Making opportunities

National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey summarized our long-established practice when he said; “Take advantage of every opportunity; where there is none, make it for yourself.”

After slavery was abolished, our ancestors who had been forcibly uprooted from their country and families, found themselves without any opportunities.  For whereas those who had enslaved them for years received monetary compensation for losing free labor, most who had labored free, got nothing, no land, no money nothing to start their free life with.

Some chose to go back to work for the wicked slave masters just to get food to survive. Others fled to unpopulated areas in the hills to find a piece of land on which to eke out a living. The really courageous ones found whatever could use to sail away from the island to shores unknown.

I say really courageous as they never knew where they would end up or even arrive alive at any place, but to them, even death was better than going back to work for those monsters.

They therefore took the ultimate sacrifice to try and make opportunities for themselves.

We have no idea how many of the freed slaves who embarked on those dangerous treks arrived alive anywhere. We know a large number found their way to nearby Cuba which was getting wealthier every day as a sugar and rum manufacturing hub. Some of us can still find our relatives in provinces such as Santiago De Cuba, Holguin, and Guantanamo Bay.

Work on the construction of the Panama Canal in 1881 was a next big opportunity for poverty-stricken Jamaicans. Thousands died on that project. In fact, it was suspended for many years because of the high mortality rate. However, among those who survived, places like Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and even some countries in South America were where they later pursued opportunities.

The next big migration of Jamaicans came during the world wars, whether it was to fight for the former slave owing country or later, to provide cheap labor to rebuild their economy.

In short, marginalized Jamaicans have never been shy about seeking opportunities abroad where none existed at home. So, when countries such as Canada and the USA started to make migration easier, thousands trekked there too. Ever heard of the ‘farm work’ programs? Thousands never returned too!

Things took a different turn in the 1970’s though. For it was the threat of communism with all its ills, that caused mostly already-educated Jamaicans who never lacked opportunities at home as well as members of the affluent middle class to seek out countries where their safety and freedoms would not be in jeopardy.

That was when what is described as the real brain drain began.

And it has never ceased for as communication becomes better, individuals are finding that their skills and training can attract far bigger bucks in first world countries than they can earn at home.

Whatever the reasons, the fact is there are either about the same number of or even more Jamaicans living abroad as live on the island.

With a history like ours, it should surprise no one that the latest Fund for Peace data, shows Jamaica being second in the world in terms of migration. (See the table of the top 5 below.)

Countries	Human flight and brain drain, 2022	Global rank	Available data
Samoa	10	1	2007 - 2022
Jamaica	9.1	2	2007 - 2022
Palestine	8.8	3	2021 - 2022
Micronesia	8.7	4	2007 - 2022
Somalia	8.7	5	2007 - 2022

In most instances however, those Jamaicans who left their homeland for whatever reason, have never turned their backs on their country, for the record of their massive remittances sent to help those who were left behind, is living testimony of their love.

And, remittances have even on occasion topped tourism as our leading foreign exchange earner, especially after that horrible Covid virus struck.

Last year, the Business Observer carried an analysis entitled ‘Remittances — Jamaica's economic lynchpin.”

It said in part; even though the World Bank predicted global remittances would fall by 22 per cent, with the Latin America and Caribbean region expected to record a 19.3 percent drop, Jamaica has defied this fate as remittance inflows grew by 25 per cent to US $1.53 billion ($221.1 billion) and net remittances went up by 30 per cent to US $1.41 billion from April to September 2020.”

Although so many Jamaicans have made opportunities for themselves overseas, it has never been a risk-free enterprise.

Actually, it takes a great deal of courage to leave friends and families to pursue opportunities in countries unknown, at times even starting at rock bottom in places where neither the language or culture are familiar.

That is why so many in the diaspora took umbrage at the imbecilic pronouncement by the Deputy Mayor of Montego Bay, Richard Vernon.

I don’t know the level of education that Vernon has or even if he has any knowledge of our history, but by calling those who sought opportunities abroad cowards, he exposed a level of ignorance that is unacceptable for a so-called leader!

 

Family Time

One of the bands at Caribana 2018

For years, I envied my ex husband, as he had such a large family and although I became extremely close to all of them and remained so even after the divorce, somehow not having my own large family still left me feeling a bit isolated. You see, I have only one brother and two cousins who grew up with me but each time we got together, we seemed so few as opposed to his family.

A section of the Caribana parade 2018

Well I am now discovering that it is not that I have a small family, my problem is I just never knew many of them!

The largest unknown segment of my family is from my paternal grandfather's side. I had met him only once and was dead scared of him as he was blind so wore dark glasses. I had never before seen anyone in dark glasses. Besides, he had a large grey beard so to me, a young kid of probably six years old in the days before television was invented thus exposing us to different looking folks, that was a very scary picture! I remember running away from him on that occasion, although his wife, my grandmother was my greatest hero.

 I guess it was because I never knew him why I never knew anything about his family either and never considered asking. It is only recently that I discovered he was one of 14 children and their descendants are spread out throughout the world.

Some of my Cuban kin

I therefore was most excited to meet a cousin from Canada who had a wealth of  information about that side of the family.

First, I learnt that I had cousins in Cuba and having traveled there three times already from my home in Jamaica which is only 90 miles away, had no problem jumping on a plane to find them in 2014.

It was a great pleasure meeting them and learning a bit about their family.

Our relationship stems from their late matriarch who was a sister to that grandfather. 

In the early 1900's, numerous Jamaicans migrated to Cuba in search of employment as then that country then had a thriving economy. That grandaunt of mine was among those who migrated there, she got married, had three daughters and she ended up seeing eleven grandchildren before she died at age one hundred and seven.

I was extremely happy to make a

Some of us bonded immediately

link with those descendants and am now in regular communication with the eldest who is the only one who speaks English. She has always said her greatest dream is to visit Jamaica, the country of her ancestors.

More link-up was to come as the same Canadian cousin who is my source of information, told me she was arranging a small reunion of some relatives who live there plus sisters who live in Seattle, Washington.

She was smart enough to arrange the reunion to coincide with Caribana. We had a lovely get- together at the Event's room at her condo and got to know all about each other and some of our late relatives all over the world.

Get together in Toronto

I bonded immediately with most of my newly met family and some of us toured together, first at Caribana and also on a boat tour of the harbor front of the vast, busy Lake Ontario.

Caribana is a cultural festival of Caribbean people and traditions which has been held each summer since the late sixties, in the city of Toronto. 

This has been billed as North America's largest street festival and it is frequented by over 2 million visitors each year. It was first held on Centre Island, one of the Toronto islands, but quickly outgrew that venue so was transferred to the streets of Exhibition Place and Lakeshore Blvd. downtown. 

The man-made lake on Centre Island in which we overturned 

When l lived in Canada many decades ago, I remember attending the carnival at Centre island and vividly recall renting a canoe and overturning, spilling all our belongings including even a radio which never played again.

I was therefore happy that I could go to the family reunion and take in the carnival at the new venue, along with the Seattle based sisters who spent a few more days in Toronto.

We all had a wonderful time there viewing the costumes and tasting the various foods and in general, just hanging out.

I must admit that each time I meet new members of the family, it certainly brings me a great sense of belonging and I look forward to many such events in the future.

An Inuit sculpture on Lakeshore Blvd.

Essay 4; Jamaicans are "world builders"

I do not think there is a place on earth you can travel to and not find a Jamaican! And sometimes we turn up in the most unusual places. In fact, my own brother even took his family on a tour of the pyramids of Egypt only to end up with an Arabic-speaking tour guide from Montego Bay, Jamaica!

For years politicians of all stripes have complained that a problem the country faces is that when taxpayers subsidize the tertiary education of many Jamaican professions, the country ends up losing as those professional immediately migrate and do not give anything back to their country. Yes that is a real problem but could the penchant for Jamaicans to migrate be in our DNA? I am no scientist but ask the question due to the conditions under which the migratory habit of generations of Jamaicans seem to have arisen.

As far as I can discern, the necessity to migrate came with the  abolition of slavery in 1834. For the freed slaves had no money, no jobs, no land, no food and in many instances, not even family in the country to which they had been forcefully transported

. Things were so bad for the freed slaves that in order to avoid starving to death some had to even return to their wicked slave masters and request that they employ them just to get  food to eat.

It was the lucky ones  therefore who could find a little boat or some means of migrating to anywhere where they as free people they could earn a living.

Monument in Cuba

In the late 1800's to the turn of the century, Cuba was recognized as the powerhouse of the region due to the industries that were flourishing based on "king sugar." News  of their need for labour spread rapidly throughout Jamaica and indeed other Caribbean islands which also faced a similar dilemma as we did, and migration to Cuba started in droves. So today when you go to the southern provinces like Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and Holguin, the descends of Jamaican and other former West Indian people are everywhere.

Fortunately too, in 1903 the construction of the Panama Canal begun and despite the fact that the project was extremely dangerous and many people lost their lives (including my maternal grandfather), Panama became a major drawing card for Jamaicans in need of employment. When  the project was completed and opened in 1914, there was still a need for workers there as the economy was booming, so instead of returning home, thousands of Jamaicans remained there, most settling in the city of Colon.

However others decided to go north in search of economic opportunities, as the Jamaican economy was still struggling and blacks had very little means of survival. Many went to Honduras, and even more went to Nicaragua, settling on the Caribbean coast and naming their new home Bluefields after a seaside village on south western side of  Jamaica.

Inside Irazu volcano, Costa Rica

Still others moved to the province of Limon on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and today the descendants  of Jamaicans play an important role in that country, even producing  the very first black congresswoman in Costa Rica , a lady who was always proud to boast about her Jamaican roots.

During the 30's and 40's because of the massive toll the two major  European wars took on British men, the then colonial master England, was forced to open its doors to workers from their colonies to do their menial and labour intensive jobs. Jamaicans therefore  migrated to Britain in hordes up to the  late 1960's when the USA and Canada also opened their doors and the trek to those countries there took off in earnest.

Before the 70's, the majority of  Jamaican who left home, were in search of economic opportunities and their remittances to assist their family left back at home became critical to the economy.

The great migration that took place between 1972-1980 harmed the Jamaican economy unlike the net effect of previous migrations. This was because it was widely perceived that the then government was introducing communism and taking Jamaica into the USSR/Cuban sphere of influence. So the  better off Jamaicans and professionals voted with their feet. They went mainly to the USA and Canada and it set the Jamaican economy back for decades, as not only did they take their capital with them but also their skills. The Jamaican economy is still struggling to recover from that outflow!

While there have been periods when Jamaican migrated in droves, individual Jamaicans have always on their own steam, found other places to go, even as far as cold Alaska in search of opportunities. However the overall picture is that by being a migratory people,  we have contributed a great deal to the building of just about every nation in the world including our own and migration remains strong in our DNA.