Remittance is one of the main props of the Jamaican economy. It is the second largest earner of foreign exchange next to tourism. So its fair to say that money transfer in Jamaica is big business, and there are no shortage of players. Their rates, service, opening hours and effeciency may differ but they all charge a fee, its how they make their money.

Here I will outline a method of transferring money that is more cost effective and convenient, than western union or any of the other players in the transfer business. This assumes you are sending or recieving cash from one person fairly regularly.

TRANSFER MONEY FROM US TO JA

1. Get your, spouse, father, mother or whomever is minding you to open a Checking account with Bank of America.

2. Have them get and activate check card and send it to you via fedex or with someone who coming down (don’t tell that person the pin number)

3. Go to any scotia ATM and draw to your hearts content, you can also use the card as a debit/credit card.

BONUS: Scotia Bank has a foreign exchange ATM in Liguanea where you can actually get your money in US$ and avoid “tiefing” exchange rates.

NB. If the account goes below the minimum limit of $25 (have them verify this amount) It will attract a charge so do not go below this minimum balance…the fees are fat ($35.00) I think. Alt. you can have them use a savings account to provide over draft coverage…Though this will attract a $10 charge for each transaction…Bottom line avoid the fees or this is not free or in fact cheaper.

TRANSFER MONEY FROM JA TO US

In the unlikely event you want to send cash to someone in the US.

1. Create a Scotia Bank account and get them the scotia ATM card.

2. They then go to any Bank of America ATM and withdraw the money.

NB. I am not sure what is Scotia Bank’sÂminimum to keep an account active…figure that out and have them keep that in the account at all time. Also be aware that the scotia card will not work as a debit/check card in the US.

CONCLUSION

This may work for other banks, but I have only done this with BA and Scotia, if you use a BA card in NCB there is a $5us charge. The card will not work in a RBTT atm. The reason this work is that BA and Scotia are apart of a global alliance, and so member banks use each others ATMs at no charge.

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This is a short story that kept me awake one night. I will rewrite it here as a “trilogy”.

PART 1

Tonight I am coming up aces, The car screeches to a halt, firm, smooth, I push off the seat…Moving before the wheels finished their final revolution. 9mm in hand, I am fluid, dark, motionless in my actions, heading for the house. I see one ‘yute’, a soldier, he’s strapped, but unaware…I squeezed the trigger and the earth swallows him up, smooth…he dissappears as if he has never been. the sounds of my pistol are lost to my ears, swallowed up by the night whose blacknees it seems, caresses the muzzle to stifle the flashes and absorb the sounds.

The darkness is mine, the bright moon subdued by a single bank of heavy clouds, working in concert to serve me and my destiny….there is one light inside the small house, in the living room….even under the cover of the darkness that abets me, I can make out the thin woooden door divided by eight glazed glass panels. Set into the fading blue walls of the verandah…the eight milky panes feigning the horror of some bloated blind beast…whose eight eyes have been stabbed out.

PART 2

I am close now…I see an outstretched foot materialise out of the ground…Its dark but I see…I see everything…I hear everything…I feel everything….The breeze that should have been there in this dark country night, but is not…its gone. Refusing to witness my aces. Hopping the leg of the fallen youth I rolled unto the verandah…Like a fog of death….the light…TV blue from my viewpoint….wavered as if giving way to the darkness that walked with me.

The doors open as if by magic…spraying splintered wood and broken glass…I sweep the room, taking in the old man dozing on the raggedy plaid sofa…his face taking on the thousand faces of the tv that watches him sleep…he is horrified and welcoming, happy and sad at this nexus where my bullets sheperds the life from his body…he died dreaming…his final sigh almost a lament that he is gone before he can truly witness my beauty…

PART 3

I swept the house for all other threats, there are none…the others I eliminate as they are found…a woman…two young boys…I erased them all…swift and Godlike…I wiped away the stains on my life…the chains that arrested me and kept me from soaring as I was meant to soar…

I hear a blast…its harsh and real…an antithesis to the silenced sounds of my pistol…this sound is hard and real…a cold slap even…slowly I awoke…the harsh flourescents of the Esso service station in halfway tree cutting away the darkness…the morning is slow…nobody except another two or three sleeping taxis and the cashier chatting to the security guard…I fumbled the bottle of warm water from the cup holder, take a sip to rinse the sour taste of sleep from my mouth.

As I slowly drove into the still kingston night, windows down I feel the missing breeze caress my face and I thought briefly of my family in temple hall…father, brother, woman and two sons…I try to zero in on the next fare….already my dream is just a memory…the way only dreams can be…I still have a family to feed…I still need to find customers…Tonight I need to come up aces.