Did somebody say Brand JAMAICA?

I wanna talk about Jamaica, this beautiful island of “Wood and Water” that’s what they told me in prep school. I believed in this country this was home to me, I believed so much that when my brothers and sisters migrated for good, I stayed and swore I would never leave.

The older I get the more I realize that I might have made possibly the worst decision of my life, when all your siblings are paying mortgage and you aren’t even shopping for a house anytime soon. It makes you question the universe, I wanna know if my 23 year old sister is paying mortgage, then what the fuck have I been doing this whole time. I loved the Volkswagen commercial with the white guy speaking Jamaican. I think that was amazing, shout out to VW for finally portraying Jamaica without the use of marijuanna, dread locks, or extremely dark men with guns and scars. Im grateful for that, that humbles me as a Jamaican who has never smoked “weed” or participated in illegal activities, it was different.

Then I saw something in the newspaper where somebody was like “This is fantastic for brand Jamaica” yea it was a great commercial, but why you acting like it was raining Gold and 1000 dollar bills, and I thought we don’t get it do we. Some people were upset about that VW Ad but they were upset about the wrong things. Let’s put on pause for a minute the amount of tourist that come to Jamaica, lets put on pause how many expats come here to work, live and have a great time, lets pause for a second of how the world views us. Let’s talk about the people who live here, who were born here who will look after them? We are so concerned with showing the world how many “White People” can live in Jamaica and not be scared that we forget the people born and live here that are scared right now.

Have you ever called 911 in this country? Have you ever had to go to the police station to report a crime? have you ever had to deal with the police? Just recently my friend had an incident where a guy tried to attack her sister in a bar because she wouldn’t dance with him. The guy pulled a knife and somebody got hurt, the police station is across the road. They told the police and nobody came. When they went to make a formal report, the police told them to change their tone and have some respect. Somebody just got stabbed and he is concerned with their tone and level of respect. I get it Mr Officer but don’t you think you should be more empathetic?

Yes we can throw glitter on it and go to our parties and send the picture to the world that we’re all happy and smiling. But we still have the issue of crime, corruption which for the record I don’t see a Jamaica without corruption, we still have the issue of people being ignorant, high tuition fees, food prices are high, yet minimum wage is so low that it’s cheaper to stay home. My friend ordered some cheap jewelry off Ebay she spent US$70 and ended up paying US$50 to clear them from customs. I don’t get it, they were cheap plastic jewelry from CHINA!!!
They don’t want us to bring anything in from overseas without overcharging us yet, its so easy for Trinidad to import their banana-chips so cheap that they can sell theirs cheaper than our local banana chips, yet you want to tax me for some jewelry from china that I want to wear to a party. A party so that when they take pictures and post them online “Brand Jamaica” looks amazing?! Come on work with me here Mr Government.

It’s like a dirty house that takes visitors, you push the dirt under the rug to entertain the guest, but the house is still dirty and it’s only gonna get dirtier if you don’t clean it.

A lot of these rich high profile people in Jamaica will always think Jamaica is a beautiful place. Because truth be told our retarded criminals aren’t gonna fuck with them, they’re gonna rob and rape me who is struggling just a little less than them. But they’ve weighed the pros and the cons, and it’s better to rob me because the chances of me being friends with lets say the Prime Minister or some other important person is less likely. They know their actions will have no repercussions.

I’m all about Brand Jamaica, don’t get me wrong my veins bleed Green, Yellow and Black (I hope to God those are the right colors). I just wish that this country would take care of it’s people, I feel like there is a system set in place to make it unnecessarily harder than it needs to be. I want to see our Police Officers do more than just write traffic tickets, and pull over cars in the middle of a busy intersection and fucking block an entire line of traffic.

*Sigh* I don’t know, maybe I’m the stupid one and everything is fine.

xoxoxo Lauren o Lauren

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