Charles Gordon Market in MoBay

This morning Lincoln picks me up in front of the resort promptly at ten and we head directly for Montego Bay’s largest fruit and vegetable bazaar, the Charles Gordon Market, a dark, ancient hall filled with wooden stalls heaped with odd spinach-like greens called callaloo and the peculiar-looking cho-cho which tastes like squash and is used in soups and stews.

There are bananas that smell of vanilla and custard, and coconuts in different stages of ripening, including “jellies,” green coconuts whose pudding-like meat is so soft it is fed to babies. There are mounds of mangos, guava, and breadfruit the size of large grapefruit, sweet potatoes ripe plantains, and stall after stall offering up “fresh goatflesh” for 280 Jamaican dollars for a pound (about $3.20 U.S.)

Lincoln introduces me to an old granny sitting in front of a pyramid of okra. “Good for the back,” she says, holding one of the fuzzy green cylinders out to me. Says Lincoln, “If you don’t get okra with your steamed fish, you’re not getting steam fish. Gotsta have the okra.”

This isn’t the sort of place where you’d run into Martha Stewart if she were on the island or even Anthony Bourdain, for that matter. The poverty is palpable, the hygiene iffy at best, and there’s a vague ominous feel to the place (Lincoln asked me not to bring a camera with me). Still, it’s fascinating. Particularly the herbs and spices section of the market where you’ll find bundles of fresh and dried herbs, both to cook with and to cure whatever ails you. Something called Leaves of Life, recommended for those with chest colds, is hawked by a toothless women who also sells homemade concoctions for diabetes, diahrea, and female problems.

Lincoln buys us both a round, yellow-green palm jelly fruit. The vendor hacks off the tops with a machete and sticks a straw in each. I suck down the sweet, refreshing liquid and think about having another, but Lincoln suggests one might be enough, adding, while leading me back towards the car, that if I should “feel uncomfortable” in the stomach while eating in Jamaica, the best cure is a shot of Overproof. “It kill everytin in da stomach,” he assures me.

Good to know. Maybe this afternoon I’ll stop by the Cohoba Lounge again and see if Dalton the rummier is around. You can’t be too careful.