Jamaica

Blue Mountain coffee, served from an enormous copper urn in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Montego Bay, Jamaica is how my memory of the island always starts for me. It is the best coffee I have ever had. Only for the guests, and completely inappropriate for the time of day or the idea of a meal, they served Tortuga cake with the coffee. Tortuga cake is a rum soaked coffee cake in a Bundt pan shape that you can purchase in small, medium and large sizes. If you are in the international terminal in Miami serving Jamaica you will see people carrying as many boxes of this as they can carry. Unopened, it stays moist for months. It tastes like butter, rum, pound cake and soft sex. Amazing. This was served in the lobby of the Rose Hall Ritz-Carlton as well as on the Executive Floor, which also served a wonderful breakfast buffet and night-time chocolate buffet with drinks as you looked over the ocean. The Executive Floor was the premium level floor. It had the special benefits of the food, bigger rooms and an incredible view of the ocean. In Jamaica, the company to whom I was contracted, had negotiated the best of the best and I received that treatment. I never want to go there again. There were bite-size memories all thrown into a bucket in my mind like seashells grabbed along the shore- 1. A cow on a chain tied to a rock in the middle of a field so it would feed and not runaway. 2. A man with a powered whipping trimmer and a can of gas walking out into a field. The grass was up to his shoulders and he was there to begin cutting down the gas. When I asked why they didn't just buy a mower to cut down the grass, the driver said, "What would the man do then? What job would he have?" 3. Women coming to work in their church clothes every day, even though we knew they would go back to shanties that night. 4. Feeding lunch to the entire staff of over 100+ workers as a government regulation required, with goat curry and rice. The meal started with prayer, immediately followed by gossip and laughing and ended with yelling. 5. Radio stations all day every day had talk shows about adultery. How to stop it, handle it, start it…. Adultery, it seemed, was a national sport.   Those were the bite-sized memories. Larger memories included going in and out of the walls bordered at the top with razor-wire. This was the "International Trade Zone" where the company's call center was located. The walls were painted white over the ten feet tall, plastered cement block perimeter . On the road outside of this trade zone, on pay day, there were dozens of vendors, like a farmers market. They were selling clothing, auto parts, food and possibly other items that were not visible. Paychecks were either earned by the women or handed over to the wives by the working husbands on payday. I remember payday. It was a carnival day of good cheer in and out of the offices. There was also a tension, maybe fear. I asked about this. It took me three different requests in three different ways to find out that the predominately female staff were afraid of the men who would be waiting. Would the women be able to save enough money for food and other things that were needed, or would the men take it all for alcohol and marijuana? My small company was brokering U.S. call center work from companies in the U.S. to a company who performed the services in Jamaica. My company was paid by the Jamaican company as an independent sales consultant. On behalf of the U.S. company, I visited Jamaica regularly and visited the Jamaican call center company's site when I was there. Of course, cultures are different in every country, sometimes within different areas of the same country.  One worth noting had to do with personal safety. We were warned regularly by local people, business people from other countries, U.S. expatriates and most others with whom we did business or developed any level of friendship: Do not go anywhere unescorted. Escorted meant at least one or two black Jamaicans, or security or preferably both. The general impression was that whites were not liked or wanted. This impression had probably been generated historically with the enslavement of black workers by white slave owners to harvest the crops. It may have continued with the courts that favored white land-owners over blacks who did not own land. The current troubles could have continued with the clear income inequality of those with money and those without. Workers did not have money. Politicians sought money from the wealthy white business owners who then awarded the business owners with contracts and favorable legislation. I realize that I have drawn a lot of lines from point to point on the map of Jamaican history with possibly more than a bit of editorial bias. Think of this as editorial commentary rather than news reporting. I only had a single chance to touch the graft and corruption which allowed this call center with whom I had contracted to exist. One of the important politicians had received a sizable donation from the owners of the call center. This donation then allowed for the opening of their firm. I went to dinner with the owners of the call center, the politician and a few of his entourage. Politicians, political friends and community "projects" that were going to be awarded to certain favorable contractors were the topics of conversation. At one point, the politician looked me in the eye and said, "Who are you and what do you do?" He was challenging my attendance as if he would soon send me for a hot towel or to fetch his car. I don't like being challenged, bullied or minimized. This must have been why I leaned a few inches closer to him and looked him in the eye and said, "I bring the clients, so think of me as the money at the table that the company who is entertaining you is spending." He smiled broadly, leaned back and said to everyone, "I am at the right table with the right man." I got up, shook his hand warmly, smiled cheerfully, thanked him graciously and left.   Soon after, I sold my company, which was really a broker between the company in the U.S.  buying services and the company in Jamaica selling services, for a very small amount of money and moved on. I was not holier-than-thou or morally outraged. For me it was more mathematical. Several questions bothered me; 1. If a shark has your tail in its mouth, when does it stop eating more? 2. If the first shark bites, there will be blood in the water, soon there will be more sharks. 3. If the people I was dealing with dealt with sharks, possibly they were sharks.   Two side notes: First - The politician with whom my Jamaican "client" was working was arrested and indicted in Jamaica. Second - That client left Jamaica when subpoenaed regarding connections with that politician and other issues. By that time, I had long stopped working with anyone that was doing any work with the Jamaican company.  My moral compass was developing at the time, but my math skills and intuition were what saved me, (plus, most importantly, the intervention of the Holy Spirit, but I was completely unaware of that at the time).  I would end this chapter by saying that those three questions have become a bit of a mantra for me. The answers do not always keep you out of trouble, but they help a lot in identifying landmines to watch out for when dealing with companies and people.