Kingston Loooooove

Kingston, like any city, can be measured by its neighbourhoods, districts and regions. If you were to catch a route cab from the university, you would hear the taxi drivers, looking for customers, shouting, "Papine, Liguanea, Halfway Tree!" It's meant to be a question- like, "Excuse me, miss, would you like to go to Papine today?"- but most often it comes out like a demand. Men hang out of the sides buses shouting this phrase, also looking, irrespective of how full the bus might already be, for more travelers. It is a phrase which I, although I have not tried, could probably even speak with a Jamaican accent, simply because I hear it so often (sadly, I haven't really been able to pick up the Jamaican accent otherwise).

Pushy taxi drivers serve as only one of many nuances which characterize the place that I have called home lately. I knew within the first couple of minutes being out of the airport that I did not instinctively love it- Kingston, that is. I remember thinking that if I was going to love this place, it was a love that would have to be acquired.

Four months, one semester, and countless taxi rides later, and I've acquired it.

Don't get me wrong. Kingston, with its barbed-wire fences, garbage-littered streets and edgy stray dogs can be entirely ugly. The pavement, when you begin to walk it, speaks of a kind of unapologetic brutality. It is true that I have not experienced that brutality- the kind of brutality which translates into the murder rates that Kingston is so infamously known for- first hand. But one does not need to see the violence to know that it exists. Simply observing the way Kingstonians interact with each other, and with me, speaks to the way that brutality shapes people into survivors.

And if it's not brutality, it's fear of it. My friend Jessica likes to use the term "victimization"- as in, "Jamaicans fear victimization." And she's right. Fenced communities create enclaves of well-to-do housing; mansions sit safely on the mountains overlooking and removed from the sheet-metal shacks down below; and unless you're a night-club or street party, you're gated and closed as soon as the sun goes down. And the problem with this, is that as soon as you buy into it- that danger lurks around every corner, or that no one can be trusted- the more this is likely to be true. By not going or not trusting, it reinforces the fact that one should not go, should not trust- and that is a difficult cycle to break.

Sadly, I feel like these things that I have just described, are the stories you would expect me to tell. They are true, of course, and I am constantly in awe of the way that the things I read in books, or learned in classes are actually true, because I see them being lived everyday here. It's incredible to me, having spent an extended period of time here, but in Rwanda too, to see the way that circumstance and history combine to create very distinct cultures, identities and sets of people.

But to focus strictly on these things, is to overlook or underreport, much in the same fashion as the nightly news, the good and the beauty and the resiliency of this city. I'm not talking only about its aesthetic merits, although there are some. The Blue Mountains maintain a majestic shadow over the city, and regardless of where you're positioned in Kingston, it's impossible not to continue to marvel at them.

Yes, quiet moments where my soul whispers, “I love this place,” have certainly occurred while admiring those mountains (although those same mountains also induced some not so quiet moments of cursing- see the Blue Mountain Adventure post if you’re not sure what I’m talking about). But really and truly, that genuine feeling of peace and love has been most vivid when I am interacting with, holding my own against and journeying alongside some of the inhabitants of this city. I say this not to suggest that I have made an incredible impact on people’s lives here, but I say it because they have had an incredible impact on mine.

Last weekend, I went to Life Fest, my second stage show in Kingston. We showed up just as Stephen Marley was beginning his set (and man oh man, he was like a mini Bob- it was great). (On a side note: Damian Marley was supposed to be there too. I was so, SO sad when my friend translated Stephen’s Patois to tell me that he had just said that his brother wasn’t going to be able to make it.) Plastered over top of the stage was a blown up photo of a boy’s face. It wasn’t until a few days after the show that I learned that the boy in the photo was the son of Spragga Benz, one of the artists performing that night. The concert was a tribute to him, a 17 year-old who had been needlessly murdered by the police in August of last year.

And sure, as the MC bellowed the rhetoric of ‘more peace, more love,’ it was hard not to find this fairly empty in light of the fact that the artists themselves could not even manage to secure a sense of unity (there were rumours afterward that there had been conflict behind stage between Spragga Benz, Sizzla and Stephen Marley). But the heaviness that hung in the air that night spoke of collective mourning, as if not to say, “This is the way our country is,” but rather, “Something has got to change.”

Of course, this is all my own speculation and perception of the night’s events. On one level, it was just entertainment, and a darn good show at that. But at the same time, it gave me a lot of insight, once again, into the factors which influence the face of this city and the heart of its people.

I’ve been spending time at a boys’ home, cleverly named Jamaica Christian Boys’ Home. Jessica and I will go during the week, after the boys have finished school and on Saturdays, when all the boys are there. We go, often with a few ideas of activities to do with them, and usually we don’t end up doing any of them, because we get too carried away with totally informal and unstructured hang out time. I love this. Here too, I have all at once been frustrated by the bleakness of these boys’ futures, and amazed by their spirits and sense of life.

And so I'm having trouble fully articulating the love that I have come to feel for this country, and this city especially. It is, as I have come to learn, a land of extremes and stark contrasts- of wealth and poverty, of religiosity and violence, of beauty and ugliness. But instead of existing in isolation from each other, I think they combine to the place which is distinctively Kingston.

I am leaving you with Damian Marley’s Halfway Tree Interlude, not only because his music helped me get through the arduous hours of studying these past couple weeks, but it speaks to the way that this city, for me, will be remembered:

So that is why this is 'Half Way Tree'
Cause this is where,
This is where the sewers will meet the rivers,
You know?
And the skyscrapers will meet the mountains.
You know what I mean?
Yeah the streets will meet the beach,
An' yuh know wha' a mean?
The city will come down to the island,
And best of both worlds.

Sending to you some Kingston love.