This is part 2 of my write-up of my trip to Jamaica. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, do check that out first.

Our second Sunday in Jamaica consisted mostly of the same activity as the first Sunday: travelling. As our time in Ocho Rios came to an end, it was time to make our way to Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. We embarked on a 3-hour-ish bus journey from the resort to the Yardie Guesthouse, our stay for the next week.

The guesthouse is the family home of Larry, our local guide and organiser, who first started to accommodate friends, then friends of friends, and eventually also tourists. He can host at least 15 people, I think. But there are plans to increase that number. In the picture above you see the view from the kitchen located next to my bedroom. It was definitely a big difference from how it was at the resort, but that was also expected. I was sitting there after all my stuff was in my room, and after we’d gone to the supermarket. I was letting it sink in where we were and what was to come with the thought “This is gonna be our place for the next week. We are really here.”

We had an unexpected meeting on the first evening. Well, it would have been an unexpected meeting regardless of the timing. We made our acquaintance with a crab that was hiding outside behind the door of the kitchen. Apparently, the crab had been a resident for a couple of years now. It’s not the most likely place to find a crab, I think, considering we are not super close to the sea.

The guesthouse is also where we took some of our classes. They either took place in the open kitchen (see the picture above) or in the parking space in front of the kitchen. The first offered shade whereas the latter did not, but it was bigger. The classes that I took were Team Royal and Ghetto Legacy. During the week in Kingston, we could decide which dancers we want classes from. This offered us the flexibility to create our own schedule, which was the opposite of Dancehall Mecca.

Tuesday was probably the day of this week I looked forward to most because it included classes from both Orville Xpressionz and Boysie Roses. Orville’s class focussed on skanking and I almost cried in the middle of the class. After training skanking for a couple of years now and enjoying it so much, it made me emotional to be in his class and finally see aspects of his dancing first-hand. In the past, the best I had was videos, but now I finally had the chance, and even the honour, to witness him dance in real life.

In the afternoon, we had Boysie’s class. We took a taxi from the guesthouse to where Boysie lives. Larry didn’t give the driver a specific address but just some general directions. When we arrived there our taxi driver stopped on the side of the street and started asking random people if they knew where “Boysie the dancer” was living. Although the first person couldn’t tell us, the second person did! This is something that I can't imagine happening in Belgium. We barely know who lives on our street, let alone where a specific dancer lives, even if they are as famous as Boysie.

Tuesday evening/night consisted of attending not one, not two, but three events! First, we went to Rub-a-Dub Tuesdayz at Dubwise Café. It’s a weekly event organised by Singer J to highlight the Rub-a-Dub genre, including performances by veteran artists. Next up was Fully Aktiv Tuesdays, which was our warm-up party before going to another iconic Kingston party called Boasey Tuesdays.

Wednesday started with a relaxing morning for me because I didn’t have any classes planned and I didn’t plan to do anything instead. Originally, it was going to be a day without any classes, but Anne organised a class with Overload Skankaz which a bunch of us joined. We had to drive quite a bit to get to a place called Bog Walk.

The spot where we took the class is a famous one among dancers and pops up a lot on social media. In the picture above you see the place where we danced on the right side, where the grey car is. So it was literally next to the road. And the picture shows the opposite of how busy the road got when we were dancing. I have to say that dancing next to a busy road is a different experience: you want to focus on the class, and the music, and at the same time you also have these cars passing by, their drivers and passengers looking at what you are doing and honking from time to time. At the same time, it gives you the feeling of being a part of a bigger whole, compared to going to a dedicated room for dancing where you only hear the music and there is no one else except the dancers. Another great class/experience! Thanks Anne for making this possible! 🫶🏻

Lime Cay is a small uninhabited island that’s 20 minutes away with a boat ride from Port Royal. Although we had planned to do either a nature trip or beach day on Thursday, we hadn’t considered Lime Cay yet. But that changed when we got word that Dancehall Family Tree 876 (DFT) was organising an event there. We drove over to Port Royal, waited for our boat, and arrived at a beach buzzing with party vibes: DFT had set up a DJ booth, a bar for drinks, and a place to cook. Although we went to the White River and had Dancehall Mecca’s beach day in Ocho Rios, this was different because it was an island, an uninhabited island even, and it’s far from the busy streets of Kingston. Being there really felt like being away from the busy lives that most of us have back home.

The boat ride back to the mainland was a lot calmer compared to the ride to the island. It was more clouded and it felt like it was going to rain. I don't remember for sure but I think that we also heard thunder before we left the island. During the ride back when looking towards the sea and not having any land in sight, it gave me a special feeling: the vastness of it all, the smallness of me or us within this, and, contradictory maybe, the large impact of this trip’s experience on me.

I already mentioned Bog Walk as an iconic place to dance, Belleh23 is another one. It’s a guesthouse in Kingston that not only caters to dancers but also other creatives such as musicians and filmmakers. We spent most of our Friday there. This includes two classes. The first one was by Xqlusiv Dancers and the second one was by Mama Blazzaz - the powerhouse from Sopreme Blazzaz. I only did the first one and it was my first class of Xqlusiv in a long time. If I’m correct, my last one was in 2021. That’s ages ago! 😱 

After our classes we made our way back to the Yardie Guesthouse to have dinner and prepare for the last party of our trip: Dance_AllFridays. It was at the same location as Fully Aktiv Tuesdays, which we attended on Tuesday. There were fewer people compared to the iconic parties and the setting was different from the parties that were in the streets. From a dancing perspective, this was my favourite party because, to my feeling, there were more people dancing besides the (Jamaican) dancers. Although there were still performances by the Jamaicans, it felt less like we were just spectators.

Our last full day consisted of two nature trips. During the first one, we drove up to Saint Andrew, northeast of Kingston, where we visited a waterfall. But we didn’t stay too long because of the rain that started to fall like 30-45 minutes after we arrived. We took that as a sign to leave and some of us headed out to Bob Marley Beach, known for its black sand and being between the sea on one side and a cliff on the other. 

If you want to see some great pictures of the waterfall (and the White River in Ocho Rios), be sure to check out Helen’s Instagram!

Over the past two weeks, we have been to four beaches. This has taught me something about myself. Before the trip, I saw going to the beach as something that, honestly, was just a waste of time: I’m not doing anything there besides sitting in the sand. I’m not doing something significant, something that contributes to my dance career. Spending a decent amount of time on any activity that doesn’t help me as a dancer has been a cause of anxiety over the last seven years. 

I get a lot of inspiration from Kobe Bryant. He said when talking about successful careers that the most important thing is when you are able to look at yourself in the mirror and answer the questions “Did I give everything I could? Did I do everything possible to try to get better?” with “yes”. When I finish my career I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and say yes to those questions. I don’t want to have the slightest feeling of “If I would have done this… If I trained more… If I worked harder…” Without going too deep into all of this here, this mindset, which has plenty of advantages, does not make it easy for me to justify doing things such as going to the beach for half a day or a full day. Although it has improved over the years, it did cause some discomfort when signing up for this trip knowing that leisure time was part of the program.

After these two weeks, I can say that I did learn to appreciate being on a beach and not “doing anything”. There are multiple reasons at play here: being in Jamaica which means being far away physically from everything at home, not having set any expectations for myself to get certain things done (which I did before starting this trip), being with people whose company I enjoy even when there is no conversation going on, and this all in the context of dance or maybe rather because of dance.

During the morning of the last day, Sophia and I recorded a last-minute dance video! 🤩 We were two weeks there and it was only on the very last day that we did a video together… Like, what were we thinking?! 😅

On our way to Montego Bay where we would take our leave to head back home, we stopped at a place called “Jus Coool”. It's a well-known shop that sells bread pudding. They had a lot of different flavours including potato, cornmeal, banana, and pumpkin. I wanted to get a banana one but they ran out of that flavour, so I went with a cornmeal bread pudding instead. The others bought potato ones. I expected them to have a sweet taste because of the word “pudding”. But this was not the case. Now, when I removed that expectation from my head and tasted both flavours I did understand why potato is the most popular one. I’m adding it to my list of recipes that I should try at home at some point. 😄

Closer to real life

Very different, more intense. That’s how I would compare our first week in Ocho Rios to our second week in Kingston. We got a better understanding of Jamaican life and culture because we were closer to Jamaicans' real life than at Dancehall Mecca where everything was happening at the resort. The fact that we stayed at a Jamaican-owned and run guesthouse was one of the biggest reasons why we were closer to their real life.

In Kingston, we had to take the car for everything that happened outside of the guesthouse, such as going to the supermarket, classes, and parties. The corresponding car rides resulted in us seeing and discovering more of the country. Larry, who often drove us, didn’t hesitate to explain about specific aspects of their lives, to point out which famous dancers live or lived in areas we drove through, and to tell us tales about mermaids!

In my write-up of the first week I compared the classes at Dancehall Mecca to those in Europe, but how do the classes in Kingston compare to those in Europe? The locations themselves make all the difference: the guesthouse with Team Royal and Ghetto Legacy, Bog Walk with Overload Skankkaz, a gym with Orville, the street where Boysie lives, and Belleh23 with Xqlusiv Dancers. These specific settings are something you won’t ever find in Europe, which makes total sense. And that makes it a totally unique experience and puts us out of our comfort zones, or at least me.

Unforgettable

The whole trip was an amazing experience! The week in Kingston was my favourite week. Dancehall Mecca was great but the fact that we were closer to real life in Kingston does make that week more special. And I feel that there is still so much to discover and so much to learn about Jamaica, Dancehall, and myself.

To Johanna, thank you for organising everything and taking care of us during these two weeks! 🫂 The first thing you said to me in the morning when we saw each other for the first time since I arrived was “Welcome to the chaos.” 😂 It still makes me laugh every time I think about it. I was not expecting to live with like 7 people in one apartment for a week and those four words were a perfect preface to what was to come. But hey, we made it through! 😆 As you probably already figured out from what I wrote above, I had an amazing experience those two weeks! I will definitely recommend Let’s Go To Jamaica to others who are interested in visiting Jamaica. See you soon!

To Sophia, Anne, and Helen, before I texted you to meet up at the gate at Frankfurt Airport at the start of the trip, there was a small part of me that thought “Maybe I should not text them. I might bother them. They might want to enjoy their time with just the three of them and I don’t want to spoil that.” I’m so happy I didn’t let that thought win. Whenever I will think about my first time in Jamaica, whether it’s next week, next year, or in 10 years, I will always think about you as well. You made this experience so much better than it would have been without you! Taking classes together, going on nature trips together, shopping together, cooking together (“cooking” is a big word here, I know, haha), going to parties together, being in the car for hours together, and - of course - waiting together 😆 Over time I might forget the details of this trip but I will never forget how I felt being there with you three. I miss you and hope to see you again soon! ❤️🫶🏻