Today I will steer away from Jamrock and address what the rest of the world seems to be talking about: former CIA director General David Petraeus’ resignation after it was discovered that he had an affair with his biographer. It is making news in JA, but more with a sort of detached fascination. More broadly, it seems like a lot of the coverage consists of either a whole lot of people casting their own morals on the situation or simply expressing a voyeuristic penchant for gossip. Both natural reactions, of course.

Let’s start by stating that powerful people are not immune to affairs and scandals and rotten judgment. The premise that politicians or military generals or even CEOs are immune to such behaviour has never made sense to me. Although, it would not be so far-fetched to think that a disciplined and brilliant fellow such as Petraeus might be able to control himself. Alas, he could not.

But that’s not what this post is about. Instead, I’ve been wondering about the timing of all of this. If the news had broken prior to the Nov. 6 election date, would the outcome have been different? As soon as I heard the news. I immediately thought: whoever was able to keep this under wraps until after the election deserves a gigantic raise, and whoever is responsible for digging up dirt on the Obama administration must be kicking themselves.

Putting on my PR hat, if I were the Romney camp, I would have spun the story to capitalize on the potential threat to national security and to question the competence, integrity and trustworthiness of the administration itself. I have heard commentary that Obama and those in his inner circle are not implicated in any way, though.

I have no conclusions or certainties. Only the question as to whether or not we would have been waking up to another U.S. President on Nov. 7. Just an interesting, now purely academic question.

There are about 15 of us volunteers here in Jamaica at any given time. We come and go, in fact, three of us will leave this weekend. Several of us blog, and today, I want to highlight five other fellow bloggers who have influenced the way in which I approach this business of documenting my life in JA.

Wendy Lee
Wendy is from Vancouver and has been faithful in writing about her experiences here in JA. Her matter-of-fact and delightful words are highlighted by her camera skills. She has a gorgeous, fancy camera, which she has recently complemented with a skills course put on by our mutual friend Kashta Graham (Kashta is an impressive entrepreneur in her own right, check out her Facebook page.) Unfortunately, Wendy is departing Jamaica next month. I will miss her blog, but I will miss her face way more.

Brianna Strumm

Brianna is from Calgary and arrived in Jamaica in July. She is my new running partner and we are training for the half-marathon next month in Negril. Brianna’s blog is honest and personal and thought-provoking and it has inspired me to delve more into the emotional aspect of living here.

Julia Magnuson-Ford

Julia lives up in Montego Bay. We do not get to see her much, but when we do, it is a pleasure and I love hearing about life up on the North coast.

Onyka Barrett

Onyka is from Trinidad and has been in Jamaica on-and-off for awhile now. I love her writing style, it has inspired me to break out of my fact-heavy, “objective”, journalistic style. She has prompted me to seek out different, more colourful words, to stretch the way I express things beyond my normal mandate of telling you what happened.

Erin MacLeod

Erin is a never-ending source of information on all things Jamaican. She is a scholar at the University of West Indies as well as a Cuso volunteer. She is also an awesome writer who inspires me to portray Jamaica with the affection she clearly has for this island nation.

For all these ladies and their blogs, I am grateful for their influence on the way I tell you what it is like to live here in Kingston, Jamaica. It is never a simple existence here, so it is never easy to pick an angle and determine the best way to express it. On another note, notice we are all women? What’s up with that? One reason is that volunteers in the development sector tend to be female (probably the subject of a doctoral thesis), and two, the men here, at least by my count, do not blog. I wonder why. In any case, check out these talented ladies and spread the word.

Randy Mclaren performed at our graduation ceremony last week. He is a spoken word dub-poet performer who calls himself the Kriativ Aktivis. He is from a tiny village in St. Thomas. Here he talks about succeeding in the academic and work world. He captivated the audience. Even if you can’t understand it all, you can get the point. Enjoy.

Today we ventured out to Fort Clarence, which is just before Hellshire Beach. It is past a suburb of Kingston called Portmore. We caught the bus from the downtown area, actually we missed the one that would have taken us right to Fort Clarence, but we managed to catch another one. I did not mind the detour, as I had not yet been to Portmore. It is so different from Kingston out there. Flat, hot and dry. And what you might imagine a Caribbean suburb looks like. Lots of one-story, concrete, colourful homes with painted fences and grilles. Lots of people walking around, children playing, even the requisite malls and plazas, complete with KFC and Burger King.

We finally arrived at the beach, which is gorgeous. Turquoise water, soft sand, and not that crowded. We sat under the shade of sea grape trees, me reading a magazine and Brianna studying for her GRE exam, which is next week. We swam and napped. A trio of dogs hung out beside us, and a random fellow also sat right next to us, with not a word spoken. It was kind of weird, but he did not bother us at all, so it was okay. I got a picture of Champagne and his horse Kunta Kinte, who is nine years old. Champagne has been offering people horseback rides for 23 years. After a final swim, we departed for Kingston.

We caught a route taxi, which was a sedan intended to fit maybe eight people max. There were 12 of us, all squeezed in. But we made it safely an caught the bus back to Kingston. The bus route took us all through the suburbs again, adding an extra hour, but we made it back to Halfway Tree in time to walk home while it was still light.

We are going to Fort Clarence today. Pics to follow, as I have not yet been there. Here’s one for the time being.

The sunsets have been spectacular lately and I can’t stop taking pictures. I will miss them when I move to my new apartment in about a month- no view!

Butch Stewart is a big name here in Jamaica. He owns the Sandals chain of resorts, a large automotive dealership and one of the two main newspapers, the Jamaica Observer. To me, it is unclear how he is perceived on the island. He is a white Jamaican and wealthy, of course. From what I have heard and observed, people are grateful for the jobs the resorts provide, but they are uneasy with where the money flows, i.e. back to Stewart. He has also come under fire for the sensational nature of the Observer’s coverage of horrific events like child rapes and murders. The Observer has also been accused of having a homophobic agenda. As a journalist, I agree that the Observer’s coverage is often sensational, gratuitous and can be homophobic. This, of course, is inexcusable, but I must admit the uncomfortable fact that at the same time, there is some good quality, first-hand reporting happening.

It has been interesting for me to observe how the reporters get the stories. There seems to be a lot more on-the-ground collection of information. I think this happens for two reasons: one is that information here in Jamaica, in general, is not adequately recorded and stored, so journalists must actually pick up the phone, visit a site or event, retrieve a document themselves or interview people much more frequently than North American journalists, who can Google everything and find all the documents and data they require online. Also, as a byproduct of this situation, the journalism profession is about five to ten years behind, in my estimation, when it comes to social media and the sharing of information. The second reason, which is speculation on my part, is that Jamaica has a history of transmitting information orally, as opposed to transmission via the written word. So reporters might naturally be more inclined to get out there and seek the story themselves, as opposed to working the phones at a desk all day. I find the Observer’s strength is this firsthand accounting of events.

Another speculation on my part is that it appears Stewart could be subsidizing the Observer’s costs; it is a thick newspaper with looong stories. This is a rarity in today’s news environment. Although print advertising seems to be strong here in Jamaica, so maybe the Observer isn’t a money loser for Stewart. In any case, I am now going to come back to the whole point of this venture into puzzling over Jamaica’s news environment: it must be nice to have your own newspaper so that you can have flattering features written about yourself. Check out this page 3 story on Butch Stewart. This would never fly in Canada or the U.S.