Novel set on Jeju and in Seoul
Talking Location With … Guy Kennaway: JAMAICA
14th December 2023
#TalkingLocationWith ... Guy Kennaway, author of Good Scammer – JAMAICA
If you are after a carefree two-week holiday in a quiet and well-ordered hotel on a white sand beach, then one of the many all-inclusive hotels on the north coast of Jamaica would suit you well. Sun, sand, turquoise water lapping at your toes and a biddable uniformed staff to look after you are all guaranteed.
But the strange thing is that the Jamaica I know – and I have lived there 35 years – is not like this at all. Beyond the high hotel fence exists a different country. It’s unruly, unbiddable, madly individualistic and usually noisy. Their highway code is idiosyncratic: the only rule you can rely on is: never trust an indicator. They dress not uniformly but highly originally. A few weeks ago I spotted a man with a hoover pipe wrapped casually around his neck like a neck scarf. As health and safety has tightened around the world, so Jamaica, which has refused to be swept up in it, has becomes an oasis of non-compliance, individual responsibility, and unfettered fun.
Travelling is not just about the weather, if done properly. It also has a social and cultural component. In Jamaica this is particularly true because the culture of this unruly and amusing island is one of its top attractions. So I am afraid if you are reading this in an all-inclusive resort, you have to get out, dismiss the official tour guide and trust in the kindness of the Jamaican people, which in my experience is bottomless. Go to a little hidden community deep in the hills, or high in the forest, where the fecundity is intoxicating, and let a family cook you a meal for a few dollars and chill with them on a wooden porch and exchange stories. These are genuine interactions which the tourist industry is trying to destroy, and I fear will succeed at destroying one day. The industry wants all tourists corralled in a compound for maximum profitability.
A lot of English and American people ask me if Jamaica is dangerous. To be honest, if they look boring I do tell them it’s terrifying and they shouldn’t go there, because who wants dull tourists hanging around? But more often I inform them that in the 35 years I have been there, I have never been involved in a single violent incident, and I go absolutely everywhere on the island, from the ghettos, to the hills and valleys, to the millionaires’ hotels.
It’s true that there is a high murder rate in Jamaica, but it is not the visitors who are the victims, quite the reverse, everybody wants to nurture tourists because they are such an important income source. The last tourist murder I can locate on Google was 15 years ago. Still, the fear of violence does besmirch the reputation of the island. And there is a reason for this which is important to understand.
The all-inclusive hotel was devised in Jamaica. It has proliferated in Jamaica and is very big business in Jamaica. It is predicated on tourists believing that is dangerous to venture deep into the country on their own. So, when a person says ‘Let’s go to Jamaica, it’s exciting, sexy, beautiful and fun,’ which it is, they then go, ‘Oh isn’t it awfully dangerous? We’d better go to an all-inclusive hotel for safety.’
But I can tell you, the all-inclusive is not exciting sexy beautiful and fun. It is bland, boring and disappointing – if your aim was to see Jamaica. The official tours, insanely over-priced – will convey you in blacked out minibuses to tourist honey pots where you will be over-charged to stand looking at some ‘attraction’ alongside a crowd of Americans.
The all-inclusive hotels encourage the idea that the country is violent and unsafe, to attract business. This is a damaging and racist lie, told for financial gain, and must be challenged.
Meantime just out of sight of the tourist honeypot is a Jamaican community with shop, bar and probably their own 
secret waterfall, full of people who love to meet visitors and treat them with civility and joy. But most tourists are barred from getting near them.
The distinction between being a traveller and being a tourist is never sharper than in Jamaica, and I urge you to be the former. Luckily, Airbnb has arrived to give the traveller some new options, because the all-inclusive hotels have basically killed off the standard hotel model in Jamaica. The book I have recently published, called Good Scammer, is a hymn of love to west Jamaica, and I must recommend an earlier book, also set in a Jamaica, called One People (Eland Classics 2023) which is a portrait of a delightful little fishing community on the north coast, and illustrates how kind and welcoming they are but how rarely they ever are allowed to meet tourists. It’s a sad situation, but you can do something about it, and have yourself a glorious exciting genuine and authentic trip at the same time by avoiding the all-inclusive hotels. And while you are on the road you can read Good Scammer, about a poor orphan who ascends to great riches by inventing an ingenious business. It is unashamedly pro-scammer. It’s time the story was told from his point of view. It’s a modern day pirate story with a bit of radical politics, a dash of tropical sunshine and a lot of laughs.
Guy Kennaway
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