AS I WAS SAYING
Old Britain flourishes and the spirit moves in Jamaica
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
Is there such a thing as a 'freebie' without commercial strings attached, or even, as in the case of poor Neil Hamilton, balls and chains? I think, perhaps naively, that there is and that I have just been on one — a ten-day trip around the West Indies, along with Auberon Waugh and Piers Paul Read. Not that the provenance of the trip — Butch Stewart, the chairman of Air Jamaica who flew us out and around first-class and put us up in Sandals, his chain of luxury hotels sounds all that innocently non-commercial. But to praise the hotels, which, being full of sporty Americans, were not up my street, was not his purpose in offering us the free trip. Indeed, if it had been, the choice of such a curmudgeonly group of old fogies would surely have been ill-advised — as counter- productive as trying to win favours for the Athenaeum by inviting Michael Winner to a free lunch. No, Butch Stewart's reasons for inviting us were rather different: not so much to plug his hotels as to plug his country; to demonstrate, in fact, that Jamaica has quite as much to offer away from the tourist beach- es as on them, which is a bit like a supermar- ket inviting journalists inside to demonstrate that there is more to life than shopping.
Another name needs to be mentioned in this respect — that of Oliver Foot. Born and brought up in King's House when his father, Sir Hugh Foot (later Lord Caradon) was governor, Oliver also loves Jamaica and has always retained his citizenship. After found- ing and for 15 years running Orbis, the inter- national charity which brings the latest reme- dial eye techniques to the poorer nations of the world, Oliver in the mid-Nineties brought his demonstration plane to Jamaica where, by chance, it was parked next to Butch's pri- vate jet. It was a fortunate conjunction since there and then on the tarmac — thereby giv- ing the practice of networking a new dimen- sion — Oliver persuaded Butch to subscribe generously to his charity and Butch persuad- ed Oliver to come back to his birthplace and work for him. Thus the Butch/Oliver partner- ship was formed to do for Jamaica what the British Council does for Britain.
That being the background to our trip, it is no wonder that our first morning after arriv- ing in Kingston, the capital, was spent visit- ing Trench town which used to be one of the country's — if not the whole of the West Indies's — most gang-infested and crime-rid- den ghettos. But instead of finding it crack- ing with rifle shots, as would have been the case until very recently, we found the church bells ringing. Oliver, a bit of a born-again Christian himself, introduced us to Pastor Bobby Wilmot who, with Lorna Stanley, had started a kindergarten school for 150 poor children from both sides of the gangland divide. In attendance was Siggy Soul, anoth- er devout Christian, who has built up, almost from the rubble, a children's library. Between them, these saintly people have done what the politicians, police and even the army have failed for years to do: brought peace to a poverty-stricken area literally burnt and shot to broken pieces. We toured the school and attended a service (much hugging) in a building of which Oliver's mother had laid the foundation stone in 1947. Also in this erstwhile no-go area we were shown Bob Marley's original village exactly as it was — i.e. with chickens pecking around a derelict car. Mike Smith, a Rasta- farian, is planning to turn it into a low-key tourist attraction to be opened soon, he hopes, by the Prince of Wales. No UN troops here to bring peace to the area at the point of a gun — simply and solely the power of the spirit.
Much of our time was spent in a similar fashion, seeing a part of the West Indies miles from anywhere — plantation houses, factories, gardens — which tourists never reach, and getting to know, and even make friends with, a new elite of native entrepreneurs, hotel managers and profes- sional people. It was a heartwarming expe- rience, if only because the overall impres- sion was so overwhelmingly British — more old British, it has to be said, than new.
What a contrast with pre-independence days when Jamaican nationalism was fired by anti-British and indeed anti-European senti- ments. 'Affirm your ancestors, claim your history' — i.e. the succession of unsuccessful slave revolts, first against the Spanish and then the British — was then the order of the day. But of nationalism, or even of politics in general, there is now little to be found. Indeed, when I tried to raise the issue of slavery with one of the new breed of out- standing hotel managers, who went to school in Huddersfield, he only roared with laugh- ter. 'Just because the English feel tormented by feelings of remorse, don't expect us to feel tortured by feelings of revenge. Happy a country without a history is what we say.'
Which is why, perhaps, when we drove into the hills above Negril to visit the cot- tage — now a museum, like Washington's Mount Vernon — where Alexander Busta- mente, Jamaica's founding father and first prime minister, was born, we found this his- toric national shrine deserted except for a machete-carrying caretaker who was amazed to see us, having had no other visi- tors for ages. Indeed, in the absence of signs, we had great difficulty in finding the place as even the locals, from whom we asked directions, had never heard of it. Nel- son's house in Antigua, however, presented no such problem!
Pride in Jamaican and West Indian cul- ture generally, however, has never been stronger: in its music (Bob Marley); in its lit- erattlre (Nobel Prize-winning Derek Wal- cott); in its sauces (on sale in Fortnum & Mason); in the way its children are brought up; and, above all, in its churches (more per capita than anywhere else in Christendom). And deservedly so. Indeed, there is no more heartwarming sight in the world than that of Jamaican boys and girls, neat as new pins in immaculately clean uniforms, decorously wending their way to school, or listening raptly to the preacher in their Sunday best. The use of the English language is vigorous- ly alive and kicking, as if freshly minted on the tongue; although it does, in fact, hark back to Elizabethan times. Indeed, listening to the pilots and air hostesses on Air Jamaica was strangely comforting, and I felt more at home there than I do listening to the Estuary English to be heard nowadays on British Airways.
As to crime, the recent statistics show an encouraging decline, and once you get used to all the men in the country areas carrying machetes — rather for the same reason as all English country ladies used to carry secateurs — it seemed safe enough. In fact the only bad experience our lot had was when my back was lacerated by a jellyfish. But this happened not out on some wild shore, but while swimming off one of Butch's well-guarded private beaches.
In any case, worthwhile travel ought to have its hardships. If you want Mammon, yes, stay on the beaches where all the plea- sures of the flesh can be enjoyed 24 hours a day. But if you want not God — that would be asking too much — but a numinous place where divinities seem always to be lurking, then for heaven's sake explore inland; and there is no better place to set off from, as we did, than Trench town.
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