"Through the chug and churn of the train,
I hear clacking cries from black toucans with huge rainbow beaks
and eerie howls from big hairy monkeys with shaggy faces
that almost look human, faces with voices so challenging
that every man on the train starts howling, too."
The Caribbean Islanders not only had not
been in the type of immense tropical rainforest
that you find in Central America because the rainforest in Cuba
and on all the islands had been chopped down much earlier,
centuries earlier, but also, they
hadn't encountered each other.
They were separated by the sea.
So Jamaicans didn't know Cubans, and Jamaicans
didn't know Barbadians.
They were on separate islands.
And I am always fascinated by the places where cultures meet,
but this is actually two stories.
The human voices alternate with forest voices.
I think of this book as my personal love letter
to the tropical rainforest.