Iyow - in your own words

Nothing like getting out of your own home to understand its good – and bad – qualities in a better light. This past December, we followed some friends out to Jamaica and partook in a little Red Stripe, a lot of jerk chicken and even some Christmas Day goat curry. We spent the bulk of our trip in Port Antonio, an unaffected seaside town that is thisclose to becoming another resort, but for now is still a great find for the independent traveler.

For Americans, the place is paradise, where daytime can slow to a trickle of balmy weather and watersports – and English has long since been established the common tongue. Nightlife guided by knowledgeable locals can be jumpin’ with echoes of dancehall reggae.

Sadly, all its character and beauty doesn’t stem the flow of young adults making their way out of the country for better jobs and opportunities. For the educated elite that remain, entrepreneurship or management gigs in the tourism industry are the mainstays.

One thing that stood out was that despite great disparity of wealth among Jamaica’s people, one did not feel that pride and self-respect were owned by the upper class. Small things, like the careful polishing of a heavy old-model bike frame by a marina hand, clearly three sizes too small for him. Or the carefully-stewed fish tea sold by styrofoam cup from precarious roadside stalls. And the easy direct greetings, “little brother,” meeting your eye, and the adieu of fists touching knuckles with “Respect.”

I wondered why the contrast seemed so stark with the U.S., and why also there seemed so much more easy acceptance of mixed races there. Perhaps it’s because the majority of its citizens are of mixed ethnicity: African, European, Chinese, Middle Eastern, South Asian Indian immigrants from generations back, but shockingly almost no native Caribbean Indian. Our friend and guide said that there wasn’t really a concept of being African-Jamaican (though there seemed to be for other minorities, like Jamaican Chinese or Jamaican Lebanese or Jamaican Jews), just Jamaican. Perhaps also, poverty deep or mild is not seen as the moral sin as it might be in the U.S. In these ways, it reminded me of how my father described Taiwan in the 50s and 60s where my parents grew up – which likewise suffered a brain drain to more modernized countries then.

p.s. While there, we were lucky to meet through our friend, her aunt, the illustrious doyenne of Jamaican scuba diving, Lady G’Diver and her son, the world record-holder for freediving. Freediving is a daredevil sport where the diver takes one big breath of air and goes down as far and stays as long as he or she can go. At the advanced levels, long-time divers physically adapt to the special pressurized environment such that they are more suited to deep diving than regular human beings. It’s like becoming a dolphin! Daredevil or not, I highly recommend scuba diving with the Lady – she has a steady hand with both beginners and those eager to push their skills. Plus, Port Antonio has the good wisdom to be on the side of the island where dives start at 11 a.m. and not 5 a.m. What could be better than that?