Howard Hamilton - Horse Sense FUNNY THINGS dreams. I've been having more than my share of them of late. A few nights ago, I had one that started out very pleasantly and ended up a real nightmare. My dreams, like yours I suppose, tend to shift through place and time as if changing gears.
Last night for example, I dreamed that I had gone back many years to a time when Jamaica's tourism industry was just finding its feet. Rich and famous people were coming here then and the old Myrtle Bank Hotel was still standing. Well, I dreamed that a decision had been taken to place a casino in the Constant Spring Hotel. Just a small casino, mind you, but I could see the elegant patrons it attracted and how it contributed to the overall success of the hotel.
CASINO
My dream then raced ahead to an international golf tournament that was being held at the Constant Spring Resort and Golf Club, which seemed to have grown into a magnificent resort replete with conference facilities and a splendid golf club.
The casino, too, had grown and now seemed to be about 20,000 sq.ft. in size and it was evidently very profitable, as I could make out every Minister of Finance that Jamaica ever had since independence whooping it up at the bar with someone whom I assumed to be the owner.
My dream then took me to the Tower Isle Hotel, which I could hardly recognise. It was nothing resembling the old Tower Isle I used to visit as a young man. Here was a 1,000-room resort with a glittering casino, a magnificent marina in which large and luxurious yachts reposed lazily and a bustling and smiling staff of 1,400 Jamaicans.
I could hear the voice of a radio announcer who called himself the Cool Fool With the Live Jive interviewing the principal of an institution which I gathered was the Jamaican Institute for Hotel and Tourism Studies. The principal was heaping praise on the head of the Minister of Finance, who had been able to double the Institute's budget thanks to an increase in the casino tax.
HOSTAGE BY HIGGLERS
Suddenly I was in the present and while I recognised Kingston, I was amazed at how dramatically it had changed. People walked about briskly and purposefully and there were obviously many non-Jamaicans, visitors, mixed with the crowds and going about their business. It soon became clear that these were tourists. They were visiting the Parish Church, which when I last saw it was being held hostage by higglers.
The Ward Theatre disgorged a huge crowd of laughing people and at Hope Gardens the sound of laughter mingled with the music of birdsong.
A newspaper headline alerted me to the presence in town of a huge convention: "2,000 Doctors Meet In Conference Here" it read. The venue I gathered to be the massive St. Andrew Conference Centre, an elegant 3,000 room complex that boasted a casino, lavish night-time entertainment and meeting facilities capable of accommodating 2,000 in a single space.
But then things shifted gears. The newspaper headline changed to read: "Jamaica Way Ahead of Region in Murder!". I could hear a voice relating that "--. Last year Jamaica recorded a murder rate of 40 per 100,000 persons. By comparison, Guyana recorded a murder rate last year of 19 per 100,000; Trinidad and Tobago 13 per 100,000; and Barbados 10 per 100,000--." And then I hear my wife's voice calling my name.
It turns out she had been trying to awaken me and the voice I heard describing the murder rate was actually on the radio. That was no dream, it was real. It is real. Life in Jamaica is rapidly becoming a nightmare for many.
WRONG TURN
I believe we made a wrong turn at an important juncture way back in the past. In fact we made several. I believe that early on we should have made a pragmatic and visionary commitment to full-scale tourism development, despite whatever objections the rabble-rousers at UWI may have had.
I also believe had that commitment included the decision to include casinos as a part of the tourism product, we could have grown the industry much more quickly and profitably than we have.
A more lucrative industry would have yielded more and better jobs and more tax. The increased revenue could have enabled government to invest more heavily in education and human resource development and - I truly believe this - Jamaica could have achieved in a single generation what was achieved in Singapore. But then Singapore had a Lee Kwan Yew. Jamaica has not had one. My dreams have not gotten that wild.
