Great Huts promoting the Afro-Jamaican heritage

WE ARE still in Jamaica’s heritage month, and Heritage Week was concluded on Monday, October 20 with the annual National Honours and Awards Ceremony at King’s House.

But, there is a place in Boston, Portland called Great Huts Eco Resort – Paradise on the Edge, a two-minute walk from the Boston Jerk Centre, that does not wait for October to commemorate Jamaica’s African heritage. Every element of this eco-friendly space on the cliff overlooking the turquoise and sometimes foamy Boston Bay has something that promotes Jamaica’s history, heritage and culture.

It has four main ecological spots: the beach, washed by Boston Bay; the dramatic and jagged limestone cliffs; a small meadow; and, of course, the jungle in which a great variety of fauna and flora thrive.

Among the trees are seats at different spots on which you can reflect, relax and rekindle a relation with nature in the heart of which you are. When it rains, suddenly you are in a tropical rainforest, and the sound of water falling from the clouds upon your roof is lullabying and cathartic.

Each unit, called hut, is unique and detached, exuding an essence like none other. Some of them have names that are inspired by the Afro-Jamaican story. These are ‘Kaya’, ‘Nyahbinghi’, ‘Queen of Sheba’, ‘African Sunrise’, ‘The Granary’ and the exquisite ‘Africana House’, whose rooms are named for African tribes, such as Ibibio, Igbo and Mandinka, and whose walls are decorated with a variety of artworks created in African. Even the wood furniture, made by Jamaican craftsmen, are uniquely themed and designed.

The motifs, artwork and accents are telling part or parts of the Afro-Jamaica story and the connection to Africa from which people were taken to work on plantations in Jamaica for almost 400 years. The ground level of African Sunrise has walls on which the story of the Atlantic trade in Africans is painted. That story and more are also told in books in a small library in the foyer.

In addition to the Marcus Garvey Memorial Garden in which many ceramic works, made and mounted by Hanover artisan, Sylvester Stephens, there are a few sculptured busts of National Hero Marcus Garvey and National Heroine Nanny of the Maroons. Reggae icon Bob Marley is also represented in ceramic, on one of three columns grounded in the sands on the beach, where there are yellow and black hammocks.

The ‘Safari Deck’ is the main entertainment and dining area, where there is a regular Saturday night showcase of traditional and contemporary singing, drumming and dancing. The structure and adjoining bar are adorned with eclectic sculptures by Kenyan-Jamaican artisan Mazola, and Nakazzi. The piece de resistance in the space is a 10-foot sculpted giraffe whose head goes through the roof. Well, it is covered by an extension to the roof.

Great Huts is big on tourism; it is a business with a purpose, to inform and educate guests, natives and visitors from abroad, of the Jamaican story and how it has evolved and impacted people from all over the world. It is not just Paradise on the Edge; it is a treasure trove of Jamaica’s heritage in Paradise on the Edge.