There are often moments in life that interrupt your rhythm and make you wonder if the inevitable darkness could just hurry up a little. I have always maintained the idea that if there is a hell, it looks like the baggage claim of a Jamaican airport. It’s an experience that I go into each time with the renewed optimism of the heavily jet-lagged.
Maybe this time my bag will come early. I’m travelling by myself, surely it won’t take too long.
These hopes are often flung away with the same ferocity that the bags experience being placed on the conveyor. Hope drains away as your back tenses, preparing for the onslaught. First, the group of newly arrived Jamaicans and tourists wait steadfastly by the carousel, like the shuffling souls of Limbo. There is a lot of pushing and shoving of carts and bodies as proximity to the unmoving machine is obviously vital. With a large horn, like the start of a greyhound race, the carousel starts and the chaos truly arrives.
The beauty of the design of a baggage conveyor is that if you miss your bag - perhaps you were held up in immigration or you had to run to the bathroom - it will eventually come back around. It’s simple and effective. Jamaican airports however, have preferred to alter the design, altering the whole point of the machine to make it far more complicated and to reduce its efficacy entirely. An individual, usually a porter in the airport, is placed at the end of the conveyor at the passengers’ side. Before the bag slips back to the side where they are loaded onto the belt, the individual takes each bag and places it on the stationary floor. From here he begins to make a wall of all the bags that were not taken off on their round.
Stupid ideas often have merit in how entertaining they are. A ten hour flight across six time zones manages to evacuate all sense of humour however. The person (or persons) who are responsible for this system should be held culpable for crimes similar to genocide, as like genocide, this system cause irreparable damage to large groups of people and results in trauma that lasts for generations. What’s more concerning though are the people who heard this idea - and instead of firing this parasite immediately and blacklisting them from ever being employed again - decided that they would actually entertain and adhere to this folly. Anger is too mild a word to describe the emotions I feel towards this anonymous person and wrath is too kind a descriptor to what I would enact on them. If we were to ever be introduced, I would need restraints not too dissimilar to Hannibal Lector’s in Silence of the Lambs; straight jacket, muzzle, the lot
As a consequence, waiting for your bags at a Jamaican Arrivals Hall, rather than a tedious shuffle, is a melee. Travellers in a group fair easier. One can wait by the carousel, while the others can wade by the ever-growing wall being constructed trying to pick out any bags they invariably missed. The lone traveller meanwhile must have skills in vaulting, acrobatics and vision mainly attributed to birds of prey.
The last time I arrived into Jamaica I changed my usual route and went through Norman Manley airport in Kingston rather than the usual Montego Bay route. The assumption that Norman Manley would have a far more convenient and sophisticated system as it was based in the capital city was a naive hope. I arrived in August 2021, just as Covid began to really rear its invisible head in Jamaica. Masks were abound and social distancing was strictly enforced. Until baggage claim. When the bags arrived, Covid became a distant thought. Tourists and locals began to merge into a single amorphous being hellbent on one goal, retrieving their belongings. Unlike the high ceilinged, air conditioned Montego Bay airport, there was no WiFi in the hall. In fact mobile phone use was expressly prohibited. A cursory Whatsapp to ensure my waiting family that I hadn’t been unceremoniously turned at the border was off the table.
The melee lasted around an hour and a half. Finally, I spotted one of my bags in the ever growing ‘You Missed It The First Time, Idiot’ pile. Finally among the last few bags to be loaded on to the conveyor, the rest of mine arrived. The final leg was customs.
Although nothing I was taking needed to be declared, like many returning Jamaicans I was asked to “carry something.” To the non-Jamaican the stereotypes may direct your mind to something illicit but at least with me it’s just things you can’t get out on the island. Without Amazon or a reliable postal system, if you are travelling to Jamaica, you often have to keep it hushed up, or you might be asked to bring a small carburettor or perhaps a travel sized anvil . As I approached the customs desk I noticed people being asked to put their bags on to another belt, this time through an X-Ray machine. This wasn’t a huge deal as nothing I was bringing was categorised in either the “illegal” or “to be declared” categories however after an hour and a half standing in Baggage Hell, I didn’t have the energy to explain why amongst my swimsuit and sunscreen I was also bringing IKEA curtains, a pool net and two grindstones used to sharpen knives.
The woman at the desk saw on my form that I was visiting ‘friends and family.’ As the only non-Jamaican citizen in my family (an ordeal that I do not have the energy to explain, still in baggage recovery) it was closest thing I was allowed to put as a visitor.
“And why are you coming to Jamaica Mr…Holland?” The double barrel confused her.
“Visiting family.”
“And what will you be doing with your family for 104 days?”
I wanted to say ‘probably arguing’ but she wasn’t in a joking mood. It was a good question actually. I had no idea.
“Just spending time with them.” The answer wasn’t satisfactory but which one would be?
“Are you carrying more than $10,000.00 US with you.”
“I wish.” I said it without thinking. Oh god. Would this cost me a few more hours in the airport? But she just sighed.
“Alright, you can go on ahead.”
Life fails to provide poetic moments when you need it to. I hadn’t been to Jamaica in two years nor seen my family in one. I wish I could say she recognised the significance of this moment prompting her to say ‘Welcome Home.’ I would like to say that I walked out to greet my family, sunlight pouring on to my face as I welcomed the heat. But she didn’t say that. As I wheeled my bags out to be picked up by my parents, they slipped off the cart, into an inconvenient pile. Gathering them with all available hands and limbs, I abandoned the cart and struggled outside, my knees nearly buckling in front of my brother and parents, under what looked to be a grey, cloudy sky.