Hey everybody

After a long trip of 20 hours from Greece to Jamaica, we finally arrived some days ago in Kingston! Luckily this time without any problems, so also without losing my luggage! The flight was very long, but we all slept the whole time. We were exhausted! Travelling is always really hard, so we could use some hours to sleep.

When we were discovering the city, we met a Belgian woman who has been living for 20 years in Jamaica now. The first thing she asked was about our political situation. She read something on the internet about us not having a government and thought that it was just too crazy. She told us about the political situation in Jamaica, which is really different when you compare it with the system we use in Belgium, but it is really successful!

The strangest thing is that Jamaica doesn’t have a king/queen or president itself. Although they are an independent state, ‘their’ queen is the queen of England. She is represented in Jamaica by a governor general, Patrick Allen. She has the executive power, but this is mostly executed by the cabinet, which is led by the Prime Minister, Bruce Golding.

Bruce Golding is a part of the Jamaican Labour Party, one of two major political parties. The other party is the People’s National Party.

The Queen doesn’t have the political power, this lies with the Parliament. The Parliament gets elected every 5 years and exists of a House of elected members who represent 60 constituencies and a Senate of 21 members. The senate can’t be elected by the people, they get chosen by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

While she was telling all of this, she gave us a city tour around Kingston. So after today, we did not only know a lot about the politics, we also saw the most beautiful places of Kingston.

I’ll be back next week to tell you all our adventures in CUBA! 

Source: http://www.discoverjamaica.com/govpol.htm

17-04-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Jolien Janssens  

Hello all and welcome again on our.

We have left Greece behind us and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, to reach or next destination Jamaica. We wanted to visit Jamaica for its beautiful beaches, lush green forests, misty mountains and stunning shoreline. But next to that, there are some other public attractions, why we wanted to visit Jamaica.

First of all we have the Dunn’s River Falls. The thing that makes the Dunn’s River Falls so special is that you can climb on the waterfalls. Together with a guide we have forced the waterfall and went to the top of Dunn’s River Falls. Lucky for us we had a guide, because there a lot of slippery place who could cause falling of the waterfall. We also filmed some very nice shots that we will upload as soon as possible. When we arrived to the top we had an amazing view over the Dunn’s River Falls.

Later on we have visited the Dolphins cove. This is an amazing place in the marine park where can relax and swim with a family of bottleneck dolphins. The animals were pushing our feet with their noses, or you had the possibility to grab their fins and hang on for a crazy ride.

What we have especially have seen in Jamaica is the large variety of water sports. This is because Jamaica has one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. On the beaches you can find clubs, which offer jet skiing to para-sailing and snorkeling lessons.

Jamaica is a very nice country to visit and I think we will back in the future.

http://www.caribbeanchoice.com/jamaica/content.asp?article=1831

15-04-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Olivier De Smet  

Jamaica( Port Antonio )
Dear bloggers 

After a 16-hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean with “Air Jamaica” I must admit that I am fed up. I took the plane from Athens to Brussels, refueled there and flew then straight to Kingston the Capital of Jamaica. Then I still needed to take the train and the bus to eventually get to my final destination ( Port Antonio). Because of the fact that I used all of the transportation systems here in Jamaica I will tell you something more about it in this blog post.

The transport infrastructure in Jamaica consists out of roadways, railways and airways. Transportation on the water is also used but not much, it’s only used for tourism.
About the roadways, I can tell you that it consists of 13 049 miles (around 21,000 kilometers). Only 9321 miles out of the total is paved. Which means that there is still a quite large amount of dirt roads. Freeways didn’t exist in Jamaica, but thanks to some investors, the government eventually built freeways that connected the main population centers of the island. Due to this investment, roadways became the primary means of transport.

Railways in Jamaica aren’t very popular anymore. A lot of the railways were closed to build roads on. It is estimated that only 53 kilometers of the once 272 kilometer long railway is still used today.

About the air transport in Jamaica I can only tell you that there are  3 airports. One in Kingston ( the capital of Jamaica), one in Boscobel and one in Montego Bay.

So if you are planning to come to Jamaica, know that Jamaica has three means of transportation. The best way to get to Jamaica in the first place is by plane. You can take the boat but then it will be a 6-day boat trip instead of a 16-hour flight from Europe.  And for people like me who get sea sick, I don’t think it would be a pleasant journey. Once you are in Jamaica you can to choose to take the bus, rent a car or to take the train. If you have enough money, I think it would be useful if you rent a car. Then you are free to go everywhere you want to. In my case I couldn’t rent a car so I was forced to take the bus and train. But I’ll have to leave you all now, the sun is shining, the music is playing, the drinks are calling me so I’m going to partyyyyyyyy !   

You’ll hear from me soon! source: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Jamaica-TRANSPORTATION.html
(Arne Looffen)

14-04-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Arne Looffen  

Hello everyone!

After we visited Iran, Turkey and Greece, it’s now Jamaica’s turn.

Before we travelled to that country, we wanted to find out how save it is there. I already heard Jamaica had a lot of problems with criminality in the past. That’s why I did some research and found some articles about it.

I found out that Jamaica hardly can control the crime in his capital city Kingston. The biggest problem are the gangs, one of them is Fatherless. It’s a group of armed young men, who have lost their fathers in gang wars. Only last year, five members of the gang have lost their lives in gang wars.
Death became so common in these parts of Jamaica, that the inhabitants aren’t surprised anymore when there is a new victim.

Jamaica has the highest murder rates in the world. There have been already 300 murders this year, that’s just harrowing. The problem is that Jamaica finds himself in a never-ending spiral of gun crime. It’s a vicious cycle of killing on both sides; policemen kill criminals and also the other way around.

Things are already going so far, that recently schools closed down after rising gang violence in the area. The number of students attending schools has dropped by 40%. The CIA reports that crime in Jamaica is not new, due to the economic conditions in the 1970s, there was already a rise of the violence. The cycle of violence, drugs and poverty has served to impoverish large sectors on the populace.

Next to that, Jamaica has been a transhipment port for Colombian cocaine. They smuggle the cocaine into the islands and sell it. Then drug smugglers from Haiti trade sophisticated guns for marijuana and cocaine. The consequences of these practises are unbelievable; unemployment, teenage pregnancy and nearly every household is involved in some kind of criminal activity.

Young people fight in gang wars, older men travel to the city to rob and steal, and the women at home often take a break to carry drugs to the US and UK.

There is a high crime in Jamaica, but it is in the crime hotspots, and not in whole the country like everyone thinks. The hotspots are areas like Kingston, St Andrews and Trench Town, it’s a mix of inner cities and high unemployment neighbourhoods where young gangs high on crack cocaine and armed with guns to kill.

Analysts say Jamaica’s culture of crime is a larger, social problem and will take more than police action to solve. Improving the economy, decreasing unemployment and cleaning up politics will be the first step to stop the criminality.

I think Jamaica has huge problems that already drag for years. The main problem isn’t the criminality, but the poverty of the people. That’s why people start to steal and deal drugs. So the first thing that has to change is the economy and of course the political situation. You can’t have a wealthy country without a stable political situation. Next to that Jamaica also has to create jobs, so the unemployment can decrease. This is a job for the government. They can decide to do some infrastructural reforms. For example building new houses, new bridges … in that way they can employ people and it’s also good for the economy of the country. Jamaica will come in a positive vicious cycle and things will become better. One thing is for sure, it can’t go on like the situation is today.

If everyone realizes this and they want something changes, it won’t be a big problem. But the government has to take the first step. We can also help Jamaica by giving good advice and stimulate them to do some investments. But I don’t think its good idea to support them by giving them money. They have to do it by themselves, or they will have the same problem in about 5 years.

We aren’t scared to go to Jamaica, even if we know that there is a lot of criminality. We will just avoid the criminal hotspots for our own good.

That was my blog for this week, again a country full of secrets!  I hope you stay all tuned and I see you next week back in Jamaica!

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6657203.stm

14-04-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Sieglinde Debeer