Expat Life: Starting Over in Treasure Beach, Jamaica
I fell in love with Jamaica at first sight. The laid back people, the bright flowers (in the middle of my own dark winter season), and the sudden relief of my joint pain captured my attention and imagination. But how does a woman from Shawnee, Oklahoma end up as an expat, living in Treasure Beach, Jamaica? This is how starting over began for me.
At the time of my first trip to Jamaica, I owned a goat farm and was a professional goat cheese maker. I had just started developing a “market” for my “useless” goat offspring (males…hey, they don’t give milk) among Africans and Jamaicans that live in my area. I saw goats roaming everywhere in Jamaica and was curious as to how I could manage mine to make them more attractive to my market base.
We flew home a few days later, with tears in my eyes, having this odd ache in my heart. It was as if I was leaving someone I loved behind.
Once I was back home in the snow and freezing temperatures, I immediately started emailing Jamaican agricultural officials. I told them that I wanted to learn more about their meat goats. My real goal to know about them as Jamaicans. For a long time, I was ignored but I kept writing to every official looking email I could find.
Eventually, I was hooked up with a woman who was a livestock officer for RADA (their Dept of Ag.) We began having frequent conversations. She asked if I would be interested in coming to Jamaica to teach goat cheese production to local women.
This class was held in the Treasure Beach Women’s Center…in the town I now call “home.” Did this happen by chance? I think not.
Fast forward a few years. By this time, I had become close friends with this RADA officer. In fact, I became the God mother to her son. I visited every six weeks or so, staying in her little home, learning new aspects about life in Jamaica each time. It was always in my mind that I’d like to live in Jamaica, but the questions were “How?” and “When?”
In January of 2014, I took my 15-year-old daughter and her 15-year-old friend to Negril, on the Northwest Coast of Jamaica, for a week-long vacation. Staying in a mid-ranged resort, we were enjoying the sun, beaches and the water, but decided to try something new.
On Wednesday morning we headed out for a little adventure. Having seen men walking horses up and down the beach, we decided to try it out. The driver picked us up, set us up with our rag-tag horses and three questionable looking guides. My gut said to tell the guy to forget it but he already had our money (a rookie mistake) so we headed out.
As it turned out, my gut was right. Within a short time, I found myself in an ambulance, and then a hospital…with a broken back. Yeah. Worst. Nightmare. Of. My. Life.
I won’t go into the details here but I will say that I soon discovered that I have severe osteoporosis. This only served to heighten my desire to escape the icy, slippery New Hampshire winters. It also put my horseback riding days, once a serious pleasure for me, on permanent hold.
When I had more or less recovered, my trips to Jamaica picked up again, albeit at a much slower pace. I still felt great relief from the joint pain due to my rheumatoid arthritis, but my back couldn’t handle the flights or the bumpy car rides. Depression began to set in.
Often, I sat at home, trapped inside during the icy months, killing myself trying to manage my goats and the cheese making. I broke two ribs despite my careful lifestyle, once, just from leaning all of my weight on the edge of my cheese vat as I made cheese!
It became obvious that things had to change.
During one of my visits to Treasure Beach, a friend took me to see a house that was going up for rent. It was owned by a mutual friend. Although it needed work, my friend spoke to the mutual friend on my behalf after I left. With his rental approval, I hatched the plan for my first “winter in Jamaica.”
The youngest of my 10 children (yes, I said 10) was having a rough time in school and asked to be homeschooled the next year, her sophomore year. Having homeschooled my older five children, this was old-hat to me. Arrangements were made over the summer, books were purchased and we started planning our trip.
Then, I found out that the “mutual friend” had rented his house to someone else. Oops.
I put a call out on social media, asking if anyone knew ANYBODY who would rent a house in Treasure Beach for the season at “local people” prices, not “tourist rates.” Although Treasure Beach isn’t a tourist hot spot like Negril, it has a strong appeal to non-touristy-tourists. Long-term prices were way out of my range.
A man I knew only through social media messaged me the name and number of his elderly aunt-in-law, Miss Julie, whom he thought might be interested. Now living in Florida, she had health issues and rarely made it down to her house in Treasure Beach.
When I called, Julie was lovely on the phone and we hit it right off.
I mentioned to her that my 16-year-old daughter, Melody, and I were going to be in Jamaica in September to look at rental options before we returned in January for the winter months. She insisted that we come stay at her home and offered to come down and show us around.
You can read all about my discoveries on that first visit in my post Welcome To Jamaica. It was quite an introduction to small town life in Jamaica. Julie is related to virtually everyone in Treasure Beach. If she isn’t related to them, she helped raise them or is intimately connected somehow. Her gate should have been a revolving one, as a path was beaten to her door daily.
By the end of that short stay, Julie and I both knew that I belonged in her house and arrangements were made for that to happen. In the beginning of the following January, my daughter and I flew down to begin making Jamaica a new “home.”
Wandering around town with a gorgeous, blonde 16-year-old girl by my side certainly made introductions easy.
Everywhere we went, young men greeted us and wanted to show us around, a fact that freaked Melody out at first, as she wasn’t used to such intense attention.
As time went by, we sorted out the good guys from the creepers and got into our own social circles. By the time we headed back to the States in March, Treasure Beach felt like home. With each stay since, relationships have deepened.
I’m still in the transitional stage between “official expat” and “visitor” legally, as it is quite a long process to get permanent residency paperwork filed and approved. My Jamaican friends tease that I’m as much, if not more, “Jamaican” at this point than they are. While I don’t know about that, I do know that I love this place.
When I’m away from Jamaica, I feel like a part of me is missing. The only way I can describe my life in Treasure Beach is that it’s like living on the set of “Cheers,” where everybody knows my name. Far from perfect (remind me to tell you about the people who threatened to poison my dogs), it IS perfect for me. I can’t wait until the day that I’ve sold my house in the States and can go to Jamaica “for good.” Until then, I’ll have to stick to the 90 day-at-a-time, 180 per year rules that tie my hands.
If you could pack up and go anywhere, where would you go and why? Tell me about it in the comments.
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2 Comments
jamaicatradingnetwork
I went last week to Treasure Beach for the first time to attend Calabash Literary Festival and it really is nice.
Jamerican
That’s awesome! I’ve not managed to be there for the Calabash Literary Festival yet, but I hope to see it one day. I’m glad you enjoyed it! I saw some great photos and videos shot by my friends there.