Jamaica...

It's the place where both my mother and the father I never knew were born and a place where over the years I've spent a lot of time.

It's a beautiful country - beautiful beaches, glistening seas... That's only one part of it, the part you see in the glossy brochures of the super expensive all-inclusive resorts... The touristy side...

But there's character hidden beneath the superficialness of the glossy brochure - the local buses, petty politics in small towns and beauty - beauty that's not mapped out in the lines of the beach... The Cloud Forest, the Blue Mountains, Fern Gully...

I know that there's danger - Spanish Town, historic and beautiful as it is, is not somewhere I'd want to go to unless I was with someone I trusted and who knew the area. Neither are parts of Kingston...

Then again you couldn't pay me to go into Bermondsey for a visit over here.

Heading back to the point though, at one point during my infant schooling days I was sent off to Jamaica for a while to stay with relatives.

It wasn't the most fun of stays - my relatives were fundamentalist christians - which I am not, and being young I was forced to go to church and get up early to pray to a god I do not believe in.

My relatives were jealous of the fact that I came from England, thinking me to be rich, although that couldn't be further from the truth and to tell the truth I was pretty miserable all in.

One of my brightest spots in the trip however was one of the women of the church, who let me stay with her when the school holidays came around.

I was a stranger and she didn't have much, but she did her best to make sure I had a good time.

That week I didn't have to read a bible or get up early to pray, she let me read what I want and let me help out in her shop.

She even let me help her get eggs from her chickens.. Even if I wasn't allowed to go near the chickens myself.

Staying with her was one of the bright points in my life and something I've never forgotten even though at 24 I am now a young adult and when I last saw her I was a young child.