THE CARIBBEAN JAMAICA

What a treat! This week we get to go Jamaica, which is one of the most musical islands in the world.

The island's indigenous Taino people called their land "Xaymaca," which meant "Land of Wood and Water," or the "Land of Springs."  Not so long after Christopher Colombus came along the Spanish colonized – which was  particularly unfortunate for the Taino -- but in 1664 the Spanish lost control of the island to the British. At that time a large number of enslaved Africans escaped to the mountains to live with Tainos and become Jamaican Maroons, fighting for the next century against the British, and eventually signing a treaty which granted them some autonomy over their territories.

By the early 1800s the British had brought so many Africans to Jamaica that blacks outnumbered whites by a ratio of 20 to 1. Since its 1962 independence Jamaica has developed a sturdy trade in beach-going tourists but its underlying economy has struggled to sustain the growth.