Culture Yard on slow path to recovery

In March of this year, the now Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince William and his wife Kate, took a tour of Culture Yard, the former home-turned-historical site of reggae legend Bob Marley in Trench Town. On Tuesday, tour manager and chief tour guide Donnette Dowe welcomed the grandson of Emperor Haile Selassie I, Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie. However, though both affairs were filled with pomp and publicity, Culture Yard is still barely pulling through its recovery after taking a big hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Tours have been picking up since last year,but it is not as massive now as before. We used to have a lot of tours, but COVID mash up everything, and you know some countries are still trying to [recover], and so are we, but we are open for tours, whether locally or overseas,” said Dowe.

Before the pandemic, Culture Yard saw many different faces from across the globe who would visit out of fascination for Jamaica’s musical culture and, of course, the Rastafarian religion. Dowe once maintained several connections with overseas tour companies, which reportedly would provide her with steady traffic from places such as Russia, Belgium and other European countries. Nevertheless, over the two years since the local outbreak, she has not yet been able to regain them.

“It’s just walk-in persons that we are getting at the moment. We haven’t got back those connections that we had before with tours from places like Poland and Sweden, Russia and other tour companies,” Dowe told The Gleaner.

STILL HAPPY TO WELCOME ROYALS

As for staff members employed at the facility, she revealed that they are still unable to operate at full capacity.

“Two of our tour guides have not returned ‘cause they ended up finding other jobs, and it is still a little low here for us to have back on staff all the people as before anyway. I, myself, just came back a week ago,” she said.

Still, she is holding on to faith that everything will work out accordingly, especially as they look towards being able to host the Trench Town Festival sometime before or after Bob Marley’s February 6 birth date. Dowe was speaking to The Gleaner after taking Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie on tour of the facility. Though still feeling the pinch of the pandemic, she was happy to guide him and share some history lessons.

“It is an overwhelming feeling. I felt overwhelmed knowing that he had acknowledged we the people of Trench Town and the Rastafarians. I wasn’t born at the time when King Selassie came, but I saw a documentary, and it just reminded me of the people [who] were overwhelmed then as well. Just to touch the Emperor. I even end up telling him that it was the same thing when his granddad was here, and it was much more of a massive crowd than this, so you can interact with everyone ‘cause they are here just to see you,” Dowe shared.

According to her, it was obvious that he, too, was overcome by emotion while seeing the impact of his grandfather and picking up pieces of information that were new to him.

“He marvelled at the history we had just here in Trench Town. When I told him who my father was, the man who wrote By The Rivers Of Babylon, he was overwhelmed. He [a] took couple [of] photographs of musicians, inside, because he says he knows these songs, but he doesn’t know who the people are. When he went into the kitchen where Bob Marley used to live, I said to him, ‘Do you recognise this person?’ because we have like a painting of the emperor at age eight in there, and he said, ‘Sure, I recognise him, that’s my granddad.’ I think this is something where he is astonished. I mean, he has been all over, but this is where the history is,” she said.

aaliyah.cunningham@gleanerjm.com