Oracabessa; Hawksbill Turtles on Gibraltar Beach

Carter and a hatchling from the nest.

We took it as a good sign that within minutes of arriving and checking out the balcony view, a ray jumped 4ft into the air to impress a potential mate. Gibraltar Beach is a stretch of relatively secluded beach, on the shore of the Oracabessa Fish Sanctuary. Most significantly, the beach is one of the few nesting spots for the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle. Our host, a "retired" British expat named Mel Tennant, has become locally famous as the turtle man. He lives on the beach in a house that looks from the outside like a construction ruin, but actually has a couple of small units that he rents out to visitors like us.
Over the last 12 years, Mel has become the hawksbill advocate, guard and nanny. He points proudly to the ever-increasing success rate (measured by percentage of eggs that hatch and return to the sea successfully, and the increasing numbers of mothers coming in to lay a nest). This improvement is very hands-on; while we were there, Mel literally dug up a nest from a site where the cliff drainage kills the eggs and reburied it elsewhere. The hawksbill, it seems, is so critically endangered that we do not have the luxury of "letting nature be nature".

The first hatchlings out of the nest.

A certain amount of this success is by way of good PR. First and foremost, the Fish Sanctuary and the local fisherman's cooperative have achieved the kind of understanding so rare in these kind of environmental negotiations. The fishing yields get better every year just outside the Sanctuary buoys, and word is spreading along the coast. Now, the locals are also guardians of the turtles, and "there hasn't been a turtle-kill in 5 years".  Mel takes mixed groups like ours on the beach all the time, letting them experience the magic of a hatched nest making its way to the sea. We're mostly spectators, but the group helps by quickly taking the unearthed hatchlings and rinsing them in the sea, returning them to the top of the beach (because the journey to the water is critical, it's when they "set their internal GPS" so they can return in 3-5 years to mate and lay), and then guarding them on their strenuous trek to the water, watching out for non-native mongoose and local herons.

The strenuous trek to the sea.

Rinsed & ready!

Leaders of the pack.

After we had rinsed a couple of baby turtles, marveling at their strong little flippers, we put them back in a clean bucket where they promptly began to scrabble towards the sea. Jennifer was given the honor of tipping the bucket; once out, the hatchlings wriggle energetically, using their strong little flippers to propel themselves seaward. We stepped carefully, laughing because sometimes a turtle would crawl right over our foot. We were absolutely prohibited from helping them in any way, which gets difficult to stomach as the the stragglers seem to tire and get hung up along the way. But they all made it, the last one was cheered just as the first one had been. Now, 36 hours later, the current has taken them to the western tip of Jamaica on their way to Cuba before they will swing around into the Atlantic for a multi-year tour of Spain then Africa and back.

Late that night, Mel woke us to see a mother hawksbill laying her nest. We had missed her arrival and 90 minutes of digging and laying, but did get to see her finish up and head back to the water. She was a tagged returnee, Mel had her on record from a few years prior, and about the size of a large steamer trunk. Photos are not allowed (other than when they are actually laying because, Mel says, they go into a kind of non-responsive trance; which is why that is also the moment to staple the tag onto mothers not yet tagged).

 

The Oracabessa Foundation and Fish Sanctuary

Gibraltar Beach (from the balcony of Mel's place)

The Fish Sanctuary was started by a couple of Peace Corps volunteers, with funding by Chris Blackwell of Island Records fame and owner of the Golden Eye hotel out on the point. In addition to enforcing a no-fishing zone, the Foundation plants coral. We met with the administrator (also a former Peace Corps volunteer that's stayed on in Jamaica) while the fisherman on the little dock were cleaning their catch and building large chicken-wire traps. Then Sanctuary wardens took us out to the reef where we snorkeled, watched their two divers tending to the coral, and enjoyed sightings of a very large snapper, a great school of blue tang, parrot fish, and many others of the usual reef suspects. Diving in Jamaica is not the same quality as some other spots in the Caribbean, but the Foundation hopes that with improved coral reefs will come more eco-tourism. And they are not the only ones, along the coast many fishing cooperatives and hotels are asking for the same to be done in their waters. With luck, the Oracabessa model will be expandable. Their people certainly are working towards that. (Here's their website with a video about the Sanctuary: http://www.oracabessafishsanctuary.org/)

Oh, and if you want to watch  our family video of the turtle release:

Rastas and Maroons, a Reasoning in Charles Town

NOTE: I have been known to bore my audience, compulsive, too deep into a subject. Here, I've shunted some of this detail into footnotes at the end, there for those intrepid enough to want to read them, but not necessary.

Colonel Frank Lumsden, head of the Charles Town Maroons,
playing the abeng in an old photo from Google. The abeng
is the cow horn that helped confound the British,
communicating across the dense mountainous foliage
using a secret code, like Morse code.

Sometimes, the search for something will fail to discover its goal, yet still deliver up a different, unforeseen prize. In my case, I wanted to visit a Jamaican Maroon community (see below*), hoping for insight into the history of their music and possible retentions of the island's indigenous culture. Instead, I stumbled upon a formal discussion, a reasoning, between them and a no-less independent contingent of Rastas.

In a narrow canyon of Portland parish, up the kind of road where I had to back up to allow an oncoming car to pass, lies one of the few extant Maroon communities in Jamaica. The Charles Town Maroons, who, for the last 7 years, have hosted a Maroon conference: a gathering to discuss, celebrate and share their culture. Without knowing exactly what to expect, I came alone from Kingston, my wife and son recognizing this outing as one of my Quixotic exercises, not willing to endure the 2hr drive there and back based only on the hope of experiencing the music and dance of Maroon gatherings. In this respect, their doubt was proven wise.

Mutabaruka, the barefoot poet

I arrived much too early at the Charles Town yard (community space), an open-air grassy enclosure with a small stage and a smattering of vendors outside. It was hot, even in the shade, and I waited 90minutes before they kicked off 3 hours of scholarly, mostly boring presentations to the 20-30 of us wilting in the audience. Some little girls climbed around me, grabbing at my sunglasses, before a stern auntie sent them off with stern admonishments about bathing and returning presentable for the event. I cooled off: first with a fiery, natural ginger-beer, then with a fresh and refreshing coconut (though I did commit the faux pas of not opening the coconut and using its shell to scrape out the meat inside...I gotta learn the trick to that). In one corner, a large, 60-ish, barefoot man sat draped in African robes, earthy rings and bracelets, and a frown. Elsewhere, a spry grandmother type wore hemp clothing and seed-pod rattles as anklets. But then, too, there was a small group with iPads and smart phones, there to promote their Maroon comic book for children, based on the various spirits and myths that inhabit Jamaica's natural world (see below**).

Mau Mau G
(from Google, I couldn't get a photo)

Finally, blessedly, the sun went down, and Colonel Frank Lumsden used the abeng to call the village elders back to the yard as a panel took the stage for the reasoning. It turns out that the shoeless man was the famous, barefoot dub poet Mutabaruka, there to represent the rastafarian point of view. The grandma was Mau Mau G, a Maroon matriarchal figure. As far as I can tell, there are some frictions between Rasta and Maroon (e.g. a 1740 treaty guaranteeing independence for the Maroons from the British also stipulated that they become trackers of newly escaped slaves). But they find common ground in their rejection of colonial oppression and the sins of modernity, and this reasoning was a forum for that. Muta spoke powerfully, his oration delivered with barely contained fury, pointing out today's moral bankruptcy and advocating for self-reliance and African identity (see below ***). Mau Mau G also spoke of self-reliance, she lives without electricity, using the natural world around her for food, clothing and medicine, living like a Maroon matriarch would have long ago. A jumpy Rasta posed a question: how to reconcile the Maroon pantheon of nature spirits with the rastafarian deification of the onetime emperor of Ethiopia, "the one true Jah, the Lion, Heile Selassie"? But the panel refused to be drawn into a theological argument, turning the focus back to the practical need for a strong, proud self-identity, skeptical of the white man.

Seems reasonable.

---

* 'Maroon' is a general term, referring to any number of communities (mostly in the Caribbean, I believe) that trace their heritage to enslaved African peoples who escaped into the bush and banded together with indigenous peoples and other escapees. Shortly after Columbus, Jamaican Maroons confounded the Spanish, then the British, successfully creating a fiercely independent culture that has survived for centuries. The way Jamaicans think about the their Maroon history is nuanced, not immediately graspable by an outsider. I've only begun to read, both about Jamaican Maroons and various others (Belize, Trinidad, Cuba, Haiti, 60,000 in Suriname and French Guiana, the kings of the "Mosquito Coast", Black Seminoles in Florida, etc. etc.). It is seriously interesting. 

** http://www.leagueofthemaroons.com/   A large host of West African nature spirits came over with the slave trade and, like the Maroons, found a way to survive in the Jamaican wilds. But it was a new land and the African spirits could not represent it all, so new spirits were invented/discovered, creating a new, Africa-Jamaica hybrid mythology unique to the island. The kids in the comic book deal with the spirits using iconic Maroon objects (like the abeng/cow horn). Not all Jamaicans are as enamored of this cultural history, disliking its paganism, some even disliking its Africanism, and the idea of getting the book in front of children is complicated.

Rasta calabash bag a carver sold
to us along with a bone pendant
for Carter.

*** It is probably not necessary to point out that true Rastas are serious about their beliefs and African identity...very different from the hippy fashion version in the U.S. that's preoccupied with dreadlocks, reggae and ganga. In Jamaica, there are various rastafarian groups, from orthodox to almost secular, it seems. The common themes are the evils of Babylon (Euro-American imperial culture) and the spiritual (or literal) return to the Africa they were ripped from centuries ago. Like the Maroons, Rastas have not always been accepted by Jamaicans. Until the 1970s, they were viewed by most as druggie malcontents and it was reggae and black pride that began to turn that perception around. Some Rasta are vegan, some wear only natural fiber, their men recognizable with dreads often piled high into cantilevered hats. But they remain a minority in Jamaica; on weekends they are far outnumbered on the roads by church ladies wearing prim hats. Jamaica has, per capita, more churches than any other country. So here, a Rasta continues to be somewhat a revolutionary.

Around Kingston, Part One

Giddy house at Port Royal

Port Royal

Kingston harbor is separated from the sea by a 9-mile spit of rock, mangrove and landfill. Out on the western tip, the old and weathered ghost of Port Royal sits quietly, guarding the mouth of the harbor. You may not know it, but you already have a mental image of what Port Royal once was. Pirates of the Caribbean, but probably with less romance and more syphilis. The wiki entry makes for fun reading, but let's just say that Port Royal was the kind of place where a pirate like Henry Morgan could become governor of Jamaica. What you may not know is that 1/3 of the original town lies 30ft under the bay, swallowed during an earthquake in 1692. On that day, poor souls were trapped up to their waist as the sand spit liquified, the ground dropped and the sea rushed in. Today, there is a small

Curry shrimp, jerk shrimp, brown stew fish

fort with cannons and some artifacts, and a tilted "giddy house" that partially sank in another earthquake (1907) and is surprisingly disorienting upon entry. There's not much to SEE really, but a sleepy vestige of the feeling permeates the place, best contemplated in the breezy upstairs of Glorias, where I enjoy sipping ginger beer and eating curry shrimp while watching local fishermen putter out and cargo ships come in.

Ded Leff

nine-night drum circle at Ashe

In Jamaica, the passing of loved ones trigger elaborate traditions, a combination of Christian practices and West African ideas about how to treat the spirit of the deceased' ("duppy"). There is a funeral, but the days and nights leading up to it are also important…culminating in the "nine-night" wake before the funeral. Our housekeeper, Barbara, goes to the bank every month to pay funeral insurance for her mother, funeral costs are steep and the nine-night can is a giant party with food and music and plenty of rum. At a local cultural center, Jen and I saw a musical play centered on this tradition, about a Europeanized Jamaican returning home to face his family and birthplace during his father's nine-night. Ashe, the cultural center, is an LGBT support community, but it can not advertise the fact here in Jamaica where homosexuality is a target. The playwright at Ashe has given musicology presentations to Peace Corps trainees and is a member of the faculty at the University of the West Indies. Starting next week, he and I will begin a collaboration on a visual map for Jamaican music history; I'm excited to see what comes of this.

Famous People

It's a small country with more than its fair share of interesting people, so it is not uncommon to cross paths with them, particularly within the small circle of privilege we travel in. We've run into Chris Blackwell, the famous music producer, at one of his hotels. We ran into a sashed Miss Jamaica when

Sweet Honey In The Rock

Sweet Honey in The Rock performed a few songs at the ambassador's house (where Miss Jamaica got a bangle snared on her lace dress and Jen took her to the bathroom for a wardrobe adjustment). Actually, we saw her again at some waterslides (no sash this time), where some little girls swam giggling after her. I have to say, seeing the light and pride in those girl's eyes causes me to temper some of my attitudes about the whole pageant thing. On the whole, I feel like we are never very far removed from some of the island's vibrant individuals: a restaurant belonging to Usain Bolt (no sighting yet), kids who play with Shaggy's kids, jazz by the family of one of Marley's mistresses. But, of course, the most famous sighting we had was not a Jamaican at all, it was President Obama.

POTUS

Peace Corps bus

Obama is huge in Jamaica. My doubts about his presidency are significant, muddled with the good, but seeing him through the eyes of Jamaicans, seeing him for his symbolic power as a black man leading the "free world", is illuminating. I have come across more than one street mural that places him abeside other national heroes like Marcus Garvey (the founder of pan-African nationalism) and Paul Bogle (leader of a major slave insurrection). Days before his short, overnight stay in Kingston, I stood on our balcony with binoculars, watching Osprey aircraft land at the airport, flying like planes but tilting their propellers to land like helicopters. Obama scheduled 20 minutes to meet with the embassy community, and Jennifer was able to invite a busload of Peace Corps volunteers (many of whom slept on our sofas). The energy was infectious, and many Jamaicans expressed their positive feelings for Obama to me. We parked at the embassy in order to bus to the venue, and I wandered through the motorcade prepping for his arrival. The vehicles were like space ships masked to look like cars, a pile of arms and equipment was being sorted by buff men in khakis and sensible shoes, looking as able to kill you with jujitsu as save your life with street surgery. Aboard the Peace Corps bus, though, the excitement was bright and optimistic. Then we were all forced to stand for 90 minutes behind the velvet cordon of a banquet room, the kids off to one side because Obama specifically wanted to greet (and photo-op) with them. I had a good spot, though at the critical moment certain mothers got very sharp elbows, but at least Carter was up front with the very civil group of kids. He got to shake hands, as did Jennifer, and then POTUS was gone. He did not, however, leave Jamaica without stopping at the Bob Marley house. This bit of respect and love for Jamaica, stagecraft or not, only deepened the well of affection for him here.

I'm in the back-left, Jen is by the little girl in red, Carteris by the boy saluting.