Dispatches From the Departures Gate: No Passport, No Cry

Dispatches From the Departures Gate: No Passport, No Cry

“We’ll let you into Jamaica,” said the head of security at Kingston International Airport, sliding my worthless passport back towards me beneath the glass window. “But it’s on you to find your own way out.”  It was 3 a.m. on a hot, sticky night in the Caribbean in March 2016—a simpler time. I was a 29-year-old corporate drone traveling to Jamaica with two friends to celebrate surviving the polar vortex that overtook Manhattan that winter. I’d ma…