I tend to learn a lot from two things: traveling and retrospect. I stumbled across some old travel journals while cleaning and thought I would share. This entry is from my trip to Jamaica in March of 2010.
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On a flight destined for Miami, I contemplate my privileged life. At the Minneapolis airport this morning, immigrants staffed the counter at Caribou Coffee, so gracious at 5am; ready with smiling faces and paper sacks to hold my turkey sandwich and fruit cup wrapped in plastic. They are serving coffee and I am about to leave for Jamaica, a land of extremes; tropical beaches, gang warfare, coconuts, resorts and poverty. I am the requisite Spring breaker in white linen pants toting sunglasses and an IPOD.
I observe my fellow Minnesotans as I wait for the flight attendant to begin the safety briefing. The man seated next to me is going to Haiti, probably to help out with the relief effort. Me, I'm going to a tropical "paradise" to recharge and relax; a sea of salt and pepper pin heads spanning the seats in front of me, bound for Florida.
Travelers Resort, Negril, Westmoreland, Jamaica:
It took nearly 24 hours to get here. Errol's, the place we were going to stay on the beach has fallen into ill repute. No one appears to be staying there and the restauraunt is not functioning. We are cajoled and serenaded anyway but decide that it may be too risky for a newly pregnant lady and head next door.
Corruption holds hands with poverty in this tiny island nation. Shanty towns, goats, Rastafarians, hustlers. We quickly realize that relaxation is not easily attained in this tropical paradise. The hustlers are relentless and we attract undo attention with our dreadlocks. Islanders dance jigs for vacationers trying to make a buck. Slavery is alive and well, a post-colonial hang over. It keeps our brains busy, too busy to relax.
The beach is beautiful, the sun is warm and the mangoes are to die for. We are handed joint after joint in this land of ganja and know that these "gifts" will come back to haunt us today on the beach. The hustlers have grafted exquisite tactics of manipulation including physically stuffing pot in your pockets, demanding payment and all the while regaling Bob Marley, singing "Roots, Rock, Reggae," playing on the ignorance of tourists whose only knowledge of Jamaica is in fact, Mr. Iron Lion Zion himself.
Trust has fallen by the wayside in this land of corrugated shanty huts and palacious homes in the hillsides. Gates, security, police officers, fat pink tourists; these things all guarantee that the circle will not end. "One Love" appears to be lost on all of us. Tourists buy cheap towels imprinted with these powerful words and have no idea that it is meant to be taken into the heart. Likewise for the folks selling them, trying to survive.
Later in a car riding through Sheffield, I meet my entitlement.
After witnessing a domestic dispute in the country in which a man and a woman chased another woman down a hill and smashed her head in with a bamboo pole and a three ring circus at a waterfall where a nine year old boy was put in charge of hustling us, I wanted two things and two things only: safety and security, topped with a dash of detachment and fuzzy denial. I wanted to reject my ability to see. I wanted to check out.
At the hotel afterwards, I promptly ate a cheeseburger and drank two beers. Ah, the good life. The right to participate as I "choose." The right to see when I feel like it. The right to ignore the reality of the place where I am half guest, half interloper. The right to purchase security guards, out of range of the hustle.
Fantasy vs. reality. Entitlement. Arrogance. Checking out. The precious jewels of wisdom hidden within. Short tennuous connections are easily broken by fear and greed, the strands of common humanness so fragile, nearly invisible in the tropical sun. It appears that we are all lost children of Zion, that spiritual point from which reality emerges culminating in unity, peace and freedom.
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