Tribute to Miss Lou

I've been trying to post on Miss Lou's death from I heard the news of her passing, but just could not find the right words. I wanted to write a Miss Lou type poem as a tribute, but alas I'm no poet. As someone who grew up in Jamaica in the 70's it feels like a personal loss. Every single Jamaican child who grew up during that time wanted to go on 'Ring Ding' on tv. I never did go, I think once, arrangements were made but fell through and I remember crying my heart out in disappointment. If a child was in the household it would be mandatory for tv to be on, on a Saturday - Was it midday that the programme came on then? I heard someone on Cool fm saying that they feel like a major part of their childhood has been lost because all the 'Ring Ding' tapes have been lost or erased. I quite understand the feeling. Fortunately though, while we may never be able to recapture those images of Miss Lou saying 'Clap dem' or telling about 'Auntie Roachie' on Ring Ding, we won't forget them because they're etched indelibly in our hearts. We'll also never forget that she inspired pride in our culture and most of all in the local vernacular. While it is accepted that it's important to be conversant with the English Language, the Jamaican patois will always have pride of place. Miss Lou made it acceptable to showcase it beyond our borders, and pave the way for other persons to earn a living from its usage.

As our foremost cultural icon, it feels appropriate that she passed on during the Jamaican festival celebrations when we're in the midst of celebrating our culture. It's especially eerie that she made her transition on the day the the JCDC had its annual SpeechFest, where children from across the nation normally recite the famed Louise Bennett poems. She said once in an interview that her greatest pleasure was hearing the little children recite one of her poems, putting their own spin to it. I like to think that she went off with a smile, with the sound of a child reciting ringing in her ears.

Miss Lou, I'll miss you, thanks for helping to create wonderful childhood memories, as our cultural ambassador and champion of the Jamaican patois, you did a wonderful job. As yu use to love say wen yu deh pon tv, 'Walk good', God bless yu mi chile, and Rest In Peace. We love you.

Non-Jamaican can read about the awesome Dr. the hon Louise Bennett-Coverly and see a sample of her poems here

Blogger Link UP

I did the unthinkable. After much deliberating, doubts about the wisdom of it, I said what the hell and took the plunge. I thought, what's the worse that can happen? Well, I wasn't worried about being kidnapped or anything like that but I was concerned about being busted.

Yep, I went to the much touted blogger link-up here in Jamaica and met eleven other bloggers. Crazy, aren't I? At first I thought, maybe this is not a good idea. What contributes to blogging being so popular is the mystery element. So you know everything about the bloggee's life but that's fine since you don't know who the bloggee is. You have no idea that the respectable, bespectacled neighbor that you bid good morning each day is 'Man out of town' who likes freaky sex.

I wanted to be able to cuss, deride, criticise everyone who got on my wrong side without being confronted some time later about it or putting my job at risk. I wanted to mull about that guy who couldn't get it up regardless of what I did (no I haven't blogged about that yet) without contributing to the poor soul's embarassment. I thought that it was ok for MadBull and Abeni to be all gungho about it, afterall they don't live here. And so I pondered. What if *gasp* I meet up on someone who reported to me in the past, or an ex (or even present) boss. I don't even know which would be worse. My carefully crafted image of the of the confident, young professional would be shattered. The people who aren't my friends may know from a very frank post that I'm not always as self-assured as I like to project. Oh crap, forget this.

However, the bane of human's existence, a combination of curiousity and inquisitiveness triumphed. That same nosiness that cause me to spend countless hours every night reading about diverse lives of the authors of the different blogs that I frequent. My grandmother would say is 'fastness'.

So anyway I pried myself from the house telling myself that I'm just going for icecream by Devon House and depending on how I feel I'll pop in just to peep. While parking, I anxiously looked in and saw a largish group and wondered. Hmmm, they look quite decent from where I'm sitting in driver's seat and most importantly didn't see anyone I know. Ok, maybe I'll just go get a drink from the bar without them knowing who it is. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Maybe.

I approached the door, looking for Madbull and KingstonGirl who both have pictures on their sites. Dr.D had indicated that he might not be there so even though he also has a pic on his site, I wasn't looking for him. I paused at the door; I didn't see KG but wow, that handsome guy must be MadBull, he looked nicer in person :)

It was great folks, I put a face to some of the blogs I frequent. I won't mention everyone I meet for fear of leaving out someone. I was quite pleased to meet Francis whose blog got me started. I mentioned him in my very first blog.

I noticed however that I was the only female Jamaica blogger who turned up so I guess that says something about me. It's either, I have too much time on my hand and don't have much to do with it or that I'm just more inquisitive than the typical Jamaican female blogger. Take your pick.

You may curse if you're a Foreign Artiste

I love my country, but damn if it isn't rife with hypocrisy!

Now, a group of really influential companies that are always sponsoring events (think Air J, Red Stripe, C&W, Digicel) formed a Coalition of Corporate Sponsors. Now this so-called coalition's main objective was to encourage/insist on some decency in dancehall events. Any artiste performing in an event that they sponsored was supposed to adhere to certain rules, observe certain code of conduct - no cursing, bashing of gays etc. Beenie Man and Bounti Killer had violated that at a carnival event and they were banned.

Now, can someone explain to me how is it that Fiddy (50c) performed at Reggae Sumfest last week, used a lot of foul language and I haven't heard peep out of anyone about it. Huh? Nada, Nil, zilch from the Corporate sponsors. Does the code only apply to local artistes? I wasn't there but I heard that Dancehall night which is traditionally the rawest night of all was like church service compared to when Fiddy performed.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Fiddy but what is good for the goose must be good for the gander. I'm not even necessarily against risque performances (I do love Lady Saw) but it's unfair to have separate rules.

My personal view is this, apply ratings to the different events just as there are rating to albums. Therefore, patrons know from beforehand that they are attending an xrated event. I'm not necessarily excited about the cursing during the performance, the occasional or odd expletive I can live with. However, I don't wan't to listen to any performance where the expletives are like punctuation marks. I can appreciate though, that not everyone feels the same way that I do.

We need to level the playing ground though.

Read some more on this here

Swimming, blogging and talent contests

Blogging has become a past-time for me and hoardes of other people people all around the world and it's quite understandable why this is so. I discovered today that there have been cases of people being fired from their jobs because of this pursuit. Well, I found out about two so far. There's Queen of the Sky who was fired from Delta for posing in her uniform and there's Petite Anglaise, the English single mother living in France whose employer fired her for blogging on the job (well, that was the excuse that they gave). Now I know plenty of you are all going to be running scared. Should I think twice about using this medium to cuss out my boss or criticize my co-workers (even when they deserve it).

So is it a case of being no-holds-bar honest and risk being identified and face the consequences or have a no-personality blog that puts everyone (including the writer) to sleep. Censor yourself or be censured?

Rising Star:
Anyway, on the local (Jamaican) scene, just finished watching Rising Stars (Jamaican version of American Idol) and I was quite pleased with the talents on display. Hey at this rate, I'm going to go broke just voting. I have 6 persons that I just have to vote for today and they didn't even show all the competitors (Jeez, what's the right word? Competitors sounds sporty and contestants sounds like beauty queens).

Swimming:
I've taken 6 swimming lessons so far and already I feel discouraged. Now don't get me wrong, it isn't because I haven't seen any progress. It's just my impatience kicking in. It just seems like I have a long way to go before I can swim. When am I going to get to the stage where I can swim the length of the pool. I can't even swim the width without stopping at least three times to rest and breath (in the shallow part). So how on earth am I going to swim the whole length, bear in mind that I won't be able to stop to rest and breathe in the deep side. If only my Mother hadn't listened to my foolish Aunt who advised her to discontinue my swimming lessons while in Prep School because (Now get this people) I was still wetting my bed. Did she think I was soaking up the water in the pool?

Proper way to eat ice-cream

Man. This is the life. Eating ice-cream and muffins while reading blogs. (Said the person with not much of a life :)

By the way, I take it y'all know the proper way to eat ice-cream? Ok, for the unenlightened. Put the ice-cream in the microwave for a few seconds so it's nice and soft. Then, crush some Excelsior (known to us Jamaicans as 'tough crackers') crackers and mix in it so it's nice and slurpy.

Hmmm, deeelicious :)

What the Hell Zidanne!

I'm in shock. What the hell was Zidanne thinking? An experienced player. Team captain. About to retire. It's the freaking World Cup Finals for crying out damn loud! What the hell!!!

Tax dodging Jamaican parents

You know, I was so mad when I read Ruel Reid's comment in the Jamaica Observer yesterday about keeping the children of tax dodgers out of school. I could not believe it. It was very obvious to me that this man was just shooting from the lips without engaging the brain. The suggestion was so ridiculous on so many levels. In a country with a literacy rate of 87% one of the lowest in the caribbean (most countries in the caribbean have literacy rates in the 90%'s) we should be looking at ways of improving this. First of all, there are parents who don't care two hoots about how many days of school a child misses so it's the child who would be punished. Secondly, if such a policy is put in action, how does that help to bring the childless non-compliant taxpayer into the tax net? Also, he obviously hasn't noticed that home-schooling has been catching on here, a non-compliant taxpayer might just decide it's cheaper to do so than pay the government what is due.

Then, did he even think of the pschological impact on the child who has to miss school because his parent owes the government? Obviously not. I too believe that something needs to be done about bringing more people under the tax umbrella. I too strongly believe that it's grossly unfair for the compliant few to be carrying the tax burden while the rest reap the benefits without paying their share. However, this is certainly not the way to go. Is he crazy? And to think that this is the President of the Jamaica Teachers Association who made this suggestion. He represents a group of people who are supposed to be the champion of education in the country. He should be advocating that more be done to increase literacy level. I'm sure the members of the association must have cringed in embarrassment at this absurd suggestion.

Crime in Jamaica

Jamaica has become a gated country. Every apartment/town-house going up has electronic/automatic gate and/or security personel at the entrance. Thanks to the escallating crime situation. The sad thing about this is even with all that we don't necessarily feel safer and feel compelled to grill every last opening (windows, doors) just in case the afore-mentioned security and electronic gate didn't succeed in keeping out the criminals. It's a sad, worrying situation.

When I was growing up, we didn't have automatic gates and security guards. It creates a dependency because now, I will never live anywhere that doesn't have them. There's a sense of panic if one happens to look outside and notice that for some reason the gate is open and no security is in attendance.

I remember my girl-friend telling me that she doesn't want to live anywhere with security/gates because of that same reason. I remember one Saturday at my previous apartment looking out, seeing the gate open, no security in sight and felt a little fearful. It's no way for anyone to live.

I no longer feel charitable towards the criminals that have us cowering in fear. I want them all dead. Not imprisoned. Not fattened by my hard-earned tax dollars so that they can commit more crimes when they are released. I have no confidence that the police (even the ones seconded here from England) can do anything about it. They haven't made any dent in the numbers so far.

There seems to be an increase in lynching here and I think that's a direct link between that and the confidence (or lack there-of) the public has in the police doing its job. People no longer think that there will be any justice so they have (rightly or wrongly) decided to inflict their own. There was a time when the intelligent side of me would triumph and I would balk at the atrocity and the cringe at the animalistic behavior of these people. I am no longer sure that they aren't doing the right thing. In a situation where (as happened last year) a man laywaits a woman at her workplace, throw acid on her and not only disfigure her but causes her death, and is subsequently killed by enraged onlookers (as happened), how can I feel any sympathy? How can I condemn the the people for not handing him over to the police? I'm not sure that had I been present, I would not have helped in some way. Probably not by actually beating since the sensible side of me probably would have kicked in. I probably would have helped to catch him though, hand him over, telling myself that I'm just handing him over so that they can hand him to the police. Right!

I do remember in my early twenties, while studying one Sunday in an empty class room at what is now known as University of Technology, seeing a man speeding along outside on his bicycle and wondering what he was up to. He didn't look like a student. Minutes later, two girls ran outside screaming and crying that the man held the up with a knife, took their money and jewellery and threatened bodily harm if they made an alarm. Immediately the student body that was present launched a search, found him and gave him a proper beating before handing him over to the police. The police who witnessed the licks, didn't act too hurried in retrieving him from the angry students. At the time clogs were the rage (these tough, board noisy shoes for you men who don't know) and I was wearing a pair. I remember while the students were inflicting boxes and slaps with hands, shoes, and sticks, I had taken off one foot and was trying desperately to make my own mark on him but just could not reach him before the police shoved him in the vehicle. The students seeing him in the police vehicle had backed off but I wasn't satisfied. So seeing him basking in the safety of the police vehicle, I took off my shoe and slap him one on the forehead before running off. It was a most satisfying action to me.

I am scared and angry and fed-up