Jamaica- past and present

“What’s the biggest problem in Jamaica?” I ask our taxi driver, Mr Henry, this morning.
 
“Unemployment- over 35 per cent.”
 
The days of slavery- between 14-20 million- brought over from Africa to work in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and America  may be over but there is another form of slavery in operation today in Jamaica. It’s economic.
 
While Chinese and Indians arrive in the country with nothing they are able to get bank loans to set up businesses. Jamaicans are refused.
 
So they are stuck at the bottom of the food chain. No wonder there is corruption and crime.
 
The ground is fertile yet little farming is done because Jamaicans can’t afford to either lease or buy the land. So it stands idle. 
 
There is another problem too. The young people don’t want to farm.
 
We visited Seville Great house, a UNESCO heritage site. Little is done to promote this as a tourist attraction – our hotel had no information on it. Yet the interior of the house hosts an excellent and very moving exhibition tracing the history of Jamaica.
 
Our guide, Rodney,  gave us a personalised tour because visitors are few and far between apart from  school parties.
 
There is not even a leaflet to take away, no shop, no café. Nothing to entice visitors yet it offers a sobering insight into Jamaican history and the only museum I have seen with an honest account of the appalling history of slavery in the Caribbean.
 
 
“To kidnap our fellow creatures…
To degrade them…
To deny them every right…
To keep them in perpetual servitude,
Is a crime as unjustifiable as it is cruel.”
   
                                    -Olaudah Equiano 1768