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Patwah-speaking flight attendant had WestJet rocking
October 26, 2016
Air travel nowadays can be a real hell of hassle. So my default airplane face and mood is usually a not-so-pleasant combination of very vex and mucho miserable. Is serious thing, man! First, there's the standard requirement of getting to airport all of three hours before for international flights.
And you often spend about seventy-five per cent of those three hours in long lines of chaos and confusion with frenzied, nervous, loud or excited people.
Then there's the inconvenience of time-consuming searches and security checks, and the potential embarrassment of a random 'extra' search. I can never get used to it!
After all of that, you get to spend a few hours locked up in an airtight vessel with a couple hundred people. And some of them have bad cough and cold. And some of them sometimes break toxic winds. Loud winds from their faces and poisonous winds from their seats - yes, skin-up face an fan nose hole!
And then now, for some strange reason, I usually get seated beside either a loud-snoring sleeper whose head keeps falling on me, or the too-comfortable and selfish one [usually a man], who keeps hogging all the elbow space on the shared armrest while he spreads his legs wide like fi him testicles dem bigga dan breadfruit!
So yeah, I don't usually wear my kinteet countenance when flying. Well, mi nah tell nuh lie, it was a totally different experience last Friday, though. Travelling from Toronto to Kingston on WestJet flight WS 2600 was a little under four hours of welcome fun and full-bodied laughter.
The flight was like a comedy show in the skies. And it was not because the undisputed king of Caribbean comedy, Sir Oliver Samuels, happened to be sitting snugly in the executive class. Oliver was laughing too. And no, it wasn't me giving jokes.
The passengers were kept thoroughly entertained by a superbly friendly, effervescent and talented tri-lingual flight attendant. Her name is Danielle Paris. And yes, I said tri-lingual. The key of Ms Paris' entertaining engagement with passengers and her delightful delivery of the inflight announcements was her effortless switching between French, English, and good old Jamaican Patwa!
Lawd it did sweet! An she born a Canada yu know. God bless her Jamaican mother!
Mi nah lie, all the crew on that flight were great. No disrespect to Brad and Sherie who were also genuinely friendly and helpful. The entire team is an unquestionable asset to the airline that employs them.
But Danielle Paris deserves some special, loud-loud big-up fi real. Yeah man, she spiced up the announcements with hilarious Jamaican-flavoured commentary. Her sweet and seamless switch from English to Patwa reminded me of our iconic Miss Lou and some of her outstanding daughters, like Joan Andrea Hutchinson, Dahlia Harris, Amina Blackwood-Meeks or Sherando Ferril-Cupid, all of whom are also great at such kinds of delivery.
An mi like it, yeah!
Yes folks, mi gi Danielle Paris plenty ratings. She greeted and chatted with everybody like they were old friends. She had a bunch of strangers on a plane laughing and talking together like a group of old friends on a country bus going on a school outing.
She even had miserable old me actually enjoying a plane ride for the first in a long, long time. Then hear the best part; when mi tell har how great she'd be onstage or on TV she suddenly get quiet and coy and say, 'No sah, mi shy!'
