My Experience in Xaymaca

My first trip to Jamaica. I found the island:
Indescribable (although you know me, I will try to describe it).
Stereotype dissolving - I can't believe that I swallowed those things I was hearing about Jamaica and Jamaicans all those years.
And completely and utterly awe inspiring. Humans seem like an intrusion here - the land has better things to do. As I travelled from Kingston's airport and drove under the Man Crab monstrosity of the cement plant (shame on a Trinidadian company for sweeping their dust under Jamaica's bed), I felt puny in a yukky way. But when I leaned my head backwards a few minutes later to look up and up to the top of the Blue Mountains the puniness seemed just right and I remembered which of the two - cement plant/Blue Mountains - will endure. Uncontested.

I remember flying out of Quito airport in Ecuador about 15 years ago. And as we were flying along peacefully with me peering out of the window, suddenly the bottom fell out! We had come to the end of the plateau on which Quito is located and the earth was now thousands of feet lower than it had been a moment ago. I will never forget the free-fall-stomach wonder of that moment.

In Jamaica I had the same experience of awe for Mama Earth. The richness and power of the forests and the mountains, the solidity and generosity of the soil, the largeness and silent regard of the limestone cliffs was not what I had anticipated. This spirit also found its way in the relaxed confidence of the writer Kei Millerl's voice as he read from his new book. In the intensity of the energy beaming out from the soil. In the studied regard of the little green lizard one early morning. I was taken aback! And none of this planetary authority was negated by the mask-like bleached faces of many Kingstonians, the drive-by shooting that held up traffic for hours, the insistence of the addicts asking with the ubiquitous stretched arm and Anancy stories. It wasn't even negated by last week's pathetic stance of the PM who doesn't even understand how homophobia has a massive impact on his own liberty as a man. Humans can NEVER touch the strength and inherent truthfulness of something that predates us and will outlive us. And in Jamaica, I was blessed to see and experience this clearly.