I shouldn’t be thinking of you.
I’m in Jamaica. To shoot a series of styled pieces.
But I promised my Medium tribe (and Alexainie) a postcard, and while I only have an hour of Internet a day, I am spending that time working on this post. Because I miss you and I also want to gloat a little.
I’m in Jamaica, man! (This sounds much better in a Jamaican accent.)
I should be on the beach or sitting by the pool sipping some fruity drink with watered down rum. Or having a Jules inspired romp in the bedsheets while trying to suck in my flabby stomach.
After all, I’m in paradise.
Who wouldn’t love the endless conveyer belt of greasy food slopped into large metal trays? Or the perfect pools, manicured lawns and always deferential, dark-skinned staff serving a mainly white clientele?
Everything is travel brochure perfect and more than a little unsettling.
And the picture perfect facade is crumbling. It’s easy to miss, though. I have to squint and sober up enough to see the cracked plaster, fake veneers and discomfited glances from the staff.
Outside these white-washed walls is a people and a country struggling to make themselves and the world a better place. But we can’t see any of that. And this is by design.
Screw the Walking Dead. Resorts are designed to create sunburned zombie-tourists, all moaning and shuffling from one buffet line to the next. Each lost to reality and more concerned with the ecstasy of the perfect vacation they purchased.
Our room is not the one we saw in the brochure! The hot tub was inside the room!
I can’t help but eavesdrop. After all, I am one of the zombie test subjects – part of some sinister experiment to better control the masses.
It seems to go something like this: a foreign corporation purchases land for a ridiculously low sum, gives the local people dead-end jobs for poverty wages and then ferries in the white, yellow and red-skinned zombie clientele by the thousands.
And they keep everyone happily shuffling from buffet line to pools and back, slurping cheap rum and eating yesterday’s food in a new guise.
I’ve spotted exactly three people in resort clothing that didn’t match everyone else. They were clearly management and not one of them was Jamaican. They were walking in a group and speaking Spanish. Clearly there is a rule about travelling in groups when entering zombie territory.
One smiled at me in a kind but patronizing way. I could tell he was trying to minimize all eye contact, likely to reduce the risk of me attacking him to find out when the buffet doors would reopen.
They lost me at a door marked “no entrada”. I must be fully assimilated as a Canadian now because I couldn’t bring myself to follow them.
So I just sat and stared at my phone, yearning to check my Facebook, but we are only given one hour of Internet a day, clearly to limit any contagion until they’ve worked out all the kinks.
So we just move from pool to buffet to pool to buffet to pool to buffet to bed. Rinse and repeat.
Have I mentioned the food?
I’ve learned to stick with the cold plates. But there are a few items worth fighting the old ladies for. You gotta be quick and fight dirty, though. These grannies are armed like nobody’s business: walkers, canes, 1000 pound purses, and brooches sharpened into some serious shivs!
I had just sat down with a bagel when a shout went up. A few of the faster types were already wheeling towards the buffet line.
An old man at the next table managed to shout “French Fries” a little too loudly into his partner’s ear before he was trampled to death by a family so sunburned they left red streaks in the air behind them.
It was a full-on stampede. Plate-clutching tourist-zombies frothed forward, hopeful to secure the ever elusive french fry for their family-tribe.
Only there were none, or perhaps the least crippled among them managed to scoop up more than their fair share. The result was the same. Those still able to walk wandered forlornly among the troughs before settling on a higher margin fare, no doubt to the glee of Spanish management.
I chose the plaintains. They were flavourless.
I can already hear Tim’s derisive laugh at the “horrors” I am facing.
So yes, my bitching is bullshit. And let’s face it, this is some of the best people watching I have ever had IN MY LIFE.
What I can’t stand is the sense of entitlement.
Just 20 yards from the main gate are shacks of corrugated metal and raw cinder blocks.
And nowhere on site does anyone speak of how Jamaica is one of five countries struggling with 96% of all reported cases of AIDS in the Caribbean. [source] Or that Jamaica has the highest risk in the Caribbean for gay and transgender people to have contracted HIV.
I’m not going to say that Jamaica is a place of poverty and neglect. There are some amazing people here and some great strides are being made, but let’s be clear, things are not all resort-like and rosy.
This is a world that is built on tourism [source]. Tourism is about fake smiles, hiding the problems and presenting a sunny and carefree image to the world. And it does shit all for real job opportunities with growth potential.
Jamaica is a place of stunning mystery, music and passion. It is a place of people with giant hearts. This is the Jamaica I want to see and share with you.
And I’m going to do just that. But you will have to wait for it.
Our plan is to head off in a friends car and meet some people outside these fancy, fake walls. But there is anxiety mixed with our excitement. Every travel site says to be extra careful and even to not leave the resort. And things did get a little shady when we ventured out to get a SIM card for my phone.
But I can’t take being here for an entire week, sitting with the beached zombies in their mad, squirming rush for the buffet line. I have to try.
