"Face to Face w/Jamaica"

[Yuriatin]

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<span style="font-weight: bold">Face to face with Jamaica</span></span>
Enough with the gated resorts. It was time to break out and meet the locals.

By Andrea Sachs
Sunday, October 25, 2009

Kathi Cooke unhinged the gate to her house in Montego Bay and opened her arms. I strode into her embrace and then into her home. As the evening darkened, we gabbed away on her silky red couch, about gardening, dogs, community service, baking, work life and dating in Jamaica. Cooke served banana chips and a juice-and-ginger-ale cocktail that smelled of the tropics. She showed me family portraits, then took some photos of us to add to the shelf. Finally, I stood up to go.

&quot;If you have time tomorrow, maybe you can come over and hang out?&quot; she asked as we swapped e-mail addresses and phone numbers in her kitchen. Our visit had lasted little more than an hour, yet so much had changed: I had arrived a stranger but was departing a friend.

Cooke, new pal to many, is one of about 300 ambassadors who volunteer with the Jamaica Tourist Board's Meet the People program. Launched nearly 41 years ago, it arranges platonic dates between visitors and island residents, basing the matches on shared occupations and interests, though an eagerness to make an acquaintance can be enough of a commonality.

&quot;It's so great to meet new people and share Jamaica,&quot; said the 44-year-old Cooke, who works for the electric company and emits her own high wattage. &quot;I find that when you travel, making friends adds to the experience.&quot;

On my two previous visits to the Caribbean island, I had been no recluse. But I had been a shut-in. The all-inclusive resorts where most Americans stay encourage guests to remain on the property, shielded behind the guarded gate. If you wish to leave, you sign up for a tour, a bubble-wrapped view of the country. Most interactions are with your poolside neighbors, some of whom may share your area code.

But this time, it was going to be different. No fortress-style resorts; instead, I would overnight at low-key lodgings that were fully integrated into the community. No group shuttles; I would drive myself, so I could stop on a whim and lean on locals for directions and suggestions. And finally, no other American tourists-in-exile. Inspired by Jamaica's motto -- &quot;Out of many, one people&quot; -- I was set to meet the many.

<span style="text-decoration: underline">The teacher and the schoolchildren</span>

Kids act the same everywhere: They stare, they swarm and they goof around, including vogueing for strangers' cameras. Once out of the classroom, the children of Robin's Bay Primary School were no different.

Before I was introduced to the students, though, I met with Merlene Anderson, a 30-year teacher who maintains an air of insouciance even in the face of a student meltdown. &quot;I'm not running after him,&quot; she said as a sobbing boy streaked across the front yard toward the main road. &quot;He has to come back himself.&quot;

Anderson softened when she spoke of the hardships of the school, a simple concrete structure that squeezes in six grades for about 80 children ages 6 to 12. Set on a ridge overlooking the shimmering Caribbean Sea, the school receives the equivalent of about $114 from the government for each three-month term to purchase educational materials and lunch foods, and to pay the cook. But the money usually runs out before the term is over. To supplement its resources, the school asks for donations. Anderson handed me a two-page printout of needed items that included dictionaries, fans, eggs and a PA system. She later added stuffed animals to the list.

In the classroom, 27 children dressed in crisp khaki (boys) and navy blue (girls) were shoehorned into desks that left little room for wiggling. I stood before the hushed students with Kim Chase, an expat from Pittsburgh who runs Strawberry Fields Together, a full-service lodging up the road, and arranges visits to the school. (Chase and her Jamaican fiance, Everton McKenzie, created the Village Inclusive Plan, which encourages guests to interact with the community and the environment; I learned of their immersion program through their Web site.) As a 22-year resident of Robin's Bay and the adoptive mother of 9-year-old Moses, who attends the school, she is also a one-woman PTA.

&quot;Hello, Miss Andrea, and how are you today?&quot; the class stood and chanted in unison after Chase introduced me. Before lunch, they rose again and said a short prayer of thanks for their teacher and their food.

Lunch is prepared in a building that resembles a stripped-down drive-through. On the day's menu: rice and peas and chicken. Beverages are not included. &quot;We can't afford it,&quot; Anderson said. &quot;The cook sells drinks.&quot; There is also tap water from an outdoor sink.

Most of the residents of Robin's Bay, in an uncommercialized portion of the northeast, work as farmers and fishermen. But Anderson said that past graduates of her school have become lawyers, doctors, nurses, police officers and teachers. Among this year's class, I met a potential pilot, a veterinarian and a soldier. But for that day, they were just kids, horsing around beneath a big blue sky.

<span style="font-style: italic">(cont)</span>

[Yuriatin]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

<span style="font-size: 8pt"><span style="font-style: italic">(2 of 3)</span></span>

<span style="text-decoration: underline">The Rastafarians</span>

Jamaica claims to have the world's highest number of churches per capita, but one minority religion -- Rastafarianism -- stands out among the other denominations. The dreadlocks and wafting scent of ganja definitely draw attention. However, when I met Donovan Slythe, chef-owner of the Reggae Pot Rastarant in Ocho Rios, he smelled of kitchen and was wearing a cap. (The tourism office directed me to this tucked-away eatery.)

The 40-year-old Rastafarian prepares Ital food, the vegetarian cuisine rooted in the religion's beliefs. &quot;Eating healthy is a way of life. Your food should be your medicine, and your medicine should be your food,&quot; said Slythe, who learned to cook from his mother. &quot;We need to eat healthy to create a healthier nation and a well-being of people.&quot;

At an outdoor table on the edge of a parking lot, Slythe placed before me a plate buckling under the weight of cubed tofu, a gluey brown stew and a mound of rice and peas (actually kidney beans). For a beverage, he presented a plastic cup of cherry juice (good source of Vitamin C) and Irish moss (a seaweed with the same nutritional benefits as fish). Under his watchful eye, I dug into my meal for mankind.

Brother Lion, also a Rastafarian, espoused nourishment as well, though his version was more akin to impromptu raw food. Swaddling his feet in brown fabric, he shimmied up a tree trunk like a worm with legs and grabbed a handful of coconuts. On the ground, he cracked them open and passed around the milk and white meat.

Lion was my escort to Reach Falls in Portland Parish, a Slinky of cascading water without the pedestrian traffic jams of Dunns River Falls, the grossly popular waterfall that attracts crowds from resorts and cruise ships. The government recently took over management of the attraction, setting up rules -- such as no diving into the main pool -- and charging admission. But rogue guides such as Lion lead guests on a back route along a banana trail that wends toward the falls.

As Lion and I picked our way around rocks and roots, he described his life in the hills, a private temple of his own. &quot;The environment makes me strong,&quot; he said. &quot;It's like a fullness. There's a better vibe in the mountains.&quot; He inhabits a wooden shanty and finds sustenance outside his front door.

When we reached a high plateau of rocks, he encouraged me to leap into the clear blue pool below. I balked. We stepped down to a lower level, where he performed a perfect-10 flip and I plunged in like a pogo stick. As we dried off, he released his mane of dreads, explaining how his tubes of hair were like antennae through which he received and transmitted feelings of love and peace. Then he tugged at his dreadlocked beard, which hung down to the top of his rib cage. He hopes to grow it to the ground. We estimated that it would take at least 40 years.

<span style="text-decoration: underline">The former plantation worker and the old-time Jamaican</span>

Green Castle Estate in Robin's Bay has a gilded pedigree: Before the current owner took over in 2007, the 16,000-acre organic farm, Jamaica's largest, was owned by the late billionaire Cargill executive Duncan MacMillan. Yet on a tour of the 17th-century grounds, little breath was spent on the tycoon. No disrespect, sir.

Guide Shernette &quot;Dolly&quot; Williams praised her former boss for &quot;always investing in the farm,&quot; which &quot;was losing a lot of money.&quot; But her more engaging discussions revolved around the Shakespearean tragedy of the plantation's crops, punctuated with live demonstrations.

Standing in a thatched-roof gazebo, Williams showed our group of four (Kim Chase, my escort again, two Peace Corps volunteers stationed in Robin's Bay and me) how to split coconuts (smash against a peg in the ground, then rip off the husk). She cracked a pimento berry (allspice to you and me), releasing its sweet scent into the steamy air, and described the national dish of saltfish (oddly, cod from Canada) and ackee, a fruit related to the litchi nut. Inside a series of boxy structures with no incoming breeze, a trio of women grated and dried coconuts, then cold-pressed the flakes into oil. A clouded liquid trickled down a funnel, onto a filter and into a bucket. Williams dipped a finger in the puddle and dabbed the smooth extraction onto my skin.

Williams is now a tour guide at the farm, but when she came there 26 years ago at age 23, she worked the plantation fields. She started with coconuts, scooping out the meat from the shell. After disease decimated the 18,000-strong grove, she moved on to papayas, weeding and fertilizing the land. She also picked cocoa beans, and I could imagine her setting the rhythms of work to a folkloric Jamaican tune.

&quot;The main thing for entertainment was song or storytelling,&quot; she explained before performing a stanza or two:

&quot;Me boil the coffee in the morning, me boil the coffee in the morning, the only thing that matters is the bowl of coffee in the morning.&quot;

After a walk through a greenhouse of orchids, Williams handed me off to Sue Crum Ewing, who was waiting in the formal dining room of the Great House, MacMillan's residence during his visits. Crum Ewing lives behind the main house with her husband, Robin, who once managed the estate and now runs a cattle ranch on leased estate land. The former teacher fills her hours painting, gardening, knitting, building birdhouses out of calabash gourds (sold at the estate's craft shop) and taking in the view of, as they say, where the mountains meet the sea.

Her Jamaican lineage stretches back to the 1600s, when her forebears were part of the British forces that wrested control from the Spaniards. Her father was a cattle farmer in Saint Thomas Parish, in the southeast, and she roamed the lands free as a wild pony. &quot;As a child, I never considered any danger,&quot; she said.

Before retiring, she spent the work week in Kingston and the weekends at Green Castle. &quot;The rural and mountain areas are similar to what you'd see in my childhood,&quot; she said wistfully. &quot;This is one of the few places left that's not packed with tourists.&quot;

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[Yuriatin]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

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<span style="text-decoration: underline">The artist
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Rock Bottom inhabits a makeshift studio and gallery in the Port Antonio market, wedged between T-shirt stalls, racks of made-in-China shoes and tables laden with fruits and vegetables. The woodcarver is a large man with a protruding Buddha belly, arms as thick as a football player's and a bald head that could probably reflect the sun. He's hard to miss, and yet I missed him.

Free-I, the Dutch proprietor of Zion Country Beach Cabins in Portland Parish, where I stayed for a night, had recommended Rock Bottom, whose work he admired, and had sketched out a map of his location. But once inside the whirlwind space, I became distracted by the cacophony of commerce. Women called out like sirens, inviting me to peruse their wares. (I fell for a bag of allspice.) A Rastafarian named Bobo showed off his creations, a macrame bikini that would unravel with the first wave and a teeny skirt the size of a tube top. Nearby, a spiffed-up man was selling touristy trinkets but was secretly shopping as well. &quot;Wife Wanted,&quot; read his hand-inked sign. Mr. T-Shirt King was looking for a Mrs. T-Shirt Queen.

After a few circles around the market, I finally found the artist chipping away at a face of a Rasta man. He greeted me with a one-potato-two-potato, thumb-rub move, saying &quot;peace, love, unity and respect&quot; with each gesture. Pleasantries over, he plunged into his story.

In his early 20s Rock Bottom had been a diver, catching fish and conchs that he would sell on the pier. He also bought up carved works that he would resell. But a dearth of supply forced him to cut himself out as the middleman and take up the craft.

&quot;I would watch the other guys carve and study them,&quot; said the 52-year-old, who's been selling his works here since the market opened more than 20 years ago. &quot;The first thing I made encouraged me to go deeper and deeper and advance with my own designs.&quot;

He still remembers his first sale: It was of a Rastafarian man, similar to the one he was carving the day I met him. It takes him about a day and a half to design, sand and paint the artwork, which he sells for about $23. His collection covers a series of walls and tables and features turtles, birds, Arawak Indians, Bob Marley and Maroons, the runaway slaves of Jamaica.

&quot;Carving originated in Africa, and we are African Jamaican,&quot; he said beneath the image of a glowering Indian chief. &quot;It tells our history.&quot;

<span style="text-decoration: underline">The musician</span>

Jamaica never goes silent. Early in the morning in Portland Parish, the children of Long Road Community waited for the school bus to the accompaniment of Bob Marley. During a hot afternoon in Robin's Bay, Dolly Williams belted out traditional songs about mangos and men who call girls sweetie pie. In Montego Bay, Kathi Cooke listened to Dance Hall artists Spice and Pamputtae sound off about slim vs. fluffy girls. And on the shaded porch of the Polkerris hotel, above the racket of Montego Bay's Hip Strip, Hedley Jones harmonized the history of Jamaican music.

&quot;When I was 5, 6, 7, I used to listen to musicians who played for the neighbors,&quot; said the spirited 92-year-old. &quot;I knew songs like, 'Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today.' &quot; Jones, whom I arranged to meet through the tourism board, is a musical polyglot who started off on banjo before moving on to bass and guitar. Dressed head to toe in khaki, he dug deep into his bag of memories, pulling out stories from the 1930s and '40s, when he performed big band in the big city, leading the Hedley Jones Sextet. &quot;Kingston was alive with music in those days,&quot; he said. &quot;There were at least 30 nightclubs and six or seven large bands.&quot;

When music styles changed, Jones evolved with them. &quot;I played all of the genres: blues, jazz, mento, calypso, . . . reggae.&quot; But he was not just a follower of fads; he was also an innovator and inventor. He explained, for example, how he built the first wooden electric guitar, showing as proof a newspaper clipping that dates his achievement to 1940, seven years before Les Paul and his Gibson. In 1951, after Hurricane Charlie cut off the electricity for four months, Jones and his cousin built Kingston's first traffic lights. And while he never jammed with Marley, his guitar played a starring role.

&quot;There was a boy, 16 or 17 years old, who was interested in doing a few recordings,&quot; recalled Jones, who helped build a seminal recording studio in Kingston. &quot;The next week, on a Sunday morning, Ernie [Ranglin, a guitarist] borrowed my guitar because he forgot his. They recorded 'It Hurts to Be Alone,' Bob Marley's first hit.&quot;

* * *

On the plane ride home after my Jamaican people-meeting adventure, I sat near a couple from Upstate New York who had stayed at an all-inclusive. They grimaced as they recalled their claustrophobic experience at the resort. Sympathetic to their reaction, I told them that for their next trip, I knew a few Jamaicans they could meet. And I'd be happy to make the introductions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...ST2009102303038

[Yuriatin]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

From the local paper today.

Thought I'd share.

Most interesting to me, were some of the comments on the article!

I agree with some of them - wont tell ya which!

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<span style="font-style: italic">dcreader22 wrote:
Boring story, and naive. does this writer ever get out? Plus, it reduces Jaimaicans to stereotypes. After the story on Zanzibar, I was hoping the washington post would follow up with something equally excellent. I was wrong.
10/23/2009 6:09:49 PM
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sarjo220 wrote:
Mahn, me nice to read dis ting, ya know. Me spirit at easewith dee writer and all... yeah mahn... nice and easy... like the sunset on Monte Bay... like the hillsides of dee town near Dunns River ... where me met dem good people of Jamaica for first time... yeah... cool and easy... no problems
10/23/2009 5:32:35 PM
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dorseylaw wrote:
Gee how about at least one link to something?
Here is the one for Strawberry Fields Forever.

http://strawberryfieldstogether.com/home.aspx

10/23/2009 4:45:56 PM
Recommend (0)

ej_smug wrote:
zzzzzzzzzzz
10/23/2009 4:32:12 PM
Recommend (0)

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[Schuttzie]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

Thank you, Yuri, for posting this! I enjoyed it...I think it showed a Jamaica that most people do not ever think about or get to see.

We met Kim Chase our very first trip to JA and she is a very nice lady trying to do everything she can to help her community. Her place was called Sonrise Retreat then, though. We see Rock Bottom very year we go..he is a delight! So jolly and happy to see us each year..wonderful~ I've also heard of Free-I of Zion Country but haven't gotten the chance to check out his cabins.

[Seveen]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

nice article but it really makes me wonder - what do other people do on vacation?

for me - being &quot;local&quot; is why i go away - i want to meet and greet local - i want to eat local - i want to hotel local

and not just in jamaica - anywhere i go

no tour bus jail for me

thanks for sharing!

ETA: i think it's kinda interesting how they mention &quot;platonic&quot; dates

[Yuriatin]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

Seveen – I thought the same thing – how odd to phrase it - “platonic dates” - but then again, I couldn’t even bother ...

You have to remember Seveen, people’s interests (or lack of), are vast. Not everyone thinks alike.

Vacation for you &amp; me can be extremely different for others.

The height of excitement and leisure for some people, is being at an all inclusive.

Though I do knock them for it at times, and I shouldn’t, to each his own.

[Gen]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

shake mi head at the second comment

[Seveen]

Re: &quot;Face to Face w/Jamaica&quot;

i remember jamaica before the all-inclusives

many jamaican owned businesses were lost with their advent

restaurants, bed and breakfasts, bars

but at the time the level of tourist harassment was threatening to shut down tourism

i spent 5 nights at an all-inclusive last christmas

i would have gone crazy if one more person asked me: what kind of work do you do, are you jamaican?

but i knew i had 10 nights unhibited (not on hotel lockdown)