The Color of Poverty

One of the things I've been trying to sort out, post-trip, are the dynamics of race vs. class vs. nationality that I experienced while in Jamaica. There were moments I felt very connected to Jamaica--when we literally re-traced the family's life in Kingston (more on this in a future post) but there were also moments, as I described yesterday, where I was acutely aware of being a tourist--or at least being perceived as a tourist (the question of whether I came to Jamaica as a tourist is one that I've wondered about. While it wasn't my intention to be a simple "tourist" the fact remains that my family and I did do typical tourist things--visiting Port Charles, climbing Dunn's River Falls, going to Doctor's Cave. Does our "family" status undercut this?)

I felt my tourist, or "outsider" status (because lets face it--that's what we really mean--tourists don't belong--they aren't locals--they don't call these places home--they leave) most keenly when I became aware of class differences. And you'd have to be really clueless and live in a state of willed denial not to be aware of huge class differences both within Jamaica and between Jamaicans and tourists/non-Jamaicans.

As my cousin "W" said, there is no middle-class in Jamaica: there is the poor and the wealthy. I did challenge him on this, pointing to the visit we had made to his aunt "P" in Portmore, and he did conceed that while "P" was hardly rich, according to Jamaican standards she was part of a lower-middle-class, especially when compared to people living just outside Portmore in shacks along the water--literal shacks made from discarded housing material and trash. But my cousin's point is also well taken--the economic divide in Jamaica is great--there are these huge homes in the hills of Kingston (see below):

[I took this from the minibus my family rented to tour Kingston]

The homes in Ocho Rios are even more spectacular--there was one that was built to resemble a cruiseship!

Then there are these more modest, middle-class homes in Kinston--the one below came from a neighborhood adjacent to the one my family grew up:


In many ways, these homes resemble subdivisions in California or any other middle-income housing tract in the U.S. Although the bars on the windows are a clear indication of the level of crime throughout Kingston. In fact, it was rare not to see any home without bars and gates and walls--only the shanties, many visible from the road, like the one below, which I saw on the way from Ochio Rios to Montego Bay, don't have bars and gates and locks:


And the economic disparity between tourists/outsiders and locals is also glaring--the cabride from our hotel in Montego Bay to the airport was 5 minutes long--we probably could have walked if we didn't have so much luggage. The cost was $700 JMD, which was a total rip-off by most standards, but this is one of the few ways taxi drivers make any money. And I found myself hesitating to give our driver a $50JMD tip--which is about 75cents--and of course I gave it to him and then chided myself. But it is easy to get caught up in feeling like you are being ripped-off as an American tourist. But that's the point--it's my money to give. The local taxi drivers and souvenir shop owners have to try to make as much as they can from the tourists because it's their livelihood. And it's sad when you get into a mentality, as an outsider, when you feel you don't want to give a 75 cent tip because you're being ripped off by the taxi fare.

One last thing: the picture of the shacks that line the road on the way to Montego Bay (and which line the roads all over Jamaica really) look very similar to the shacks that line the highway leading from Hong Kong to Guangzhou and that you find traveling along the Yucatan peninsula and overland from Istanbul to Athens. Poverty looks eerily similar, whether in the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, or I dare say the U.S. I'm not sure what color poverty is, but I know it's not green.

Poor Man, Rich Man

I spent this past weekend in the mountains, and there are some brief observations I wanted to make:

*Because it has been so dry and so warm, the leaves hadn't really turned color yet.

*I saw very few people of color the entire 3 days I was in the mountains, but unlike my trip to West Virginia, I did not feel racially paranoid, at least it wasn't acute. I'm not exactly sure why, perhaps I am more comfortable in my own home state or perhaps people weren't staring at me the way they were in West Virginia (and I was once again with my white Southern boyfriend, so we again comprised an inter-racial couple but really, we noticed nary an askance glance)

*The class/economic polarization and disparity is very marked. We drove through the countryside and saw small farmsteads and trailer homes--indications of rural life and poverty. And about a half hour later we came upon a boutique town that sported views of one of the ugliest condominium sites on the top of a mountaintop (part of a ski resort), golf condos, and a private air strip complete with a few jets parked amidst the lush greenery of the mountainsides, with million+ dollar homes in the background. All of this struck me, somehow, as obscene.

*Aside from the natural landscape and beauty of the mountains, the towns, for the most part, resembled one another in terms of the similarity of shops and restaurants and things to do in the town, itself. Some towns catered more to tourists. Some catered more to wealthy out-of-towners, some to college students, some to hippies. But we basically went from one downtown to another, shopping at similar stores, until it struck me that aside from the detours to the natural surroundings, we were basically taking a shopping tour of the mountains--and that also felt obscene, so we stopped.

That's all my observations for now. The poverty and the wealth is what is going to stick with me the most--the class disparity. Because it just seemed wrong. I know that I should not begrudge people their private wealth, but the conspicuous consumption of it, against the backdrop of people really struggling to make a living, just seemed disturbing.