Ah, Jamaica! - includes related material and recipes - Special Travel Section

In 1980 I quit my job, packed my bags, boarded a plane bound for Kingston and moved into a cottage perched on the edge of a hill overlooking the city and the sea. I was weary in spirit, mind and body, and I went to Jamaica like a pilgrim seeking a healing. I found that and more.

It was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. For years I roved the Caribbean looking for the right spot, having decided that I wanted the experience of living in a predominantly Black society. I chose could come and go with greater ease. And besides, I'm an island person. I live on Manhattan island, grew up on Long Island and take comfort in knowing big water is always near me. So I explored several Caribbean island, letting my spirit be my guide.

And yet, Jamaica was never on my wish list; I thought I'd end up in a smaller place. But I went to a story for this magazine, and in the midst of interviewing people, trying to decipher the patois and absorb the information, I fell in love with the place and the people. I think it happened on the road from Kingston to Ocho Rios, sitting in the backseat of a car, being chatted up nonstop by my hosts' little boy. The combination of his deep, lilting voice caressing my ears and the wonder of the lush ever-changing countryside unfolding before my eyes as we traveled that winding road filled me with joy.

That was 15 years and dozens of Jamaica-bound trips ago. In my many sojourns I've come to know the country well and have built a network of deep and abiding friendships.

Jamaicans are beautiful people, a rainbow tribe: African, Indian, Chinese, European, Middle Eastern and every combination in between. A people who take fierce pride in their country, its history and culture, they can be feisty folks who give no tea for the fever, sometimes abrasive, pushy and arrogant. I've met some who would cuss you in a minute. Women higglers, arms akimbo, are not to be played with; these are some tough sisters. The scam artists who too often hover 'round tourists make my teeth grind. Then there are those who want to look down their noses at African-Americans. But though I've met my share of bad ones, bores and buffoons, stuffed shirts and snobs, by and large the people I've met have been a easy in their graciousness, hospitable and warm.

Though the oft-repeated phrase "No problem!" may sound like a cliche, a lot of folks really mean it and willingly go out of their way to offer help or provide a service. Jamaicans wish you good morning and expect to be greeted in return. People visit one another in the evenings and on Sun and one need not wait for an invitation to come by. Some of the best times I've had in Jamaica have been in people's homes at informal gatherings, sitting around talking about politics, people, world events, discussing the differences and similarities between African-Americans and Jamaicans.

But I especially love the parties, because people of all ages get up and dance, and folks are serious when it comes to the music. If there's a party, the entire neighborhood gets to hear the music. In Kingston, street dances are still held, especially around carnival time. But no matter where you are, music is a constant in Jamaica. Radios or cassette tapes are almost always going, and music from reggae, house and rap to calypso, soul, gospel and classical is constantly in the air.

Some people are surprised by the fact that I love the city of Kingston, but I do, and not simply because so many of my closest friends live there. I also enjoy the concerts, theater and dance, the art museum and galleries. jamaican art is flourishing -- sculpture, paintings, ceramics, carvings -- and it's next to impossible not to become a collector. I love the bustle and the contrasts: buildings dating back to the 1700's next to modern skyscrapers in the old city; the fancy cars navigating around goats in the new city. Big supermarkets stocked with every conceivable consumable next to open-air markets, where women come in from the country to sell their fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade curries and sundries. And then there are the women who sell flowers by the roadside, and the higglers who spread their array of merchandise on the ground, setting up what folks call their "bend-down plazas" right in front of fancy shopping arcades. I love the sprawl of the place, houses climbing the hills overlooking the harbor, the huge plain. At night Kingston seems to sparkle; the lights from those houses in the hills are like twinkling jewels, and the city below seems to glow.

I call Hellshire Beach outside Kingston the best "colored" beach in the world. On Sunday afternoons people of every shape and shade, rich and poor, can be found cooling it at Hellshire. Fishermen bring their catches, and enterprising sisters and brothers have built cook shacks with names like joy Spot #1 (the place I always sit close to). It's a Hellshire ritual to order fresh fried or steamed whole fish that you pick out beforehand, with lots of pepper and fried dumplings called festival, and get happily greasy.

No year passes without my getting on a plane headed for Kingston. I've lived there for months, shuttled down for long weekends, gone twice, sometimes three times in a 12-month period. If I could, I would become a regular commuter, shuttling down every six weeks. One day I plan to live in jamaica year-round.

I can't name a relative or friend who doesn't know that I love jamaica and consider it my second home. I even made up a name to describe my relationship to the country: I call myself an Af-Am Jam, as in an African-American who loves jamaica. When people ask me why, I invariably say, "Because my spirit feels totally connected to that place and those people. It's where I feel wholly whole. If there's such a thing as reincarnation, perhaps I lived there in another life."

God got real busy when it came time to make jamaica. Mountains and hills almost everywhere the eye can see. Land of wood and water, with rivers and streams rushing and meandering and crisscrossing the land to meet the sea. Beaches too many to count -- some tiny coves, others broad expanses that seem to stretch endlessly along the azure water. Close to Eden? Yes, I often have that feeling when I'm there, because of the abundance and variety of flowers, fruits, plants and trees.

The British who held jamaica close for 350 years treated it as one huge botanical garden, bringing plantings from Africa and Asia and the Pacific. There are dozens of varieties of mangoes (I've tried to taste every one); exotic apples, not even kissing cousins to the ones we know, with names like otaheite apple, star apple, custard apple and golden apple; and other fruits called naseberries, soursop, sweetsop and jackfruit; ginger and pimento (allspice to us); coconuts and coffee; pineapple and sugarcane and trees from around the world.

There are rolling hills where cattle graze and sweeping plains dense with sugarcane. On the eastern end of the country, rain falls frequently, creating a tropical lushness that is almost overwhelming. In just an hour and a half s drive from Kingston, one can be in springlike weather high up in the Blue Mountains. It's a place of mist and rainbows and meadows and pine forests where rain dances from peak to peak.

To experience the Jamaica I love, you have to get out into it and take to the winding roads that crisscross the country, hugging the sides of mountains, meandering through hills and vale, following and crossing rivers and streams. There is always a sense of anticipation on these road trips, no matter how familiar the route may be. I love the profusion of colors: robin's egg blue, dusty pink and little lime-green country houses; listing country buses with Day-Glo red or blue stripes; red earth and dense brown, golden sand, gray limestone, sun-dappled golden hills, green mountains wearing crowns of trees, vegetation in every shade of green, and the ever-changing Caribbean sea. At twilight everything seems to soften and haze over, the colors become muted and there is a feeling of peace in the air.

Like a kid, I love stopping at roadside stands to buy tiny, sugar-sweet bananas or young coconuts to drink their water and dig out their jelly. I also love pulling up to one of the shops and buying a cold drink and chatting a bit with the locals.

And there are always surprises. Once, on a road going up into the hills outside Montego Bay, I rounded a curve and came upon a meadow where a barefoot blond little girl, who could have been Heidi's sister, was rounding up a herd of goats. On a journey from Kingston to Ocho Rios, an old man in tattered clothes, with dreadlocks hanging past his waist, holding a staff in one hand, like an Old Testament prophet, seemed to materialize out of thin air on a particularly mountainous stretch of the roadside. I've chanced upon a country wedding, the bride all in white lace, her chocolate skin aglow, the bridegroom beaming, leading a procession of bridesmaids and groomsmen and guests back to the reception. And I always delight in little girls all starched and pressed, ribboned and bowed on a Sunday morning walking sedately with mothers wearing church hats cocked just so.

No, Jamaica isn't paradise: The problems of poverty and class are ever apparent. And yet there is a spirit in the people, in the land that makes me believe in this young nation and in promises of things unseen.

And despite all my many trips, there are still so many places I have yet to see, so many others I have never tired of returning to. When I first moved to Jamaica all those years ago, I would spend hours in front of a huge map savoring names, trying to decide where I wanted to go. I want to explore Maroon country, where escaped slaves successfully fought the British to a draw in 1795 and were granted semiautonomy, and especially to visit a hamlet there, in Trelawny's Cockpit Country, known as "Me No Send You No Come." Other sites remain perennials on my list: I love to take my stressed-out body to Bath, the oldest spa in this hemisphere. In those hot mineral waters I literally have felt all my cares roll away. There's a tiny beach in Port Antonio at Frenchman s Cove nestled between lava rock cliffs where an icy mountain brook feeds into the sea. There's Holleywell up in the Blue Mountains and the Red Hills outside Kingston. No matter how many times I go to jamaica, there will be one more river to cross, one more valley to wander, one more story to hear, a new piece of history to learn, another facet of culture to explore.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group