From ‘Browning’ to Big Foot

Some Jamaican men have egos the size of the Blue Mountain Range. This particular one that I will speak about is the reflection of a large group of Jamaican men who verbally abuse women who don’t want to speak to them.

I have heard of men who take it upon themselves to disrespect women who they call to on the street, because the women don’t give them the time of day. But who would think that this would happen to me!

I was minding my own business on a class trip on Friday, and trying to get in line to board a #78 JUTC bus in Downtown, Kingston to get home. I mean, we Jamaicans all know how hot Downtown is after midday and the bus provides air conditioning, so yes my main priority was to pay my fare to get on the bus as quickly as possible. Then suddenly, from out of nowhere a vendor or passerby (not sure of his title) starts screaming on the top of his voice.

“Yow browning, (Jamaican term for girls of a light complexion) you wid di glasses on yuh head, yuh tink mi a beg yuh nothing?!”

The crowd started looking around for this mysterious ‘browning’ and l realized everyone was staring at me. In my defense, I usually respond to anyone that hails (says greetings to) me on this street because my mother told me once that anything can happen to me on the street and I might need assistance from these same strangers. So I would have responded if I had heard him earlier. He continued to shout angrily, but it was my turn to climb the steps of the bus to give my fare to the driver so I thought, let me just leave this man alone and go home. But apparently, that made him even angrier.

Big Feet

” Yuh foot dem big like!” He jeered, as if to get my attention.

I noticed all my classmates and the rest of the crowd was now staring at my feet. Some of them laughed and I continued into the bus.  I wear size 7 sometimes 7.5 footwear so I don’t consider my feet big. I just assumed he still wanted to get my attention. I sat down at one of the windows and the man still kept his insults going.

” All you, mi woulda neva married you cause your foot dem too big, mi couldn’t buy shoes fi fit dem”

At this point I started laughing because I thought this man was crazy. For the entire ride back to Papine, which seemed like forever, the incident was the sweet topic of discussion. My friends had a blast reenacting the man and saying who else they would tell about what happened. It was then I was told that he had been calling to me for a while before he went from ‘zero to one hundred real quickly’.

The Moral of the story

 I believe if a man calls to a woman whether she hears him or not, he should move on with his life and act like a mature individual. There is no need to verbally abuse someone because they don’t want to speak to you. Men ask yourself this the next time you think of disrespecting a woman, would you like a man to verbally abuse your daughter if she refuses to talk to him?

Jamaican Children and the Illegal Sex Trade

Human trafficking of children is very much alive in Jamaica. This practice can be blamed mostly on poverty, but poverty is never an excuse to sell children or anyone else as sex slaves.

I wonder if parents who partake in this despicable act consider the future of their children. Do they really sit down and mentally examine the dangers that they are exposing their children to. The young girls and now increasingly young boys will for obvious reasons be scared for life. Most of them will probably have their futures ruined permanently by the haunting of this present reality in which their parents sent them away to have their underage bodies abused to cover a responsibility that parents should do. Children should never be used as a means of supporting the family.

While growing up in a single- parent household life was challenging at times. But forcing me to become a sex slave was something that my mother would have NEVER considered. She is a hard-worker and my mother worked day and night to ensure that my family was well taken care of. I applaud Jamaican mothers who are like my own, mothers who would go without food to ensure that their children are fed.

If Jamaica is to take a positive step forward we need to have more positive interventions from the Government and the religious institutions. After-all this country holds in the Guinness book of records, the title of ‘Most Churches per square-mile of any country in the world’ More than 1,600 churches can be found across the country’s 4,500 square miles, and the number continues to grow. How can we then be such such a Godless nation?

Classism in Kingston, Jamaica

Classism is an issue that has affected the Jamaica society since the days of slavery. The capital city, Kingston is divided into two major groups; the upper and the lower class.

Members from the upper class dominate the corporate realm, and enjoy the benefits of a modern society. These individuals are usually Euro-centric in nature while members of the lower class are mostly Afro centric.

As a final year journalism student at the University of the West Indies, Mona, I recently produced a radio documentary whichis entitled THE UPTOWN- DOWNTOWN DIVIDE. This documentary goes in-depth about the issue of classism in Kingston, and features residents from Uptown and Downtown, University lecturers who are qualified to speak on the issue, and a lot more. The historical aspect of the issue is explained for a better understanding of why the society is the way it is today.

The separation of the two social classes is looked at from a geographical, stereotypical, and financial point of view, where education is seen as the most popular means of social mobility. Skin bleaching and police brutality also play a major role in propelling classism in Kingston.

Supervision was given by Dr Canute James (Lecturer) and Miss Fae Ellington (Lecturer & Broadcaster). The documentary was narrated by Lorraine Mendez from the Jamaica Information Service (JIS).

If you wish to listen to the documentary, and become educated about the issue of classism, then click this link which will direct you to my Dropbox account.

This is true in Jamaica

Jamaican Politicians

Many wait for change, let’s see what the next election will bring.

Why is Jamaica Poor?

(Photo: An aerial view of Kingston, Jamaica).

It’s an embarrassing but inescapable truth about Jamaica – most of the time, we’re a complete mess. From arresting criminals to developing industries, diversifying exports to simplifying taxes, creating wealth to erasing intolerance, Jamaica lags behind much of the world.

Our GDP per capita is less than half the global average. According to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, almost one in three men and one in two women in their early twenties can’t find work. Forty per cent of all the jobs in the country are in farming, fishing and car repair. Construction and tourism provide a quarter of the rest. And those hard-baked jobs pay about J$11,500 a week, not enough to afford the computer to read this article.

What’s a beautiful banana republic to do? Two hundred years ago, Jamaica was the richest colony in the British Empire by a distance, and its citizens, like Simon Taylor and Thomas Thistlewood, the most wealthy. Falmouth famously had running water before New York. How did we go from such prosperity in 1814 to such poverty today? Why is Jamaica so poor?

It’s the billion-dollar question, one the best and brightest social scientists have been chewing on for decades. Here’s the most influential living economist, Robert Lucas: “Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia? If so, what, exactly? Once one starts to think about [it], it is hard to think about anything else.”

It’s easy to know what makes a market healthy – just write down what the First World does. Modern economists agree that balancing state budgets, suppressing inflation, allowing free trade, and investing in infrastructure is the way to go. But what’s good for the country is not necessarily good for the government. In a democracy, where politicians only last a few years at the top, it makes more sense to spend as much as you can, protect the interests of powerful friends, and skimp on infrastructure apart from big, prestigious projects.

Still, with selfish people in power everywhere, why do rich countries stay rich and poor countries stay poor? In 2001, a Turkish economist, Daron Acemoglu, solved an amazing, disturbing piece of the puzzle. He discovered that he could predict the current GDP of 70 countries, including Jamaica, by looking at the mortality rate of white men in the 1800s. Wait, what? How in the name of Paul Bogle are those two things even related?

It turns out that wherever European colonisers survived in large numbers, like Australia and North America, they imported the rule of law from home. But where they mostly succumbed to disease, like much of Africa and the West Indies, they didn’t bother to set up strong institutions. Instead, they set a precedent of grab-and-go, short-term, extractive policymaking that persists, like the viruses they feared, to this very day. Out of many, one example – inefficient bureaucracies that encourage and even tolerate widespread corruption.

Tim Harford, yet another economist, explains: “Development is thwarted because the rules and laws of the society do not encourage projects or businesses which would be to the common good. The small amount of education and technology and infrastructure [in a country like Jamaica] could be much better used if the society was organised to reward good, productive ideas. But it is not.” By contrast, America’s patent system, effective courts and venture capital paved the way, as much as the literal investment in highways, for a good idea like FedEx to flourish. In turn, FedEx created the delivery network for Amazon, whose supercomputers now enable Netflix, and the virtuous cycle continues.

This is all very depressing, because it suggests the problem of poverty operates on a scale larger than anyone’s lifetime, that as a colonised people, we were predestined to struggle far past Independence, and that we are our own worst enemy in implementing solutions. But depression is not despair. We have to find a way to align the short-term interests of our elected officials with the long-term interests of the economy. How to do that remains unanswered, but with the world’s best and brightest on the job, it’ll probably only take another 200 years.

**(Article was taken from the Jamaica Gleaner Online)