Desiree lives heart's desire

Chaos, Freelance Writer

Today we continue our series on past Miss Jamaica Worlds.

Desiree Depass is beautiful. Desiree Depass is private, complex, frank, smart, focused, fun, energetic, confident-- Desiree is crazysexycool.

The 5' 6", Miss Jamaica World 1999 has a light in her eyes which twinkles in amusement or burns with the fervour of the truly determined.

They twinkle when she speaks of her on-going war with cockroaches. Not ordinary cockroaches. Ninja cockroaches. The kind that find their way through mosquito netting or into showers to attack the unwary. She lamented: "I'm terrified of cockroaches and I'm a magnet. They are disgusting creatures with no purpose. I was in the shower once and I felt something on my ankle. I looked and there was a cockroach latched on to my tendon..." (Screaming and hysterics ensued).

The Miss Jamaica World 1999 contest is into the decisive question and answer section. There are two questions on slips of paper and Desiree has to choose one. Her choice is the difference between winning and losing, between being a Miss Jamaica World or an also-ran. There is a swasm, no a hurricane of butterflies in her stomach, each one doing its own version of some exotic gymnastics. In other words, she is tense, nervous ­ will she make the right choice? The crowd is silent in anticipation, the judges are sitting, staring, half-cynical smiles locked in place and Desiree has to choose. Then she feels a cockroach crawling over her... .

Undecided

She wants to freak out. She wants to run away, screaming, clawing away the monstrosity on her, but she chooses and chooses well. She gets a question along the lines of 'What future opportunities would you like to see for young Jamaicans?' Desiree smiles and experiences a rush of adrenaline. She answers. The crowd, a Jamaican crowd, difficult and hard to please, roars in appreciation.

The final three are being announced. Desiree is silent, praying: "Please don't call my name. Please don't call my name". It becomes a litany, a chant, a prayer to the gods of beauty pageants and still Desiree, wearing a daringly cut dress, feels the thing crawling over her.

The announcements are made.

After a few anxious moments, Desiree Depass wait is over. She is ecstatic and does a rather unladylike pump-fake in celebration which, with a smile, she says was "inappropriate". She is Miss Jamaica World 1999.

The cockroach? Just a bead of sweat meandering its way slowly over her curves.

What followed was a whirlwind of fun and fatigue, anticipation and anxiety. Desiree went to London for the Miss World finals and fell in love with the city. "I was picked up by a group including Miss United Kingdom and they couldn't find the hotel. I looked at London and thought 'I could live here'" she reminisced.

After a swimsuit photo shoot on a very cold beach in Malta, after being chaperoned everywhere, after self-doubt and a return to her indomitable confidence, after hours spent applying make-up and more wearing it, the finals took place. At the end of it all, Desiree Depass was crowned Queen of the Caribbean, officially one of the most beautiful women in the world.

According to her mother Marguerite (Desiree laughingly calls her 'Miss Socie' and this interview may have been a lot shorter if her mother not filled in the gaps she was too modest to mention), who had joined in despite rather vocal ­ if playful ­ protests from her daughter, the past Immaculate High School student was rehearsing for the pageant years before she made it. "She used to hold fashion shows and beauty pageants with her friends which she always won" ("be-cause I always kept the best clothes for myself" her daughter smiled). She had entered the Miss Jamaica World competition once before in 1997. "I was glad I entered the first time. I got exposure and I found out what to expect and what to prepare for."

Route

Desiree Depass did not follow the usual route after a high school experience jam-packed with activities and achievements, evinced by a veritable mass of medals Mrs. Depass brings out. Instead of heading off to university, she embarked on a voyage filled with a myriad of activities, because "I wasn't one of those persons who knew what they wanted to do from high school".

Desiree is a dancer, once with the Cathi Levy Players. After a stint with Caribbean Bottlers and another with a telemarketing company, she got the opportunity to dance and learn with the Cuban national dance troupe 'Danza Contempreano de Cuba' in Cuba, after they had performed in Jamaica.

Here was another interesting chapter in the young Desiree's life. Instead of the apartment she had been promised she discovered she would be renting a house with a young couple and their daughter. This was not the first surprise.

"Have you heard about culture shock? My mother and I had gone to Cuba. When I saw the building it was dilapidated, paint was stripping ­ it wasn't a place I wanted to live. I started to cry ("pampered, spoilt" her mother throws in affectionately, to more remonstrations from her daughter). Inside the apartment was nice. I didn't know much Spanish, so I had brought a dictionary and had conversations that way. I'm not usually a big reader, but I read 10 big, thick books in the three months I was there ­ there was nothing to do," Desiree said.

It got even more interesting.

"I had blueberry pancakes every morning for three months (which she had brought with her) and corned beef and rice practically every evening," she said. Include a hour-long walk to get to and from classes, four dance classes a day and a seven-flight trek to get to and from her apartment when the elevators broke down, having no one to talk to (her mother had left after a week) and Desiree got depressed.

"Eventually I decided to stop moping and to do what I had to do. I got into the groove, because I love dancing," she said. Then she went home for Christmas ­ perhaps not the best idea. "I didn't want to leave (after Christmas in Jamaica). I had shipped a bicycle to help with the commute, but by the time it arrived I was shipping it back. I had gone to the embassy and called my mother and told her I couldn't take it anymore. I was depressed and didn't want to do anything. I was so glad to be back, it was a 'kiss the ground' feeling. I was so happy. There are so many things taken for granted here."

Direction

Back in Jamaica and without a job or sense of direction, she decided to do a travel agency course and worked at Compact Travel for under a year before taking another shot at the Miss Jamaica World title. After that year, she worked at International Travel before ending up where she is now, gracing the skies with the national carrier Air Jamaica, where she has had a few 'moments' of notoriety which are best described by this encounter.

"I had spilled water on a gentleman's shirt and was frantically rubbing it when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lady seated beside him whispering to him. He turned and said 'You are Miss Jamaica?' and I said 'once, but not anymore'. He then said: 'Bwoy baby, you can spill anything on me'".

Dark moment

There have been a few dark moments in Desiree's life, chief of which was a hold-up attempt by a gunman, in which she showed bravery and presence of mind in manoeuvring her car between the devil and a hard place, scraping the car in the process and escaping. As she put it: "I decided I wasn't going to be raped, murdered or held-up." The event, unsurprisingly, has left her somewhat paranoid.

Desiree Depass has finally latched onto what she wants to do with the rest of her life, after packing in experiences many would kill to have.

Unsurprisingly, considering her fascination with cable channels that show real life trauma and surgery, she wants to be a doctor and has already taken steps towards achieving her goal. As her mother puts it, Desiree is "impatient, she can't wait" ­ the mark of the true achiever.

Come February next year, Desiree Depass will be taking another step in her personal odyssey when she gets married to her long-time love, Ian Pullen, who she indicated as her 'sugar' ad nauseum in her photo album.

There is a lot more to come.

Desiree Depass is crazysexycool.

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