Boom=
Listen Up
As I approach the gateway to the tropical heaven, I got Bob Marley in my ears. Summing up The Bob Mood- he assures me, Every thing's Gonna be alright,
Yet if Vegas is where neon goes to die, then this is certainly the resting place of "Legend" and "One Love" Bob Marley Nostalgia. The music still stands the test of time, and Bob Marley is an American Idol, but the country needs an extreme makeover.
Think Fat Elvis belting out a few lines of My Way--Karaoke Elvis, a cheap imitation of himself. And so it is with Jamaica, like a hound dog with a few miles left, loyal to the end--providing tourists with the ganja, the rum, the HBO (Hair Belonging To Others) $10 hookers and the rasta vibe.
"So what do you want?" gets asked a hundred times as I walk the gauntlet in Ocho Rios. I'm feeling Cambodia, Thailand and Turkey pushing at me all at the same time. Thank god there are no carpet merchants.
Even Rolling Stone's Mick Jaggar abandoned his house; paid with a currency that doesn't exist anymore-the US Dollar.
I want to say-"What do I want--how about infrastructure, a police force, sanitation, hygiene..but instead I say" Coconuts"...They have plenty of those.
No Woman No Cry, sung by the Patron Saint of Reggae, is a pain in the English.
At first I thought it meant, No woman=no cry. Then, "Hay Woman Don’t cry, woman". Lately, I know it as another meaning: There is no woman who doesn't cry. This Coconut Entrepeneur has his take on it; but I found out a more accurate rendering of NWNC in Jamaican patois would be ‘No, woman, nuh cry.’ The ‘nuh,’ which makes a shorter vowel sound for ‘no,’ is the equivalent of the contraction ‘don’t.
Yu done know (= You understand) Inna di morrows =See you tomorrow in The Grand Cayman Islands and the calm, turquoise waters of Enya's Western Caribbean Blue.
