Jamaican Me Crazy

When people think of visiting Jamaica, they imagine a tropical paradise of beautiful beaches and green mountains where people do nothing but dance and listen to reggae music. And this is the Jamaica most tourists will see.

But my freshman year at St. Stephen’s, I got the opportunity to see Jamaica as it really is with the soccer academy. The beaches and mountains are not as picture perfect as the brochures suggest, and life is sometimes hard for Jamaicans. Still there’s a lot of beauty and joy to be found even in the hidden Jamaica I saw.

When we first arrived in Montego Bay, on the northwest coast of the island, we did experience something of the stereotypical Jamaica. The song “Welcome to Jamrock” was playing loudly over the speakers outside of the airport, and the smell of ganja was thick in the air. On the two and a half hour bus ride to go sixty miles across the island to Kingston, the stereotype was quickly replaced by less familiar impressions of Jamaica. First the drive itself was pretty scary because the roads over those picturesque green mountains were narrow and steep.

Second, the city of Kingston was much poorer and more rundown than you might see in the beach side resorts. Even the nicer areas of town would lack what any of us would consider to be basic features such as clothes dryers. The prep school where a former St. Stephen’s boarding student went looks no nicer than the oldest and most neglected schools in our city, quite a contrast to St. Stephen’s. Without the school’s name on the side, one might easily mistake it for a prison.

Life is also not a nonstop party. On our trip we visited an orphanage, not a place most tourists would visit. Still, despite the poverty, the Jamaicans we met were almost universally happy and friendly. The orphans greeted us with smiles, merchants along the road were happy to introduce us to local snacks, and life in many ways seemed very similar to life here in the states. The cities in Jamaica that I saw were rougher and dirtier than I was expecting but were also warm and welcoming.