Jamaica or not Jamaica

Jamaica. I sit here in Jamaica. Sort of.

My toes caress white Jamaican sand. Jamaican voices repeat "yeh mon" and "ire ire" to the delight of Harley Davidson clad Americans and Canadians. Bob Marley is everywhere. I am eating Jamaican food and drinking Jamaican beer. The smells of freshly lit cannabis drift easily through calm beach air. This is not Jamaica. It is very nice, very very nice, but it is not Jamaica.

This is the kind of guilt dilemma in which I tend to find myself when I travel to these sorts of places. By these-sorts-of-places, I mean beautiful resorts positioned strategically in very poor warm-weather places. I am not in Jamaica. I am in a sanitized, very comfortable facsimile of Jamaica set up for tourists. Tourists very much like me.

I'm sort of okay with this, but it is weird. For example, much of the resort - as I'm sure is true at most resorts here - is designed in some sort of faux-plantation style. My room has plantation shutters. The main building is, as you might guess, the great house. Like-dressed men and women with black faces are there to serve me endless tropical delights at my every whim. It is weird.

Our orientation guide mentioned that she grew up on a resort that used to be a slave plantation. Her mother was a chef at the resort and the family lived on the grounds. This is weird.

I'm not sure what my obligation as a tourist - and probably foremost as a human being - is here. How much of this resort money improves the lives of Jamaicans? Probably not very much, but maybe I'm being cynical. I met a couple from Brooklyn in the lobby and the gentleman told me that the average worker here is on about $15 a day. Is any of this good for anyone? Is it merely just new colonialism?

I ask these questions while I enjoy a rum and tonic waiting for the rain to clear so I can walk to the pool room without getting wet. The resort provided me with an umbrella, but I think I'll wait it out.