GRANVILLE, St James — As a weekend treat on Friday and Saturday evenings, customers can get a bite of Shevor “Fat Head” Raiby’s jerk chicken in the square in Granville.

Raiby, who is out from just before midday each day, says his chicken has become so popular that individuals seek to take some with them when they depart the country.

“I’ve sent my chicken to America and England. When my friends come here and said they want jerk chicken, I look about it and give them,” he told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

“Many people coming here and going back overseas and want my jerk chicken because it’s nice and beautiful,” he added.

Locally, people from outside Granville also seek him out to get a taste of the chicken which he describes as flavourful and moist.

“People come from all about to get the chicken — from Montego Bay, Mt Salem — all about, trust me,” Raiby declared with a smile.

A big part of it, he said, involves a sauce that he developed.

“My sauce name golden brown, and people even asked me to make it for them but I don’t,” he joked.

He disclosed that he prepares more than 100 pounds of chicken each day, which is usually sold off by the time he’s ready to return home.

“Right now I’ve put about 37 chickens to soak,” he told the Sunday Observer on the Wednesday the team visited.

Explaining his routine, Raiby said he’s up from very early on the days when he is set to jerk chicken because he wants to give the best to his customers who depend on him.

“I start working 2:00 am — getting the chicken ready, washing off my jerk pan — and I start setting up to go on the road,” he said.

“In the morning after I set up I come back home, get a bathe and get a little nap, and then by 10:30 I head out back on the road and light the fire,” he continued.

He declared that he gets started by 11 o’clock, when the fire is ready and the coals are just right to start the process.

But just before that he has to do the most important part of his job, which is ensure that the chickens are seasoned to the bone.

“How I do my chicken is that I stab up my chicken when I am seasoning them. I even push the seasoning up in the chicken — mostly in the breast part,” he explained.

According to Raiby, “Whole heap of people said them rate my chicken; I keep it moist and warm.”

He has been in the food business for more than 40 years, and had previously done jerk fish in Montego Bay before switching to chicken and moving his spot to Granville.

“I came to Granville in 1974. I always live up here so I just decide to come up here and start jerk chicken,” he said, adding that he always wanted to do something that involved cooking.

“From I can stand up I wanted to be a chef. Cooking nice, you know. From you’re not hackling yourself, cooking nice,” he expressed.

He said, too, that he has not only plied his trade in Granville but was recruited to cook for tourists at a spot that was an attraction in the neighbouring parish of Hanover.

“I worked at Great River for one year, jerking chicken for tourists when Great River was running. The tourists love it, man. Everybody rate me,” he said

However, it is in Granville square where he’s made his mark, with residents and students from the nearby Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College among his regular customers.

“I’ve been getting a lot of support over the years because everybody tell everybody to come around and buy chicken. Sometimes I don’t even have hand fi sell man, trust me,” he told the Sunday Observer.

While he loves it, he said there are some challenges.

“The hardest part in it is to cut it up; the easiest part is to season it,” he said.

“The work is not hard, you just have to put your mind to it — and if you want to have something, you have to put your mind to it,” he added.

He has been able to build a life for himself through operating his jerk chicken business.

“I’ve built my house and sent my children to school. Two [of them] went to Maldon High School, one went to Anchovy High, and one went to Mount Alvernia. I have a grandson that lives with me; he went to Hopewell High” he explained.

He said that if he could do things over there is nothing he would change as he loves what he is doing.

“[In] March I will be 69 but I don’t know when I will stop; I would have to sick out. It’s my pleasure and my job that, man. That make me pay my bills, that make me do everything,” he declared.

However, he explained that he has noticed one glaring issue — it appears none of the younger individuals around him seem to want to take up the trade.

“Nobody don’t want to do it. I’ve never heard a man come and say, ‘Fat Head, let me get up and come help you season the chicken,’ nobody,” he lamented.

Watch Shevor “Fat Head” Raiby’s video chat with the Sunday Observer at www.jamaicaobserver.com.