Jamaica and why I’m never going back

Failing to understand Jamaica and why I’m never going back.  

Originally this was going to be a story of my regret at failing to gain a real understanding of Jamaican life but by the time came to leave, regret had descended into really not giving a fuck at all. So here’s my new story of trying to understand Jamaica.

The first hurdle in trying to understand Jamaica is language. If you only looked around you this would seem like a strange statement to make, as most signs are recognisably English. Many official notices are often written in a very formal, even somewhat dated style that wouldn’t look out of place on the streets of Britain. One common sign however, a campaign to keep Jamaica tidy gives a clue as to how the spoken language is a different thing altogether: “Nuh dutty up Jamaica”. Nuh being no and dutty, dirty. Being British I’m at least partly familiar with the Jamaican form of English, you wont get very far in some parts of London without hearing it. We even have the legendary Rastamouse cartoon for kids, for some reason unknown to any Jamaican I asked.

Talking face to face didn’t always create much of a problem but you soon realise that this is because people kindly tend to moderate their accent for us. However, when you hear Jamaicans talking together, particularly when the discussion is more heated, it can be almost incomprehensible to visitors. Even so there is a wonderful richness to the accent that can often make listening a pleasure whatever the level of understanding.

When written down the language is a lot easier to digest, at least for a Brit, like me with some familiarity, and the grammar, although different, is logical. “Me nuh gwaan”, can relatively easily be understood as, “I’m not going”, for instance, unless you’re a non native speaker of English. So, if you’re thinking of going to Jamaica I’d work my way through a few how to speak Jamaican English videos like this one, if I were you.

My first approach to trying to understand the country was by comparing things to Africa, where, obviously almost the entire population has its roots. Perhaps the first, most visible evidence of commonality are the multitude of brightly painted shops, decorated with images of the products or services on offer. The palette of colours wouldn’t look out of place on many African streets but a closer look at the images reveals a far more Western approach to the art: African shop art is always in a style that’s more about capturing the spirit of a thing than creating an accurate representation. Jamaican shop art, although often professional, far more tended towards the latter and when amateur, lacked the esthetic appeal of what orientalists would unfairly describe as “primitive” art.

It’s impossible to think of Jamaica without reference to Rastafarianism, which is linked to Africa in a number of ways. With Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie elevated to prophethood, the religion shares more similarities with Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity than other relatives of Christian thinking – not just theologically but with forms of religious dress as well. I witnessed a sabbat ceremony at a small Rasta community in the Blue Mountains, where the women and the priest were dressed in a very similar style to worshipers at Lalibela in Ethiopia, with long white robes. The community was a Nyabinghi form of Rastafarianism, who’s ceremonies are linked to a Ugandan anti-colonial movement led by a woman named Muhumusa, said to be possessed by the spirit of the legendary African Queen, Nyabinghi.

I wasn’t sure I’d grasped the feel of the ceremony until the effects of the big spliff kicked in, then everything made a lot more sense. For an indeterminate period I drifted away to the soaring, hypnotic vocal harmonies from the dancing Rastas as the drums pulsed with a steady rhythm. You’d struggle to find such minimalist drumming in Africa but it was the rhythm of these drums and chants that created the basis of Reggae.

It’s difficult to imagine a religion with a better reputation than Rastafarianism. Has there ever been a Rasta terrorist? I very much doubt it. They brought us Bob Marley for God’s sake! Other religions are struggling to catch up in the credibility stakes after that and they’ve done more to put Jamaica on the map than anything else, despite accounting for only about 1% of the population. There’s no doubt that their influence far exceeds their numbers.

If the idea of chilled out, stoned Rastas gives you an image of Jamaica as the ultimate in laid back, Caribbean destinations, you’re going to be in for a shock when you get to Kingston and larger towns on the island. Urban life is as chaotic as anywhere else and Jamaicans don’t hold back in making their displeasure known when necessary. This does mean that on an almost daily basis you’ll experience someone shouting what is possibly the most delightful swear word in the English language: bomboclaat. It does require the local accent to appreciate its full majesty however. The word derives from the expression, bloodclaat (bloodcloth) indicating a ladies sanitary product but the exact origins are much disputed.

One very clear similarity to Africa is the habit of being able to greet complete strangers in the street and generally expect a cheery response and having a chat with shopkeepers and stall holders when buying something is entirely natural. Jamaicans certainly like to talk and I inadvertently was a bit rude to a couple of people before I realised that even very minor interactions require a well defined acknowledgement and response. A brief “thanks” without definite eye contact can be seen as impolite and a few extra words wouldn’t go amiss. Given the importance, some would say obsession, us English have with politeness this seems like a good practice for any of us to uphold but somewhere around this point things started to go a bit awry for me.

Firstly: as Jamaicans, from the above evidence, obviously have well developed notions of politeness and social interaction, why were so many beggars and street vendors just so downright fucking rude? While an abrupt, “give me money”, can sometimes be explained away by cultural and linguistic factors (though I’m not convinced that this is the case in Jamaica), the army sargent’s command tone of voice and hectoring follow up to a polite refusal are far less easily dismissed. Of course Jamaica is not a rich country so begging and hustling are inevitable. Speaking personally I don’t see that as an issue, when life is hard you’ve got to get by somehow. However, being a bit more civil about it would not only be polite but make more financial sense:- even if you don’t give something to someone one day, you might give them something the next time you see them but I can’t imagine that it’s only me that wouldn’t bother with someone who was rude. Admittedly I have made exceptions for people in a distressing state or with mental health issues.

Secondly: although I had plenty of unambiguously nice encounters with Jamaicans, all too often I felt that I hadn’t really related to whoever I was talking to, there seemed to be something unsaid hanging in the air. Initially I put this entirely down to my own failure, not anything inherently negative about a person’s character, let alone anything in part of the Jamaican national psyche. No such experience occured in Trinidad, which you’d assume to be culturally similar and neither generally in Africa either. Although there is always a real limit to what you can deduce about a nation in a matter of weeks I’ve never left a country with such a question mark hanging over my thoughts.

Maybe I’d just got it all wrong but I wasn’t entirely alone in my experience. Other travellers I spoke to had, on the whole enjoyed themselves but there was no shortage of gripes about hustlers and the number of interactions that inevitably ended up with a demand for money. A lot of women were certainly none too keen on Jamaican men’s rather unsubtle mode of chat up lines. I was even told of a number of relationships with Jamaican men, where it soon became clear that money was their sole motivation, even to the extent of stealing money and not feeling any need to apologise for the fact. Even when these encounters are mostly pleasant, there’s the risk that little by little you start to walk on by rather then stop for a chat, fearing the certain arrival of the, “can you help me out” speech. I hate myself for doing it as I know sometimes I’m probably turning down the chance of a little insight into the culture. With my extremely limited budget in what is a relatively expensive country for backpackers I can’t give to everyone, even before we get onto the subject of promoting a culture of dependence.

The combination of a reasonably large tourist industry and relative poverty, as always creates these kind of issues so I was still trying to remain philosophical about the situation. What changed my mind was the racism.

I’ve certainly experienced forms of prejudice in places, such as Ethiopia but never actual racist, verbal abuse (at least not in any language I understood) but after the third racial insult against me in Jamaica I knew for sure I was never coming back. The first occasion I dismissed, as two locals made it very clear to the man that they weren’t going to tolerate that kind of language and told him he was a bloodclaat for acting so. Another man seemed to think that for just walking on the same pavement I deserved to be called a batty boy (abusive term for a homosexual) and although I didn’t get every word of the third tirade against me, the expression, “fucking white man” made his intentions clear, even though I’d committed no crime more sinister then walking past him in the street.

In any country you can get minor, apparently negative responses from people: a frown; a disinterested grunt or being ignored. We’d normally brush these off with innocent explanations: maybe they were having a bad day; misheard or their mind was elsewhere but the racism forced me to reconsider – were the explanations not always so innocent as I’d assumed?  Sadly it would come as no surprise to me that a Jamaican visitor to England could have a similar experience and I’d be equally surprised if any Jamaican Briton had got through life without experiencing far worse racism than just the words I was subjected to. Brexit has unburdened English racists from the social pressure that served to limit some of the overt public expressions of their bigotry. So I’m not trying to say Jamaica is as bad as my own country but three times in a few weeks puts it beyond unfortunate coincidence for me.

Unlike white, English racists, Jamaicans can at least draw upon a genuine history of oppression and exploitation through slavery and colonialism. They can even justifiably feel resentment at more current issues of Western, economic exploitation, political interference and the refusal to seriously discuss reparations. All of which are issues I’ve been sympathetic to for many years. They are also entitled to be angry at seeing big profits from the tourist industry being scooped up by foreign investors, so it’s not necessarily a big surprise that some take it out on white foreigners, although Chinese Jamaicans  have also been on the receiving end of such racism, as a mixed race, Chinese-Jamaican man made very clear to me.

No matter how you dress it up or justify it, my experience was simply what it was and why would I want to experience it again, when I could go to a host of other places like Sudan and Pakistan and not be treated to hassle and insults. Both these countries could equally lay claim to past and even present injustices for which Britain has never made amends but where no one felt that justified affecting personal interactions with me. Here is another instance where at least some Jamaicans haven’t adopted the African culture of tolerance. In all my time in Africa I have only once encountered anyone who vocally equated me with the crimes of my forefathers and he was a decidedly unpleasant man who’s treatment of fellow Africans left a lot to be desired.

So, to all you decent Jamaicans, who I can only assume are the majority in your country, I am sorry but I won’t be coming back. And if by any chance you are reading this and want to take issue with anything I’ve said, please comment below.