from the "One Love Bus Tour, Negril" facebook page:

Lenbert Williams writes,

Please do not judge the love bus bar crawl by the shanty town experience.

I am in the pub crawl business , not a shanty town tour and I do not have a licence to operate a charity.

I will however accommodate the kind folks who want to touch the lives of the less fortunate kids and parents. These kids and parents are not perfect. If they were they would not be in this plight. While I do not encourage begging, 2 dollars will buy dinner for a family of 5 in the shanty (one lb of rice, one tin mackerel, 1/2 lb of sugar and a cool aid.)

The reality is the government and corporate Jamaica have turn their backs on these folks for far too long and the love bus and its very generous tourists are the only source of help for many of these very desperate people.

The love bus alone cannot solve the the Shanty town problem but I hope that through the wider tourist community, policy makers will be embarrassed into ensuring that the people are taken into consideration.

When the visitors donate stuff to other charities no one knows where it end up. I prefer when the visitors give directly to the needy folks, experience the joy first hand and witness the struggle, the poverty, talk about it and complain. This in my opinion is a first step in ensuring that future government policy makers involve the people, not just the water front and large corporations.

With the contribution of some musical instruments from some good tourists, the Love Bus is in the process of setting up an orchestra for the youths from the shanty.

May God continue to bless those who have given and those who plan to give as we try to bring some semblance of order to this side show as many visitors are demanding and requesting the shanty as a quick stop.

Please note that the shanty is not a regular stop of the love bus tour; I only go there on request.

One love, Lenbert