By Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor 
Blackwood Meeks
IN CASE you haven't heard, an American, a white American, living in America, has just confessed to murdering over 48 women for reasons that you might have to find the article to see for yourself whether you understand.
It's the Green River case. Any rumours you might have heard that the responsible authority for tourism in America has cautioned the American media about how they report crime because it might deter tourists are just that, rumours. So too is the rumour that all black women, especially if they practice a certain profession, are now afraid of white men. Utterly sexist, racist rot.
It is also a rumour that the relevant Jamaican authorities have issued a travel advisory, in important or unimportant newspapers, front page or back, loudly or quietly, that Jamaicans should avoid travel to the Great You My Mistake of America. In any case, Jamaicans would not listen. We love Amerikkka. We want to see for ourselves how foreign crime really stay. So how come, year after year, roadblock after roadblock, as likkle pin drop inna Jamaica big speaking people start tell we fe careful how we report tings for foreign people might hear and choose not to come to Jamaica and de likkle food wudda bax outa we mout? Is it alright that we maim and kill each other as long as potential visitors don't hear about it?
So we hearing how we cooking up our pennies into dollars to spend in exotic places like Italy to entice their devaluating currency and we please want all Jamaicans to stop the noise-making. Bout unemployment and slum-living and squatter settlements especially in the tourist resorts. But is how that happen? How come people who live so near to tourist dollars don't see themselves as getting any of the benefits? So dem behave like might as well de tourism don't exist then.
You're making noise Amina. When tourists come they make enough. And please to put on your uniforms when you go to work in the craft market for white people love to see black people in uniforms when it is time to be served. Try your best to look like the nice nannies and butlers we put in the ads.
JAMAICA IS SELF PROMOTING
You know, we just don't get it. We don't even need to spend another cent on promoting Jamaica. Jamaica already promote itself. Thank you, Bob Marley. One love. Come on and smile in Jamaica. Come to Jamaica and feel alright. And thank you, Puma, for you get it. "Taking from the spirit, history and culture of Jamaica, according to the report, Puma is flooding the world with fashions, everything from underwear to overwear in the colours of the Jamaican flag. Mek dem pay for it. Buy it in fancy stores abroad and moggle it when dem coming a wi yard. Come show we how we mek dem feel alright.
But Jamaicans have to feel alright in Jamaica first. My friend Miss Lady seh, she is absolutely fed-up, till she choking on this plantationisation of Jamaica in the name of tourism. Successive administrations remind us that this is not really our home. We have simply been employed to keep it clean, violence-free, make it into a nice little comfort zone so that when the rightful owners who work so hard in foreign, overseas and abroad get a chance to take two weeks away from their own brand of crime and violence to see how we getting on, we shall be pleased to hear them bestow upon us "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
You know something, though? In the new style visionary way of relating to the hired hands, enlightened people have done research and presented paper after paper at big learning convention, that demonstrate, (oops, wrong word), that show that there is a direct co-relation between the level and quality of productivity and the manner in which the hired hands are treated. So, quad erat demonstratum (oops, that word again) it stands to reason that if the hired hands receive a little better treatment from the middle managers that bucky master leave to run things, they just might behave a little better when buckra is in town. For sometime black people mad, sick, head nuh good and dem get tings mix up. Dem will hear "run tings" and tink yu seh "ruin tings".
The truth is, in the tourism department, if tings don't run right it is going to get properly ruined. The whole world knows where to find Jamaica but we have to fix how dem find it as in, "I trust I find you doing well".
Puma is doing very well. Puma understands that expensive ads, made into foreign, with foreign actors over the voice of Bob Marley wailing One Love, played on foreign media where they don't speak Hinglish and need no translation of the Reggae Vibes, is not what brings foreigners to Jamaica.
But when they come, they trust to find us doing well. Miss Lady don't tink the potholes that line the streets of Portland, the first tourist port in Jamaica would qualify, except we now rename it a tourist port and only show dem de new marina. And give the craft vendors a few new merinos too, de nice mesh ones in some beautifully uniformed colours. After that we have to clean up the roads.
I was involved in some work on behalf of the Coastal Water Improvement Project prior to the opening of the marina. You know what some people told me? Dem not taking part in no clean-up programme because their experience had been that only when foreigners coming clean-up gwaan. Some residents of Port Antonio actually took me to the distances they walked to dump their garbage. Firstly they had to walk because not one skiff had ever been placed in their communities and secondly, there was a big garbage heap to show because it appeared as if no garbage truck had ever heard of some communities.
One old man spoke in a meeting about the reason he stopped cleaning his street. He observed that someone else would bring the relevant authorities to verify how much work had been done, assessed by the square, so that he, Mister Some One Else, could collect on it. The people in the meeting concurred that such was the case. As to where I live in St. Mary. Dem tink I am a complete idiot telling dem bout dangers of burning garbage when nobody seems to realise the greater dangers of leaving their garbage uncollected, so they have chosen the evil with which they can cohabit. And my little place in St. Mary and the communities I interacted with on behalf of CWIP in Portland are not the only ones across Jamaica that are so afflicted. Just watch the news on TV any night. Oops, careful how you report that, people in foreign might see. Although I am not telling you what to report.
ADVENTUROUS TOURISTS
There are some very adventurous tourists, however, who will find a way to get off the best regulated tour bus to explore how the natives really live. You must have seen at least one of them. Yes that one, poised behind a video camera, recording the first encounter with real garbage and gingi flies in a country that claims to be recognising the value of community tourism. Some communities cannot qualify despite their best efforts without intervention of the very people who collect their tax dollars to advertise Jamaica to people who dun know, yusimi?
And yu know how dem know? Reggae music. Jamaican performers on the big screen. Jamaican food tekking over the world. Miss Lou, remember her? Last seen returning to Canada to delight folks with that quaint little way of speaking that's not allowed in schools or decent company. Never mind, in short, via Jamaican living expressive culture is how people have come to know about and recognise us. An yu tink de big spenders would spend one tups of the cost of airing a 30-second commercial to stage a Capleton concert in the Vatican, since is Italian market dem after? Yu tink dem wudda put me in Central Park fe talk bout Anansi? (And by the way that spelling is correct. A Nancy is what the Europeans thought they heard. More on that some other time).
You think we could get some lifetime travel tickets for Carifolk Singers or the Jamaican Folk Singers with their how much international gold medals to sing twice a year in the Royal Albert Hall sponsored by the tourism authorities? Puma is staging an economic comeback by 'piggybacking on the popularity of the island'.
We don't get it. Jamaicans also want to feel nice in Jamaica about Jamaica. When that happens, everyting curry and everybody who comes to visit will comfortably partake. Every corner of the globe knows where to find Jamaica. But "what about the one love, one heart...?" I trust that one of these days, they find us well.
And feel all right.
