IN THE VILLAGE of Drax Hall Woods, St George there is no wooded area. It is woods only by name. But for many miles around people know Drax Hall Woods for something else – its horrible road.
Last week I assigned all Nation photographers to look for and record some of the worst potholes dotting our roads. I could not help laughing when photographer Ricardo Leacock dropped into one on the Ronald Map Highway, leaving a gaping hole in one of his tyres.
Two days later I was asked to look into the state of the road at Drax Hall Woods, but after hours of searching, young reporter Alex Downes could not find the location.
I decided to do it myself and ended up stuck in a deep rut in the middle of the village on Sunday morning. It took half a dozen big rocks strategically placed under the tyres to make it out.
But I should have been better prepared, because the warnings were numerous. I first entered Drax Hall and a man cutting grass told me: “You too high up. Go back down by the plantation house and use the cart road there. . . . You just might make it ’cause you driving a SUV.”
I took the road he recommended and when I thought I was almost there I stopped at a junction to enquire of two women who were waiting for the bus. One said: “Go down this road. When you pass de church it is the bad road in front of you.”
Again I followed their directions and as I approached the “bad road”, just to be sure I asked an old woman who had just got out of a car and started to make her way across the rocky path if I was indeed in Drax Hall Woods. She replied: “This is Drax Hall Woods, but you sure you want to go down in there with that car?” When I told her yes, she responded: “If I was you I would drive real slow.”
It took less than a minute to comprehend her warning because what I thought was “bad road” turned into a deeply rutted river bed with flakes of asphalt surface that suggested at some point in the past it was an actual road.
One resident said to me it was bad for many years and had never been paved. I therefore asked where the big chunks of asphalt came from and she revealed some time ago a number of loads of road surface milled from a highway project were dropped along the path and levelled out to form a half decent road.
Heavy rainfall over time, however, has made it impassible to anyone but the most intrepid of drivers in a super rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle. I’m an off-road enthusiast. I know the hills and valleys of St Joseph and St Andrew like the palm of my hand. I have scared many people while driving them across rugged terrain.
The dry river bed they call a road in Drax Hall Woods didn’t scare me, not once I had surveyed it and was satisfied that the wheels of my vehicle could spawn the 18-inch craters that ran its length. That was until it had to go round a corner. My left rear wheel dropped into the rut and the vehicle would not move. Not without the use of some perfectly placed rocks and pieces of asphalt surface.
All the time I was stuck, resident Richard Callender stood in his patio about three stories above watching my adventure.
He warned me that while I had cleared the rocky challenge, a muddy pond lay ahead of me. Since his old Toyota Corolla can’t make it over the rock path, he travels through the bush to the muddy patch, hoping it is navigable. When it is not he leaves the car at home and tries his luck with the bus.
“We were promised a road nuff times going back to when Louis Tull was the MP and we still waiting. [Esther] Byer-Suckoo promised us a road and we still waiting. The current MP Dwight Sutherland came through and talked and we still waiting for a road.”
Elsa Garrett has been living in Drax Hall Woods for nine years and she too is anxious for a road, but more for her children’s sake than hers. Any time the children get home from school after dark she is worried. In fact, she said she only had Internet installed so they would not stay out after school doing assignments. The long, treacherous walk is more than she can bear.
She recalled how last year she and her husband had to collect rocks and fill the mud track so they could drive in and out.
“This really is not right,” Garrett said. “We pay taxes like everybody else. We deserve goodroad too.”
Minister of Transport and Works Michael Lashley is intimately familiar with the conditions in Drax Hall Woods. In fact, before I could mention my trip he was aware that I had been there and was quick to point out that the road was already on the programme of MTW for construction.
While he could not give a time frame, he assured the residents that relief was on the way.
In the meanwhile, I will join the residents in praying there is no more heavy rain in the area. I don’t think they can take much more.
In the meanwhile, I hope a concerned politician would source a couple of truckloads of marl to fill in those ruts and cover the mud pool so that until the road arrives some half-decent access would still be possible.