The Other Side of the Brochure in Jamaica

« Return to Jamaica

It’s about time I tried this bird watching business, so further up the coast near Bluefields, I meet Vaughn, who has helped a young local named Wolde Kristos set up Reliable Adventures, a grassroots eco-tour operator offering nature hikes, marine tours and bird watching. I’ve always wanted to get my head around the fact that people travel the world so they can spot endemic birds through binoculars. Boisterous Veda is my guide, and she’s fizzing with excitement at the prospect of seeing her favourite Northern Patoo, one of the 28 endemic species on the island. We walk up a trail and there it is! An owl, morphed into a branch. I confess I fail to share her enthusiasm, but as we walk quietly along the Belvedere forest trail, every chitter or movement produces a mild thrill, each named and recognized by Veda as a Sad Flycatcher or a Red-billed Streamertail Hummingbird. Bird watching is like equating thrills with a bird name, and the more obscure the name, the bigger the thrill.

They’re all birds to me, but it’s a fun enough game to play, hunting without any weapons. Filming the birds is tough work, since they don’t stick around in any one place for too long, and we all have new appreciation for those birding documentaries, the ones where some poor schmuck spends 3 weeks waiting to get one shot. I reckon I’ll slot birdwatching into the “hobbies for later life” bin, along with golf, cruise ships, and heroin addiction.

Bent over, she gyrates her hips with a pulsating throb. Both hands around her tight pink shorts, he slams his groin into her. Spinning around, she mounts his crotch and continues to shake, moaning and sweating as he rotates and smashes her on the bar. There is dirty dancing, and then there are the dance crazes that sweep Kingston’s dancehall parties, each more sexually overt and provocative then the next. Wednesday night is Weddy Weddy, and much later Passa Passa, the biggest parties of the week. By night, I mean early morning, since Weddy Weddy only gets going at around 2am, and the larger open street party Passa Passa after 4am. Since we have an 8am bus, and have already been working since 8am the previous morning, we’d have to give Passa Passa a miss, but we headed off to an open courtyard to find Weddy Weddy practically empty at midnight. Reggae cut with dub, sliced with disco and peppered with pop booms from loud speakers, and large screens show the butts and breasts of the few girls gathering around the dance hall. By 2am, there’s a solid crowd, but still no one is dancing. As the hours click over, the music gets louder, the atmosphere tense, the crowd thicker. Something has got to give. The night is sponsored by not one, but two energy drinks, Magnum and Bullet. I meet the marketing manager of Bullet, and ask him why two drinks would sponsor one night, their promo booths directly opposite each other. “One we call an energy wine, the other an energy drink. The idea is that you mix them, load the Magnum with a Bullet. We call it a Lock n’ Load.” Rastafarian men are walking around selling huge stalks of pot, and a cloud of green smoke sits over the courtyard. Interestingly, nobody is smoking cigarettes. The dance circle edges closer and closer together, until two girls in hot pink shorts start flipping out in the middle. Some well-dressed Kingston guys, infamous Rude Boys, watch the action through their sunglasses, the light of the camera reflecting off the bling around the necks. One guy steps up, and it has begun. The Daggering is on.

From the socio-political beginnings of reggae music, Jamaican dancehall has evolved into a beat of bling, embracing hip-hop’s fascination with wealth, sex and materialistic ambition. The old timers prefer the purity of reggae as it was, the unemployed kids of Kingston, many living in slums torn apart by gang wars, can’t get enough of the way it is. With the success of Sean Paul, Beenie Man, and Shaggy, Jamaican music continues to find an audience worldwide, and here at Weddy Weddy is where the up and comers get their start.

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