Little Bay

The Road From MoBay to Kingston

Sharky's seafood grill shack, St. Ann

We recently received our first visitors here in Jamaica, a quartet of Portlanders, flying in to Montego Bay airport on the other side of the island. I broke my journet to the airport when I threw on my fins, hid the car keys in a stump, and snorkeled in almost perfectly clear water. So I was in a fine mood when Cassie and Jason arrived (earlier than Tonya and Chad, an hour we easily killed with rum punch). MoBay, as it is called, lies up on the northwest coast, shiny and touristy. So coming back, we wound our way east through resorts and malls, but pretty soon the turquoise upon turquoise waters dominated the scene, much to the 'oohs' and 'ahs' of my passengers. Resorts still pepper the coastal road but also small towns on pretty inlets, caverns, cane fields. History is dense in Jamaica, but easily overlooked because one is blinded by the bright light and sheer beauty. For instance, along this road, Columbus was stranded for a year, several slave rebellions took place, even a massacre of Rastafarians just 50 years ago. Small roads reach uphill towards rougher country, while rivers and streams bring the island's famous spring water down to the sea. We passed Discovery Bay, supposedly where Columbus discovered Jamaica, now dominated by the gigantic metal dome of a bauxite mine, and stopped for lunch in Runaway Bay. I ordered a seafood platter and, not uncommon, watched a fisherman walk a bucket of lobster from the sea to the kitchen. That's how fresh it is. After lunch, our route cut overland at Steer Town, winding up and over the spine of the island. Here the potholes are frequent and pedestrians and goats share the road…at least until the Chinese construction company finishes the major toll-road they are building.

As it is, the two hour drive has 2 or 3 toll roads that are as big and wide as any modern highway. Yet the stretch cutting inland is still a slow, slightly nerve-wracking drive through rolling hills of green turf, cows, old stone churches and the occasional giant cotton(?) tree so imposing that its 5-story high branches host an elevated ecosystem with succulents as big as a VW Bug. Cupped in the middle of the central hills is a wide, bread-basket valley where the road is lined with shacks selling banana, pineapple, ackee, bamboo. That is, until the road begins to cascade down the slope towards the southern slope, following a pretty river in a narrow limestone canyon. Finally the road pops out of the canyon at Spanish Town, the one time capital. Here one is reminded that not everything in Jamaica is a postcard; the architecture of hardscrabble, corrugate shacks runs into the distance and dancehalls and bars line the road. Finally, I was able to point out to my passengers the Kingston dump, signal of our arrival in Kingston, and still smoldering after 2-weeks of burning and blanketing the city in a toxic haze.

Little Bay

Little Bay Jamaica, showing the village on the other side

After showing our guests around Kingston a little bit, we left Carter in capable hands and headed out to the leeward (western) tip of the island for the week. The road at one point goes through a mile-long tunnel made of giant bamboo. Cassie and Jason went ahead, Tonya and Chad rode with us, gamely stopping off for a roadside lunch at a crossroads where we were served lunch from kettle over the coals while high school boys rented time on an Xbox set up in a shack and a drunk jabbered at us. Our destination, Little Bay, is not that far as the crow flies from the tourist hotspot Negril; but it is off the beaten track, indeed our route ended on a lane where brush scratched the sides of our new car and I had to honk to clear the way of goats. We later discovered a better way to get there, but you get the picture.

Bay view / Red Stripe at beach bar / our route to Little Bay

Little Bay is a very small, reef-enclosed bay with a set of 10 or so tourist cabins, a handful of houses in the fishing village, and the ghost of Bob Marley. That's about it. Most of the cabins are small, with plywood partitions that put you in earshot of every noise your fellow guests are making. This was the only downside of the intimate charm of the place…we were unlucky enough to share the area on the one hand with a group of loud, smoking midwestern ladies and on the other with a group of loud, arguing New Orleans ladies. We gossiped that at least one of these groups were on a ladies' sex vacation (which apparently is a thing…there's even an "exposé" film called Rent A Rasta), but mostly we were lucky to have a larger cabin set well away from the rest, with a porch separated from the lapping waves only by a strip of trees. After dusk, large bats

Fruit bats at dusk

would come do magical acrobatics in the trees, and several evenings we stood out there letting them zip around us. The bay was tranquil for the first 3 days, so we made good use of it…commuting the handful of steps to the water, snorkeling out to the reef offshore or paddling kayaks or simply floating in tubes at sunset. It was in Little Bay that I realized that I am becoming a little snorkel-crazy, coming back in only to rush for my fish identification book and log all my new discoveries.

We ate at the little restaurant at the cabins, but it was pricey, and the village beckoned anyway. There aren't traditional restaurants, instead we found a couple establishments where if you tell them several hours in advance, they will cook up locally sourced Jamaican meals, served with Red Stripe beer and a soundtrack of reggae. The fisherman would motor out every so often, lobstering and fishing. One of these boats was dugout from a cotton tree, but judging by the 5 lobster and bucket of fish…that man's boat was no handicap.

Fisherman out by the reef

We picked up dinner at a shack in the sand one night, another night we sat outside as the mom cooked and a son Carter's age waited upon us with formal, if wobbly, attention. Later, Chad found "the best chicken he had ever eaten"…you need to know Chad to understand the magnitude of this.

Bob Marley

Little Bay was once where Bob Marley kept a love-nest, which means that other than beachside life, the only thing to do there is go on the Marley walk (assuming you are not interested in Rent A Rasta). A guy from the cabins took us out on the dusty road through the village where we were quickly joined by a local man. He wasn't really invited, like a remora, and he was clearly the town's red-eyed ne'er-do-well, but at least he was talkative and lively. We immediately saw that there was a big fat sticky marijuana bud clinging unnoticed to the back of his shirt. Ganga is obviously profoundly available (was he sitting in ganga?). A young boy rode by waving a large branch of buds. By the way, I have worked out, when offered the herb, how to politely decline…I tell them the truth, it makes me "lonely", which the purveyors seem to understand. Anyway, our walk drifted back into the trees, past a cinderblock school ringing with young voices, to a bat cave. This cave, perhaps like many Jamaican caves, is pockmarked with openings where roots and tendrils twist down from the trees above and shafts of sunlight look like translucent columns holding the roof up. Once your eyes adjust, it's clear that the roof is alive with small bats jostling for purchase. After the cave, we went over to what used to be Marley's shoreside property, where Jason and I plunged in the mineral spring where he used to swim.

Marley's shore / sitting at Marley's spring

The spring is small, tucked under a lip of rock and no more than 15ft across, but probably a good 8ft deep. I think the property was always rustic, but since Hurricane Ivan there is nothing but a foundation left. Still, seen simply as a beautiful spot haunted with Marley's positive vibrations, it was pretty cool. We watched some teenagers jumping off the rocks looking for conch, before heading back the way we came. On the way, we passed the spring where there were now 4 young men hanging out. One of them showed us the honeycomb he had pulled from a tree, squeezing out the mana onto his hands and eating it up. But then, as if embarrassed for his niceness in front of his friends, he said something rude in patwa ("honey make da pussy sweeter"). I think about that sometimes when I consider the Peace Corps experience of female volunteers here…so much beauty and pride and positivity in Jamaica, but also not free of their own brand of anger and sexism. Anyway, our walk was over, we tipped our guide who then tipped the ne'er-do-well, actually not him directly, rather his family. Better that way.

We did go 20km for lunch in Negril, the tourist town of the leeward coast, where I jumped off a rock at a tourist bar that we quickly fled as catamarans started dropping off hordes of people. Other than Negril and the Marley walk, the vacation was mostly comprised of mellow joy and unhurried activities back at the cabins. But how much can one write about yet another snorkel, yet another game of Mexican Train Dominoes, yet another Red Stripe?

Playing around with the iPhone's panorama function

Jennifer in her natural element

Jamaica. First impressions.

Frenchman's Cove, where a little
river meets the sea.

When we arrived back in December, the cool and dry season in Jamaica was just getting going, in which it only gets up to the high 80s every day and the rain only comes once per week. From our 3rd story vantage, we can see the rain coming from afar, an opaque gray drape unfurling across tree and building, unloading copious, fat drops and then departing just as quickly. The amount of water from one passing cloud is easily many times greater than the annual rainfall in Lima. I find that I am still comparing many things here in Kingston with how they were in Lima. But also, every day, my first impressions are a collision of my American cliche of what Jamaica is (a reggae beach destination) and a more complex reality. So here, 4 months into our Jamaica life, are some first impressions.

First Impressions

Fitting the preconception, there are indeed many Rastafarians, their men with long dreads piled high into knit caps. Jennifer and I drive down the street amusing ourselves by noting just "how many Jamaicans there are in Jamaica". But Rastafarians make up less than 10% of the population, there is a strong Protestant majority here, running the gamut between thin-lipped conservatism and dance-in-the-aisles tent revivalism. Uptown Kingston is peopled by a professional class, polished and urbane. Skin colors run the gamut, and I've been surprised by a little old Asian lady rattling off in the Jamaican dialect called "patwa". Women's hairstyles in particular express a creativity and variety to be marveled at. Unlike Lima, there is a chuckling friendliness even among strangers and it is not uncommon for the checkout lady to rib me a little as I fumble to pay a grocery tab that can easily be over 40,000 Jamaican dollars (that's $350, groceries are expensive on this island).

We are lucky enough to live one block from a restaurant
and music venue where the stage is under an ackee tree.

In Kingston, most locals seem to easily switch between a beautiful island version of "the Queen's English" and lively Jamaican patwa; this is fortunate because the communication has completely broken down with the few people I've encountered who are strictly patwa speakers (technically an English dialect, but so rife with alternate grammar, lingo and other cultural influences, I think it counts as its own language). There is a warmth and ease between people that is refreshing, music abounds, and beauty and creativity and humor seem to be a big part of life here.

There is also a dire, deadening poverty that runs counter to the mellow vibe and underpins very high crime ratres and, on the street, a steely-eyed demand for "rispek" (respect). It will take me some time to understand this facet of Jamaica and, particularly, Kingston. The vibe in the capital is unique, grim-faced. Every so often I see the odd tourist, wandering in search of the Bob Marley House, looking somewhat blanched and forlorn, getting challenging stares from locals and wondering what's become of the tropical reggae paradise they were imagining. It's not so pronounced for the initiated, but still...Kingston is Kingston. There are large swaths of the city that are completely off-limits to us and the level of turf violence and thievery remains oppressively high, with gangland overtones and psuedo-political affiliations. I may be imagining it, but there seems to be more of an undercurrent of tension here than in Lima. Perú has a long, difficult history of racism and oppression, yet even as part of the "colonial" class there, I rarely suffered any revolutionary resentment, though I often wondered why. Here in the birthplace of Marcus Garvey, perhaps the birthplace of pan-african nationalism, featuring a people that labored long under slave-driven plantation society, there is more of an edge. In our well-to-do uptown neighborhoods, window-washers at stoplights ignore all refusals and act offended when not compensated. Walking in the swept business district of New Kingston, an ever angrier panhandler followed me until I turned in to a fast-food place just to lose him. Driving through an intersection crowded with pedestrians and higglers, one guy came up and slapped the car, pretending I had hit him. We did not stop. In fact, we are instructed that if we ever actually hit a pedestrian, we are not to stop and instead should go on to the nearest police station and inform them there. That does not sit very well with me, but I am too new here to be cavalier with such advice.

Jamaican stuff: ginger beer, sharp and spicy,
ackee fruit for the national dish made with
saltfish, and scotch bonnet peppers
(about 15X hotter than jalapeño)

Kingston

We live in a light-filled 3-bedroom on the 3rd and 4th floor of a little complex. Our terrace has a small pool and looks out over a police tow yard, New Kingston, with a the Caribbean visible if you squint a bit (see the photo at the end of this post). The city sits on a wide alluvial flat, ringed by green mountains that the clouds spill over. Out past the modest multistory buildings of New Kingston, we see the water and a large commercial harbor that's hugged by a long sand spit. At the end of the sand lies the old pirate capital of Port Royal, 1/3 of which lies under water after having sunk in a 17th century earthquake. As in Lima, Kingston offers us a privileged bubble to live in, but here it is not as comprehensive. I wake hearing a cock crowing somewhere, while at night we hear the sound of slapping dominoes as the men in the tow yard next door play and talk under a tree full of butterflies. On the street, fruit vendors wander in traffic, fancy cars stuck in traffic bottlenecks sometimes jockey for roadspace with goats foraging on the shoulder, and after dark the lane next to our building is populated by ladies of the night. We've heard tell that there are some places where the prostitutes stand in the road naked, so I suppose we can appreciate the decorum in our neighborhood. There are some shopping centers that aren't quite malls, a couple 2-screen cinemas, some very earnest restaurants…but it all seems like a small town to us, perhaps due to much of the city's footprint being strictly verboten to us.

Portland parish

The Island

Sadly, Kingston is not near the glorious beaches of Jamaica. For that we need to take an admittedly beautiful 2-4 hour drive either around the coast or through the mountains. The drives involve dodging pedestrians and bikes and goats and bottomless potholes and sheer dropoffs (all while driving on the left side of the road, I might remind you). We pass through small towns with music booming out of corner stores and taxi stops and fruit stalls and on Sundays locals are on the road in their church finery, many heading to little, stone Protestant churches. Each town seems to have its own reputation that we are only beginning to learn of; one town has the best jerk BBQ, one is for surfing, one is where the slave rebellion happened, etc. Eventually, the drive delivers you to the northern coast where you can opt for long sands at all-inclusive resorts or hang out at less developed coves. We've already sampled both, probably enjoying the rustic areas more. There is plenty to dislike about the big resorts, but I have to be careful about applying my privileged keep-it-quaint-for-me attitudes to an industry that is clearly very, very important to the well-being of many Jamaicans. Plus, never-ending cocktails, scuba rentals and abundant activities for Carter is pretty great, and only about 25% of the pinkish resort guests walk around with rictus frowns frozen on their thawing, mid-Western faces. But outside the resort lie miles of coastline still to explore, waterfalls to climb and a mountainous interior still unknown to us.

Our vista in Kingston

The end of Perú Diary. The beginning of Jamaica Diary.

NOTE: Seriously, this is very much just a diary of the final months prior to leaving Lima, nothing very sexy. So unless you are my mother (Hi Lois!), you may wish to skip this post and just wait for something juicier next time!
Sitting here in Kingston, one month after moving here from Lima, and I finally have the urge to write again. Our final stretch in Lima, from roughly Halloween until just before Christmas, was a mash of preparations for departure and social events (with each seeming more like a good-bye than the previous). Now, though we miss our friends in Lima and several Peruvian things, we can stand on our terrace on the 4th floor and look out over the roofs of Kingston to the Caribbean and the green, green hills that ring Kingston. The city here is a little under a million people, compared to Lima's 13 million, so things are quieter, main arteries sometimes seem like backroads and traffic will seem underwhelming once I get used to driving on the left side of the road. We live very close to the well-swept business center of New Kingston, where one can find a Burger King and a Pizza Hut, yet Jen was unsurprised to come across a flayed goat carcass hanging from a tree in a lot nearby. But more on Jamaica later, I need to wrap up Perú.

Halloween
Jen spent the last half of October and the first half of November in Washington DC for training, but we got a little Halloween spirit before she left at the 1st Annual Perú terror festival where we saw Julio's short film among others. But after that, it was just Carter and I. Carter decided on Robin Hood, and we toured the Embassy Trick-o-Treat with Julito and little Emma as Mini Mouse. I was decked out as a Mexican sugar skull and headed out later to a very fun grown-up party. It was the kind of Halloween party I like, where most everybody clearly enjoyed the dressing-up part. I parked close to the party at the house of some friends, and walked over with them (he dressed as a famous local butcher, her as bacon). He is a Canadian mining executive and, as such, has received some threats so has a full-time bodyguard. It was extraordinarily surreal walking back with them after the party, tipsy, followed the whole time by a stern, large man.

Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor!

Carter and Mariza go to Washington DC
I was busy (as I wrote in a different post about going to the Bolivian jungle border), so we wanted to have Mariza accompany Carter to DC to visit Jennifer during her training there. Typical for us, we waited too long prior to sorting out the paperwork for Mariza and it was only by the narrowest of margins that we succeeded. The process took several days, with shuttling back and forth between ministries and the embassy and the notary. At one ministry, I was literally told to "…come back at 2pm, pick up the embossed certificate, take it to an official translator to process, he will give you a translation tied in a red ribbon…". At a different ministry, I waited 45-min in a line (futilely, I might add), most of which time another man in line decided to use the opportunity to preach hellfire to the masses. In the end, Carter and Mariza did go and visit. Mariza was the adult, but Carter's English and his travel experience meant he was the guide. Mariza had a lovely time in DC, though, amazed at how clean things are. She also figured out that she could go into any store and if she just kept speaking Spanish, eventually a Spanish-speaking employee would show up.

Thanksgiving & Despedida (Farewell Party)

Hogar folk at our house for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving this year was bigger even than previously. We had 80, including 50 or so Peace Corps volunteers but also a handful of kids from the Hogar and a couple of the volunteers there. One of the kids was Julia, coming straight from chemotherapy. It was a joy, as always, though many of the Peace Corps volunteers used this as their chance to say how sorry they were to see Jen go. At one point, all the volunteers were chanting enthusiastically "J-White! J-White!" A couple days afterwards, we had our official going-away party at the house of her boss, Parmer. There were speeches and dancing and drinking. A couple had been hired to show some Peruvian dance, so we got to see a Marinera and an Alcatraz (in which couples have paper napkins tied to their rears and chase each other around with candles, trying to light the napkin). Jennifer and I, for better or worse, were dragged up on stage for both dances. The Peace Corps people had been very nice to remember me and made a point of inviting my 3 buddies from the Amazon Raft Race and their wives. Of course, by the end of the night Jeremy and Ben had managed fall backwards on a table, later fall and smash the flower bed and, finally, to piss off their wives. It was a damned good time.

The Marinera

Jen to PDX with Cat

Allison

So it turns out that it is 99% impossible to bring a pet to Jamaica. Hint: the only viable way, assuming your pet is not British already, is to take your pet to England for 3 weeks and make them and a British animal. So before we tried this option for our cat Allison, we figured we could find her a nice home in the States until a better option was apparent. What finally happened, however, was a comedy of confusion and error that saw Jennifer fly for 12 hours with an unhappy cat and then 4 days later fly home with that same cat. The good news is that Jen got to spend 4 perfectly Portlandia days with her friends in Oregon, which is probably just what she needed prior to taking on her new role in Jamaica. 

My litho stone

Stone Litho
Ben (my raft race buddy) is an artist and took the time to walk me through the ancient art of stone lithography. It's an amazing, multi-week process in which limestone is smoothed, worked with acids and oils, and finally made into something that can print to paper with very high resolution. Ben helped me create a stone with an image I created from a photo from Lake Titicaca. Sadly, I am not thrilled with the image I created, but the chance to experience a very, VERY hands on craft was great. It's not something I will do again (partially because of all the specialized equipment), but Ben did get me thinking about what I am going to explore next: screenprinting. So far, no luck finding a screen-printing teacher in Kingston.



Final Days

With Rosario

And then we hit our final weeks, in which got everything packed up and organized. I had my last class with Rosario, having at least tested into lower-intermediate Spanish. Mariza's still-unidentified nervous condition seemed to worsen as the day that her "gordo" was to leave came ever closer. By the end, we were living out of our suitcases.

With Ana Lucero

There were several Christmas parties, one for embassy personnel, one for Peace Corps, and, of course, there was the annual handicapped kid festival (at the embassy). That last one, that's the one where 2 years before I met Jefferson and got introduced to the kids at the Hogar. So it was wonderful to be at the Christmas festival again, this time good friends with the kids, for one last hurrah. We went out to the Hogar several weekends in December but those Saturday and Sundays are chock full of charitable groups coming by to entertain and give gifts. A lot of the Hogar's larder gets stocked during this important time there, but it was not conducive to a nice, quiet goodbye. Jen and I drove out one Wednesday night so we could have that goodbye. The kids were sweet as ever, funny and irreverent as always, and Jen and I held it together until we made it into the car where we masked our emotions by cursing instead of crying. OK, crying a little.

Julito's birthday party

It was all hard on Mariza. We also had to say goodbye to Maureen and Julio and their whole family who had all but adopted us. Carter and Julito bore it like troopers, but it was clearly one of the first heart-breaks either had ever experienced. I know we will go back to visit, but that's small consolation. There's a sad flip-side to the joys of the nomadic, expat life we're living right now…and it has to do with leaving people. Kids. Friends. Compadres. Vamos a estreñarse mucho, mis amigos!

Last few days at the Hogar de San Francisco de Asis (with Shayla)

One last visit to The Cricket Club with Julio and Maureen and little Emma.