I’ve decided to take a break from writing, get off my butt and get some other action going. Jamaica is looking at an election in three years, with one of two deadbeat political parties expected to again take us on that ride to nowhere. I hear some calling for boycotting elections, but I think that’s [...]
Rural farmers on the Demerara’s East Coast in Guyana are hoping that the rains quickly come or else they stand to lose millions invested in farmlands for rice and cash crops and they want the government to do more to help them cope with the extremely dry weather brought about by El Nino. Some of [...]
The scene is haunting. It recalls those pictures of war ravaged African cities where dark faces congregate by seemingly useless buildings to stare at nothing as feet force people on to nowhere in particular. But it is West Queen Street, downtown Kingston, Jamaica, the Wednesday when things are supposedly returning to normal after the Jamaica [...]
A state of emergency has been declared by the government in Kingston the Jamaican capital as gunmen attacked four police stations and burned one to the ground. The State of Emergency begins at 6 o’clock Sunday evening and last for a month. A statement from Prime Minister Bruce Golding said the decision to declare the [...]
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in a mood of atonement, announced Monday night that the US extradition request for alleged drug dealer and gun runner, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, is to proceed. Rumours of the decision to allow the process had created a tense atmosphere in Kingston, the Jamaican capital, where government offices, the courts and [...]
All the senators nominated by the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) have thrown their support behind Prime Minister Bruce Golding, beleaguered with calls for his resignation by the opposition, human rights and church groups after he told parliament on Tuesday the party had hired a law firm to lobby the US government over a treaty [...]
It would seem that every day we wake up and open the newspapers, turn on our radios and watch the television Jamaica’s problems appear to be spiraling out of control. If it isn’t the recent drought and water crisis it is the rising cost of living. If not these crises, then it is the current [...]
In the summer of 2007, Jamaicans went to the polls and decided that after 18-plus years of PNP rule they wanted a change. They voted Bruce Golding and the JLP into power and, in the process, made Portia Simpson Miller’s stint as PM one of the briefest. She became Jamaica’s first female party leader and [...]
The few articles that have mentioned ‘evangelicals’ or the like have not always been fair, due no doubt to their brevity, or misunderstanding or some such thing. Many have rightly condemned the distasteful pronouncements of some of the movement’s leaders but appear to ignore its contributions. I will continue the conversation by delineating what I [...]
About three weeks after my arrival in Ghana that a friend, Yao, handed me the calabash of palm wine with the directive, “Try this; it’s deha, palm wine.” I had heard much about the treasured drink that was such a staple of West Afrikans’ culture it also reigned in their literature but the frothy, milk-like [...]