Leaving the resorts behind in Jamaica

Kathi Cooke unhinged the gate to her house in Montego Bay and opened her arms. I strode into her embrace, then into her home. As the evening darkened, we gabbed on her silky red couch about gardening, dogs, community service, baking, work life and dating in Jamaica.

Cooke served banana chips and a juice-and-ginger-ale cocktail that smelled of the tropics. She showed me family portraits, then took some photos of us to add to the shelf. Finally, I stood up to go.

"If you have time tomorrow, maybe you can come over and hang out?" she asked as we swapped e-mail addresses and phone numbers in her kitchen.

Our visit had lasted little more than an hour, yet so much had changed. I had arrived a stranger but departed a friend.

Cooke, new pal to many, is one of about 300 ambassadors who volunteer with the Jamaica Tourist Board's Meet the People program. Launched nearly 41 years ago, it arranges meetings between visitors and residents, basing the matches on shared occupations and interests.

On my two previous visits to the Caribbean island, I had been no recluse. But I had been a shut-in.

The all-inclusive resorts where most Americans stay encourage guests to remain on the property, shielded behind the guarded gate. If you wish to leave, you sign up for a tour. Most interactions are with your poolside neighbors, some of whom may share your area code.

But this time, it was different. No fortress-style resorts. Instead, I would overnight at low-key lodgings that were fully integrated into the community.

No group shuttles. I would drive myself, so I could stop on a whim and lean on locals for directions and suggestions. Inspired by Jamaica's motto — "Out of many, one people" — I was set to meet the many.

Visiting a school

Kids act the same everywhere: They stare, they swarm and they goof around, including vogueing for strangers' cameras. Once out of the classroom, the children of Robin's Bay Primary School were no different.

Before I was introduced to the students, though, I met with Merlene Anderson, a 30-year teacher who spoke of the hardships of the school, a simple concrete structure that squeezes in six grades for about 80 children ages 6 to 12.

Set on a ridge overlooking the shimmering Caribbean, the school gets the equivalent of about $114 from the government for each three-month term to buy educational materials and lunch foods, and to pay the cook.

But the money usually runs out before the term is over. To supplement its resources, the school asks for donations. Anderson handed me a two-page printout of needed items that included dictionaries, fans, eggs and a PA system. She later added stuffed animals to the list.

In the classroom, 27 children dressed in crisp khaki (boys) and navy blue (girls) were shoehorned into desks that left little room for wiggling.

I stood before the hushed students with Kim Chase, an expat from Pittsburgh who runs Strawberry Fields Together, a lodging up the road, and arranges visits to the school. Lunch is prepared in a building that resembles a stripped-down drive-through. On the day's menu: rice and peas and chicken. Most of the residents of Robin's Baywork as farmers and fishermen. But Anderson said that past graduates of her school have become lawyers, doctors, nurses, police officers and teachers.

Among this year's class, I met a potential pilot, a veterinarian and a soldier. But for that day, they were just kids, horsing around beneath a big blue sky.

Along the banana trail

Jamaica claims to have the world's highest number of churches per capita, but one minority religion — Rastafarianism — stands out among the other denominations.

The dreadlocks and wafting scent of ganja definitely draw attention. However, when I met Donovan Slythe, chef-owner of the Reggae Pot Rastarant in Ocho Rios, he smelled of kitchen and was wearing a cap. The 40-year-old Rastafarian prepares Ital food, the vegetarian cuisine rooted in the religion's beliefs. At an outdoor table on the edge of a parking lot, Slythe placed before me a plate buckling under the weight of cubed tofu, a gluey brown stew and a mound of rice and peas (actually kidney beans).

For a beverage, he presented a plastic cup of cherry juice and Irish moss, a seaweed with the same nutritional benefits as fish. Brother Lion, also a Rastafarian, espoused nourishment as well, though his version was more akin to impromptu raw food.

Swaddling his feet in brown fabric, he shimmied up a tree trunk and grabbed a handful of coconuts. On the ground, he cracked them open and passed around the milk and white meat.

Lion was my escort to Reach Falls in Portland Parish, a Slinky of cascading water without the crowds of Dunns River Falls, the popular waterfall that attracts tourists from resorts and cruise ships.

The government recently took over management of the attraction, setting up rules — such as no diving into the main pool — and charging admission. But rogue guides such as Lion lead guests on a back route along a banana trail that wends toward the falls.

Finding an artist

Rock Bottom inhabits a makeshift studio and gallery in the Port Antonio market, wedged between T-shirt stalls, racks of made-in-China shoes and tables laden with fruits and vegetables.

The woodcarver is a large man with a Buddha belly, arms as thick as a football player's and a bald head that could probably reflect the sun. He's hard to miss, and yet I missed him.

Free-I, the Dutch proprietor of Zion Country Beach Cabins in Portland Parish, where I stayed for a night, had recommended Rock Bottom, whose work he admired, and had sketched out a map of his location.

But once inside the whirlwind space, I became distracted by the cacophony of commerce. Women called out, inviting me to peruse their wares. (I fell for a bag of allspice.) A Rastafarian named Bobo showed off his creations, a macrame bikini that would unravel with the first wave and a teeny skirt the size of a tube top. After a few circles around the market, I finally found the artist chipping away at a face of a Rasta man. In his early 20s Rock Bottom had been a diver, catching fish and conchs he would sell on the pier. He also bought up carved works that he would resell. But a dearth of supply forced him to cut himself out as the middleman and take up the craft.

He still remembers his first sale: It was of a Rastafarian man, similar to the one he was carving the day I met him. It takes him about a day and a half to design, sand and paint the artwork, which he sells for about $23.

His collection covers a series of walls and tables and features turtles, birds, Arawak Indians, Bob Marley and Maroons, the runaway slaves of Jamaica.

"Carving originated in Africa, and we are African Jamaican," he said beneath the image of a glowering Indian chief. "It tells our history."

On the plane ride home after my people-meeting adventure, I sat near a couple from upstate New York who had stayed at an all-inclusive. They grimaced as they recalled their claustrophobic experience at the resort.

Sympathetic to their reaction, I told them that for their next trip, I knew a few Jamaicans they could meet. And I'd be happy to make the introductions.