A loud crash from the kitchen reached into my subconscious and with an instant shock, forcing me out of my deep slumber and onto my feet. My heart pounded as I grabbed the heavy metal flashlight on the nightstand and crept toward the double doors that connected our bedroom to the living room, while breathing slowly and deeply to gain my composure.
That evening when we were retiring to our room, Juicy, the hotel’s gardener, had warned us not to go out that night. This was very different from other times when we had been there. Being only six weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and being low season anyway, there were hardly any tourists in Negril, and we were the only guests in the little 13 room hotel. A big storm was nearby in the Caribbean, and with the storm surges taking away a lot of the beach that day, the police had stopped patrolling, and given the sparse tourist population, the climate was right for robberies and muggings on a dark and rainy nighttime beach. “Crime on the beach tonight?” I asked him as we were headed up the stairs to our room.
“Ya mon, crime on da beach.” He said, looking at me earnestly but sadly.
I heard more commotion in the kitchen with pots and pans crashing to the floor. Armed with the flashlight to use as a club, I pushed open the door, jumped over the couch and ran to the kitchen to confront the intruder. Seeing the shutters of the kitchen window banging against the kitchen wall. A series of lightening flashes illuminated the dark room revealing a wet kitchen floor covered with pots and pans knocked off the kitchen counter by the flapping shutters, and also revealing the fact that I stood in the room alone.
Rain was blowing into the room sideways from the raging storm outside. I turned on the lights, closed the shutters, securing them with the weight of a case of Red Stripe beer, thinking that after we drank the beer, I would have to find another way to secure the shutters, as I started cleaning up the mess.
Ritsuko came into the kitchen, shocked as I was that the storm had intensified. I was just happy that it was the storm, and not an intruder. I asked her to turn on the television, as I mopped the water from the floor.
We had known of what was then Tropical Storm Michelle when we left home for Jamaica a few days before, but it did not look like it would interfere with our vacation. The day before, however, we had watched the sea grow ever more angry, and we had watched the beach all but disappear in some places along its seven mile stretch. Sitting down in front of the television in the pre-dawn hours, we saw a weather forecast showing that category 4 Hurricane Michelle was on its approach to Cuba, and although it looked far enough away from the west end of Jamaica on the map, we sure were getting slapped by the periphery of the storm. As we sat there talking about how this was the first time in a long time that we had ever turned on a television during vacation, the picture imploded into a tiny white dot and the rest of the room went dark.
When traveling, we always carry a flashlight and a couple of candles. I dug into my suitcase and found the candles, which we stuck into empty Red Stripe bottles placed on saucers. The candle light flickered from the draft of wind wasping through the closed shutters as we sat in the room in pre-dawn darkness, gingerly making our way about in the kitchen to boil water on the gas stove for our morning coffee. Having no electricity, I put together a makeshift coffee making apparatus using a funnel and a coffee filter. It was slow, but effective ... kindof like indoor camping.
As dawn’s first light illuminated the beach below, we could see that the raging surf had deposited huge mounds of sea grass on the beach in front of our hotel. The wind and rain was beginning to subside as we went down to the beach. Few people were out that morning. A couple of ladies emerged from the hotel. They and some friends had been relocated to our hotel in the middle of the night from the Rockhouse on the Negril cliffs. They said that they had been sitting in the bar when a huge wave knocked down the a wall and filled the bar with sea water. Luckily, no one was killed or injured, and all the guests were evacuated.
Walking down what was left of the beach, we could see that a couple of boats that were anchored off the reef the evening before had been broken loose from their anchorage and washed ashore by the storm. Crews of people had begun to gather on the beach to collect and bury the mountains of seagrass. Most of the workers were men and women, although some entire families were out there. The storm seemed to have caused only minor property damage. Business owners up and down the beach were hiring people to come out and try to put the beach back in order. At least it gave people a chance to earn some money in the cleanup.
With the downturn in tourism, many who depended upon work in the hotels, bars, and restaurants had been laid off for the past few weeks. The people who comprised the small staff of the hotel where we stayed were lucky in that they still had jobs, but with no tourists in the hotel lately, there had been no tips, and they depend upon tips to survive. Still, they were better off than most. Many people were destitute. Some would ask for money as we walked by them while they shoveled the seagrass into holes in the sand. I quickly learned to carry a supply of coins with me when we walked the beach, and when someone would ask, I would just smile and press some money into their hand.
The cleanup went on for a few more days as the sea began to calm and once again become the sparkling clear turquoise jewel. The cleanup of the beach in front of our hotel was complete so that we could enjoy our last vacation day in the idyllic setting that one expects in Negril, but up and down the beach the labor continued.
Anyone who has been to Jamaica, and been outside the compound of the many all-inclusive resorts would see the great division of wealth among the people, and the poverty in which so many there live. In an area of the island in which tourism is the main source of income for most who live there, the economy is so fragile, and with the downturn in business that fall, we were able to witness how fragile a tourism economy can be. I felt sorry that the economy of the area had become so distorted, with mega resorts drawing in huge amounts of money and siphoning it away from the island, while paying their employees a barely above poverty wage with no protection in an economic downturn.
Tourism certainly opens up avenues for all of us to visit foreign countries, and to be exposed to new cultures, but it is easy to fall into the tourism big business formula, theme, bastardization and homogenization that is marketed so heavily in package deals, last minute specials, etc, and that is so very true of the mega resorts in Jamaica. I would encourage anyone who is planning to visit this country, or any other, for that matter, to stay away from the lure of the resort, and spend your money at locally owned hotels, eat at smaller, locally owned restaurants, and try to put your tourist dollars into the hands of the people who live there.