At a Jamaican World Cup watch party, equal servings of rum, tension

All the screaming. The anguish. The pleas for divine intervention.

And that was just my drive on the Perimeter.

Far away in Mexico, two teams were to play for the final spot in Atlanta’s World Cup pool-play games — one of the two remaining slots in the entire 48-team field.

The opportunity to experience that tension drew me to a modest watch party, as Jamaica and the Democratic Republic of the Congo dueled in a winner-take-all match Tuesday afternoon in Guadalajara.

Leaders of the Atlanta Jamaican Association gathered at Rodney’s Jamaican Soul Food in Smyrna, not far from Truist Park. (I went with the jerk chicken — spicy and succulent.). Four born-and-raised Jamaicans who’ve made metro Atlanta their home — Evette Taylor-Reynolds, Garfield McCook, Horace Murray and a woman with a denim hat who preferred to limit her identification to her first name, Verna — came to support the Reggae Boyz, as the Jamaican men’s national team is known.

They are part of the Jamaican diaspora in metro Atlanta, which Taylor-Reynolds said numbers more than 60,000.

I liked all of them. They welcomed me and introduced me to later-arriving attendees. They explained one of McCook’s side dishes — Jamaican breadfruit, a starchy fruit often served roasted and sliced — and the two drinks the restaurant poured for us, Jamaican rum punch and sorrel, the latter made from hibiscus.

When Verna ordered a serving of breadfruit to take home, she encouraged me to try a bite (it tasted to me like a potato) and told me that she preferred to prepare it fried. I asked her if it was better than the restaurant’s. She nodded her head.

Their love for their homeland has been manifested in many ways. Murray left Jamaica in 1989 for greater opportunities in the U.S. (he recently sold two Caribbean restaurants that he had owned for more than 20 years) but still returns to Jamaica multiple times a year.

“Any moment I get, I’m back there,” he said.

After Hurricane Melissa destroyed much of the country this past October, Taylor-Reynolds led efforts to collect clothing, food and other necessities and made a trip in February to deliver them.

It was her hope that a Jamaica win could provide light for her struggling homeland.

McCook, who grew up playing soccer, was the most diehard of the four. He told me about the Jamaican roster, including star goalkeeper Andre Blake, “the king of soccer for us,” he said.

He was feeling nervous.

“I feel it right here,” he said, rubbing his stomach.

Taylor-Reynolds was the most vocal.

“Wrong way! Wrong way” she shouted when DR Congo maneuvered the ball toward Jamaica’s goal.

“Thank you, Jesus!” she declared, hands aloft, when a Congolese goal was waved off by an offside call.

“Dribble like when you were a boy!” she instructed one of the Reggae Boyz as he tried to evade his opponents.

“Oh, my Jesus, what is wrong with these boys?” when the Jamaicans couldn’t keep DR Congo from possessing the ball inside the Jamaican 18-yard box.

As the game remained scoreless through the end of regulation and into the first of two 15-minute overtimes, attention was increasingly trained on the televisions above the bar, and tension along with it. DR Congo was the better of the two teams, accumulating more scoring chances but failing to find the net, in no small part because of the outstanding goalkeeper Blake.

But, nearing the end of the first (non-sudden death) overtime, DR Congo scored off a corner kick. And the bar fell quiet in an instant. Verna quickly exited the restaurant for a walk, hoping her absence would bring Jamaica luck.

Some things are universal.

In the second half, the minutes ticked away with Jamaica unable to muster a legitimate scoring opportunity. Jamaica fell short, denied its first World Cup appearance since 1998.

Elsewhere in the metro Atlanta area, surely Congolese nationals celebrated their nation’s second World Cup appearance in history and first since 1974. And undoubtedly some began making plans to see the Leopards with their own eyes — their home country’s team in their adopted city — when they play Uzbekistan at Mercedes-Benz on June 27.

The Atlanta Jamaican Association could return to the good work of providing scholarships to young members of the Jamaican community in Atlanta and back in Jamaica.

Patriotism takes many forms.