I’ve finished editing some of the photos from my trip to Jamaica. I wish they were better, but they are what they are. They’re up on my website.
I’ve just finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. It’s got me thinking about the nature of travel and tourism. I travel a lot (too much for someone who claims to have a green thumb.) These days it’s less as a tourist, and more for work. Still, I’m forced to admit a certain degree of voyeurism in the work that I do. There are tough ethical questions that need to be asked, and after Zambia, I can’t help but ask them every day. A Small Place is a good read, and made me reexamine some of my own assumptions on post-colonial landscapes.
From the book:
Antigua is a small place, a small island. It is nine miles wide by twelve miles long. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they would be less lonely and empty — a European disease. Eventually, the masters left, in a kind of way; eventually, the slaves were freed, in a kind of way. The people in Antigua now, the people who really think of themselves as Antiguans (and the people who would immediately come to your mind when you think about what Antiguans might be like; I mean, supposing you were to think about it), are the descendants of these noble and exalted people, the slaves. Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your masters yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.
