How Hurricane Jamaica Made Landfall In My Soul

CHAPTER ONE

Welcome to CHAPTER ONE of my island memoirs, originally published in 2011 and adapted to include current times and life situations.

These were my actual (now adapted) book dedications.

To my son, Curtis. He will always be the only one who ever fully understood me.

Special thanks to my mother. If not for her I would have been homeless and without internet each time I came back to Canada.

To my BFFs in Jamaica who probably don’t know the impact they had on me throughout this odyssey. Without them, Ochi never would have felt like home and Middle Quarters would never have become home. Speaking of home, Shane, you were the best neighbor a girl could ever have and I owe you endless flasks of Wray & Nephew.

Ask anyone who’s known me since before Jamaica until now and you’ll find out that my three most life-altering events are (in this order):

The birth of my son,

my discovery of Jamaica,

and the death of my son.

Those three events reshaped me from the inside out and rocked the foundation of the life I thought I would live.

Some might wonder why I’d choose to write a life-changing book about Jamaica when I’ve survived a thing as monumental as maternal grief, but some things I like to keep tucked away in my quiet parts.

Also, the impact of travel can never be overstated.

Hence…Jamaica it is.

I find it utterly fascinating how something that occurred purely by chance actually pulled enough pieces together that I could look back far beyond hindsight and say “Ah-ha, that’s why that happened!”

It was no accident at all.

This memoir was supposed to be about my travels to Jamaica, how I moved there, and how everything I touched turned into golden coconuts. Instead, it morphed into a book about revelations, triumphs, bravery, introspection, and yes, all the failures.

If I were a stranger reading this I’d totally want to find out how the book ends and where this unbridled island gypsy ended up.

These pages are not at all about typical experiences one might have in Jamaica and should never be used as a guide of what to do or not do if you choose to vacation or move there.

As they say in advertising; results may vary.

I kind of knew that going in but didn’t take it under heavy consideration.

When I say Hurricane Jamaica “happened” to me, I mean it. I didn’t ask for my life to be tossed upside down in the spin cycle but that’s indeed what happened.

Have you ever wondered if people actually win those "win a vacation” contests?

I’m living proof that they do because I won a vacation. Twice, in fact.

March of 2003 was the first. I was awarded an all-inclusive trip to Jamaica through a local radio station here in Canada. It was a five-day jaunt that ruined…my…life.

I say Jamaica ruined my life because if I’d never won that first trip, the flame of my addiction would’ve never ignited. It’s difficult to say whether I was so infatuated with Jamaica because it’s Jamaica or if I would have loved any old destination in the same way.

This trip was my first introduction to international travel. Obviously, it captivated me…I’m Canadian. We don’t have palm trees, colorful houses, or a vibrant dialect that sounds pleasant even when you’re telling someone to go suck it.

I can’t speculate what my life would have turned into if my first international travel had been to Prague or Nunavut. However, I can say that I had previously been to San Diego and my life didn’t change at all. Not one bit. I pet a few dolphins at SeaWorld and called it a day.

If not for this first trip to Jamaica, I probably would’ve owned a house, had a loaded bank account, and had a wardrobe suitable for living in a city with eight months of winter.

Instead, I moved back in with my mother temporarily, drove an old car for several years past its expiry, wore the same four outfits all winter while maintaining my much larger Jamaica attire, and had more luggage than I knew what to do with.

The big win.

It was March 2003 around 6:00 a.m. on a weekday morning when the cue to call came over the radio waves.

My favorite station in Calgary had a contest running where they would play a song by Sean Paul, a huge Jamaican artist, and when you heard it you had to be the ninth caller to qualify. While getting ready for work, the song came on, I dialed, and BAM…I got through as the correct caller on my first try.

I was now in a draw for a trip to Jamaica!

Somehow that didn’t seem good enough for me so on another morning I heard the same song and called again. My plan was that if I got through a second time I would pretend to be someone else. I’d pretend to be my best friend, Trista, and enter her name in the contest as well. She and I made a deal that if either of us should win we had to take the other on the trip.

As luck would have it I got through again and we now had two entries in the draw for this vacation.

I’ve entered in radio contests before and I really had zero faith that I’d ever be lucky enough to actually win but this time it felt different. The feeling was inexplicable. I felt strongly enough that on the day of the draw I decided to drive to work instead of taking the bus so I could listen to the radio when the draw was made.

Sitting in morning traffic, the time had come. I was fully tuned in when the morning crew made the draw. Before they even said the winner’s name they cracked a joke about her convoluted surname.

That was the very moment I knew it had to be Trista because she has the most ridiculously long and messed up last name. All I needed was for them to say it! Just say it already!

And then…they did!

I was beside myself screaming into the void of my car. I couldn’t even call her because they were calling her. I listened to her on the radio accepting our prize and as soon as she hung up with them, she called me.

We were both losing our minds. What a bizarre feeling to have just won a free vacation. I’d never won anything in my life up to this point aside from a free barbecue.

The scramble was now under way because our departure date was a mere two weeks from the day we’d won and neither of us had passports. Back in those days we didn’t even need passports for international travel but we wanted them anyway, just to be sure. Nothing was going to stop us from being two best girlfriends on an all-inclusive tropical vacation together!

The only thing I had to do was clear it with my job. I’d only been working at City Hall for six months and had zero vacation time banked thus far. Fortunately the five-day prize included a weekend, plus I could use the excuse that it was a prize trip. Could they really say no?

Everything got sorted out and two weeks later, we were off!

Remember the days before digital cameras? No..me neither but this is me in a FILM photograph at YYC on my way to MBJ.

Arriving in Jamaica.

I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like watching the island approach from my right-side window seat. Flashing forward, from trip number one through thirty-six, I never grew tired of that view.

As our plane touched down, I gawked at the hillside beyond Montego Bay in complete awe. I saw a mixture of little board shacks, average looking homes and some massive, rich-people homes all mashed together.

I’d never seen anything like it before.

There were a few glaring things about Jamaica I’d noticed before even stepping off the plane. First, there were clearly no building codes here. Back home, I worked in the planning and building department at City Hall and where I live you need a permit just to dig a hole. This place was a contradiction to everything I knew about homebuilding.

Second, everywhere was green! Keep in mind it was Canadian March and when I left, Calgary was cold and snow-covered. In Jamaica, it was all so lush and full and green! With palm trees lazily swaying in the breeze, surely this was paradise on Earth.

Sangster airport looked like a flight center for ants - it was so tiny and hardly existent. They didn’t even have boarding bridges yet. We walked off the plane and straight onto the tarmac. This was a completely new experience for me. The only airports I’d ever visited previously were in major metropolitan cities such as Vancouver, Los Angeles and San Fransisco.

Jamaica felt so primitive and I was charmed to death by it!

The two most memorable feelings about stepping off that plane for the first time were the distinct smell of smoke in the air (they burn a lot of brush and trash), and the overwhelming whooooosh of humidity when the airplane doors opened.

To this day, any smell of smoke in the distance brings with it a rush of fond memories. I wish I could somehow bottle that smell and keep it forever. And the onslaught of humidity never got old for me because in Calgary, it’s so dry and so elevated that nosebleeds are normal. Jamaica was the first time I experienced pants literally sticking to my skin and I’ll never forget that feeling.

Stepping off that airplane onto the tarmac felt kind of cool, like presidents do when they fly to foreign countries.

And there I was with two feet planted on Jamaican soil. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was the beginning of my life according to Jamaica.

Me and Trista arriving at Sangster airport. Just stepped off the plane and already had rum punch in our hands!

Now, back to this free vacation.

Of course it was epic! I stayed at an all-inclusive resort and had scheduled bus trips to a bunch of different venues and events over five days. I ate and drank for free at the hotel, met all the staff, and partied like I’d never been let out of a cage before.

Keep in mind I’d been a single mother since I was nineteen. Never in my life had I experienced such FREEDOM (and hangovers) without consequence. We double-fisted drinks for five days straight and I don’t think I was sober for many hours in a row.

An MTV camera crew staying in the same resort we were at. They were covering American “Spring Break in Jamaica” which was utter debauchery.

However, some very key moments on that trip provided me with a full realization that I’d seen nothing of Jamaica yet.

One question I couldn’t stop asking myself was, “Why the hell am I on this tour bus?”

I was on it because I was a tourist but most of the time I wondered what else was out there. I wondered where the sauntering locals were going, what that little cook shack served compared to the all-inclusive meals I was eating, and how I could get off the damn bus.

The locals in the streets seemed loud and vibrant. Some appeared tattered and downtrodden and others, glitzy and blingy, yet all of them were straight up having a great time!

Stacked speaker towers thundered with reggae and dancehall at any old spot on the road. It looked like people just threw pop-up dance parties on a random Tuesday afternoon for no apparent reason. Clearly, noise bylaws were not a thing.

I quickly understood this island wasn’t at all about the strip of hotels I was on. Not even close.

A funny thing happened to me on that first trip. I was approached by a fine young police officer. He was hired as security by an artist we were traveling with and had accompanied our group on every excursion we took, so naturally we chatted plenty. He was just always “around.”

On our last evening on the island he made me an offer I simply couldn’t refuse. He told me that if I ever returned to the island I could come stay in his neighbourhood in the countryside and he’d show me the real Jamaica.

Well honestly, who could turn down an offer like that? Apparently, the same person who could turn down the offer of moving to the island and managing a few rental properties, that’s who.

Yes, someone also made me that offer on my first trip. He was a wealthy American who owned several condos in the same resort I stayed at and he was looking for a trustworthy foreigner to manage his affairs when he wasn’t on the island.

Sadly, it was not meant to be at that time. I was a single mom of a ten-year-old, working a corporate job and living paycheck to paycheck. Uprooting a child and quitting a career to flit off to an island was not in my cards nor my finances.

This first trip came and went faster than I could blink. I’m not sure how the other hundred return passengers felt but I…was…devastated to be leaving and even more devastated that I had an invitation back without any clue how I could financially swing it. I just knew I needed to get back there and see what the police officer was talking about.

When I returned home to Canada, the money gods and the “Kristi needs to be in Jamaica” gods had mercy on my soul and I magically afforded a ticket to fly back two months later.

Apologies for the lack of photos. Would you believe I only took ELEVEN pictures on that trip? And all of them are too crappy to share (good old film cameras).

Have you ever won a vacation? If so, where was it and how did it feel for you?

Stay tuned for CHAPTER TWO.