Jamaica 8

Jamaica has for the moment a quite bad reputation among individual travelers. This is of course due to all the violence and the high number of killings. On the front page of the leading newspaper there is a daily notice "Murder Update". Yesterday's figure was 845 since Jan 1st. With this in mind, it was with mixed feelings I entered the plane from Barbados to Kingston. And it didn't make the situation any better that there was no one to pick me up when I exited the airport. But after half an hour a smiling Robin Andrade appeared, and since everything has been fine.

Jamaica has had a recession for some time. 13 years ago their dollar was 5 to 1 USD. Now it is 50. The whole country struggles, and it would have been surprising if Y'smen under such conditions would experience growth. There has been 4 clubs, but at the moment there is only one that functions fairly well, the one in May Pen. There are exciting things going on in Kingston. I'll come back to that after my meeting on Monday.

After I was picked up at the airport, we picked up Sandra Hamilton, another key member of Kingston YMC, and went for an evening meal a peaceful place somewhere in a park. They informed me about local conditions and presented me with an itinerary for my stay in Jamaica.

During Friday I was to be taken to May Pen. That's a town with about 45.000 inhabitants situated 65 km west of Kingston. That trip took nearly three hours, so week end traffic out of Kingston requires a lot of patience. Fortunately we had a lot to talk about, so the crawling pace wasn't bothering us.

Here in May Pen I am staying with Clarice McDonald, president of the club since 1995. Besides she is a principal of the town's only primary school.

It is the biggest primary school in the Caribbean with about 2700 pupils. I look forward to attend a club meeting on Saturday and visiting the school on Monday.

Y'sly

Arne Augedal (02.11.02)