Beer and revelations

14th June 2007

I don’t care how good the photographer is, they will never be able to completely capture the reality of being somewhere. Being there is more than just what you can see and even more than what you can hear. It’s a complete use of the senses and a combination of inputs at times so subtle that you may not even be aware of them.

Yesterday I went walking through Ocho Rios taking photos and eventually ended up far from the “duty free” end of town in a part where the locals rule. At one point I found myself standing on the side of the road, soaking up the atmosphere rather than watching it presented for me, and I became fully aware of where I was and that I was “really” there. The tendency can be to become inured to it and simply to be looking for the next photo, the best angle, an interesting composition and trying to present the scene rather than becoming a part of it within your senses. I stood there for quite a while, feeling the gravel on the side of the road crunch under my boots and the sweat slowly drying on my skin as I gave the breeze a chance to cool me. I listened not only to the sound of the traffic but also to the smaller subtleties of the voices around me, the birds in the trees and the chickens in someone’s backyard. The smells may not have been those described in the typical essay on tropical breezes but the exhaust fumes mixed with the odours from a construction site and the plants growing wild on the side of the road and among the debris were real and placed me where I was rather than putting me in the position of detached observer. Live the moment as if it may be your last and at the very least you will have a richer experience and memory to savour at some point in the future. I think that no matter what may happen I will always be able to recall those moments on the side of the road in a small Jamaican town. They may not have been the most picturesque and certainly may not have been the ones to hold an audience enthralled with my description but they were moments of life and were all encompassing in a way that nothing I say, write or show can capture. I put my camera away and decided to delight in the whole rather than the view through the lens.

I immediately found a bar and had a couple of beers.

Ocho Rios feels like a town that has a cruise port while other places feel more like cruise ports that have a town. Of course Jamaica is synonymous with laid back and relaxed but there is none of the glitz and gloss that marks the port areas of the other places I’ve visited. This is a bit more basic and a bit more real. There is plenty there to capture the eye of the tourist though and the first place that you find after the short walk from the ship into town is Island Village, home of the Reggae Experience. Want to take the Bob Marley tour or buy a hat complete with fake dreadlocks guaranteed to make you look like a local, then this is the place.  Want some grass mon?, then every few feet along the street is the place to be and everyone is able to get you anything you need. There must be more taxi drivers here per square foot than anywhere else on the planet and all without any obvious signs of an actual taxi. Sadly it is also where I have seen more people missing limbs or other appendages and looking for handouts than anywhere else I have been. At one point I was shadowed by a man who kept insisting that he could show me a great beach, perfect for taking photos, as well as the famous marijuana tree and it was some time before I realised he only had one hand, which must be a bastard when it comes to rolling a joint.

I took photos of the beach in downtown Ocho Rios but I had to do it through the chain link fence and over the barbwire. I was not going to pay to step onto the beach, living the moment has a few limitations and being charged to walk on the sand is obviously one of my limits. From there I kept walking past the shopping centre where I had gotten my haircut on a previous visit and, running the gauntlet of more taxi touts, continued towards the main street. It didn’t take long before I found myself discussing the cricket with a local who congratulated me on New Zealand’s results in the World Cup and accepted my commiserations on the West Indies results. I politely declined his invitation to his shop that had everything I didn’t know that I couldn’t live without and a few other things beside. A quick walk through a “flea market” with every stall seeming to sell the same carved wooden giraffes and I picked up my digitally challenged shadow. As we got further and further off the tourist trail and I began to become more and more conspicuous, he kept congratulating me on being brave enough to go where the locals go. “It’s the only way to really get to know the place mon”. This was when I had my epiphany and sought out the bar. Okay, so it may not be exactly a religious response but it was a pleasant one. Which is more genuine, sitting in a franchised bar offering a Jamaican experience out of a glossy brochure or sitting in a dark and dingy bar and drinking local beer at 10 o’clock in the morning? Sitting there with my beer and my jerk chicken sandwich, watching the locals go by and realising that I had nothing else that I had to be doing, I was happy and content. How many others in the world at that moment could say the same?

Greg