Share your best tip for dealing with Negril hustlers and beggars ...

[jasperpso]

i am a softie - if someone truly looks like they need it - i will give a guy 100ja for food or a beer..
but
i DONT want a drawer full of souvenirs.. i buy some - for gifts, but i dont take allot of stuff home..

its the higglers , not the beggars that get on my nerves.. i dont want drugs while i am walking with my kids - also dont need them when we are sitting down to eat at alices either.. if i am walking by you, that isnt a invitation to start walking with me, i also dont need a guide.. a firm no from me usually works, but recently at mi yard, i was sitting drinking a beer with Ali-C, and there was a kid - maybe 20 yrs old being shooed out to the gate, he was trying to get us to pay him for singing a song..it was obvious that he was very hungry - he was speaking to the lady shooeing him explaining his stomach was hurting.. it was all a little crazy.. here i was sitting with Ali-C talking about his music and where he was playing that nightand i got a cd from him, and this guy is trying to sing to us for some food.. anyways, when i walked out he was still sitting by the gate, and i gave him a couple 100ja.. i know it wasnt allot -but you know what - i feel better about that - then any of the souvenirs i bought that trip..

now i know some tricks of getting around negril with little negative exposure to my kids. there are places to avoid, and finding a local taxi driver with a good fare to get around is a must - because walking the west end isnt for everyone..

[negrilaholic]

I guess I have been pretty lucky my four vacations in Negril because I have never been swamped with beggers and/or higglers. And when I am asked to just look, I will do so, and will chat up the sellers because part of what I enjoy about my vacation is being able to talk with folks and never noticed a "high pressure" tactic to buy anything once I am there to look and hold a conversation, be it brief or long.

When asked to buy something right off the bat, usually just tell them I don't have it like that and most folks are pretty understanding since they know all to well how things can be on a tight budget. Maybe my next trip later this year my "luck" will run out where that is concerned, but unless it gets really bad for me personally, can't see as it will stop me from coming and enjoying Negril, but that's just me.

[captaind]

We must be lucky because it just doesn't happen to us. Perhaps it's due to where I go for the beach. Usually Cosmo's but sometimes Mama Flo's Perhaps it's my 35 years of Jamaican experience. Perhaps it's because I speak and understand Patios fluently and understand Jamaican body language.

Hey sometime I reach in my pocket for a hundred or two if I recognize that this isn't really as hustle but someone who is in real distress.

As to the organic higgles.... They can't sell me anything that I don't already have the best of. Carvings ad bracelets and such are made in my ditrict and I let them know that if I ever wanted any more of that stuff I'd custom order it up in the district.