Westmoreland

Recently, the tourist town of Negril held its Reggae Marathon. So after Carter and I dropped off some Peace Corps racers in town, he and I backtracked to meet up with Jennifer (who had been out on site visits). We're meeting at a place in the hills, a funky retreat known for its open-kitchen dinner demonstration featuring farm-to-table organics grown there on the property. This is all courtesy of an anniversary gift-certificate from my dad and his wife. I've passed through Little London before, but this time instead of turning towards the sea, or proceeding on to the tourist town of Negril, we turned north into the cane. As you can imagine, sugarcane has an ugly history of enslavement, but it is also Jamaica's biggest export, and it takes up much of the flat, arable land. It is an ongoing topic here, valued for the income it brings, but sugar has also squeezed small farmers up the hillsides and, ultimately, Jamaica is forced to import much food that its own earth could produce. So we drive through the corridor of cane until we turn up a rough lane, exchanging greetings with machete men on the road, "alright," "blessings," and "yes, boss." It feels like country. Rough-hewn fences, a donkey, boys at the creek in their underwear, a shack that serves as the local bar.

Early morning start to the marathon.

To get to Westmoreland parish from Kingston, you follow the sun towards the west until you run out of island. We were there because Jennifer was doing the half-marathon in Negril but, because we had opted to stay farther inland, we all had to be up at 3:30 am to be sure Jen was in Negril for the 5:15am starting gun. After dropping her off, Carter and I started walking along the dark course. There were not a lot of spectators along the way, in fact there were probably as many people still walking on the road after a night of partying. Carter took a cat nap on a store's porch, but eventually the runners came, padding in the dark, and we found a steel-drum band. Several Peace Corps volunteers were running too, so Carter and I had plenty of people to cheer for in the 10k, the half and the full marathon. At the finish line, with the sun now up and a reggae band playing, runners took their medals and happily plunged into the sea. One Peace Corps guy took 7th place in the marathon and the Peace Corps women took 2nd as a team in the 10K. Perhaps most impressive was not a winner at all, an overweight volunteer who determinedly finished the marathon just 10 minutes before they closed the course, at 11:50am...almost 7 hours of running, much of it in full tropical heat.

"It's like a treehouse!" -- hanging around on the balcony

The volunteers all went off to enjoy themselves, while our family headed back to our retreat in the hills. The place is a handful of simple huts on a hillside, owned by a white dude with dreads and his Jamaican wife. "It feels like a treehouse," said Carter. Upon our return, we discovered a group of 7th Day Adventist ladies and children at the gate, all dressed to the nines despite the dust, wanting very much to pray with us. Jen and I availed ourselves of massages, though Jennifer's was rather comically marred by a marital spat between the owners in which the wife called him out for trying to act too Jamaican. The neighborhood is small, a community of small one-room homes tucked in foliage, and everyone seems to have their role to play. A man named G.G. showed Carter and I the way to the local swimming hole, where the water is crisp and the mud is squishy, and along the way he called out to folk invisible to me and pointed out hallmarks of the place: Mama Pinky's bodega, the ackee tree, the benches by the painted bridge where the people come together on Sunday evenings.

Dinner at the kitchen.

Evening brought a farm tour and then dinner in which the chefs prepare everything in front of you and talk about the local ingredients. The "sushi roll" appetizer, for instance, substituted shredded, fresh coconut for rice and plantain instead of fish. All washed down with fresh sorrel punch...made from ginger and sorrel (a dark, red hibiscus brought over by West Africans during the slave trade).


I snuck away Sunday morning and drove myself down to a rustic bay well off the beaten path. Snorkeling around the little reef was satisfying, though I did not see all that much, and I was back in time for breakfast at the retreat. And then it wasn't long until Carter and I were back on the road, driving the 4 hours back to Kingston. We stopped for patties, turnovers of flaky crust and savory filling, Jamaica's fast-food...and thus satiated, a fun weekend came to a close.