rootswoman~~ your voice rings clear and true as always.
I have stayed away from this thread until now because, historically, if anything negative was said about Negril the speaker was accused of being "jaded, bitter, drama filled, etc."
Our first maybe 15? trips we never complained about anything. Was this because there was nothing to complain about? No, we just made excuses for people, places and things. I can think of many things that we SHOULD have been upset, offended and just plain pissed about but let slide because we loved the place.
Now? Has Negril changed for the worse? No, we have changed. We no longer wish to accept some of the behavior that is so commonplace on Negril beach. Things ranging from small annoyances all the way up to some stockie woman ranting at me with a knife in her hand near the fish market.( OH- I remember writing about it at the time on some board and I said "a gyal" waved a knife at me. A person replied something like " Well, if you called her a gyal no wonder" Ahhhh yes, of course SOMEHOW it HAD to be my fault. Freakin' ass hat, like I out of the blue walked up to some stockie with a knife and said "hey gyal") This should have NEVER been acceptable to me, we should have found a new vacation destination after that incident. But once again we made excuses for people/places/things. I thought "Ahh she's just a crack head, ignore it and move on." Oh yes, I was an idiot- why did I think it was ok to vacation on a beach with crack heads? Oh yes, my thinking was "gotta take the good with the bad to be able to come to this beautiful beach." Well, ya know what? I don't HAVE TO take a damn thing. Just an f.y.i. to that person- gyal can be used many ways, derogatory or term of endearment. Lang time me nuh see yuh gyal! But that had not a damn thing to do with the situation I was discussing.
I guess what has really turned me off as much as anything is the whole scratch the surface thing. Everything seems ok and then scratch the surface and there just may be something ugly underneath. One of my all time favorite quotes from a hotel manager after an employee's younger sister was killed on the back of a bike? He said " Oh what a shame, she was so young and didn't get to be sexed more." Yep, shrugged that one off as US not understanding their culture.
Now is EVERYONE in Negril the same? Hell no. It has just become too much work to try to discern between the genuine people and the bullshit artists. It is sometimes fun but leaves me feeling dirty afterwards. Like this last trip sitting on the beach, young lady and her step daddy at the bar. Tanya comes on the radio and I am singing away and the young girl catches my eye and say she loves Tanya too. She comes over and we talk and talk. Her step daddy comes over too. He is full of rum and buying her drinks. She tells me all about the two foreign guys she is "seeing" and trying to decide which has the most money so she can decide who to go with. She is telling me how her step daddy has taught her so much and where would she be without him. Anyway long story short? They go away and Richie and I look at each other and say- he is sexing her and he is probably pimping her out. Ok- this one was my fault too- I should have never had a conversation with anyone on the beach. Silly me.
Here's another lovely one- group of us girls sitting on the beach eating. WELL, we alllll know that women can't just sit and eat and chat we MUST be waiting for a man to come to us right? So, some guy flops his ass on one of our chairs and just starts floatin' the crap. Smokey is at the bar and comes down because he knows we are just trying to chat girl crap and be left alone. The guy says to Smokey "You are just afraid a Jamaican man will take your woman." Oh snap, that's not rude, right? That's just part of the culture, right? Ok- then it wasn't rude when Smokey said to him " You can't even afford to buy her shoes" Oh gee- that was just terrible huh? We are supposed to spend our hard earned money to go there and put up with all manner of rudeness and never slam back, right? Right, cause that would be~~~ JADED, BITTER AND DRAMA FILLED!