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Review: Chigger Foot Boys

When I heard the title of Pat Cumper's play, Chigger Foot Boys - based on actual events ofJamaicans fighting for the British Empire in WWI - I stifled a nervous giggle. I hadn'theard the expression, 'chigger foot', in years but, more importantly, I felt a tinge of guilt.

I first heard the phrase as a girl, after overhearing my Jamaican mother with a friend. Thetwo women seemed full of disdain for a fellow migrant. I had no idea what he'd said ordone to draw their ire. But they dismissed any consideration of the transgressor, agreeingthat they shouldn't "pay him any mind", or stoop to his level for that matter, as he wasmerely a 'chigger foot'.

I gleaned that a 'chigger foot' referred to a poor, bare-footed country boy who was, sadly,more often than not, destined for a life of toil, cutting sugar cane; a meagre existence as a'higgler'; or exploited as an itinerant worker and source of cheap labour. Later, I learnt theliteral meaning of 'chigger': a parasitic bug that bored tiny holes into flesh, secreting larvae,which caused sores. The salient point being that a 'chigger foot' was commonly associatedwith poverty i.e., the mite was able to burrow under the skin of someone's toes because theycouldn't afford a pair of shoes, or any footwear at all.

With that thought, I sat down to watch Chigger Foot Boys, convinced that the term was adisparagement. One protagonist, Medora - feisty and fashioned in the tradition of strong,

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no-nonsense, black Jamaican women - was a match for any man. In this case: Mortie, asimpleton, referred to facetiously as "chigger foot bwoy" by a sweet-talking, smart alecprofessional soldier, Linton; and two decorous, middle-class brothers, Roy and Norman.

Most of the action takes place in Medora's rum bar near Kingston's harbour. Boisterousgames of dominoes and lips loosened by alcohol encourages sparring between thecharacters, whose paths ordinarily wouldn't have crossed. To that extent, Pat Cumber's playportrayed a microcosm of Jamaican society: namely, the hierarchy of 'colour' and 'class' - aby-product of colonialism, which resulted in a caste system, or pigmentocracy.

My mother, barely 'brown', and with her father's connections, could have secured a job inthe civil service. Instead, England's green and pleasant land beckoned. Ironically, she foundherself amongst Jamaicans - like the transgressor - with whom she wouldn't typically have"kept company".

It seemed at one point as if most Jamaicans desired to go to the 'Mother Country';moreover, they believed themselves to be British. And, as Linton informed: "If England wasat war, so were we!" Indeed, Jamaica's loyalty to the Empire, which permeated everyaspect of life, partly drove tens of thousands to enlist.

However, the cold reality of everyday, casual racism and housing discrimination, inparticular, proved a great leveller for my mother and her contemporaries. But in Norman'sexperience it was ignominious, for different reasons. The light-complexioned, Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar had to suffer the indignity of only being allowed a commissionwith a special dispensation: becoming an officer rested upon him being listed as an"honorary white man."

Mortie, illiterate and an innocent was also a persistent soul; he turned up repeatedly at therecruitment office in Kingston, only to be rejected, usually on health grounds. Nevertheless,he believed his rifle skills at hunting wild boars in the 'bush' equipped him to be a sharp-shooter in the King's army. Eventually, he succeeded - when Britain was in desperate needof more men; or, as Linton put it, to reinforce the ranks of "cannon fodder".

Irina Brown's directional technique in portraying the multilayered aspects of each character

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was to employ flashbacks: Medora's vulnerability beneath the stern exterior; Linton'sscheming; Mortie's dire prospects; Roy's half-hearted attempt at being responsible; andNorman, with his future looking the brightest, once he'd completed his law degree atOxford. The flashbacks were seamless and didn't interfere with the play's pace or coherence.And smuggled in between the seriousness were some laugh-out-loud moments, as PatCumper's keen ear for dialogue and Jamaican patois resonated with some in the audience.

As the war raged Medora was best placed to observe its devastation at a distance; from thevantage point of her rum bar she was able to witness the wounded and dead returning inever increasing numbers. When the futility of war finally dawns on her she becomes anadherent of a black nationalist leader on the rise - Marcus Garvey - who'd begun to preachagainst the "white man's war".

Like countless others, the aftermath of war was bitter for Norman: his beloved youngerbrother, Roy, didn't survive. And one of the most poignant scenes was an imaginedconversation between Norman and his now dead brother. But the final scene in whichMortie and Roy's bodies were laid out head to toe brought the carnage to a close andrevealed Pat Cumper's metaphor in using 'chigger foot'. Death had brought Mortie, with hiscombat boots on, and Roy in his bare feet, parity.

Earlier in the play Norman joked that Roy would never roam in the fields of the family'splantation unless he had his boots on - as he was afraid of the chiggers. And all along, morethan anything, Mortie wanted to be respected. Tragically, his knee-jerk defiance at beingdiscriminated against in Taranto, Italy, - where mutiny of soldiers from the British WestIndies Regiment, rebelling at having to dig latrines and denied fair pay, was to ensue - led toMortie being 'shot at dawn'.

In the dexterous hands of acclaimed playwright Patricia Cumper MBE, Chigger Foot Boysaccomplished what a good theatrical production should by being bold, entertaining andenlightening. Indeed, Cumper's year and a half's research in both Britain and Jamaicashows; the play is jam-packed with little-known information on Jamaica's involvement inWorld War I. And, without a doubt, she ably convinced why, ultimately, 'chigger foot'wasn't a disparagement. Indeed, narratives like Mortie's represented - poor, marginalisedand voiceless - were stories which needed to be told. To all the 'chigger foot boys' - nuff

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respec'.

Follow Sonia Grant on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SoniaSGrant