January 8 and 9
Tuesday was a rather quiet day for us spending most of our time with Kay‘s friends. For lunch, we went to the home Of Iva and Clive. Iva was active in the tourist business and used to set up meetings between tourists and locals so that they could get to know. She is now a justice of the peace, a volunteer, quasi-judicial position. One of her guests, Norma, was the Costas, the head of all the JPs in the area. Iva had invited about 10 or 12 of her friends over to join and meet us. Most had had some connection to the United States, having lived there or, in some cases having children and grandchildren there. It was a jovial and enjoyable afternoon.
Clive drove us back to our hotel where we had only about an hour or so before Kay’s friend, Pearnell, picked us up and drove us to her house, where she had prepared dinner for us, which we ate on her deck. After dinner, Pearnell drove us about an hour or so to see the luminous lagoon where phosphorescent particles below glimmered in the water. We went out on a boat and observed the luminosity. This was interesting but not worth the 2-hour drive and the boat ride to see. Pearnell, a psychologist and university lecturer, is great fun, though, so the evening was very enjoyable. Carol and I had met Pearnell on an earlier visit to Kay, so it was a reunion of sorts.   
Wednesday, we were originally scheduled to drive out to Montego Bay, which would have been about two hours each way. After yesterday‘s experience, however, we told Kay that we thought we would pass on that and would like to go someplace closer. After much discussion, we wound up going to Konoko Gardens and falls, which, to my surprise, turned out to be great. We had a very good guide who told us about all of the plants and trees. Really quite beautiful, more of a rain forest than a garden. Carol made friends with a toucan and a boa constrictor.
     
Afterwards, we rode back to our hotel where we had lunch, rested and all three of us had massages. Kay had had a massage yesterday and was raving about it. Maybe useful; definitely painful. Read and relaxed before going to Christopher’s a restaurant highly touted by some friends of Kay. Dinner was terrific, and the grounds and resort look beautiful. Hotel is called Hermosa Cove. If you’re thinking about this area, looks like an excellent bet.
Back to our hotel to blog, read and sleep.
January 7
Didn’t mean to post yesterday’s offering before covering our evening activities.
We stopped at the super market to pick up a few things for dinner, which I ate while watching the Bears-Eagles playoff game, which the Bears lost on a last-second blown field goal.
We were driven by Gilbert up a winding road to the top of a mountain, where we went to the Dub Club, a popular place for music. Climbed down some steep stairs to through the weed-infused smell to the happening club, where it was happening for people about one eighth (okay, a slight exaggeration) our age. So after soaking in the nice views briefly, we escaped the Dub (luckily, we’d asked Gilbert to wait) and drove back to the quiet refuge of Kay’s veranda and a couple of cold beers before retiring. 
Did a wash this morning and had another lovely, leisurely breakfast on the veranda. I read more of Michelle Obama’s book, BECOMING, which I’m enjoying very much, both because it’s interesting and well-written and because we know the places and some of the people she talks about in Chicago.
Gilbert picks us up and drives us some two hours to Ocho Rios on the new highway through the mountains. Part of the drive is through heavy rain on a windy road. Kay tells him to get off the phone (good work, Kay) and Carol is very unhappy that there is no functioning seatbelt on Kay’s side. But we make it to Ocho Rios without incident and check into our very modest hotel, Rooms on the Beach. Kay has booked us “Ocean View” rooms, despite the fact that it’s the Caribbean Sea, not an ocean, that we’re on. Carol and I have a slight view of the sea, but Kay has none. When she complains about the lack of view, the lady at the desk says that “Ocean View” is just what they call the rooms. We speculate that some marketing guy thought that “Ocean View” was a lot better than “Sea Glimpse.”
It’s 3PM and we’re all hungry, so we walk to nearby Juicy’s where we have some delicious “patties” which are like flaky empanadas filled with your choice of different insides. This is a rough equivalent to our hamburger and I think there’s a brilliant franchising opportunity for these in the U.S. here’s Kay devouring one and a couple photos of the atmosphere at Juicy’s.  
A brief lesson in Jamaican. “Yes” is “yes, man”, which is pronounced “yeh monn.” “Patties” is pronounced “pahties”. When the woman who works for Kay breaks something, she explains that “it dropped.”
We return to the hotel, where Carol reads and I nap. After our late lunch, none of us is hungry, so Kay passes on dinner altogether, and Carol and I have some thing light at the hotel. Then up to the room for blogging and more Michelle Obama.
January 6
Slept late and enjoyed very leisurely lovely breakfast on the veranda. As usual, had trouble posting yesterday’s blog, so left it after firing off my typical, frantic email to Glenn Crocker.
Kay gave us a solid, lengthy tutorial on cricket for which, having played on the Jamaican national women’s team, she was well qualified. We peppered her with many questions and I’m now an expert on the intricacies of the game. Not.
We drove to the ball park to see the match between Jamaica and St. Kitts , which was in the third day of a 4-day match, with Jamaica firmly in charge. Having watched less than two hours of the match, I can confirm the cricket makes baseball look action-packed.
   
January 4-5, 2019
As this is just a short trip to Jamaica, I was not going to blog at all. But the first day and a half have been so amazing that I thought I’d better give it a try, even if I don’t follow through on the rest of the days.
Carol and I have come to Jamaica to visit with our good friend Kay Osborne, who we met when she lived in Chicago. We flew through Fort Lauderdale so that we could have lunch with our friends Len Oshinsky and Elyse Etra, who kindly came out to the airport to meet us and spend a couple hours with us over lunch.
From Fort Lauderdale, we took the relatively short flight to Kingston, where Kay picked us up at the airport and drove us to her lovely house that overlooks the lights of Kingston and the nearby mountains. In fact, the area is called Beverly Hills. Here are photos of our wine glass on the table on Kay’s veranda overlooking the city, and the scene over breakfast in the morning.
January 4-5, 2019
As this is just a short trip to Jamaica, I was not going to blog at all. But the first day and a half have been so amazing that I thought I’d better give it a try, even if I don’t follow through on the rest of the days.
Carol and I have come to Jamaica to visit with our good friend Kay Osborne, who we met when she lived in Chicago. We flew through Fort Lauderdale so that we could have lunch with our friends Len Oshinsky and Elyse Etra, who kindly came out to the airport to meet us and spend a couple hours with us over lunch.
From Fort Lauderdale, we took the relatively short flight to Kingston, where Kay picked us up at the airport and drove us to her lovely house that overlooks the lights of Kingston and the nearby mountains. In fact, the area is called Beverly Hills. Here are photos of our wine glass on the table on Kay’s veranda overlooking the city, and the scene over breakfast in the morning, plus a view of Kay’s living and dining room from the veranda.
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To introduce you briefly to Kay, she is an MBA who was a marketing executive with Abbott in Chicago in charge of international marketing relations. She became the head of TVJ, the largest TV station in Jamaica. Kay is a playwright who has had plays produced in Chicago and London, a talented painter who is in the middle of writing a novel and, oh yes, did I mention, a former Miss Jamaica and a former member of the Jamaican women’s national cricket team. Other than that, she doesn’t have much going for her (other than the fact that she’s a delightful and very kind person, and a good friend). We visited Kay a number of years ago and went with her to the Calabash literary and music festival in the southwest of Jamaica. Pretty-much everyone in Jamaica knows Kay because of her various activities, primarily as head of TVJ.
Kay has talked to us about the weekly dominoes games that she plays, so we were very intent on going to watch. We left after dinner for the house at which the game took place, at the home of Omar, a former MP and government minister, now retired, and his wife, who turns out to have been a classmate of our friend, Susie Kiphart, at the Erickson Institute in Chicago. Go figure. It was great fun to watch the dominoes gam, about a dozen or so people playing a very competitive as spirited, but friendly, game of dominoes. It turns out that there is a whole lot more to that game than those of us who played it as children would think. Everybody was very welcoming and receptive to our looking on.
  
We crashed back at Kay’s and then got up early in the morning to have a quick breakfast and go to a Saturday morning ritual on the veranda of a former famous director here in Kingston. Each Saturday he and his wife host a group of people (there were about 40 this morning), who bring along some food and who perform their various specialties, singing, poetry, just talking. It is a most interesting group of talented people. Kay convinced Carol to bring one of our books along so that she could read a few poems from the book. En route to the veranda, we stop to say hello to Abigail, a young woman from New York, who is living in the basement apartment of Kay’s house and was walking to a nearby coffee house to study and write proposals. Abigail has a Fulbright and is studying inter-generational storytelling in Jamaica. At Kay’s invitation, Abigail hops in the car and joins us for the morning.
The morning was great fun. At the end, Kay, without warning me, invites me to come up to “perform“. I told the group that it had been a pleasure to witness all of the talented people this morning and that I was there to represent the group of untalented people. I told them that I thought we were in the majority and that it was time that we organized and took charge. This met with a very favorable reception and many people came up to me afterwards to sign up for my new group.
At the veranda meeting, we met a woman named Ruth who is a community organizer in a rather rough area near Kingston called Rosetown. She was there with a young friend of hers, Penny, who had worked for UNICEF in countries ranging from Thailand to Myamar, and currently, South Sudan. We got into a discussion with them and Ruth invited us to come downtown for her to show us some of the public art that is being created by artist to revitalize the community and to give support to artists. We walked around to look at some of the murals.
We had lunch at what was formerly a very large and fancy jewelry shop, which currently is part jewelry shop and part restaurant. We were joined there by Denise who is originally from Iowa, but who has lived off and on in Jamaica and who has worked for USAID in various different countries. It was a very good lunch and discussion with this group of six interesting people.
From there Kay drove us to see Bob Marley‘s house and museum in Trenchtown, the seat of much Jamaican music, we visited two different places, in one of which we were guided by a fellow who seemed to have had a bit too much weed. In the other place we were guided by a very enthusiastic young man who had an excellent and quite funny patter that he had developed. It is fun to see the historical Bob Marley stuff and to be reminded of what an incredible icon and hero he was.
     
After this we drove back home and I got in a bit of a nap before dinner on Kay’s veranda and then going off to a concert with Kay to celebrate the 44th anniversary of a band called We the People—a large crowd, dancing and singing to very loud music, with lights that glared in our eyes, with a range of singers who had been accompanied by the band over the years. We spent two hours there, which, for me, was at least an hour (maybe more) too long. I did play around with photos affected by the colorful lighting.    
Afterwards, we sat on the veranda and I had a couple beers on Kay’s veranda, while we debriefed the concert, which was at least as interesting as the concert itself. It was after 1AM, by the time Carol and I retired. Of course, this whole day and a half is testament to the fact that you can never see a country as well as you do when accompanied by a native, especially a native who is also a friend.
October 26
Okay, en route back to Chicago, time to recap and reflect a bit.
Various of you have commented to me that you thought taking this trip was “gutsy” or “brave”. In truth, I did not think of it in that way when I planned it. On reflection, though, I guess I accept those characterizations. “Nutty” might also fit, but you were all too kind to suggest that. I guess an endless curiosity to see and experience other cultures motivates my drive to travel. Some years ago I was discussing travel with a friend who told me that his parents became more adventuresome in their travel, the older they got, because they figured that they had less to lose. There’s something to that, I think.
Traveling alone in a very foreign country for two weeks was a new experience. Though I hadn’t intended originally to do this (you’ll recall that I was to go with a small photography group), I’m not at all sorry to have done it. I behaved rather well, and readily forgave myself when I thought I might have done better. I’d far rather have traveled with Carol, but as she did not want to come, I didn’t have that choice.
There were a few glitches, which seem to happen on every trip. I decided to make an itinerary change because I wanted to see the end of the big festival in Bastar, I changed air reservations and Air India gave my travel agent (and therefor me) fits, the accommodations at one place were initially unsatisfactory, so I needed to have those changed, my back started to hurt, but I was able to control that, pretty well, and I contracted a nasty cough because of exposure to smoke in a pottery-making facility. One day I got many mosquito bites that itched like hell. And then, of course, there were the blog difficulties. (Let me say here that I recognize that my agitation over blog difficulties is abnormal. But I enjoy writing it and get frustrated when I can’t post. After all, I’m just thinking about you.). Reading these things makes it sound like this was the trip from hell, but that’s not at all the case. They were challenges to overcome and, one way or another, I overcame them.
After many years of travel, I have come to realize that there are certain things that I just do not need to see anymore. Here is a partial list.
One. Any church
Two. Any statue or monument built to commemorate an important person or event
Three. Any government building
Four. Anything built in the year 1612
Five. Any craftsman who converts sows ears into silk purses (including a description of how the purses differ depending upon the nationality or religion of the sow)
Six. Any fruit or vegetable market
Seven. Cave paintings
I realize that this may seem a bit snotty or opinionated. And what’s wrong with that? It’s not that what I don’t need to see is what nobody needs to see. To each his own. For me, though, I’ve pretty much done the above. (I will admit that there may still be a few exceptions.)
An aside here, I got into a discussion with one of the French people who I kept running into, Yves, who had traveled very extensively, even more than I have. We discussed Las Vegas which he had been to a number of times. I told him that Las Vegas was my least favorite place in the world, that it combined everything that was wrong and vulgar about America. He loved Las Vegas, arguing that it was absolutely unique. I told him that I did not have to love everything that was absolutely unique. We understood one another, and agreed to disagree.
Before going on this trip, I’d been told by two Indian travel agents who I know well, and trust, that this was a trip I needed to take, because I was going to see a world that would not be around much longer. There was ample evidence to support that point of view. The most glaring was the swirling colored lights that bathed the street before a key event of the Bastar Dushera, the brainchild of an event planner who must certainly love Las Vegas. There were less dramatic evidences, as well, paved roads at least part of the way up to some of the hill tribes, other improvements financed by the government, including schools, toilets and the like, increased Western dress (even some of the younger Bonda women, the most colorful of the tribes I saw, are starting to move a bit away from the traditional dress) and satellite dishes in some villages. But times change and however much we might like to see these tribes the way they were many years ago, we don’t get to choose to keep them in another century.
Each trip I take, I’m reminded that the passing years are not my friend. It’s why I want to do as much as I can while I can. In some ways this trip was less physically taxing than I’d anticipated. Kolkata was hot and very humid, but the rest of the places were not, and some were even cool, at least in the morning and evening. The roads were a lot better than I thought they would be. And the guides—particularly Jaspreet and Prasant—were very solicitous of my well being, offering to physically lend me a hand going up or down over rocky terrain a bit more often than I thought I needed, but I usually accepted it, and certainly appreciated it. They warned me constantly of potential tripping hazards. Both of them stopped of their own accord to buy medication for my mosquito bites and cough, and neither would accept payment for it. In the one instance there was some real potential danger, the swirling groups of men carrying their gods, they assured that I was protected. And often they cleared a path for me or expressly asked people to allow me to get to the front. The vehicles I traveled in were extremely comfortable, air conditioned and, most importantly, had WiFi.
I continue to think that India is amazing. I’ve been there four times now, and haven’t scratched the surface. There’s a vividness and reality to it that’s unlike anyplace else I’ve been. It pulses with life and completely overwhelms you with color. On the other hand, if you have any fear of death by head-on collision, you may want to think twice about India. Not to put too fine a point on it, driving is terrifying. But I choose to believe that there’s a method beyond my ken that Indian drivers adhere to, and so I no longer duck or grimace at each near-death experience. Or perhaps it’s just their many gods that protect them. The country is full of contradictions, for example the tidy way the Indians keep their own homes and the trash heaps that abound most everywhere else. India is foreign with a capital “F.”
So what was great and what good, but not great? I was in Kolkata for the start of the Durga Puga, a huge festival. I got to see the preparations and some of the sights, but didn’t really experience the festival. That would have been nice, but the timing just did not work out, and the visit was definitely worthwhile and gave me a taste of the festival, anyway. I spent only two days in Kolkata, so I didn’t get a real good feel for the city. It seemed like the least Indian of the cities I’ve visited; more cars and no cows in the streets. The Oberoi I stayed at was outstanding and the Thai meal I had in the restaurant at the hotel was easily my best meal of the trip. The dinner I had with the art dealer at his apartment was something of a kick. My visit to the Motherhouse where Mother Teresa lived was extremely moving. I mean no disrespect in saying that Mother T was the real deal.
After Kolkata, I was dealing with tribes, villages, markets and the Bastar Dushera. The first two tribes I visited performed dances for us. It was nice to see them in costume and to witness the dances, but, frankly, these were not high points for me. I did not come to India to watch performances done for me. At the third village, though, we happened to catch them performing their annual Laxmi Jugar. Witnessing this authentic ceremony—not a drop of which was done for us—was one of the highlights, perhaps THE highlight of the trip. It was a rare privilege. (Other unplanned things were also great, for example the kabadi game we saw in a village, the dance contest for young girls that we went to one night and even the cock fight.)
Of the markets I saw, watching the Bonda come in to their market and witnessing the goat market were the two best. (Doesn’t seem right to do a final post with no photo, so here’s one of me with two of my Bonda friends.) Other fruit and vegetable markets were fine, but not markedly different from other markets I’ve seen around the world. I sorta feel that I’ve been there, done that.
I was unable to witness the lives of the hill tribes, except to see them in their garb come into and participate in markets. Frankly, I’m not sure how important it is to be able to distinguish between all the tribes. Their lifestyles, work, religion and social customs are quite similar, one to another. Getting a feel for that, overall, seems to me what’s important.
I absolutely loved walking around the many villages I visited with Prasant. I saw people engaged in their lives and was privileged, through Prasant, to interact with and photograph them. Life in the villages seemed calm, peaceful, well-paced and cooperative. Voices were not raised, children played and people smiled and responded to namastes or juhars. To be sure, there was hard work to be done, but that was simply part of life. I loved the fact that the place I stayed at longest was only steps outside a village and employed people from the village.
And the Bastar Dushera, the centerpiece of my trip, was terrific, once you got by the event planner’s touches on the first night. The trip would have been worth taking just for the Dushera, including seeing all the tribes people who came in for the festival.
There were memorable specific experiences, meeting the Bastar King and then the chief of the state police, were two of them. These and other experiences would not have been possible, if I had been traveling in a group. And, speaking of kings, and the like, being a (admittedly minor) celebrity, who many people wanted pictures with was somewhat revelatory. It gave me some notion of what a pain in the butt and intrusion that celebrity can quickly and easily become.
As always, having good guides is critical. All of mine were satisfactory or good, Prasant was quite excellent, and will get better as he goes, and Jaspreet was just outstanding .
One of the keen observers of my blog, my friend, Gil Cornfield, wrote to me, “There is something surreal between the beautiful and intricate garments worn by the tribal people and their basic pre- urban lives. It speaks to the wonderful ingenuity and creativity of humankind.
“The fact that these ancient tribal groups exist in India is a revelation. It is almost like visiting another planet where the occupants share our humanity but have evolved into wholly different societies than our own.”
As usual, I think that Gil’s observations are spot-on, except that I’d put one thing differently. I think that it is we who have evolved into a different society and that we now see signs that the tribes are “evolving” into a society more like ours. And it’s hard to be confident that that’s a good thing.
To everyone, thanks for coming along again.
And, namaste. Wouldn’t it be something if we all paid respect to the god within those we meet?
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