THE TRUTH IS, we were taught to hate Jamaicans. As a little girl in primary school, our teacher taught us that Barbados was the jewel of the Caribbean. We were taught that any mad/crazy slave, or any slave who could not take instructions, were shipped off to Jamaica. This was the mandate. I supposed in my little head, (or was that taught to me also), of every Caribbean Island . Send the mad and aggressive slaves to Jamaica. Then as time passed and you start to see clearer, meet people and question things, you soon realize that the insurgent slaves were the brave ones. They were the men and women who could not be broken. They were the men and women who remembered their rich past and knew of their dark future away from their homes.
They didn’t need the new religion and they certainly didn’t need to bake in the sun. As time went on, I learnt of the Maroon settlement and of the slaves who fled to the mountains in Jamaica. Obviously their quest for freedom continued and even the government fought to contain them. As mad/crazy as they were (supposedly), these humans knew they didn’t want to be slaves. Call them what you might, but they were not getting on their knees!!! I thought, who are the mad people here ? The ones who ran for their freedom or the ones who bowed down and remain slaves ?
THE TRUTH IS this is why you are disliked, hated even, by other islanders, your other side of the family. You show them their weaknesses. ……….You are an affront to other islands Jamaica!! You stand tall in rooms filled with short people.
This is a snippet of an article written by Sheri Veronica. The article and other related stories can be found at <buzzebly.com>
EDITOR’S COMMENT
Years ago, back in elementary school in Jamaica, I distinctly remember that the history books and teachers portrayed people like Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, Nanny, Sam Sharpe, the Maroons, George William Gordon, as trouble makers in the early Jamaican society – not the kind of people we should emulate because they dared to challenge the Institution of British Colonialism. Fast forward a few years, and by the time Jamaica got its Independence from Britain on August 6th, 1962, I was then in my 2nd year at STATHS, these former “outlaws” became National Heroes. Not the first and only time I have seen attitudes and views of history change. I applaud the writer for her guts to spill the beans on where the “superiority complex” from which some of our fellow exBritish Caribbean neighbours still suffer, came from. Get over it. It’s a British disease.
The Might Sparrow wrote in “Dan is the Man in the Van”
According to the education you get when you small,
You will grow up with true ambition and respect from one and all.
But in my days in school, they teach me like a bloody fool,
The things they teach me a should be a block-headed mule.
Now we all should know better.