JAMAICA was one of eight countries who signed a United Nations agreement yesterday, intended to protect children from being recruited by armed forces or 'armed groups'. But what about children at home?
The Armdale Inquiry showed in tragic detail just how traumatised the island's youth have been by the culture of violence. Children don't just hide guns for gunmen, increasingly they are the gunmen.
It's all around them. Even Prime Minister Bruce Golding was using 'shotta' metaphors on the weekend as he gave a motivational talk to Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) activists.
"Mr General Secretary, deputy leaders, if we don't arm our soldiers with the information they need, then we can't quarrel if they are not firing any guns out there. We haven't given them the ammunition that they must go out there to fight the propaganda with," Golding was quoted by The Gleaner as saying.
Something I will never forget is standing next to a child in the Jones Town community about four years ago when some gunshots started. Immediately he identified the semi-automatic weapon. He had no right to know that much.
Meantime, just around the corner is the police station where some years ago a group of gunmen cooly walked past, carried out their business, and then walked back down the road.
It's that same station pictured above by Andre Phang Grade, then a 12-year-old attending Jones Town Primary School, in a poster competition, 'How Violence Impacts My Daily Life.'
That is what the likes of young Andre are forced to witness and that is what he and his contemporaries are at risk of being involved in.
I don't know about abortion, but being a Jamaican man, I believe I have the right to breed as much woman as I can and not have to take care of the kids.
More than that, I believe it is my duty to sleep with as many women as possible, and to make as many of them pregnant as I can. And if there is a man who doesn't want to to that, it must be because him is a gay, and you know what we Jamaican men think should happen to those. Gwaan Buju B!
Plus, every Jamaican man knows that you cannot abort the pickney before him born, but you can don't bother to mind him after him born, and once him pass being a juvenile, you can bus gunshot pon him if him step pon yu toe at a dance. A jus do Jamaica run. Because we respek life until bwoy fi dead!
THE Miami Herald carried two stories on Sunday about how Jamaica is trying to cope with hard times, both by experienced Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles.
The first is based upon Charles' interview with Prime Minister Bruce Golding who explains his plans to cut costs to mitigate the impact of the recession. This after finance minister Audley Shaw infamously declared that the recession wouldn't impact Jamaica. And all we know how that went.
Meantime, Charles also travelled to St Mary where the banana industry previously took a hit not just from hurricanes but the World Trade Organisation, whose ruling ended preferential trading in the fruit with the European Union.
Central to that story is the St Mary Banana Chips brand, which the Jamaica Producers Group is gradually building into an export business – part of what Government hopes is a shift from exporting raw materials into agro-processing and finished products on foreign supermarket shelves.
GRANTED it's a little late since Kanye West invaded the stage at the VMAs, but still, it only just reminded me of this classic footage of the late Peter Tosh.
While Kanye saved the VMAs from being again just about Russell Brand and his alarmingly tight pants, by no means everybody was convinced, or appreciative.
Kanye and his outbursts have entertained the world before, but as the doubters suggested, that this latest one might have been stage managed. As disrespectful as this suggestion this connection might be to "one of the best outbursts of all time!", his stunt sure boosted record sales.
Watching this video of Tosh cussing off Michael Jackson and Prince, it's best not to imagine what words Taylor Swift might have heard, were the 'Stepping Razor' standing in Kanye's shoes that night. However, whatever he might say, you'd have to take his word for it...
ANNIE PAUL blogs on what's behind the 'Gully vs Gaza' phenomenon. Apparently it's all to do with homophobia, writes Paul.
She reminds that deejays popularly used to refer to communities as 'borderline', until Vybez Kartel decided he had to switch that for Gaza. This after the term was adopted by Jamaica's most famous and most camp roots play actor, Keith 'Shebada Ramsey'.
And all that explains why zinc fences all over island are spray-painted with Gully or Gaza? More confused?
DOLLAR VAN DEMOS is a dollar van like no other. You just hop on and make a music video. You don't even have to be very good. Imagine doing this on a coaster bus going through Half-Way-Tree...
FOR the past however many years everyone has headed down to the same raggedy field Saturday and Sunday.
It's not all about the winning (and there was a time when our side ALWAYS used to have shirts), but it's that one thing in the week free of all life's burdens: work, wife and kids — whichever ails you.
With age and those creeping distractions — and maybe they're more an excuse for being unfit — there's less and less time for what really matters. I know that describes me because: a) I'm nostalgic enough to be writing this and b) I'm ashamed that twice a weekend is now twice a month.
Tripping over 30, you really know it when your body tells you have to start warming up for the first time since you high school coach ordered you to. And as for that tackle you comfortably made five years ago, what remains of your competitive pride has become, "Well, I have work Monday."
And it's not only about the football but also the lyme after: the idle talk, jokes and of course, those long gone high school glory years.
The winning still matters, except at this age losing doesn't motivate revenge, just maybe golf or dominoes instead; or spending more time with the kids - at any fitness level you should score past your three-year-old.
IF you haven't already been there, Twitter has some more photos of Zimboo & friends. And scroll down this page for the related interview...
Meantime, Zimboo bugged us to post the to the 'Heh!' button via PscyhoFreud.com, where you can listen to some his choice phrases. Perfect to annoy your co-workers, or simply make your boss rate you as insane:
"Wah gwan my style contagious like a yawn, women run lef' their clothes they have on. Heh!"
Oh, and that's Miss T&T in the photograph with him, together with Switch and Diplo (left to right) from Major Lazer.
CHOOSING a high school, Asani Morris could have gone to the same as his brothers, just like every other normal person in Jamaica. In fact Asani had an especially normal choice, given that the school, Calabar, was around the corner. Instead he decides to enroll at Jamaica College on the other side of town.
"Because my brothers went to Calabar and it was too close to the house," shrugged the entertainer.
Life for Asani has never been about convenient, or normal, which can worry those around him. For the past five or so years he's been working with deejay Prince Zimboo Abakunamabooba, from 'Dbush in Africa', whose career has blown up this year with a single, 'Heh!', being released next month on M.I.A. producer Diplo's Mad Decent label, with an album to follow.
"The Zimboo thing won't work in Jamaica. Give it Up!" everybody had told Asani after the act was just two years old. But his stubbornness paid off when his artist appeared on a Black Chiney mixtape and dubplate requests soon started rolling in (Zimboo is reuniting with that soundsystem to play a show in Belize this Halloween night). At one point it got really weird when this article in Slate magazine led to Zimboo being featured on the MSN.com homepage for the better part of a week.
With dancehall being as conformist as it is, Asani was always destined to be a misfit. Even playing piano at Christopher's jazz bar in New Kingston didn't suit him. They paid handsomely in free drinks but then Asani doesn't drink or smoke, except to "put a little rum in some fruit juice".
However it was at that same venue this year, upstairs in the Quad nightclub, that Zimboo ran away with the launch party for Diplo and Switch's Major Lazer album, on which he also appears. Zimboo and his wooden alligator stole the night with their forwards:
"Practice safe sex dont exceed the sex limit, Zimboo don't drink water cause fish have sex in it... You wonder why the sea so salty, the Octopus is getting naughty."
Anyway, so last weekend I'm standing in Asani's family yard with his lastest associate, fellow producer SaniShowbizz – who like Zimboo is of course not the same person as Asani, just that he looks a lot like him. Showbizz sometimes works from the recording studio that Asani's brother Junior (aka deejay Benzley Hype) built around the back.
In between rapid-paced rants Showbizz is chain smoking Matterhorn cigarettes at a sickening rate, lighting each new one with the half-smoked last. He's wearing a black suit, fedora, shades and on his feet a pair of orange flip-flops, just like the ones Asani was wearing minutes before.
Showbizz is a familiar character to anyone who's encountered one of the many slightly inebriated and profane elder hangers-on found at studios across Kingston, telling elaborate stories of being robbed of their ideas and music; and generally claiming the credit for the success of other artists, no matter how tenuous.
"Yow, mi tell you someting. Mi... [starts thumping his chest, hard] Mi teach Pele how fi play football, mi! An' when mi watch Pele play football, a dem time mi see Bob Marley a come an' Bob Marley wah play football an' mi tell Bob Marley, 'Right ya now mi a di wickedes' ting inna football an' yu know dat, yu know dat! Mi can tell yu anyting you wah learn an' a matter of fact you can make some music yah so because mi cyan see the talent in yu from the way yu control di ball. Mi know yu gwaan be di greatest musician to ever come outta Jamaica because right now yu a di real man an' yu know dat too Bob.' Him did see dat. Zeen. An' yu know dat."
Back in the real world the local music industry is yet to be kind to Asani. Talented, and weirdly so, Asani's had occasional half-chances, like the time he played his first tune to the owner of a radio station. Immediately he had Asani re-record it and within 30 minutes 'Lose Your Number' was on rotation.
However from then on things didn't go entirely to plan. Dawn Dodd, wife of the late great Clement 'Coxzone' Dodd was tipped off by Gambling House Studio about his next tune, 'Mr Fixit', and was interested in releasing it on the Studio One label. But then the studio's computer crashed and his tune was lost.
Meantime he's finding more and more characters to work with. He plans to release a compilation album in 2010, led by Zimboo but also featuring himself; Ned Chigins, 'a black redneck from Texas'; Alfredo 'a chef from Italy' and Vlad! from Russia.
He's also going to continue eating tomato ketchup out of a cup.
VISITED an HIV/AIDS ward just once. Covered murder scenes and some awful accidents but never felt death like in that ward. The patients were all in advanced stages of the disease, gaunt and silent; the row of beds like a line of coffins ready to be buried.
Beyond fear, the reality is that 25,000 people in Jamaica are living with HIV - persons who must face death but also the last few years of their lives. They were the motivation for poet Kwame Dawes's project, 'Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.' project, which won an Emmy Award in New York City last night.
Part of the Pulitzer Centre-sponsored project is its multimedia website, www.livelovehope.com (winner of a 2009 Webby Award), which features extensive photography, videos, audio and of course, Dawes' poetry:
A friend argued that a post last week was a little unfair to taxi men. It's true that taxi men get a bad rep for their supposed anti-social behaviour.
But that was until Imogene Blake, who operates the route from Mandeville in Manchester to Spaulding, Clarendon. His annual expenses were including in a submission for a fare increase made by taxi drivers to the Ministry of Transport earlier this year.
He claimed to have spent $125,000 on washing and cleaning his 1998 Honda Partner during the financial year March 2008 - April 2009. That's just under $2,500 a week, and in a country where the minimum wage is $3,700 a week, that's pretty clean.
A further expense for 'uniform' of $3,600 for the purchase of three shirts shows Mr Blake is not just clean but also a dapper player in the transport business.
Maybe there is something special about the Jamaican taxi man, weaving his underpowered Toyota Corolla station wagon through rush hour traffic. When everything else in life is holding you up, here is a man who cares that you get somewhere fast, and well before the line of traffic queuing in front of you.
FINALLY gotten around to registering Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Why sign up? You'll get extra content/updates not necessarily published on this blog. You can find Twitter and Facebook widgets in the right-hand column. Just scroll down...
PEOPLE were left head-in-hands when news broke the other week that British diplomat John Terry had been found murdered in St James. And as those who knew him knew, Terry was also gay, and so his was a murder ready for scrutiny unlike any of the 1,611 the island suffered last year.
Crime and homophobia exist in Jamaica, and in extremes. However not every murder of a gay person is a hate crime – as this murder was reported by the British press.
"I don't think it is a homophobic attack, although it's been run in the UK press. It isn't consistent with the information that we have. It is unlikely," Head of Serious and Organised Crime, Assistant Commissioner Les Green. Green is a former senior British police officer.
So-called 'crimes of passion' have stalked Jamaica's gay community, often occurring when older uptown men enter into relationships with ghetto youths – as theorised in the Terry case and the bleach-faced suspect (pictured above).
"If it is proven to have been motivated by hatred of homosexuals, it will be one of the most high-profile and horrific examples yet of what campaigners say is a growing trend for extreme violence against gay people in Jamaica," reported The Independent, adding the word 'If' only in the eighth paragraph.
What is not a 'growing trend' is a willingness of British reporters to look beyond the stereotype. Driving two reporters from the airport through the ghetto two years ago, it wasn't hard for them to notice the poverty and that the residents are of African descent.
It was 'just like Lagos', they remarked. The report was predictable.
WATCHING cable television in Jamaica used to be this fun. All the channels for a fraction of the real price; and that's not even taking into account those who got their cable hooked up for free.
This weekend I'm grateful to still have my legit sports package from my cable company, Flow, but no HBO (Entourage, Check Your Enthusiasm etc). Not after HBO recently cracked down on piracy of their signal.
A friend managed to get through to customer services. Apparently HBO should get back the signal in '30 days' and customers will be compensated for days gone without. However the sting is that Flow can't say how much extra we'll have to pay until negotiations are complete.
Meantime HBO are working to develop content for the region to replace the South American feed they had been insisting upon, and the Caribbean refusing.
BARBICAN, St Andrew – This taxi man was snapped by Observer photographer Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid, driving the wrong side of a traffic island so he could overtake 100 yards of early morning rush hour traffic.
You won't be able to see her in the photograph but the look on the face of the woman driving the SUV on the right said it all...
Totally shameless, half of him hanging out of the window and with no worries about another dent, taxi men and coaster bus drivers are the kings of the road. And no matter what they do, and whatever the consequences, it's going to be your fault.
Pedestrians are tough too, often crossing the road without taking even the slightest glance at oncoming traffic. Again, that'll be your fault.
Meantime the police can be reliably found at another intersection, pulling over cars and making more traffic snarl up. Around the corner coaster buses are rushing to pick up more fares and doing pretty much what they like.
THERE'S two small problems with attempting online ventures in Jamaica: (i) few people are online and (ii) investors know that. However, despite this, despite the recession, the clouds are clearing.
More and more people are launching websites, while Facebook is of course everywhere, and a growing number of persons are browsing the web with their BlackBerries and other smart phones. That said, what could be the tipping point is Digicel's launch of their WiMAX wireless broadband Internet service mid-2010, which promises to cover 60 per cent of the population.
This was the company that transformed the mobile market in Jamaica and now has more subscribers than adults among the population. Given the strength of their brand it's not unreasonable to expect that if anyone can, Digicel can market online to the masses – currently locals account for about 25 per cent of visitors to the island' news websites, a figure that shows local Internet access/usage has a long way to go.
Meantime there are a few independent sites shaping up to take advantage should WiMAX live up to what Digicel CEO Mark Linehan himself termed, "broadband for the masses".
TrackAlerts.com launched this June but already claims more than 100,000 monthly pageviews. Being the most regularly updated track athletics website in this, the world's No.1 track country, makes good commercial sense believes founder and 'journalist trying to be successful businessman', 'Vijay'.
"The fact that TrackAlerts.com is new and still into its promotional stages, advertisers have not yet buy into the idea. However, we are not worried in away as our job is to keep on promoting and continue to provide the world with quality and breaking (track) news, which is our No.1 aim... then before long advertisers will realise what we are doing is serious," he said.
He too is optimistic about the possible impact of Digicel – not forgetting existing Internet providers LIME, Flow and Claro – but still reckons that the site is far from being financially self-sufficient.
"I suspect within another two to three years, because by then advertisers will have a better understanding that more people are going online for news. Gone are the days when there was one radio station and one newspaper. Now you can do everything online. So, if you are aware that people have access to the Internet, why don't advertisers believe these people will read news online instead of buying the papers?"
He won't be the only one praying Digicel don't false start.
AS obvious at it really is, the British press still manage to underrate the influence of the Jamaican sound, from ska to dubstep. Another reminder came on Tuesday night when Speech Debelle, a sweet-toned 26-year-old female rapper from a Jamaican family in South London, won that country's prestigious Mercury Music Prize.
Trying to describe her music is hard, just that driving around Kingston in the car it sounds really, well... makes this writer miss London. Meantime the Jamaican references are plenty on Debelle's autobiographical debut album, 'Speech Therapy', and the jazz bounce of the production complements her voice.
Debelle, born Corynne Elliot, had an eventful upbringing spending four years of it in homeless hostels before eventually winding up with the Big Dada label. Big Dada has a creditable record of releasing experimental hip hop and much if it Jamaican-tinged from artistes such as Roots Manuva and Wayne Lotek – who as producer brings some of his signature strings and clarinet sound to 'Speech Therapy'.
"We, meanwhile, jumped on the tables, spilt drinks and partied with little thought for the feelings of the great and the grey of the UK music industry gathered around us," said a post on the Big Dada website about the Mercury Prize ceremony. Some of the audience looked confused.
As for a friend who's band rehearsed with Debelle but 'chose' not to work with her...
ARMOUR HEIGHTS, St Andrew – Nobody in Jamaica needs to be told about our landlords. Most times you have to fill out a long, invasive application form and if you're not a lawyer/doctor attending the same church as the landlord... better try someplace else.
And when you do finally get a place, they'll likely do things like limit the amount of tokens you can get for the communal washing machine – that is, if and when the landlord can be found after days gone missing and you have no clean clothes.
And it's because of a landlord that I got a joke from today's edition of the Chat! newspaper. The Range Rover belonging to 'controversial' (when are they not?) deejay Mavado was reportedly shot up outside his uptown home.
More than a year ago a friend was being pestered by his landlord. That friend was a relatively good tenant and in fact he'd even made some home improvements. Still the landlord carried on, so said friend decided to move but not before he helped find an appropriate tenant to replace him. That tenant? David Brooks A.K.A. Mavado.
P.S. Respect to my current landlord. He's one of the good ones.
FRENCH magazine Clark has an interesting interview with photographer Peter Dean Rickards, creator/proprietor of the Afflicted Yard website.
He and his website have become known equally for the stunning photographer but also for some, er, controversies. But above all it's about the work and what is a unique portrayal of Jamaica – its beauty, troubles and idiosyncrasies.
"The fact that it became known as ‘controversial’ was probably a result of the language and subject matter that I often used. I enjoyed pushing buttons and laughing at certain things in the society, but I never actually set out to be more conscious than anyone else, or to set any sort of example. It was just a way to share my words and images in a way that was new and exciting. The Afflicted Yard was really just a blog before there were blogs," said Rickards.
Quoted above, one particularly notable thing about The Afflicted Yard is that it's one of the first Jamaican content creators to make a living from the web. Hopefully it's a trend that will grow thanks to a significant development in the Jamaican Internet industry expected mid-2010 (more on that from this blog later this week).
You can read the translated version of the article via the Afflicted Yard blog and while you're there, take a trip around the site.
GOING to the movies in Jamaica is wrapped up in a lot of tradition, namely standing for the playing of the national anthem, the national anthem and of course people talking throughout.
But as a pirate nation people are more likely to watch a dodgy DVD bought on the street for J$100 rather than spend say J$400 to watch the same movie at the historic Carib, or another theatre from the same Palace Amusements chain.
DVD rental stores have already become extinct and Jamaican moviemaking itself isn't doing that much better. Piracy or not we're a long way off getting our equivalent of Brazil's 'City of God', no matter how rich in potential the society is for a screenplay of that quality.
Twenty-seven years on the Jimmy Cliff-starring 'The Harder They Come' is still streets ahead. That was the first time Jamaicans saw themselves portrayed on the big screen and remains the definitive portrayal of the rural-urban poor struggling to make it in the city before submitting to frustration i.e. crime and dying in a shootout with police – a situation that persists in real life today.
Still, here are four other local movies – 'Smile Orange', 1976; 'Babylon', 1980; 'Countryman', 1982 and 'Third World Cop', 1999 – uploaded to YouTube by Ian Vassell:
TIVOLI GARDENS, Kingston – A comment posted by a reader to jamaicaobserver.com, in response to news coverage about the United States move to extradite local don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke:
"Suddenly surround Tivoli and all garrisons with the military and proclaim that these communities will be leveled within 24 hours and residents should leave immediately to camps set up for refugees at the national stadium, arena and other locations throughout the country. Total destruction is the only solution."
For or against theres's no doubt that Tivoli is an extraordinary place: on one hand the community is home to probably Jamaica's most secure street party in 'Passa Passa'; and on the other hand there is its fearsome reputation as the 'Mother of all Garrisons'.
Photograph: Biggy Bigz
Tivoli long ago become uncomfortably powerful for the politicians who, working hand-in-hand with the gangs, socially engineered Jamaica's garrison communities: votes and power for the Members of Parliament; guns, patronage and immunity for the dons.
And what that angry reader hoped for has happened before: security forces confronting gunmen inside the community, putting not just each other at risk of death but also ordinary residents.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Dudus will not go easily, not least because the US tried to extradite his father, Lester 'Jim Brown' Coke. Not after his father burnt to death in a Kingston prison cell under mysterious circumstances.
Several politicians rumoured to be of interest to the US will not be sleeping easy either. Another faces the dilemma of signing the extradition documents.
But absent from the media picture are the residents themselves. As in every garrison community it is those individuals whose obedience gives the don his power and the MP his votes.
WAITING for their first glimpse of Ian Thomson's 'The Dead Yard', Jamaicans were anxious about what promised to be the latest media hatchet job. Booksellers have since declined to stock the book, even more anxious about potential lawsuits from society figures shamed within its pages.
The tone of the book is a little miserable and its content is not news: Jamaica suffers from poverty, crime and the British colonial hangover of race and class. In fact the focus of the book is the state of Jamaica's relationship with Britain.
Thomson, himself white and British, finds in Jamaica a mainly black poor and a complacent white or lighter-skinned establishment. Again, not news. However what does raise eyebrows are the juicy quotes he includes from the great and the good who hosted him in their homes and hotels.
Likely, because of his being white and British, his 'victims' felt comfortable opening up. "Oh, I could've whipped her. I sacked her," said one host about his staff.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Thomson reserves most affection for Perry Henzell, a white but rootsy Jamaican and the creator of the 1972 movie 'The Harder They Come'. 37 years later, Henzell's movie remains the definitive portrayal of the sufferer trying to make it.
The protagonist, Ivan - modelled on real life outlaw Rhygin – comes to Kingston from the country, trying to make something of his life. Things go awry and his life ends in a hail of police bullets. It's a storyline played out daily in real life Jamaica, where the badman life seems as probable for young men at one end of society as a law degree is for the other.
"You visitors are always getting it wrong? Either it's golden beaches, or it's guns, guns, guns. Is there nothing in between?" one elderly woman asked Thomson.
For all it's ills Jamaica remains an alluring country — were it not then would journalists still be coming here to write about how awful it is, while not just enjoying the beaches but also the culture and a society more complex and sophisticated than one-off media portrayals give credit.
As the Afflicted Yard explains: "Our country is known for its extremes. A place packed with originality and creative energy that continues to flourish despite the current socio-political state that has removed the personal pride of many. An island filled with beauty unsurpassed and ugliness that would make a rat puke."
So life goes on. Jamaica is far from dead. Still, for an introduction to the 'real' Jamaica, 'The Dead Yard' is not half bad. Better yet, visit.
P.S. This book was released quite a long time ago...but then they didn't send it to local journalists either.
PERHAPS you always wondered why racehorses have such fancy names. Simply it's to tell them apart from the competition. Something similar goes for Jamaica's badmen and their choice of aliases.
In the police blotters Monday a man was shot dead by police after allegedly engaging them in a shootout. An all too frequent occurrence. The release read: "Dead is 29-year-old Michael Palmer otherwise called 'Muffin' of Cockburn Pen, Kingston 11. The identity of the other man is being withheld pending further investigations."
As different as 'Muffin' might be from plain old 'Michael Palmer', it's hardly fearsome (short for ragamuffin or not). Better known was 'Cheese Trix' — named after the snack, and yes, also shot dead by police. And who could forget 'Pum Pum Mouth'.
But for subtlety, nothing beats Mark 'Wrong Move' Dixon (pictured above), a convicted murderer and escapee whose alias is a ready made excuse in court.
So before you make your final bow, having 'opened fire on police' and been found 'suffering from gunshot wounds in bushes', make sure to find that perfect name to preserve your badman legacy. Make that police blotter your own.
PANTS' legs slightly rolled up and Clarks Deserts Boots on the feet. That style has lived on for decades in Jamaica as synonymous with the boot as the WW2 British soldiers returning from North Africa in their 'clodhoppers' — the original inspiration for shoemaker Nathan Clark.
Almost as long ago, when the Empire Windrush disembarked the first generation of Jamaican immigrants in Britain, centuries of cultural domination by the colonial power began flowing back the other way. It's ever present today on the streets of London: in language, style, music and thankfully, the food.
But one thing the Brits gave back, was of course, Clark's cheese-bottomed casual classic. Perhaps then it's all the more surprising that the company doesn't have a presence here — almost the opposite of Puma which profitably appropriated 'Brand Jamaica', Clarks are a brand which Jamaicans have made very much their own.
You can find them — Boots, Treks, Wallabies, Natalies and Luggers — or fake 'Bank Robbers', sold right across Jamaica. MK Mart in downtown Montego Bay has possibly the widest choice of genuine Clarks.
In Kingston you can try Emperor Shoes at Consumer Plaza on Constant Spring Road and Fashion Express in Liguanea Post Office Mall. Clarks are also cheaper in Jamaica, beginning at J$6,000.
A friend here in the city has an uncle in the United States who sends down a shipping barrel of Clarks every few months. And recession or not, it only takes a couple of days before he's all sold out, young and old feet alike.
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