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Maybe a few streets that way it's dangerous, but here it's okay. Right. And over there, what happens? Cuz the Naz War. Yeah. So, here's what I was talking about the rubbish here in these more dangerous areas. So, why doesn't the government come and clear the rubbish from these areas? Living in Kingston, Kingston good enough, but you don't know sometime the violence, you know, some part in Kingston violence. Bullets go into that police station on a regular occurrence. And this is the area where they said that there's there's a gang war brewing. All good, all enjoyment, all fun.
Just starting to walk towards some of the more dangerous areas, expecting some kind of eruption of crime and shooting and war. So, Jamaica, music, beaches, and gang violence. Government of Jamaica decreed a state of public emergency to combat rise in violence. It seems to have a split reputation. I've always wondered what Jamaica is actually like on the ground. Jamaica has an astronomically high murder rate in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. Let's see what it's like for ourselves, shall we?
children. Violent war in Jamaica. Gunfire still echoing out around the city as darkness falls. Hopeless. Welcome back to Kingston, capital city of Jamaica. Today we're going downtown. Lately, there's been some things brewing. There's always things brewing here, but there is a inflammation of a potential turf war. If you've seen in the first video I made here in Kingston, there was a crime scene that we showed up to and there were some murders just in broad daylight downtown Kingston.
This is a regular occurrence, but apparently there's going to be some people wanting revenge. There could be an increase in violence. So, we're going to go down, see if we can meet some people and, you know, see what it's like living down there and just generally feel the atmosphere. Then, we're going to have a look at some other areas around the city. So, let's go. It's always a bit tense in this country when you go into these kind of areas. Let's see what it's like. So, we've come downtown and as you can see from some of those shots, this place is super on edge. You can see I'm looking around a lot. You can see we drove past a police station there and a huge maximum security prison. That
police station is actually the dividing line between two gangs turf. And that police station gets caught in the crossfire of many gang wars. And there's actually bullet holes in the side of that police station. All the glass is has cages around it to stop the bullets going in the windows because the violence here is so frequent that bullets go into that police station on a regular occurrence. And this is the area where they said that there's there's a gang war brewing. Absolutely mental. But we're going to go further into the downtown area now and see what we can come across.
Okay, so we've arrived uh right in the center of downtown. We drove past the street that we went to in the first video where there was the um mother and daughter killed sadly. And Kevin, what's this area like? Um this is King Street. This is upon Upper downtown. Um it is mostly peaceful. They have a lot of homeless persons. Is there much violence in this region? Violence is all around. Yes. You have no basic safety. No. There's nowhere you can go where you wouldn't be at risk of a shot. Yeah. Right. Or a big pocket or something. And if I was uh alone, would it be safe for me here? Well, in Montego Bay, downtown Montego Bay,
people will more protect you because of the tourism, but down here it is really unusual to see a white person walking by themsel, right? Yeah. So, Montego Bay, the second biggest city, has a lot more infrastructure for safety of tourists. But in Kingston, like tourists are very rare. So, you got to watch your back, right? Yeah. How this situation works behind me is these guys rap and sing and then they rap about like the products they're selling and people flock to get like a bargain here and they have like these kind of flash sales. Do you feel comfortable living here? Yes, man. Feel comfortable, man. People good. Comfortable. Awesome. Yes, man. And is there any violence around here? No, not right here, but out of the
area in different places. So, this place is all good. Yeah. All good. All enjoyment. All fun. tree mother. bum. If somebody's watching this, where can they find your music? Instagram and anything. Quality Boss. What's your Instagram? Quality Boss. Tik Tok. Quality Boss. I'll leave it. I'll leave it on the screen and people can find you. Yeah, man. All right, brother. Good luck. Yeah. Right. And do you live in this place? How is it? Nice. It's all good. So maybe a few streets that way it's dangerous, but here it's okay. Right. And over there what happens cuz war? Yeah. Really? Yeah. There some part of good place for them good and bad
and good people here is good and over there is not so good people the same way bad people there bad okay brother nice to be I just want to take a second and say a huge thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video. As a lot of you know, the past few years of my life have been pretty intense. I've traveled to some of the darkest corners of this world and seen some unimaginable hardships. Ukraine's front lines, South Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan to name a few, and obviously now Jamaica. It's become of great importance for me to process these experiences responsibly because witnessing these things definitely has
an impact on one's mental health and that's where Better Help has come in for me. Better Help connected me with a licensed therapist that really helped me verbalize and come to grips with what I've seen. Unlike traditional therapy, Better Help allows me to choose how I want to communicate. Phone calls, video chats, or messaging. This flexibility has been absolutely priceless, especially with my unpredictable and volatile travel schedule and never knowing what's going to unfold during the day. Better Help's network of over 30,000 therapists has given me a wide range of expertise to tap into. Signing up was really straightforward. In most cases, you're matched with your therapist within 48 hours of signing up.
You just fill out a questionnaire and they take care of the rest. If you're like me and believe that your mental health isn't as important as your physical health, then consider Better Help. If the first therapist doesn't feel like the right fit, you can easily change to another one at no extra cost. I encourage you to visit betterhelp.com/indigo traveler. Clicking that link not only supports this channel, but it also gives you 10% off your first month. So, a big thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video, supporting the channel, keeping the travels going, and let's get back into it. So, some of the areas we went to on the first day were like really on edge, right? Uh, and now we've come to this
area and everybody seems a lot more calm and it's like you can feel the atmosphere is lower. But it's crazy because like three blocks from here with people getting killed, right? And that is because each area is controlled by someone different. Right. Some guys are peaceful. Yeah. They're not into the violence. They try and sell us purely to make a living while some community have somebody else running or a different street. So some people believe in like commerce, buying and selling like just clothes and things and other people believe that violence is the way to get money, right? There's obviously more money in violence, right? More. Well, if you really think about it, that would be the conclusion. Yeah. Why would
people Yeah. prepared by violence over here. So, another thing that's quite interesting about this area is that the streets are much cleaner. If you go to the more dangerous areas, obviously like they're just completely neglected and the um streets have got like rubbish all over them. If you go into the more middle class area, even cleaner than here. There's still a bit of rubbish here, but it doesn't like stack up. If you can see in the distance over there, there's a factory. Just by that factory is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Kingston. And then just back here, you know, I think now we're coming to a place that's a bit more open. It's a bit more dangerous, but you
can feel the difference. You know, don't get me wrong, bad stuff still happens in all these places. Doesn't matter where you are in Kingston, violence can erupt, but it's in different degrees. So, we're just starting to walk towards some of the more dangerous areas. And these streets are apparently a lot more busy than they are right now. But because of the attack that was on when on the first day that we were here, they're kind of expecting some kind of eruption of crime and shooting and war. So yeah, people stick to their own streets. You can start to feel the atmosphere change. It's crazy. So you can see just up here, this street was where the shooting was. And you know, we saw in that first video the crime scene. This
street was all taped off, but now it's open again, but that was right here. So, here we are right in the heart of the violence of uh downtown Kingston. So, this street might look pretty busy right now, but this is nothing compared to its usual capacity. It's normally packed cars all along here. There's not even like cars or taxis driving along here right now. We can easily walk space. So, it's normally like shoulderto-shoulder cars and everything that people have been told to not come here because war is erupting. It's already taking place. So, here's what I was talking about the rubbish here in these more dangerous areas. So, why doesn't the government come and clear the rubbish from these areas? They do.
They have special days. Okay. But because of lack of resources and the demand to move garbage, they can't do it every day. Okay. So we've come into the shop here and we've met our local man Ricky Dongatong. Yeah. So how's business here? Because I haven't seen any tourists. So is it mainly local people you sell to? Yeah, we sell local and tourism people still but this is good going on but sometime it's sometime fast. You see what I'm saying? What's it like living in Kingston? I didn't like living in Kingston. Kingston good you know but they don't know sometime the violence you know violence some part in
Kingston violence and everywhere a violence but some part of Kingston violence you see what I said right so it's okay but you're never sure when something might happen you want to know when something happen anytime and even in like this area here there's violence yeah things happen downtown still things happen downtown still what I say how do you see the future of Jamaica say Yeah. How do you see the future of Jamaica? Positive or negative? Positive. Yeah. Positive. Beautiful. So, what do you think's going to happen uh in the next 5 years? Do you think that it'll become more stable here? Yeah. You do? Yeah. Cuz things a little change. Yes. Things will change for the better. Things will change.
Yeah. You happy with how the government is handling the violence? Yeah. But we feel like you could have do more better still on the violence, you know? Look more, you know. Yeah. What would you like them to do? All right. Right now, we don't want him like going on some of the ear them and find out what is a problem. Sometime you see me I say like going them and find out what is a problem. You want them to go into the right certain area, certain gar, you know? Yeah. So they can find out what is a problem. Okay. So you want them to go into the more dangerous neighborhoods and put a stronger fist down and take action. Do you have a message that you would want to give to the world?
Anything? Yeah. Uh, love Jamaica. Yeah. All right, brother. Thank you for your time. Love again, man. I respect again for the time, man. All right. I thank you. All right. Big up your neck. You buy me a bagu. Hey, bro. You good? Yeah, I remember when you coming. We met. Yeah, man. You good? Yeah, man. Bless you, man. How you been? All right, man. You doing well? Yeah, man. We're doing well, man. What are you doing today? Well, me some somebody call me to do some kind of bailing. You understand me? Some go on movement. Oh, like you're working. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a broken hand. Yeah, man. We know make broken broke it cut. Oh, cut with the saw,
right? Sometime go to courthouse. Oh, you're going to the courthouse today? No, not today. But get all of the papers and get them su. Beautiful day. Yeah, man. Respect. All right. Good to meet you. Take care. If you didn't see the first video, we met him in Tivoli Gardens, which is one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the whole of Jamaica. So that gentleman we just met, you were saying he works on behalf of people who have been locked up and he goes and he like gets the paperwork ready to get them out and the money and get and pays the bail and gets them out of prison on behalf of the
relative the relatives. Yes. So the relatives would pay him cash. Yeah. Right. a certain percentage. And then literally like 2 3 minutes walk from that place where that guy where the person was the two people were killed, we're back in a really safe area. It's just if you didn't know these streets, you could easily walk into the wrong neighborhood and things could go bad. So we've walked down from this street. It's about 10 minutes up there is the dangerous area. We just walked down, come to this beautiful area on the waterfront. You can see the police are here. And they've got uh restaurants, beautiful seafood restaurants. You can see the water there, the harbor.
Almost every major Jamaican corporate company Uh-huh. up having their headquarters. Headquarters, right? So all the big companies of Jamaica have their headquarters in this area. You take a few minutes up the road and there's gunshots. These worlds are so close together, but they couldn't be further apart. down this area, you don't really necessarily even need police cuz it kind of polices itself because if there's crime down here, the corporations will put pressure on the government and they'll go into the dangerous areas and they'll find the people who committed the crime. So basically, if it's out of the eyes of the corporate side of Jamaica, then it doesn't really matter in the eyes of, you know, the government
because it's not having direct impact on the cash flow essentially. Here's the Bank of Jamaica headquarters. So this street here is a initiative by the government trying to bring tourism to Kingston, cultural tourism. Lots of beautiful street art and things and you can see it's really beautiful. So you know they are really trying to uh make it better and more appealing for tourists and this is quite close to that corporate area as well. And then again you go that way a few streets and you're right in the middle of the belly of the beast. So this is really quite a moving monument here. It's dedicated to all the children missing or killed because of the violence. This is only people under
the age of 18. Just covered in names. Age 11, 14, age seven. And this is just people getting caught up in the violence. So, we've come up to this neighborhood here. Very affluent neighborhood as you can see from those houses. Name of this neighborhood is actually Beverly Hills, believe it or not. Absolutely beautiful. Big mansions looking over Kingston down here with the harbor in the background. And again though, it's just 15 20 minutes drive from the murder streets. And you know, I feel like in Kingston sometimes that if you close your eyes
and open them a minute later, you could be living in a completely different reality. Sometimes less than that. Sometimes it takes, you know, 10 seconds and you're in a different reality. You know, all cities and all countries have contrasts of course, but I feel like that's enhanced here in Kingston. Another interesting point that I've learned about Jamaica and the gangs and everything here is that people will come from Haiti because relatively on a boat, it's not too far. They'll bring weapons because Haiti has an abundance of weapons. And if you didn't see my Haiti series, we go into detail in there and talk about how that happens and where the weapons come from. and how people that have no food and can't
afford water, fresh water, are sitting there with militarygrade weapons worth thousands of dollars. Because there's such an abundance of weapons in Haiti and such a lack of food and water, people will bring guns from Haiti to Jamaica and swap them for food and fresh water and these things and take them back to Haiti. Okay, so we just had a lovely lunch at a beautiful seafood restaurant there. Kevin, quite the trip, right? Yes. How do you see the future of Jamaica? Do you think the violence is going to build and get greater or do you think it'll subdue
a little bit? Well, the government is trying their best to keep it down, right? But I don't think they have the proper plans and ideas and systems and policies in place. Honestly, I don't think that the government really understand the real issues and real problems in those areas cuz most politicians or people who are part of government system don't really visit those areas unless it's an election time. If you don't really know the needs of the people, you will never understand what the real issues are that are causing the problem. And I think that is where the government is really lacking. So because of the fact that people that become politicians tend to probably be from middle-ass families and those they live in middle class neighborhoods and
so they can't relate to the hardships of a working class, you know, poorer neighborhood, right? The political system is really corrupt. You work with it, all right, they get out of it. So you so getting somebody from those areas into politics who really wants a change. Yeah. Eventually when they get there, they'll understand that it doesn't make any sense. It's so corrupt that it's impossible to change. Yeah. Almost impossible at this point in time. Hopefully in the near future. I hold out hope for that. Thanks for keeping me alive. Just appreciate it. Thanks. A huge thank you to everybody in Jamaica who made this trip possible. And thank you so much for having me in your
country. This should go without saying, but obviously there's so many parts of Jamaica that are completely fine for tourism, and I'd highly recommend to check out the country because it's filled with some of the nicest people you'll ever get to meet. Obviously, the places that I went was to meet the people and hear what it's like living in some of these harsh neighborhoods. But, of course, and I know most of you know this, that a country has so many sides. And I always recommend to do more research on a country and see all the different sides of it because there's so much information about out there about Jamaica and it's really got so much to offer. Big thank you to Kevin for keeping me alive. It was definitely
needed in parts. I've put a video up on my Patreon. Over 20 minutes of bonus footage from the three Jamaica episodes. So if you want to check that out, head over to my Patreon. Big thank you to my patrons for the continued support and a huge thank you to all of you watching. I'll see you in the next series next year. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and merry
