“What began as two weeks in Jamaica turned into several months when I decided to walk the perimeter of the entire island.  I would have a driver pick me up at night and then drop me off where I ended the previous day.

During one stretch of beach, I was walking past a couple shacks on the ocean where I heard someone yell, ‘What are you doing here white boy?’.  I stopped and yelled back, ‘walking’.  They told me that I couldn’t walk down this beach because I would end up being robbed.  I shrugged it off, thanked them for the warning and kept moving.

A few minutes later they pulled up to me in a pick-up truck and again told me I wasn’t safe and I should go with them and they would also give me a place to sleep.  I decided to go with them knowing they had bad intentions but driven by the curiosity to meet new people.  While chatting in their shack, it was clear they were sizing me up and they were the criminals.

Things all of a sudden changed when I told them that had I traveled from Mexico and had been staying at a large estate on the water.  A look of fear rolled over their faces and they went silent.  One of them jumped up and ran into a back room.  He came back a few moments later with a huge bag Marijuana and started saying, ‘We grow.  We partner’.

They thought I was a member of a Mexican drug cartel and immediately feared for their lives if they crossed me.  They spent the rest of the time asking to stay in touch so we could partner up.”