Dawn Ritch, Contributor
I WAS drawn to a letter to the Editor from an Englishman of Jamaican parentage. He reported that there were more cricket fans travelling from the United Kingdom to Barbados than to Jamaica for the recent series, including himself. Paul McKenzie said British tourists feel safer in Barbados than in Jamaica, and implored us to get a grip on crime.
John Issa, chairman of SuperClubs said on "Breakfast Club" that Jamaica's name still has a certain cachet. But he too said we needed to get a grip on crime, and included the horrendous garbage situation in this country.
I've been to Barbados. There's nothing flatter except Cayman, to which I've never been. But almost every little shed in Barbados is written up as a tourist attraction in British newspapers.
More frightening is that celebrated Sunday Times columnist Michael Winner, in his "Winners' Dinners", even suggested that there was such a thing as a Barbadian cuisine. Never mind that he was staying at the famed Sandy Lane Hotel, spending an astonishing wheelbarrow full of solid British pounds in the tens of thousands on his annual Christmas vacation there. He was repeatedly served canned orange juice for breakfast to his mild annoyance, yet wrote that he'll be back as usual. I sent him an e-mail saying that I'd like to set up an itinerary for him in Jamaica on his next trip to the Caribbean, but had no reply. Maybe he thought I might rob or murder him. Such is our reputation for smiling mayhem these days.
JAMAICAN CACHET
This, no doubt, is part of the Jamaican cachet of which Mr. Issa speaks. But in order to participate you need a strong heart, a stronger pair of sandals and your money in a pouch on your belly.
Fine for the young I suppose. But people 60 years and over usually just want a shady tree, a cool breeze and nobody yapping in their ears about anything. A lot more of them than ever before would also like to be nude and show their big, sagging bellies without public comment. They certainly do not wish to feel they have to strap their valuables to their bellies in order to visit Jamaica.
The generation of baby boomers worldwide begins to retire at the end of this decade. They ought to be a captive market for Jamaican tourism. But they want very little except to be left alone, which is impossible in Jamaica. Here is a great big demographic bulge coming worldwide. More older people alive than at any time previously in the world's history. All they will want is cleanliness, civility, good food and peace and quiet.
Most, it is reported, will live to see age 85. And in better physical and mental condition than could have previously been expected, though at a medical cost still unknown. Most will be unable to retire. Pension funds in Europe, Britain and America are in a reportedly dubious condition, but baby boomers will still be in a better position to travel than anybody else.
Tourists coming to Jamaica will therefore expect ramps and wheelchairs, and a quiet attendant if possible. But it's impossible in Jamaica. As soon as their bottom hits the seat, we'll be shoving their wheelchairs off over potholes, and selling them drugs and girls if we're running true to form.
It is the elderly who will be travelling most after the year 2010. Not the 40-year-olds who are raising their children, or the 50-year-olds for whom "Spring Break" is but a fond memory, and college tuition bills for their offspring an ongoing obligation. Young adults will, as usual, stay with friends when they travel, and not in hotels.
When the First World baby boomer walks to his street corner for a coffee, he could be bombed. But here he could be shot and robbed. If you ask me, this is the cleaner way to go. But none of them is likely to agree. Stressed out by the war on terror, they will crave a little peace and quiet more than ever. That, and a spectacular sunset over the sea, in a tropical paradise. Because that will be the last dream to die.
IMPOSSIBLE
Impossible to provide in Jamaica. Between the copies of other artists' work that we routinely hawk on every roadside and call it native art, the conversation that we want to hold every time somebody orders a beer, the ubiquitous bead necklaces that fall apart as soon as you put them on, and the hoots and hollers at every member of the female sex, the baby boomer might as well be in Baghdad.
Some of our guests are usually either half-drunk or stoned or both. The claim upon their alertness just to go outside for a drink, is more than many of them can manage. Everytime a friendly native shakes their hand just to say hello, their arthritis will scream with silent pain. And all in the interest of unnecessary physical contact, when any old nod and a smile would do. In Jamaica tourists run the gauntlet. Who needs it?
Bear in mind that Jamaica is the only Caribbean island blessed with a genuine cuisine. Yet the home of Blue Mountain Coffee and Pickapeppa can't even sell a lunch to a tourist, while Barbados can serve them canned orange juice and get away with it.
This is galling beyond words. It used to be that in Jamaica "Every Nigger (was) a Star", and everywhere was swept up and the garbage collected. Now every "Nigger" is likely to be a lout getting vex because you don't want to talk to him or shake his hand, and he couldn't care less about the environment.
Maybe the change happened when our politicians began to talk about "civic pride". This has obviously been taken to mean that the Kiwanis Club or Cable & Wireless will clean up after them, and replant the trees that they chop down to make curios and sell coal. Or alternatively "civic pride" means you can come and dump your garbage on my land. Or steal my flowers to plant in your yard.
Jamaica doesn't need casino gambling to make tourism prosper. All we need to remember is how not to interfere with each other and the tourists, and to tidy up the place. Surely the country that introduced tourism to the region, and led internationally as the destination of choice, can once again rise to the occasion.
