Dear Summer: Letters to My Daughter! Jamaica May not be the best place for your future!

I went to my neighbourhood shop yesterday and bought a orange juice for a $100. I remember as a teenager an orange juice was sold for anything between 30 and 50 dollars. I was incensed at the shopkeeper who were staunch supporters of a particular political party. I have heard them several times degrading and disrespecting the other party that was in power when flour went up to being sold for $50 dollars a pound. They said that they loathed the "dutty nasty labourite them" Back then I was subjected to this constant verbal abuse every time I visited their shop. Albeit I have never voted in my life back then but because my generation had rallied for a change in government and because I was quite outspoken about the political fracture of our government system. These people in their seventies thought it would be OK to continue sabotaging my future for the love of their beloved party.


They who would soon pass away, many who have not lived to see their beloved government finish a term, wanted to shape the future of my generation. They did not care that Manley's legacy had died! They just want us to continue to live in this decrepit of a nation!

I sometimes muse that i cannot blame these old people who think for the most part that since they went from pit latrine to flush toilet that things are actually going on for them. Or these poor people who use to cook inna dirt floor outside kitchen and now have kitchen on house with inside sink etc will think that they have made great leaps of success in their life.

But what about my generation who are watching cable TV and have the internet and realise that these accomplishments rendered good by my elders are nothing in comparison to life in the 1st world countries.

They who learn about Politics by listening to the radio or arguments of other people that they hold in high esteem can never truly understand the dynamism of Jamaica's Political sphere. They cannot comprehend that the reason why i am upset with them is because they cannot see anything wrong with our governance if when I was a teenager i use to buy a pound a rice for $15 dollars and they now sell me that same pound a rice for $60.
I am infuriated when they cannot see how the likkle cup soup weh keep the hunger away for so much people was originally for $20 dollars is not being sold for $50 and $60 at the corner shop in rural Jamaica.

One time when you had a hundred dollars. You could a run a pot as they would say in our dialectal expressions! Now it is almost a hundred dollars for a tin a mackerel! Mackerel sold at $85 at this corner shop is dearer than chicken back! And chicken Back is another issue when it will soon be as expensive as chicken and will no longer be looked upon along with tin mackerel as the former Ghetto steaks and the latter poor people veal!

Where are we headed?

Sometimes I wonder what kind of world I have brought you into Summer?
I sometimes will be a huge hypocrite if I said I did not think of migrating and never returning to this slump of a country. I know this because of my DIALOGUES with my people within the diaspora who claim that they will never return to Jamaica.
They are afraid of being murdered by criminals looking for money as soon as they land here! Even if you have a little money in Jamaica, you have to feign poverty because people will kill you fi you tings!

I am ashamed at the congregation of women on the doorstep of another idiot and watch as they internalised the foolish ideologies of how relationships should be and rant about men, children and money. What is even more heartbreaking is the little girls who they haul behind them to these female sessions who sit their and imbibe these ideologies, convince that these are epithets of relationships. I know this too because only two percent of people read my blogs are Jamaicans! I assume that it means only two percent traffic comes from Jamaica but i do get high readerships from my Jamaicans living in the UK, Canada and United States!
I am glad the day i made smart people my companions by reading my books! Your book must be your best friend! That is what my father taught me to seek education first and everything else afterwards!

People claim that all they need is a little money to move forward with their lives but scamming has proven that money might allow some Jamaicans to afford Temporal things but it does not buy them intellect, morality, values or communal precepts!
Most Scammers and their families are as vacuous, bad mind and decadent as they were before their ill gotten wealth. The only difference is that many of them are more embolden now because they believe wealth makes them invincible!

I was driving in Montego Bay when an alleged scammer bad drove another man! The driver a friend of mine said to me that he was not even going to complain because these scammers might just pull their guns and murder you in broad daylight if you say anything to them! They are a deadly mutant brand of narcissism.

What will Jamaica be in the future?

I tell people that it will soon be a place like Nigeria! We gonna have 100,000 dollar notes! We will be renounced for scamming and corruptions! Our people will be going back into the dark ages at this rate! There will be a time again when only rich people can afford Gas stove as evident of the Cylinder Gas now being sold for 2500 for the small Gas Tank!

When only rich people will afford electricity as evidence by widespread theft by in some communities!When JPS improves their theft detection technology we will see many more people using lamps and candles for light at night! After all with minimum wage being just under $5000 Jamaican dollars, how can i buy the gas, pay the electricity bills, buy the tin mackerel and the chicken back,or the internet or the cable with just $4500 dollars a week!

Poverty breeds illiteracy which in turn gives birth to bad mind, corruption and crimes! How will my child's generation afford education or a first world education when they cannot afford cable or Internet to see how things work in the wider world beyond the borders of Jamaica!

How can a Jamaican be able to send their child to school when you cannot even afford simple amenities for that child! A slide window with mesh to keep out insects cost 21,000 Jamaican dollars. One Piece of wood cost an average a 1000 Jamaican dollars!. How will mom extend the house from the one room that she has all six children in when it is easier to buy food for them than buy a 4 by 4 sill to extend the room for another room so we can stop cooking in our bedroom.

If there is no hope for the future of this country, it means their is no hope for the future of my daughter in this country where people think I must believe I am better than them because I insist that my daughter has a private school education not understanding that I only seek to develop her talents to their highest potentials. It is also an issue of safety! I do not wish to send her to a public school with its inappropriate fencing or expose her to the ethos of children sprung from the wider society! With the alarming rate at which children are committing violence in schools! Sometimes I think about educating her at home!

What do we need

We need an overhaul of the education system that is what we need and that of our political systems! This is not the eighties or seventies. We are not being ungrateful to our political leaders because Jamaica has come a far way from in the eighties! But it will take a new brand of leaders, young leaders with a clear understanding of where we need to be heading politically! We have people within the diaspora who are inkling to invest in Jamaica both financially and intellectually!
We need a vast majority of our politicians to retire! We are tired of their hair-brain policies that are not taking us anywhere, anytime soon. Why Lisa Hannah could not use those Millions for the two independence Galas to build some factories where designers and hairdressers can produce clothing for Jamaicans so that we do not have to import so much clothes!
People say Jamaicans will not buy Jamaican brands, that is a lie. Look at Cooyah! If celebrities and noteworthy citizens begin wearing Jamaican brands everyone will wear it! Jamaicans love to follow the crowd! Just make an idea or item popular belief among those they perceive to be superior and everyone will no doubt follow suit!

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