With accommodation in Kingston this week at a premium, The Champs Photo Finish Package for
Bed and Breakfast being offered by Neita's Nest. 
Stay 4 nights and get 15% off room rate. 
Offer ends April 2.  

As we approach the start of Champs 2102, the annual Boys' and Girls' High Schools Athletics Championship, Kingston, the home of this 102-year-old track meet is warming up with expectancy. Alumni of these high schools are arriving from all over the world and the  island for their annual mecca to the National Stadium. 

Will Jamaica College and Holmwood Technical retain the Boys' and Girls' Trophies this year? Will Calabar, celebrating its Centenary, or Edwin Allen High steal their thunder? What about Wolmer's Girls and Boys, the winners in the 100th renewal of this track and field event? Or St. George's another multi-time winner. Not to be out-done, the boys'  and girls' schools with the longest winning streaks, Kingston College and Vere Technical remain strong contenders.

The excitement begins on Wednesday, March 28 and rises to a fever pitch on Saturday night. Don't miss it!

We more often than not ask our guests why Neita’s Nest was their Bed and Breakfast service of choice for their visit to Kingston. These conversations are for the most part had with persons who chose us straight from the internet; no word-of mouth recommendations, no referrals to depend on. 

A myriad of reasons are given for why we were chosen, and they seem to mirror what we say we offer. From our website, would-be guests conjure up a perception of who we are. Here is what has been said:

• Many guests say that our price is affordable.  
  
• Interestingly, and seeming contradictory to the first, one guest said the place seemed classy
  
• Yet another said the description sounded like just the place to relax
  
• You seem to be surrounded by nature, said a nature lover
  
• You are not in the heart of the city, said one who was looking to get away from it all
  
• It seems like you are in a safe place, said the single female traveler
  
• The website made Neita’s Nest seem homey
  
• I was traveling alone and I wanted a family environment
  
• I wanted to know what it was like to live in a Jamaican home
  
• I felt I could get to know more about the people 
  
• I felt that this experience would offer more personalized treatment than a hotel could
  
• I wanted to taste Jamaican foods the way Jamaicans cook and eat it
  
• The comforts and convenience of home make young children better travelers

All these perceptions and expectations were conjured up from the photos, guest video, our blogs and our description of what we offer here at Neita’s Nest. The best part of all this however, is the common thread in the feedback, which is that everything is JUST as it looks in the photos, and just as we promised it would be. 

                                We keep our promises!

Another frequent feedback is that our low rates suggest that our service standards are not high. They were however, happy they took a chance on Neita's Nest. Our promise to our guests is that no matter what our price is, we will always give value-added. So come. Come and experience Neita's Nest, and tell us what you think. 

The only thing that could possibly rival the mass of colour from the bougainvileas in Kingston this month is the sheer spectacle, energy, rivalry, and yes colour of CHAMPS. Students, alumni and die-hards make their annual pilgramage from all over the world to the National Stadium in Kingston for the March 28 - 31 meet, when high school boys and girls compete in this century-old fashion for supremacy in track and field. Here are some highlights of recent years.

Brightly coloured Bougainvilleas in all their glory are a typical winter landscape feature in Jamaica. This palette of colour creates the perfect invitation to Barrington Watson's art studio in Orange Park Jamaica. Here, Barry (left) reacquaints with John Searchwell, Retired Educator, at the beginning of the inaugural Barrington Watson Retrospective Tour on February 4, 2012, organized by the Jamaica Cultural Enterprise in conjunction with the National Gallery of Jamaica. The tour included a visit to the artist's home in St. Thomas. John was accompanied by friends and family, including his daughter Marnie visiting with us from the U.K. 
Photo by Marnie Searchwell Kindred

Snow birds travel south in winter. So do our fellow Jamaicans living in northern climes. They get home sick in winter so they come for a couple weeks to escape the bleak winters, to warm the cheeks and to bring cheer to their families. Foreigners comb the travelogues for a warm escape. Jamaica beckons. 

The verandah at Neita’s Nest is a perfect vantage point for spotting unusual birds flitting through our trees; some blue, some red throated, some speckled, and I realize that they are not our tropical birds. They are just visiting with us to keep warm too. It is always exciting to see the visiting birds while they commune and share the same space with our local ones; parakeets, humming birds, nightingales, hopping dicks, woodpeckers, doves and hawks.

Another feature of these early months of the year is that we don’t get much rain, if any. Some say this is our autumn. The leaves yellow and fall. The grasses brown, and intermittently, bush fires can be spotted on the dry mountains.

One would think that this is not a good time to visit Jamaica. Quite the contrary! Apart from the occasional cold fronts, which by the way I just love, we do have some really cool breezes blowing, keeping our tropical temperatures down to the mid 70s and low 80s. We have many a cloudless sky, and the few clouds are often wafted away by the breezes. Against the stark contrast of the brown grass and charred mountains surrounding Kingston, I am enthralled, year after year by the beauty of our bougainvilleas and poui. They are at their ever best at this time of the year.

At Neita’s Nest we have the bougainvilleas in fiery orange, understandably named Kenyan Sunset, the pink and white called Surprise Bougainvillea, and the fuchsia named The Lady B, for the wife of our first Prime Minsiter, Sir Alexander Bustamante. Our Poui is the pale pink. It hasn’t bloomed much since we built our Tree House around it some 10 years ago, but it does have some flowers now. I prefer the Yellow Poui though. Their leaves shed, and one morning you awaken to this amazing cloud of canary yellow. They last only a few days, then form this yellow carpet on the ground, which is just as beautiful. I enjoy all this from a near distance because so many of my neighbours have the Yellow Poui in their gardens, and many more of these trees dot the hills around us.

We are in our winter months now; dry, cool and very colourful.

Activities are warming up in Jamaica as we approach the summer with its high points of the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of our Independence. And, in the words of Tinga Stewart, Jamaica's 1981 Festival Popular Song Competition Winner, with the song of the same title, "Nuh Wey Nuh Betta Dan Yard". 

Jamaicans living overseas have already begun to make their travel arrangements so as not to miss the highlights in July and August. Some have already made their visit home based on the travel time most convenient to them, and have been able to participate in the activities which have begun; the Barrington Watson Retrospective and the CCRP (Caribbean Community of retired Persons) Legacy Awards, to name just two. 

Yes, all eyes and ears are focused on Jamaica this year, and hearts are anxious to be a part of the excitement. But it is not just now that Jamaica has been seen as a mecca. When I was attending the University of the West Indies in the mid-seventies, there was a student from the U.S. who explained that the reason he chose to study here was because the stars were all aligned and a 'light' shone on Jamaica that made this place magnetic.  
 
So too have many of our guests here at Neita's Nest said that they had always wanted to come to Jamaica or, that they want to live in Jamaica. Sometimes they cannot articulate why, but there is something telling them from their very first day here that they want to stay. Of course, being in love with my own country, I am so touched to hear this.

I remember one guest from North America, and of African descent, saying that she wanted to live here because this is the first country in which she has ever been, where she is in the majority, race-wise. Something bothered her however. "Why is it", she came home and asked me one day, "that I look like everyone else, yet they look on me and know that I am a foreigner?" I chuckled before I could answer. My mind immediately went back to a morning that I dropped her off at the Institute of Jamaica on East Street to do some research. 

I watched her as she walked off. There she was looking very much Jamaican, dark-skinned, kinky-haired and full-some. The dead give-away however was her child-like wide-eyed gazes as she turned her head slowly from side-to-side, taking in all the sights and sounds of downtown Kingston as if she had just gone through the wardrobe into Narnia.

Jamaican women don't walk like that, I explained to her. We walk purposefully and are focused on where we are going. And, perhaps she would not normally walk like that had she not been mesmerized by being in Jamaica. The sweet end to it all, or beginning of it, depending on which perspective you choose, is that she did return to live in Jamaica.

I remember this little anecdote because I read today that The Independent, a British-based newspaper, in a recent survey has named the "20 best places" to be a woman for one reason or another, and Jamaica is among the countries listed. As reported in Jamaica's Daily Gleaner on March 6, Jamaica has the highest ratio of women in high-skilled jobs, like legislators, senior officials and managers.

This survey finding is as much heartening as it is food for thought. I can clearly remember the public excitement around the first female member of the Jamaica Defence Force, the first female Jamaica Omnibus driver and many other firsts for women in Jamaican society.

So here is a question for another independent survey.  Is there any correlation between our purposeful walk and our confidence to walk through those glass ceilings and take our rightful places? 

Food for thought.

Fiery heliconias and passionately pink ginger lilies seemed to pop with ease from the paint palette of Jamaican artist, Tricia Evelyn while she stayed at Neita’s Nest recently.

Tricia chose Neita’s Nest for its 'Artist's Haven’ appeal, and she wasn’t at all disappointed. Each morning after the breakfast dishes were cleared from the verandah table, Tricia laid out her paints, her brushes, ‘canvases’, and other paraphernalia, and became at one with nature. Inspired by the lush green hues of our natural backdrop and the pinks and oranges in our garden, Tricia spent some useful hours hand painting cushion covers, each uniquely different

When they are all stitched up and puffed up and ready for your sofa, you will be able to get yours at Craft Cottage in The Village Shopping Centre, Kingston, a great little place packed with Jamaican art and craft.