Foreign Service life in Jamaica: Land of Red Stripe, reggae, and romance

Part 3: Saying goodbye to paradise, and moving on

Last time, I told readers about the romantic encounter that changed my life during my my first Foreign Service posting in Jamaica: meeting my future wife, Margaret, at an informal gathering in a friend’s home, 3 weeks after arriving.

My 18 months in Jamaica passed slowly, moving through a kind of romantic haze: 40 years later, I remember almost every event—work-related and personal—with fondness. I was incredibly busy weekdays—the job on the visa section of the Kingston embassy was a relentless bear—and spent the weekends relaxing, either in the city or traveling around the island, determined to see everything I could of a geographically gorgeous island. As a city, Kingston itself is not particularly scenic—not like San Francisco or Paris, or Copenhagen, where I soon would move—and was generally shabby and often dilapidated, except for the newer business district in New Kingston, where shiny high-rise buildings and hotels tended to overshadow the unkempt, weedy sidewalks and potholed streets below.

The city’s fading infrastructure needed a lot of attention, which the struggling economy was not providing. Still, Jamaica was a historic old British colony—nearly 300 years old, with a lovely harbor, surrounded by breathtaking mountain—and finding one’s way around Kingston was an interesting challenge, often complicated by roundabouts, left-hand drive streets, and ubiquitous, poorly-maintained minivans—the preferred method of transport for almost everyone—causing traffic jams everywhere.

The city is best seen looking down from the mountains at night—alight and twinkling, almost serene—and I spent many evenings on the porch or grounds of Margaret’s Smokey Vale great-house, doing just that. Whether it was with a Red Stripe or rum punch, looking down at the city made me feel at peace—and any work-induced troubles far away. Margaret and I visited her friends occasionally; one of her close friends lived next door to me, and invited us over often. (At last three other single J.O.’s lived in my building—we were good friends, but only occasionally partied together.) The rest of the building’s 50 or 60 residents were a mix of expats and well-heeled Jamaicans, but I knew most of them only to nod at or speak to in the elevator.

One day a Soviet diplomat who lived there—I think—swam up to where I was sitting at the pool, said hello, in English, and then swam away. Never did figure that one out. (We were not yet on very good terms with the Soviets, in the Brezhnev era, before Gorbachev, and the brief U.S. “incursion” in Grenada in the fall of 1983 had not improved matters …)

On weekends, I traveled as much as I could, either with Margaret or alone, if she was working; she flew with Air Jamaica to Canada, the U.S., and throughout the Caribbean. Her job qualified her as a foreign-exchange earner, an enviable status; she had been flying for almost a decade when we met, and was fairly seniorm and was also a trade union representative for the flight attendants. She occasionally took part in labor negotiations. Once, when contract renewal talks were bogged down, she called me at work and asked if I would mind bringing over pizzas from the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, close to my office (and next door to the Foreign Ministry). I was happy to do so.

I did not expect the Deputy Prime Minister, Hugh Shearer, the government’s negotiator, to answer the door when I arrived. He was beaming as I handed him the boxes. That day I became known, indelibly, as “Pizza man!” My first “job” outside the Embassy … unpaid, of course.

At the Embassy, I was chosen as the consular section representative to the American Kingston Recreational Administration (AKRA; our Embassy commissary board), and shortly after that, elected as its president. Add one more unpaid job to my list. We had a full-time manager—an American spouse—who did all the heavy lifting, and all I had to do was preside over meetings. I did end up getting a free trip to the Bahamas out of it, when we were forced to visit the regional Internal Revenue Service office to resolve a technical issue with our quasi-official operation.

I also became involved, almost by accident, with the Jamaica-American Society, a sort of informal, grassroots friendship organization dedicated to building better ties between U.S. and Jamaican citizens, with occasional fund-raising projects and get-togethers. Traditionally, the president was Jamaican, elected by the membership, and an Embassy officer volunteered to be vice president for a year at a time; my deputy chief of mission sounded me out, and I agreed to serve. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, exactly, but what started out as quiet monthly meetings, where I smiled and said as little as possible, quickly turned more dramatic, when the other officers got into an argument and the president suddenly, angrily resigned. (Guess who ended up presiding over meetings as acting president for the next few months?)

The last thing we wanted was for it to collapse! If I felt like I was in a tight place, a little help from diplomatic training and advice from superiors at the Embassy, managed to help me keep the Society alive and moving forward cooperatively. As acting president for 6 months, I even managed to become friends with all the remaining members!

Margaret and I frequently visited other parts of the island together—she loved nothing better than showing off the tourist attractions of Jamaica, from Port Royal, the old pirate capital from the late 17th century, to Port Antonio, from Ocho Rios to Montego Bay, and just out into the countryside. I loved Port Antonio best of all—one of the prettiest places I ever saw, bar none—and we later spent a few days of our first honeymoon on Navy Island, a sort of resort off Port Antonio once owned by U.S. actor Errol Flynn. We even took a quick trip to Curacao to pick out wedding rings, and almost got married there early—but were not on the island for the minimum 72 hours required by the Dutch. (Darn it!)

I never did make it up to Blue Mountain Peak—more than 7,000 feet up—but she assured me it snowed there occasionally—OK, rarely, and lightly—up there, and that fireplaces were used to heat the travel cabins! Once I went to Negril on my own, just to say I had been there—it had a sort-of hippie-like reputation, which did not really appeal to me, I soon realized—and afterward, traveled back to the States a couple of times, either on business in Miami or to see my family in North Carolina.

A few of my longtime friends came down to visit me—and see the sights, with a free place to stay—and my now-six-year-old daughter traveled down there, alone, for a week to visit me (as a reward, I flew her back to spend a few days at Disney World!).

Those few U.S. trips had a curious after-effect: technically, any day spent in the United States had to be added on at the end of my absolute-legal-minimum 18-month tour, if I was to qualify for “home leave,” which normally came, under law, to FSOs away from the U.S. for at least two years. I say this because after Margaret and I had set a wedding date at close as possible to my originally scheduled departure date, my personnel officer informed me that I actually had to stay a week longer than I planned. That’s why we ended up spending part of our honeymoon in Jamaica, on Navy Island … rather than traveling to the U.S. immediately!

By regulation, I was required to seek permission from the Department of State to marry a foreign national—and she was required to undergo a cursory security investigation to “qualify” to marry me. The regulation specified 120 days notice, which we barely gave them—and the permission did come, but not until 48 hours before wedding day. As the clock rolled down, my deputy chief of mission cabled in a follow-up request for an immediate answer—and Washington finally responded. I had never expected a negative response—nothing in her past was suspicious, after all—but rules were rules, and during the Col War, you never knew.

I had already decided that if a negative response did come, the wedding would go ahead and I would then quietly resign from the Department. My boss knew all that …

* * * * * *

My brother and mother flew down for the small wedding at 300-year-old St. Andrew Parish Church—Margaret had one attendant, I had two other groomsmen, with my brother as best man—and then went on to a somewhat larger reception at the Pegasus Hotel’s rooftop restaurant. What had once started out as a very limited guest list, to keep costs to a minimum—no more than 150 sit-down guests, including family, a few VIPs (the Ambassador and his wife attended, and Deputy Prime Minister Shearer came alone) and a small sample of Embassy friends—ended up growing, of course. She and I agreed to split the costs. (I sold my car, which I had not planned to take back, anyway, to pay for it.) But it was all worth it, and fun—and folks, well, most of them partied well into the night. It wore my mother out—but she was a good sport, and flew back to North Carolina the next day.

I did not know why one of my Jamaica-American Society pals—the Society’s newly-elected president, Dena Wynter, wife of the publisher of the Daily Gleaner, was discreetly taking so many photographs, but after Margaret and I returned from Navy Island, we found out. A full-page spread appeared in the Gleaner’s afternoon tabloid, the Star, titled “The Vice Consul and the Stewardess,” and the whole city, it seemed, was abuzz. (I can only guess that “Flight Attendant” did not roll off the editor’s tongue in a headline, as easily as stewardess … which Margaret hated!)

I could have been mortified—that kind of publicity I had certainly not sought or wanted!— but it was actually kind of a nice tribute from the J-A Society—and the photographs of Margaret were good, at least. And besides, I was leaving the country!

A few months before we were married in January 1985, I got the news that my next posting would be at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark—the country from which my father’s grandparents had migrated, more than a century earlier—and the first choice on my list of prospective second tours. I was thrilled! It was also language-designated, which meant I needed six months of Danish language training, slated to begin at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington County, just outside Washington, about a month after Margaret and I were married. It would allow me to get off language probation, but would mean long hours of intensive studying in a rigorous new language (no one in my family spoke it anymore, and acquiring a 3/3 rating—minimum fluency—was tough).

My home leave—30 days—would be the rest of our honeymoon, proper—and we traveled around in North Carolina for several weeks. But rather than quit her job immediately, and stay on, she decided to keep working at Air Jamaica and visit me for a week or 10 days at a time, until July or August, when she would move permanently to Rosslyn, Virginia, where we were subleasing an apartment near FSI. She would then be naturalized as a U.S. citizen—the two-year requirement was expeditiously speeded up for diplomatic spouses—and then we would move to Copenhagen in October 1985.

Our island romance was going global!

Next time: Foreign Service life in Copenhagen: Like something out of a fairy tale …