'Wild Gilbert' on Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast

Mark Jamieson THEODICY AND LOVINDEER’s ‘WILD GILBERT’ ON NICARAGUA’S MOSQUITO COAST uring my first period of fieldwork in twisting trajectory, as Gilbert’s wife looking for 1992 and 1993, one of the recordings her husband (Barker and Miller 1990: 113). Dthat I heard over and over again on the cheap Amongst the almost universally bilingual portable radios owned by costeños (residents of Miskitu- and Creole-speaking people of Nicaragua’s east coast), and in restaurants, bars Kakabila with whom I conducted fieldwork, and ‘ranches’ (nightclubs), was ‘Wild Gilbert’ by and where ‘Wild Gilbert’ was as popular as Jamaican dancehall DJ, Lovindeer. The song was anywhere, the notion that a hurricane might a reggae recording featuring a comic account of have a personality was nothing new; the the havoc wrought by the eponymous hurricane prevailing winds over the course of the year that battered Jamaica on 12th September 1998. already had Miskitu names and personalities Reggae in various forms was, and remains, very (Yahbra—north wind; Diwas—west or land popular amongst costeños, particularly Nicaragua wind; Lalma Pasa—east wind; Unghki— Creole English (known locally as Creole) northeast wind; and Waupasa—south wind). speakers. What made Lovindeer’s recording so However, these in some way represent part of popular was its significance for those who had the cosmic order for Kakabila whose means of experienced Hurricane Joan which had caused transport and livelihoods (villagers are fisherfolk so much destruction to Bluefields, El Bluff, as well as farmers) were dependent on sail Rama Cay, Kukra Hill, the Corn Islands and power, outboard motors having yet to make the communities of the Pearl Lagoon area in a significant appearance. When those winds southeastern Nicaragua on 22nd October 1988, got out of line, villagers would stand up with only a month after Gilbert’s devastation of a machete which they might wave in the air Jamaica.1 to cut up and neutralise the ‘breeze’. In more Gilbert killed 45 people in Jamaica (as well critical weather situations, villagers relied on the as reportedly 330 in Mexico) (Barker and Miller most powerful of the two village shamans, Dama 1990: 111) while Joan in Nicaragua only took Prophet, who would leave his magic calabash to four lives but each hurricane was remembered in the water’s edge in order to arrest the power of the most badly affected areas of those countries the wind—most notably the south wind which as the most destructive in living memory. In sometimes brought hurricanes in October and Jamaica it did not take long for Gilbert to had the power to make women cry—or the have acquired both a personality and ‘bad boy’ power of the wind’s agent, Prahaku, a sky spirit nicknames (‘Kilbert’, ‘Rufus’ and ‘Rambo’). Joan, of considerable potential malevolence. which came to the Caribbean hard on Gilbert’s ‘Why,’ I asked villagers, ‘if Dama Prophet heels, missed Jamaica but was represented by is able to stave off hurricanes with his calabash, some Jamaicans, partly because of its unusual did Juana [the local name for Joan] come?’ suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 2 summer 2018 88 The Fieldwork Playlist ‘Well,’ one old man told me, ‘when it’s really appealed to costeños long after this hurricane had coming there’s not much you can do.’ And when passed. Lovindeer’s approach in ‘Wild Gilbert’ a hurricane like Joan cannot be stopped by was to present the listener with a catalogue of magical means, it threatens a cosmic order that threats to the moral order—those rents in the ideally rewards the good and punishes the bad protective ‘sacred canopy’ (Berger 1990) that by wreaking havoc on good and bad alike. Gilbert had visited on Jamaica—in specifically Hurricane Joan punished indiscriminately, autobiographical terms. Those threats reported some told me, inflicting terror and destruction by Lovindeer applied as much to the Creole- on everyone, regardless of their moral worth. speaking communities of southeastern In Kakabila, following radio warnings of its Nicaragua devastated by Joan as those in imminent arrival, Mister Whitfield called on Jamaica that were hit by Gilbert. The devastation fellow villagers to help him tie down the zinc Lovindeer reported focused at first on the losses roof of the only large cement building, the and deprivation of the undeserving. He reports village school, so that as many people as possible in the lyrics that, because of the hurricane, his might seek safety from it. (People’s houses bedroom was full of water, his bed and pets then were built predominantly of lumber.) were all soaked, there was no electric light, his Some helped him, he told me; others did not. meat and fish had spoiled, he could not cook It was those who did not, he added, that were and was therefore now completely reliant on first to fill up the school when Joan arrived. bully beef (corned beef) of which he was now Fortunately, nobody was killed or injured in tired, and (possibly worst of all) a cold beer now Kakabila (at that time with a population of less cost ten dollars because of the lack of working than 300), but all households were affected, with refrigerators. Meanwhile looters, none of whom considerable damage to plots of cassava, rice and seem to have been hurt, thanked the Lord for other cultigens, and the loss of clothes, papers, Mister Gilbert who had given them fridges, household utensils and, for some, roofing. Many colour televisions, video players and stereos. kitchens, then mostly built outside from sticks Lovindeer sings, ‘The little dog laughed and leaf, were also destroyed. Though I am less to see such fun and the dish run away with familiar with details or with many personal the spoon’ (from the nursery rhyme Hey diddle anecdotes from outside Kakabila, similar diddle); at first one believes this to mean that the tales of destruction were reported from other hurricane carried away his kitchen utensils until communities, especially to the south in the city he qualifies it by asking if anyone has seen his of Bluefields, Rama Cay and the harbour town satellite dish which took off ‘like flying saucer’. of El Bluff over which the hurricane’s eye passed This is a coy intimation by Lovindeer that and where entire lumber houses were destroyed because he has a satellite dish, and is therefore completely. relatively wealthy in Jamaican (and Nicaraguan) Hurricane Joan’s apparently random terms, he might be deserving of a levelling depredations, visited on the virtuous and turn of events. Meanwhile his roof ‘migrate[s] sinful alike it seems, demanded some kind of without a visa’, a lyric that would evince a wry rationalisation. While, no doubt, many accounts smile from both Jamaicans and Creole-speaking of why Joan had hit Nicaragua were circulating, Nicaraguans, almost all of whom would know Lovindeer’s ‘Wild Gilbert’ seemed to offer a or be aware of fellow country-people who had theodicy package, humorously expressed, that entered the United States seeking their fortunes suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 2 summer 2018 89 The Fieldwork Playlist without the necessary, and very hard to obtain, tearing off their roofs, but sparing their lives, legal paperwork. Meanwhile the hurricane so that they may see how Jah and the righteous has destroyed Mister Chin’s restaurant and (Rastafarians like himself) ‘run things’. In the blown down Mister Chin’s grocery shop, end, however, Gilbert turns back and lifts Natty both apparently acts of random destruction Dread’s roof off his shack, causing consternation by Gilbert but possibly nods to the fact that to Natty who had previously thought that he many important businesses in both Jamaica and ‘live right’ (lives with moral rectitude). Gilbert southeastern Nicaragua are owned by Chinese then goes on to blow away ‘the youth who a loot migrants and their descendants rather than and rob’. Afro-descendant people (Sujo 1998: 70–75). In summary, Gilbert, according to Lovin- The implication is that Gilbert might somehow deer, punishes the wealthy (the Chinese busi- have levelled perceived economic disparities nessman), those with hubris (Oliver), the between ‘Chinee’ people and other locals.2 self-righteous (the Rastafarian Natty Dread), In these ways Lovindeer offers the listener and the looters, and the rent in the sacred hints that perhaps there is indeed some moral canopy is repaired and the moral order reaf- justification in what Gilbert has done after all. firmed. That Lovindeer is mindful of these political Lovindeer’s ‘Wild Gilbert’ was of course and economic imbalances is certainly suggested written for the events of 12th September in near the beginning of ‘Wild Gilbert’ when he Jamaica and it was reportedly at that time ‘the declares with satirically acrolectal pronunciation, fastest selling reggae record in the history of possibly reproducing a patronizing and almost Jamaican music’ (Barker and Miller 1990: 107). meaningless government platitude, ‘We would Although they knew that this recording was like to express our sympathies to those affected written for a different hurricane, ‘Wild Gilbert’ by Gilbert.’ for Nicaraguan costeños was, and is, really about This line of argument, one in which perhaps Hurricane Joan where the hubris, hypocrisies, Gilbert makes some kind of moral sense, is inequalities and criminal behaviour were more explicitly pursued in Lovindeer’s accounts imagined in terms that were very similar to those of Oliver and Natty Dread’s experiences of the reported of Jamaica by Lovindeer. The themes hurricane. Oliver’s mother urges him to come and explanations offered by ‘Wild Gilbert’ inside as it becomes more intense but he laughs represented for them, I argue here, a theodicy and tells her that it is only a ‘dibby dibby’ (weak) that made sense of their experience of the events breeze, and that he wishes to experience it.

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