The Globe: Jamaica's Cockpit Country

The Blogger spent about a week in Jamaica's Cockpit Country, reporting an article for Discovery Channel Magazine. The Cockpit Country is a unique and little-traveled section of the island's interior which has always been so inhospitable that it has managed, in large part, to avoid development. Most Jamaicans have still never set foot there.  As you can see from the photo above, its topography resembles an inverted egg carton -- steep hills separated by deep recesses that reminded the colonizing British of the pits used for cockfighting. Hence the name Cockpit.

The Cockpit is precious for many reasons: it's the watershed for the tourism-intensive north coast; it's the world's foremost example of limestone karst topography (a landscape of limestone covered by jungle canopy); it's home to several endemic species, including the giant swallowtail butterfly (largest butterfly in the Western hemisphere), two species of parrot, and the Jamaican yellow boa; and it's home to a people group called the Maroons. The Maroons are national heroes to Jamaicans, since they are the longest continuous population of freedmen in the Americas. They were slaves who escaped from the Spanish and later battled the British for decades from their redoubt in the heart of the Cockpit Country. Pity the hapless Redcoats, sent into this hot, overgrown, treacherous, malarial, waterless place to do battle with the expert locals, who defeated army after army sent in to rout them. The British ended up signing a peace treaty with the Maroons, whose leader, Captain Cudjoe, insisted that it be done the African way, using the parties' blood for ink.

The Maroons still live in the village of Accompong, and I went there to visit the locals and interview the elders. It's sad to see the state of their culture. They pride themselves on the purity of their African culture (They are Ashanti, from what is now Ghana); because they have been so isolated from the rest of Jamaica, and because their treaty with the British allowed them a certain degree of autonomy, they managed to avoid a lot of outside cultural influences for much of their history. But the world keeps shrinking. Now people want more things. They want to get out. They want their kids to get out. Few of them want to stick around Accompong growing yams and not really having an income. So the elders face a dilemma: either bring in some kind of development or lose the population to greener pastures. Yet, of course, as they bring in development, a lot of outside influences will come in with it, and their cultural ties to Africa will continue to disappear as they become more Jamaican. As it is, most expressions of their Ashanti legacy are mere vestiges -- their language survives only in a few songs, their religion has been Christianized, and their physical artifacts are mere symbolic relics. The strongest remaining tie is their deep knowledge of the bush and its medicinal plants, and as they grow less and less close to the land, that, too, will disappear.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun reporting this piece. I got to bang around in the sweetest LandRover I've ever beheld, which belongs to a fantastic guy named Jan (on the left in the photo below). Jan is a Jamaican from Kingston who is part of the Jamaican Caves Organization, which is equal parts funtime outdoor club and serious conservationist group. Jan was my guide for most of my trip.

The Cockpit Country is littered with caves, and Jan took me into a couple. They're enormous and beautiful, a nice change from good old Eagle Cave in the Adirondacks. Jan and his partner in the Jamaican Caves Organization have traveled for miles in underground rivers through some of these caves.

When I got to Accompong, Jan and I parted company, and I took shelter with an older expatriate American, who's trying to open up a resort/camping ground kind of place. It sits on top of a beautiful hill with spectacular views, and it will consist mainly of raised cabana-style thatched-roof shelters. It's not open yet, but Tony took me in. You could do worse than to sit taking notes as a gentle rain falls on the Cockpit Country at your back . . . . 

A very congenial farmer/caretaker named Gee, resting by the side of the road during the day's worst heat:

Jan, myself and a Peace Corps Volunteer named Paul spent one night with the family of the guy in the photo below. They have no electricity or running water, and use an outhouse and an outdoor kitchen with wood fire. They were very sweet, gracious people. We arrived after dark, and they were sitting on their front porch talking quietly in the dark: An old man, mother, father, a seven-year-old boy, and another boy under age two. The stars were raging overhead, and "peenie wallies" -- fireflies -- were flickering off in the dark among the yam vines and banana trees. I slept under the stars on the simple platform that comprises their back porch.

A father and son transporting yams by bicycle as the rain falls over Barbecue Bottom Road, which cuts through some of the prettiest scenery in the Cockpit Country:

Dango, who runs tours into Windsor Cave, the best-known cave in the Cockpit. Dango is also a subsistence farmer, so he gets up every morning before dawn, does his farming, then walks down the road to this shack at 10:00 or so. He sits in the shack until about 6:00 every evening, in case anyone comes along wanting to see the cave. He keeps a guestbook there, and by the looks of it, he averages maybe one visitor a week (and that's taking into account the fact that most arrive in groups of two or three). Ecotourism has just not taken off in the Cockpit Country. The crime rate in Jamaican cities has driven an "all-inclusive" style of tourism where most foreigners stay in beach resorts that are little self-contained universes and they never have to go out and brave the real Jamaica. So it's only a few intrepid souls who find their way out to the Cockpit Country, and even fewer who happen upon Dango's shack.