Working hard for change...we can help!

Looking back at over three decades of travel, I have seen first Kingston then Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and now Negril transform into harassment zones for tourists. Anywhere wealth congregates then you find people who are prone towards easy money harassment techniques instead of taking the time to come on easy and friendly to make an honest dollar.

Sometimes we are our own worst enemies with the way we spread around our money by giving it to people without requiring some "Respect" or some equivalent quid pro quo in exchange. Sometimes we are too casual to bestow the term "friend" to people we casually know and that level of openness can become our Achilles Heel.

I live in and love Jamaica but I have weaned myself away from tourist areas for just this reason. I don't get this harassment problem where I live. When the Jamaican dollar was strong, it was a better place to vacation and harassment was not so common. We can hope that Jamaica will overcome its economic problems and that will result in the pressure being lessened between locals and visitors.

Peace and Guidance

I am pretty sure that my wife, my best friend and I are well known on the part of the beach that we stay at near the NBCC. We generally don't have much issues and the beach there is set far enough back that you can avoid most of the wandering type sellers. The ones we deal with we deal with all the time. We have our bread guy, we have our juice guy, we have our fruit lady and so on. What I find is that if we want to go down the beach that's when we start getting harassed a bit more. We stayed one year at The Palms and I had a bad experience with a guy. He was pissed off that I was smoking cigars, that I had brought from Canada, and declined to buy smokes or his dried out stogies. He got pretty heated and was going off on me. He didn't think I knew what he said as he figured me for just another tourist. But I understand patois fairly well. I finally had to get up out of my chair and tell him to beat it. We had friends sitting with us and they were getting uncomfortable with his aggressive attitude. For the rest of the week he would come to the edge of the property and say stuff but never directly at me as he would look off down the beach or out into the water. He thought he was so clever lol. I would just ignore him but its a prime example of someone who clearly doesn't understand how to deal with people. We are generous but we are creatures of habit and deal with who we deal with. I own enough Jamaica stuff to start my own store where I live and I refuse to smoke crappy cigars. I love Negril and Jamaica so I won't ever stop going there.

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Originally Posted by HarryS

Yes, this... and when people on here say "it doesn't happen!" or "just say no and it stops right away!" they must be either in denial, don't leave their AI resort, or are there so often they are "locals" and aren't bothered any more.

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Harry...obviously no one is denying it's a problem and apparently a WORLD WIDE problem...not just a Negril problem. I live here, post on negril.com and shared a link so we could all be helpful in filling out the survey and sharing our views of the harassment...possibly to help reduce this issue.

While it makes me sad that you are harassed so frequently...there really are people that aren't bothered at all whether they are first timers or seasoned travellers. I don't have an answer as to why some are bothered more than others but maybe the survey can help with this also.

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I look like this and still get hassled! :P

Great pic, Crusher...I think it might be your sweet, innocent face though :D :D

lol....maybe!! :)

I filled out the survey though. Its a cool idea happy to support the research.

Survey done.

If the harassment gets too bad for your comfort, would a "nah badda mi" or "nah go mas" help or deteriorate the situation?

~Moose

Done

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Originally Posted by CosmicMoose

If the harassment gets too bad for your comfort, would a "nah badda mi" or "nah go mas" help or deteriorate the situation?

~Moose

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No