Resorts

I am going to guess that your trip to Jamaica was inspired by the famous Ministry of Tourism commercial, to “feel alright.” Singing… “Come to Jamaica and feel alright.” It gets me all the time. The ad did its job as it is so inviting. The beautiful Caribbean sea, lovely scenery and hammocks — please, take me there now. Your trip may otherwise have been inspired by word of mouth and/or a travel agency, as you pored through glossy brochures and websites of the paradise that awaited. I too remember the feeling of gazing behind one of Jamaica’s lofty resort gates. It was in the early 90’s, watching an episode of The Price is Right. 

If my memory serves me correctly, it was summer, because The Price is Right is a daytime TV show and I remember being at home watching and playing along. Cable television had recently become the norm in Jamaica, well at least for middle-class families. The United States local stations were our cable channels, in addition to the basic and premium cable channels. I would watch The Price is Right, mesmerized not only by the prizes, but the games as well — at the age of ten, I knew the cost of the grocery items better than most of the contestants. I really wanted an opportunity to play as it presented experiences that were unknown to me. Then one day the prize was a seven-day vacation stay in Jamaica at the Wyndham Rose Hall Hotel and Resort. I was hooked. This resort is no longer there, but at the time, I had never seen anything like it. Yet, it was just mere miles away from our family home. The prize featured the resort grounds and a pool with built-in bar stools. It was wild, you could sit on a stool in the pool! 

On the northern coast of Jamaica, there are dozens of resorts of that type, but I had never seen beyond the security at the gate and the tall garden style pillars that guarded them until The Price is Right, an American game show. Not only that, by the age of ten, I had only remember visiting the northern coastal resort corridor one or two times before. Although, my paternal parish of St. Ann holds many of the most renowned resort properties in Jamaica, back then, the idea of a weekend visit never dawned on us as a family or any family I knew for that matter. If a family stayed at a resort, it was limited to adult couples only as it was seen as too expensive for the enjoyment of children. Not that we weren’t worth it, but with Jamaica being a developing country, as children we would not appreciate the magnitude of the privilege, having not worked for it. Also, to have reached heights our grandparents and parents had never seen was just not done. This was the unspoken cultural rationale. 

It was not until my eldest sister and her then boyfriend, now husband, took my close childhood friend and me to the Wyndham Rose Hall, my very first hotel/resort visit, for a weekend stay that I got to experience the prize that lay behind those grand walls. It was really cool being behind the gates, but even more amazing that I now knew it was all possible. Anything was possible now that I’d gotten the grand prize of attaining something I had only seen on foreign TV. The fun part is that now I get to visit my favorite resorts whenever I am in Jamaica. Today, I do see more Jamaican families, not just couples, but entire families on vacation at Jamaican resorts and it brings me so much joy because not only do we belong, but it’s also vital for us to see and to be seen in this space. Seeing makes the impossible, possible.