seemed like a decade, I came to understand that she had mistaken me for a doctor that sometimes had made visits to the area. She kept thrusting the bundle at me, and I kept trying to understand. At one point she slowed down and I got her to unwrap the baby. It was barely breathing, and I could tell it was very sick. I then tried to get her to get on the bike with me to go down to town to a hospital. She did not understand and somewhere at sometime in that linguistic struggle, the baby gave up. She looked down at the child, who was now in my arms, and she began to sob violently. At that point, a few other folks had walked up and they gently took the baby from my hands, and guided the woman and her dead child back in to the shack. As quickly as that it was over, I was alone on that mountaintop staring at my useless hands. I turned slowly and got on my motorcycle and made my way back down the mountain. I went home, laid down on my bed and begged God to let me cry. He did not. Later, I learned to cry when I drank.