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Jangle, to say that your description of your vacation in the Bahamas is “nice” would be to make the understatement of the year! Your post, “The Haitians are Fast Becoming the New Jamaicans” is really good descriptive prose, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading every sentence of both posts! They deserve publishing in a Jamaican newspaper, in my opinion, and I wish I could see more of this type of writing here on the forum!
Aside from the fact that I absolutely enjoyed reading your post, I have a couple of comments to make on it.
I love your headline (“The Haitians are Fast Becoming the New Jamaicans”), and I’m not sure how much Jamaicans realize the reality of this! The guns for drugs trade between Haiti and Jamaica involve a great deal of human smuggling as well. The truth is that not every Haitian is concerned about going north; some just want to go anywhere in order to get away from their troubled homeland. Not everyone can go across the dangerous border into the Dominican Republic, and not everyone has the cash or the guts to risk the dangerous voyage by sea and ocean into the Bahamas or the Turks & Caicos Islands or the USA. So for many, the trip across the relatively calm Caribbean Sea into Jamaica is as good an option as any. Marrying a poor Jamaican man, with Jamaica’s liberal citizenship laws, can make the difference to a desperate Haitian woman.
In your vivid account of your trip to the Bahamas, you stated that the bank robber was caught. This is interesting, particularly when you compare it with Jamaican police’s clearing up rate of some 35-percent of violent crimes (or is it 35-percent of homicides?). As far as a criminal getting away from either country is concerned, it is surely much more difficult to patrol the borders of the Bahamas archipelago when compared with that of Jamaica, so…..
Question: Is it accurate to state that, in the case of Bahamas beaches, there are “not as many as Jamaica”? Remember that the Bahamas is made up of some 700 islands and cays. You mentioned Paradise Island and Nassau (main city of the island of New Providence) in your report, but what about other islands that are even more famous for their beaches, including Eleuthera, Harbour Island, Abaco, etc.?
Regarding Jamaican dance moves, I suspect that the average Bahamian teen, like his/her counterpart elsewhere in the Caribbean, knows a great deal about the latest Jamaican dance moves. The economically well-off Bahamas has one of the deepest Internet penetration of any country in the world, and so the average Bahamian youth will be exposed to whatever he/she wants to see, including YouTube. There are also those sickeningly pervasive Passa Passa DVDs, which seem to be, unfortunately (for Jamaica) available a dime a dozen throughout the Cartibbean region! Then, there is the television music station “Tempo” (previously owned by MTV), which broadcasts to almost thirty Caribbean countries. Finally, a plethora of reggae artists regularly hold sold-out concerts in that country (to cite an example, the Marley brothers are always advertising their big December concerts in the Bahamas, which feature a lot of Jamaican guest artists). Also, from what I know, Beres Hammond in particular is a hero there, with almost legendary status.
Regarding the fastest growing industry in the world, the tourism industry, Jamaicans are NOT tourism people in the truest sense. For one, far too many Jamaicans (including many educated ones who should know better) confuse “service” with “servitude” (a Jamaican parliamentarian amazingly attempted to link tourism with servitude sometime back in the 1990s). In addition, the vital importance of the tourism industry to Jamaica has not, to this day, adequately penetrated the minds and communities of most Jamaicans, and so crude hustling is the order of the day as many see it as simply a way to make a quick buck.
Bahamians and Turks Islanders, on the other hand, with virtually no other major industry except for the service industries tourism and banking (salt production in the case of the Bahamas is one of the handful of exceptions), realize fully the essential meaning and importance of “service.” Added to this is the fact that tourism has been the mainstay of the economy of the Bahamas since the early twentieth century.
Ed Bartlett has seemingly been doing an outstanding job so far in Jamaica, but underneath it all I suspect that Jamaicans, from government ministers and business people down to the ordinary man on the street, need to have a tourism culture more deeply embedded in their consciousness. Only then will Jamaica, despite its myriad attractions, truly become a world class tourism destination. At the moment, it’s anything but that!
Aside from the fact that I absolutely enjoyed reading your post, I have a couple of comments to make on it.
I love your headline (“The Haitians are Fast Becoming the New Jamaicans”), and I’m not sure how much Jamaicans realize the reality of this! The guns for drugs trade between Haiti and Jamaica involve a great deal of human smuggling as well. The truth is that not every Haitian is concerned about going north; some just want to go anywhere in order to get away from their troubled homeland. Not everyone can go across the dangerous border into the Dominican Republic, and not everyone has the cash or the guts to risk the dangerous voyage by sea and ocean into the Bahamas or the Turks & Caicos Islands or the USA. So for many, the trip across the relatively calm Caribbean Sea into Jamaica is as good an option as any. Marrying a poor Jamaican man, with Jamaica’s liberal citizenship laws, can make the difference to a desperate Haitian woman.
In your vivid account of your trip to the Bahamas, you stated that the bank robber was caught. This is interesting, particularly when you compare it with Jamaican police’s clearing up rate of some 35-percent of violent crimes (or is it 35-percent of homicides?). As far as a criminal getting away from either country is concerned, it is surely much more difficult to patrol the borders of the Bahamas archipelago when compared with that of Jamaica, so…..
Question: Is it accurate to state that, in the case of Bahamas beaches, there are “not as many as Jamaica”? Remember that the Bahamas is made up of some 700 islands and cays. You mentioned Paradise Island and Nassau (main city of the island of New Providence) in your report, but what about other islands that are even more famous for their beaches, including Eleuthera, Harbour Island, Abaco, etc.?
Regarding Jamaican dance moves, I suspect that the average Bahamian teen, like his/her counterpart elsewhere in the Caribbean, knows a great deal about the latest Jamaican dance moves. The economically well-off Bahamas has one of the deepest Internet penetration of any country in the world, and so the average Bahamian youth will be exposed to whatever he/she wants to see, including YouTube. There are also those sickeningly pervasive Passa Passa DVDs, which seem to be, unfortunately (for Jamaica) available a dime a dozen throughout the Cartibbean region! Then, there is the television music station “Tempo” (previously owned by MTV), which broadcasts to almost thirty Caribbean countries. Finally, a plethora of reggae artists regularly hold sold-out concerts in that country (to cite an example, the Marley brothers are always advertising their big December concerts in the Bahamas, which feature a lot of Jamaican guest artists). Also, from what I know, Beres Hammond in particular is a hero there, with almost legendary status.
Regarding the fastest growing industry in the world, the tourism industry, Jamaicans are NOT tourism people in the truest sense. For one, far too many Jamaicans (including many educated ones who should know better) confuse “service” with “servitude” (a Jamaican parliamentarian amazingly attempted to link tourism with servitude sometime back in the 1990s). In addition, the vital importance of the tourism industry to Jamaica has not, to this day, adequately penetrated the minds and communities of most Jamaicans, and so crude hustling is the order of the day as many see it as simply a way to make a quick buck.
Bahamians and Turks Islanders, on the other hand, with virtually no other major industry except for the service industries tourism and banking (salt production in the case of the Bahamas is one of the handful of exceptions), realize fully the essential meaning and importance of “service.” Added to this is the fact that tourism has been the mainstay of the economy of the Bahamas since the early twentieth century.
Ed Bartlett has seemingly been doing an outstanding job so far in Jamaica, but underneath it all I suspect that Jamaicans, from government ministers and business people down to the ordinary man on the street, need to have a tourism culture more deeply embedded in their consciousness. Only then will Jamaica, despite its myriad attractions, truly become a world class tourism destination. At the moment, it’s anything but that!
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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