Street vendors strut in brightly coloured string vests and baggy jeans which hang off their hips displaying their designer boxers beneath. And of course huge trainers are the finishing touch for the smallest toddler to the ageing pensioner. You get white, Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern Jamaicans all as 'Jamaican' as their black neighbours. It's a country with a huge ethnic mix all living happily together, with seemingly few problems of racism. But this is one of the only problems Jamaica doesn't have.
Poverty there is enormous and the level of crime even worse.
Incidence of violence is high with guns and machete's being popular tools for 'snuffing' others out. Arguments between women often end in acid attacks where the chemical is thrown over the face causing the skin to literally melt away beneath. As a foreigner, I couldn't walk anywhere in Kingston, it was too dangerous. And far from writing about life on the beach, I was going into the ghettoes with the crime reporter, and being handed a bullet-proof vest and metal helmet by a rifle wielding policeman who delighted in telling me that any bullets fired at me would simply bounce off my helmet. The police station in Trenchtown was more like a field army camp, containing only metal chairs and maps of where the local Yardies had blocked off roads to stop police access.