Jamaican Till I Die!

I recently came across a Jamaica travel video done by voyagetv.com called Hands-On History .  It features Bellefield Great House, Montego Bay.   Not one to pass up anything to do with great houses, one of my favourite archetypes, I settled down to watch the little 7-minute flick.   Sepia hued Bellefield Great House coutesy of Voyage TV To the beat of African kette drums a disembodied voice says: “It really is a step back in time, you know, in the heyday of our sugar production.   So, you know, that’s kind of what we try to do here: take people back in time, you know, to 1805 before the abolition of slavery when Jamaica was a really special place….” !!! “Special  place” FOR WHOM??? Ms Rousseau, owner of the disembodied voice, takes Voyage TV’s host and the viewer on a tour of the Great House and the sugar mill whilst bringing us up-to-date on the illustrious history of the Karr-Jarrett family; all to the sounds of a Rastafarian ch...

Continued from:  The Lack of Organized Public Protest By The silent Majority Are we actually interested in permanent solutions to our problems? I think we have given up on the Government’s ability to fix anything and have decided to provide for ourselves the things they have failed to do. In most developed countries the people would take to the streets to demand that the Government deliver on what they are suppose to deliver, it is why we pay taxes, so that we do not have to worry about these basic services. Take the dilapidated state of our roads and infrastructure, faced with this problem do we organize and demand that our hard earn tax dollars go towards fixing our basic needs? The average Jamaican choose the alternative they go to the bank and take out loans to buy the biggest SUV they can find to navigate the potholes, the more dilapidated the roads the bigger the vehicle. Big SUV's are more a status symbol than a requirement, peoples way to profile ...

I cannot help but wonder why there is a lack of organized public activism and protest in Jamaica. I am having a hard time remembering when last Jamaicans organized a massive, peaceful, progressive, socially cohesive movement against anything.  I am not talking about the politically organized partisan, divide and mash up, out of control, tire burning gas riots of the past or the protest in defense of Dons, Warlords and Gang members but a more productive outcry. A socially conscious Nation Building movement against poverty, social injustice, mismanagement, child abuse, crime and corruption within the Jamaican society. The lack of organized public outcry in Jamaica either means that we are all content, yard nice, everything sweet, session a run, henny a flow and everything is right in our world or that we are such a fragmented society that it is almost impossible for us to come together as a people to confront the problems we face as Jamaicans outside of the party politics. ...