In July 1993 I decided to attend my eldest son’s commencement ceremony in Barinas , Venezuela . My young high-school daughter and my seventy-three year old friend would be travelling with me to attend the ceremony. An acquaintance had warned me earlier about travelling to South America via Curacao on ALM. I did not ask [...]

As Jamaica modernized, little things started to slip away. Sometime in the early 70s, importation of firecrackers from China was banned after it was discovered that the powder was being extracted from the firecracker by unscrupulous persons to make ammunition for guns. So the festivities during the season were decidedly quieter, and as shopping for [...]

In the tiny district of Queensbury, St. Elizabeth, on Jamaica’s south coast, Christmas meant big-time celebrations, and preparation usually started right after the August 1 Emancipation holiday. We would know it when a brisk north wind whispered “Christmas coming,” and one or two farmers would build a lime kiln to produce white lime, a process that [...]

I grew up in deep rural Jamaica. In my district none of the citizens owned a motor vehicle, and so we walked everywhere. At age four I walked almost a mile to basic school on dirt tracks and unpaved roads. Back then we took our own cooked lunches to school. Some students wore shoes while [...]

The Jamaica that I grew up in was one of brotherly love, care for each others welfare, where in the face of disaster, sickness, death, hunger, achievements and success people banded together. Everyone came to help in times if illness, if the sick was hospitalized people visited; those who could not go to visit made [...]