we're all happy in Jamaica

“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
- Henry James

“With the real travel snobs I have shuddered at the mention of pleasure cruises or circular tours or personally conducted parties, of professional guides and hotels under English management. Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveler and not a tourist.”
- Evelyn Waugh, Labels (1930)

“Come on Jamaica
Everybody say
We're all happy in Jamaica . . .”
- Elton John


I had the good fortune of being invited to Jamaica to do paintings for a store the last week of January. Air fare, painting supplies, accommodations, ground transportation and meals for the whole week, everything was paid for. Outstanding! It was a lot of work - - - more than any of us had accounted for, and I was very happy that my brother David and my friend Jim were both there. They had their own work to do but helped me out plenty. Two school children wandered in and I immediately turned them into apprentices. Look how talented they are.

The butterfly was painted on the front of a display counter. Other images were painted on the windows but that’s a bit difficult to make out in photos. Reflections on the glass and such.

The week went very, very fast and we all three wished to see more of the country. I had never seen water that color. It was sapphire and sparkled like the sun. It was so clear you could read the morning paper under water if you wanted. And the people were very charming.

We ate all our meals in the small, local restaurant, all but one being fewer than six tables. We stayed in a house in Negril, along the island’s northwestern coast. We effectively avoided the tour package experience. We were comfortable and well fed, but we did need some help with the language. Periodically, I couldn’t understand the local pronunciation and at some point would give up (who was it who said England and America were two countries divided by a common language? Likewise Jamaica.). I didn’t have enough time to really get an understanding of the money down there. A cup of coffee was sixty Jamaican dollars (about 70 cents American). Our driver for the week, Andrew, helped us out tremendously.

Our days were spent about an hour east in Lucea, a small coastal town that appears to have one main road wrapping through the center of everything like a ribbon. Two cars can barely manage to pass without clipping off each others mirrors. There were few sidewalks, the pedestrians just staying along the edge of the roads. Children walked along, side by side, in their various school uniforms. Voices were everywhere. The quarters were close and compact, and the brightly colored buildings all called out for attention. The sky and the water were both equal in their blues and the white plaster and the doorways painted in reds, blues, greens, and yellows all competed and then merged in my mind, adding to the visual energy all around me. Most business signs were hand painted, some carved, and described goods and services in color combinations unimaginable. But for all this dazzle Lucea was a town unhurried and there was a slow, easy pace to the streets.

A whole week in the Caribbean and I came back just as pale as when I left New York. Leave it to me.