Before I set off, my ultra-supportive husband borrowed a guidebook from the library for me to read. This marked the watershed for holiday planning, and whilst I told myself I was just looking up the basic info to pack a suitcase, as I read I developed expectations. In a former life, I learned about expectations. The trick in business is to just exceed those of your customer, anything over is waste, and anything under is disappointment. I have a rather idiosyncratic theory that depression is the result of unmet expectations. I won’t be mentioning it on the forthcoming exam paper, although some theorists say that depression is due to a bucket and I will be writing that. Strange? But I digress.
The guidebook mentioned white sands, palm trees, waterfalls, and coconuts. There was a very tiny part where it also mentioned sex tourism and cannabis. Jokingly, I pointed this out to Nick and asked him if he minded be taking full advantage of all that the nation had to offer? I needed the guidebook because until my friend told me that Jamaica was where she was taking me, I had never thought of going there. I had formed no expectations other than that it was a long way to go and would be out of my price range. I sort of like the music of Bob Marley, but given his untimely death from cancer some years previously it was unlikely that he would be performing. I suspected that all I knew were clichés; after all, I went to Tunisia and didn’t see a single grain of couscous. I went to America, and didn’t see a single child with a gun. I planned to take it as it came.
It was our first morning. My expectations had been met by palm trees with coconuts on them, a pool with sun loungers around it and exceeded by the breakfast buffet. The sound of the sea was drowned out by reggae music. Hot sun had revealed the trim, tanned flesh of young American women in designer beachwear and the reddening beshorted flesh of the wealthy American men who seemed not to be their dads. I am a fat, moderately off English woman. I realised I would need to purchase a number of sarongs. The marble was gleaming, the plants exotic, the breeze was warm. There was a bank of salespeople at tables selling trips to hilltop mansions, magnificent waterfalls, tropical rivers, dolphin experiences… I took in my new all-inclusive town, my subconscious feet following in the wake of my lovely friend. She was heading for the gate.
If Jamaica equals Bob Marley and Rastas then it follows in the mind that cannabis figures. I don’t have strong feelings on cannabis; all I can say for myself is that it makes me nauseous, so I don’t use it. There were two guards at the gate, they operated a large barrier. From there we could see we were on a side road bordered by scrubland, there was a petrol station and a Burger King. We were approached by dust-coated raggedy men immediately we passed the barrier, a little like we had come through one of the magical shields featured in the works of JK Rowling. They offered drugs and sex. There was friendly rivalry between them four had come forward and another handful watched from a pavilion over the road. It occurred to me they might have built it. The banter was flattering, superficially light but beneath that was a mix of wariness and hunger. I sensed keen business intelligence assessing the prospects offered by two lone women, one of whom had not bothered to wear a ring that morning.
My friend went to sit in the car of an individual in Rastafarian dress. I was left with to make small talk with a licenced taxi driver who for eighty US dollars would make sure I had a good time. He could also get me coke, cannabis, or seemingly as a last resort drive me wherever I liked to go. His friends catcalled from their shelter, but he remained as focussed on me as my little dog is while food is on my plate. I stood monosyllabic, expecting him to work out I was not about to buy his services and then to swear a little and move off. However, once his awkward assessment was done, he seemed to relax. He had asked me where I was from and went on to talk about a relative who had come to Birmingham. He hadn’t been to England and would like to have done when he was younger, but now his father was getting older and he had a family. He said that he worked around the hotel here and would beat the process offered by the hotel. Again he proudly showed me his licence and warned me that not all drivers had one, which was against the rules. I found myself thawing, and in spite of my initial revulsion, accepted his business card when he offered it to me. My friend came out of the Rasta’s car and entered into negotiations with another man about a factory made friendship bracelet sporting the legend ‘ire’. She wanted it and I handed over the equivalent of £10 to get him to leave. He followed us to the gate.
At sunset, men in beaten-up canoes paddled the length of the beach selling sex, cannabis, and hematite jewellery from their boats. No doubt to protect themselves from bad magic, they never set foot on land, but stayed in the shallows while the occasional tourist paddled out, calf deep.
As the holiday went on, it transpired that eighty dollars was the going rate for what tourists bought from locals. I came gradually to the conclusion that behind the charming roadside stalls selling conch soup (thin spiced, with conch pieces), and fresh jelly coconut (fresh green coconuts the top shaved down with a machete so that the warm milk could be drunk through a straw) was a trade in drugs. Could anybody make a living selling the occasional drink for a dollar? Away from the gate, there was a sense of hand-to –mouth poverty remedied by selling one cash crop and limited services. That said, we were shackled by our all-inclusive wrist bands (unaccountably they didn’t have’ exploit me or mug me’ printed on them), and apart from a drive out with relatives of my friend, we didn’t see much of the country.
Eighty US bought two very large twigs of cannabis. I never found out what kind of sex a woman could get for the same money, but I’ll always have the fantasy.
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