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.
