Tourism according to Jamaica Kincaid

"The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person day to day."

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                Through her writing, Jamaica Kincaid speaks volumes about the negative aspects she sees in the tourism industry, and in tourists themselves. She seems to dwell only on the negative aspects that tourism has brought to Antigua, ignoring that maybe it isn’t tourism that is the cause for all of this. Maybe these problems can be attributed to other problems, such as corruption and inequality, and one of the symptoms present is the “ugliness” of tourism on the island.  To call every tourist an ugly person is to generalize a group of people who come from all walks of life in order to explore a new place in the world.

While some tourists and their practices might be exploitative towards the natives in whatever region they happen to travel to, it can’t be denied that tourists also serve to improve local conditions in many cases. They bring money into otherwise poor yet beautiful areas, which helps the locals fund things such as schools, hospitals, parks, etc. The situation is obviously not so black and white, as tourists can and do cause harm to local monuments or fauna, but the situation is not as black and white as Jamaica Kincaid makes it seem through her writing.

My Experience as Tourist

     My weekend as a tourist was almost completely a failure. I traveled to Ponce with my friend Juan, in order to attend the ACS Senior Technical meeting that was being held at the Hilton Hotel. That must have been the best possible scenario to pretend to be a tourist, in a town where nobody knows me, but specially a hotel, which is exactly where tourists are supposed to be found. Well that wasn’t even close to the case, as I barely talked to any strangers during my stay in the hotel. Most Americans seemed unapproachable and not inclined to make small talk, while the Puerto Ricans where with their families so there wasn’t much I could have done to talk to them.

     

     My only experience making somebody believe I was a tourist was when we went to the town square in Ponce, and went around to the different bars. After a couple of beers I felt more comfortable telling the white lie that I was a tourist, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull off saying that I was from another country, so I decided that I was going to be a Puerto Rican raised in Florida and visiting family, which seemed like the most believable lie. I started talking to a girl in a bar, and she asked me where I was from because she thought I had an accent (that’s actually just how bad my Spanish is). I told her my spiel, and I thought she believed me, but I think the reality was that she must have seen through my poor disguise because the conversation fizzled from there on out. Everyone else I met during the trip was either a friend of mine, or a friend of a friend, so I didn’t feel comfortable lying. A better story might have gotten at least one person to believe me, and because of that I didn’t really get to feel what being a tourist is like in Puerto Rico, but I did get to enjoy the sights and nightlife of Ponce, which was completely foreign to me, so in a way that could have been considered my tourist experience.

My grandmother

           My grandmother, Raquel Estrada Gonzalez, has been an important part of my life since I was born. She has always been there for me, and goes out of the way to help me and my cousins in any way possible. Her love for me is a thing that I could never doubt, but she has always had a tendency to overreact to most situations, with results that vary from either being hilarious, or extremely frustrating. From what my father has told me, she has always been like this in every aspect of her life, and will continue to be like that for the foreseeable future.

            One of my first experiences with my grandmother’s overreactions was when my grandfather and I went to buy pool supplies. We had been tinkering with the filter motor, and headed out to buy a part that we needed, accidentally leaving the motor to start up on a timer. We were in Guaynabo when grandma calls my grandfather, screaming hysterically that water was flooding the outdoor patio and running into the street, at least that’s what we managed to understand after a few minutes of her babbling/screaming. The solution to this was simple, you turn off a small switch directly on top of the motor and it stops the flow of water, but between her anxiousness and trademarked tendency to overreact, she either couldn’t find it, or wouldn’t even attempt to. My grandfather was furious, yelling at the top of his lungs that she had to turn it off, but this continued all the way to Bayamon, and when we got to the house water was still rushing into the street. We got out of the car, and walked into my grandmother calling my uncle asking for help, while grandpa went straight to turn off the motor. Literally hundreds of gallons of water were wasted due to her overreaction that time.

While the previous example is slightly understandable for people that can’t handle high stress situations, her overreactions weren’t restricted to just serious events. A few years ago my father got a tattoo of an owl covering his chest and shoulders. Obviously my grandmother would disapprove since she’s very religious and doesn’t approve of tattoos, but her reaction at the time when my father showed her was to start crying uncontrollably all day. She would not stop crying, telling my father to get it removed, how he was going to hell, etc. This maybe would have been understandable if my cousin or I had gotten a similar tattoo, but my father is 40 years old, has his own job and family, and to top it off, has other tattoos. That’s what made it even less understandable for me, he already had about 5 other tattoos, why react like this to another?

But all of us know that her actions come from a place of love, if at times not rational thought. My grandmother might not react well to some situations, but that is usually because she cares very deeply about the people around her and wants them to do what she thinks is good. Usually she apologizes for an outburst after thinking clearly for a while, but we all know that’s the person that she is, and we love and accept her as such.