of Wood and Water’, you can probably understand why I didn’t say: wanted us to see. They didn’t allocate any ‘leisure time’ at all! And
‘Sorry, can’t make it, too busy working on the Powerlist.’ A nice, even an irate call to Laverne Walker, who runs Sackville, elicited
easy few days by a beach or pool was just what the doctor ordered, little sympathy – half a day for rest and relaxation was all I could
I thought – and then the itinerary arrived in my inbox. negotiate. This is what happened next.
Now I assume that when it comes to cheap fares, Sackville know
what they’re doing; sadly, their expertise doesn’t extend to the
unwritten rules of travel writing. The schedule they sent through
Day 1
indicated that they actually expected us to do some work while we
were in JA. Every one of the fi ve days was full of places they wanted Devon House
us to go to, activities they wanted us to experience and things they Having fl own into Kingston the night before, in a luxurious
British Airways Club World cabin, we started our trip with a visit
to Devon House in Kingston, the home George Stiebel, a mixed-race
businessman, widely regarded as Jamaica’s fi rst black millionaire,
who built the mansion in the late nineteenth century.
Stiebel, the son of a German Jew and an African housekeeper,
was a carpenter-turned-arms-dealer, who after being shipwrecked
off the coast of Venezuela, invested in a gold mine in the South
American country, from which he made his fortune.
Returning to Jamaica, Stiebel bought 99 properties (it was illegal
to own 100 or more). In 1881 he built Devon House and lived there
Looking out over Kingston from Strawberry Hill (above); and
Devon House, built by Jamaica’s fi rst black millionaire (left)
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