A Message to My Children on our Heritage

Your Jamaican Heritage: A Message to My Children and All Who Come After
Basil Waine Kong

My Dear Children, a part of me lives in each of you. I hope my life experience enriches your life as well. My belief is that culture, relationships, experience, education and upbringing is like a field with both flowers and weeds growing in the same rich soil. Both are available and our choice to make. While you can chose to water and nourish the weeds and weed the flowers, our challenge is to continuously forsake the weeds and fertilize the flowers. With a nod to our background, if we pursue education, enlightenment and character, your life will be a beautiful bouquet that will enrich the lives of everyone around you. Flowers will not refuse to bloom because of a few inevitable weeds invade your flower bed.

Our culture is our light as well as our mirror. If you fill your life with good things, only good experiences will manifest themselves. I try to seduce and entertain all my senses each day. So, I see great works of art produced by God as a sunset,a rainfall or a rainbow; and man’s great achievements in our architecture, language and innovations; smell the fragrances of flowers, feel the textures of every thing about me including my wife’s embrace, listen to a variety of music and the voices of my children and grandchildren, enjoy interesting food and spirits, and use my sixth sense to wonder, to contemplate, to think deeply about what is possible.

While our family genetics hale from Africa, Europe, China and Japan, because of the name I inherited from my father and some oriental features, the Chinese part of us seems to loom large and well out of proportion to their contribution given that none of us have ever had a meaningful relationship with any Chinese relatives, friends or even acquaintances in my 66 years.

As a background, you need to understand that in Jamaica, a single woman, having given birth to a child is free to assign any surname to her progeny. A woman can pick out the most handsome and successful man in her community, in other words, the “Big Man in Town” and name her son “Little Big man” or “Little man” even if they had never met each other. I heard of a case not too long ago where a woman was impregnated by a plumber who was contracted to do some soldering at the house where she worked as a helper. She neither knew his name of how to get in touch with him so she named her son “Alton Plumber”. Eighty five percent of our children born in Jamaica are born to single women.

My mother’s roots for all intent and purposes go back to Woodlands District in St. Elizabeth which Kingstonians refer to as “bush” or if they were generous called us “country”. During my mother’s time, as well as mine, it was and is still one of the most impoverished places in Jamaica. The roads are virtually impassible. But now, however, there are ten automobiles in our community, everyone has cell phones and some even have Internet access.

We were only 20 miles from the Ocean and I saw the Ocean for the first time when I was about ten years old and actually put my feet in seawater at about 12 years old. Bodies of water is abundant but less than 10% of the population can swim. On these very rare trips to the ocean, my grandmother would give me a bottle to bring back sea water so she could rub it into her arthritic knee. Sea breeze, sea water and sea food were all perceived to have medicinal value. In my mother’s time, there were no paved roads, no running water, sewage, electricity, newspaper, radio or television in Woodlands.

While we had soft feather pillows from the chickens we slaughtered, I slept on a mattress filled with dried banana leaves and hung my three outfits on nails above the bed (one for church, my karkie uniform for school and yard clothes). It was a serious offense if I played in my church clothes.

Although a truck or a car came through our district about every other day, no one in our district owned an automobile. Each time a vehicle came through, all the children would instinctively chase after it like puppies and considered it a treat when we could actually touch it. If it stopped, we would marvel at its instruments and for days after would pretend that we were driving it by sitting on a log, steering a pretend steering wheel and making all the appropriate sounds of a car with our mouths. We were all speed racers.

I marvel at the change in our safety consciousness. Today, our children are locked in child safety seats in highly engineered cars with every safety feature imaginable. When we took trips, we stood up in the open truck with the wind in our faces. If we took off fast, we could jerk backwards and if we stopped too fast, we would crash into each other, particularly the ones in the front. While you may only drink bottled water, we drank water from the same pond where the cows also refreshed themselves.

When I taught each of you to ride a bicycle, You were already riding a tricycle and when I bought a bicycle for you, I put on training wheels and held on to the back of the seat up and down the street until you were experts at it. I think you even wore helmets. When I learned, they put me on the seat and pushed me down a long hill without even telling me how to use the brakes. In one hair raising minute, I could maintain my balance and ride it back up the hill---no big deal. Did I ever tell you how I learned to swim?

Several innovations and improvements occurred while I was a child. My uncle Claudie McDonald and my Aunt Myra brought a radio in 1955 which was powered by a car battery and the antennae was hoisted to the top of a tall tree. We could get three stations, BBC, one from New Orleans and the other, the Jamaican Broadcasting Company (JBC). The entire community would gather round to listen to Cricket matches and celebrate the exploits of famous Jamaican cricketers, Gilchrist, Ramadin and Valentine. Aunt Myra also bought a stove and refrigerator that were both powered with kerosene. During the Manley Administration, electricity was made available in rural areas like ours even though the people in our district were “staunch” Labourites.

And still we rise. Out of these impoverished circumstances, I personally know two physicians, five lawyers, a dozen accountants and a plethora of financially successful people who emerged from these humble beginnings to own businesses. Most of the population were and are still small farmers.

My immediate neighbor, Mr. Garnett(Lloyd) Myrie, is the epitome of this success. He was precocious in his youth and got into a lot of fights regarding his black power rhetoric that earned him the reputation of a “bad boy”. After his stint as a soldier, he founded a security company (MICA Security). As a superb businessman, he now employs a thousand people and has become wealthy as well as generous. While he has offices and homes throughout Jamaica, he never squanders an opportunity to help the people of Woodlands, Donagal, Brighton and Springfield as a PNP man. We have joined forces and fully intend to help raise the standard of living for people who live in these communities. He is the only man I know who is as sentimental about these communities as I am.

I pause to tell you that Jamaicans have a greatly inflated sense of importance and power. I will cite two examples to explain this phenomenon. The story is told of some Jamaican gentlemen who were discussing strategies for the economic development of Jamaica. One proposal that they considered was to declare war on the United States like the “Mouse that Roared” where the United States would destroy the country but would build it back up like they did for Japan. But one of the gentlemen was visibly skeptical about the plan and finally asked, “So what if Jamaica win?”

During World War 11, there was a popular Jamaican calypso song that went like this:
“Someone tell me Hitler bad, te raw raw boom; But mek him come a Jamaica if him bad, ti raw raw boom; We would lick him, kick him, cut him throat, poison the brute and bun him up; Ti rite rite raw raw boom. War O, war O, war in Europe, yes I know.”

Interestingly, this sense of power is not unfounded. If there was a track meet between the best of the United States and the best of Jamaica, undoubtedly, Jamaica would prevail. Planet earth is 14 billion years old; about seventy billion people have lived here. Jamaica has the fastest man (Usain Bolt) who has ever lived as well as the second fastest (Asafa Powell) that ever lived. The three fastest women on earth are Jamaicans and Jamaica, with less than 3 million people, came in second in the World Games in Berlin in 2009 and won more medals at the Olympic Games than the entire South America and India put together (2.5 billion). The most popular musician (Bob Marley) and Jamaica’s influence on western music is legendary. Jamaica is a brand. If you put the names of countries on tee shirts and sold them to the world, the Jamaican shirts would sell out first. Jamaica has style.

My mother (Violet Ursula McKenzie), was the fifth of fourteen children born to the union of William McKenzie and Rosella McFarlane, both half African and half Scottish. St. Elizabeth is well known for the Scottish influence as they owned the fertile plantations for which that part of the country is famous. St. Elizabeth continues to be the breadbasket of Jamaica. In the old days, I am told that successful Jamaican gentlemen would aspire to marry a pretty woman from St. Elizabeth. My mother was such a beauty.

1923, at the tender age of 15, my mother was sent off by her mother to live with her older sister Myrtle, who lived on ”Love Lane” to find work in “Town”. Kingston was practically the only place where one could find a job at that time as everyone in rural Jamaica were small cultivators (beef, chickens, pigs, cabbage, peas and beans, carrots, sugar cane, fruits or worked on sugar/rum plantations). My mother’s obligation was to find work and send money back to country. She walked into Chan Kong’s ice cream parlor on Water Lane and asked for a job and was hired on the spot.

Do you ever wonder why you can get “Chinese Food” in any city of the entire world? According to Mr. Clarence Kong, who was a friend of my father, my father and his brother Victor and their families came to Jamaica after the invasion of China by the Japanese about 1938. The Kongs, meaning “Large River”, comes from Southern China, the Hakka people or Han Chinese. They were the gypsies of China who moved frequently to get away from trouble (famine and invading armies) or to find economic opportunity. The first Chinese came to Jamaica in 1854 just after slavery was abolished in 1834, 30 years before President Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States. It is worthy of note that, Queen Victoria purchased all the slaves in Jamaica at prevailing prices and set them free whereas the abolition of slavery in the United States was by proclamation. The consequence of this is that American slave owners resented the “taking” of their property and continued to think that they still owned Black people.

When Jamaican slaves were freed, they went to the most remote areas of the island to guarantee that they would never be enslaved again. So, part of what has contributed to the poverty of the descendants of slaves is that they continue to occupy property that did not appreciate in value like ocean front or flat fertile property. They went to the hills where they could see soldiers coming. In fact, they preferred if there were no easy access to where they lived. When some of them tried to negotiate for a living wage, the white plantation owners balked and brought in Indians (Coolies), Syrians, Jews and Chinese workers who provided cheap labor for five years of indentured servitude after which they were to be given passage back home with their savings. Some Chinese were forcibly taken from China and put on boats bound for the new world so this practice was memorialized as being “Shanghaied”.

Not many Chinese went back to China having tasted the “good life” in Jamaica but established themselves as “Shop-keepers” and commercial traders. They were, nevertheless strangers in an ocean of black people who teased them for eating dogs (China nam dog) and for wearing “oil skin” (silk).

My Aunt Myra was the sixth child of my grandparents who was married to Mass Claudie, the Big Man in Woodlands. They had four children (Monica, Melvis, Carlen and Donovan). Mass Claudie also fathered Las, Presley and Delroy. My brother Earl and I usually made up the group known as “the Pickney dem”.

Our Sunday routine was very predictable. We would wake up as soon as the Roosters crowed, wash up, have tea and bread and on special occasions, “a hunk of cornpone”. This was a wonderful type of corn based pudding made with condensed milk with plenty of raisins (currants) and pieces of coconut. It was baked in a Dutch Pot (from Holland) with hot coals on top as well as on the bottom. “What is hell on top, hell on the bottom and hallelujah in the middle?”

It is also worthy of note that all hot drink in Jamaica is called "tea". So you can have coffee tea, coco tea and even fish tea (soup). Unlike the United States, we have no set menu for breakfast. We are known for having dinner for breakfast. Stephanie and I were invited to breakfast and our neighbors served vegetable soup. She had to beg for coffee.

By 8:30 am on Sundays, we would be off to Sunday school that started at 9:30 am. Church started at 11:00 and ended at 1:00 pm. Granny not only had her special bench that no one else would dare occupy and would always had paradise plums, bust-mi-jaw and mints to keep us awake during boring sermons. We never missed church in all my childhood. Going to church was automatic.

We would eat the same thing for dinner every Sunday: Brown stew chicken, rice and peas. Menus in Jamaica are pretty well set for the week. On Fridays, butcher day, we would eat organ meats. Saturday is soup day, etc.

After Sunday dinner, Granny, my brother Earl and I would walk about a quarter mile to Uncle Claudie and Aunt Myra’s Big House. By the time we would arrive, if "Iceman" had ice, she would have the ice cream bucket all set for the boys to turn. For an hour, the boys would turn that bucket with rock salt and pieces of ice. Aunt Myra specialized in two flavors: run raisin and grape nut. The ice cream was ready when it just could not be turned any more. Everyone would gather around as Aunt Myra would unhook the latches, take off the turning contraption and take the cover from the aluminium cylinder to expose the creamy goodness. The palette was awarded to the boy who worked the hardest turning the bucket and it was usually me. Oh what a joy that was to lick the palette clean to the envy of all the other Pickney dem. Granny was served first and she loved ice cream. So, she got a large serving.

Some Sundays, instead of ice cream, Uncle Claudie would make cane juice or coconut water and coconut jelly with a sprinkling of sugar. Other treats included carrot juice and sweet milk, sour sop juice and sweet milk, and my favorite custard apple and sweet milk.

Sweetened condensed milk would make everything taste good. In fact, if no one was looking, we would just turn the condensed milk upside down and drink it directly from the can. We could mix it with water and put it into whatever tea we were drinking. I don’t think we actually put it in fish tea but we slobbered it over cakes, breads, and buns.

The other versatile food item is salt fish. I believe I heard that Jamaica is the number one consumer of salt cod. It goes well by itself, as a fritter, with eggs, with ackee, callaloo and boiled into yams, potatoes, dashine, coco, bananas to flavor these ground items.

When I was growing up, Woodlands was a thriving community of 500 people ---all farm hands and laborers. We had a cricket team lead by Captain Mills that competed with other communities, Saturday night dances with Herbie Arnold’s rhumba band and weekly shows where the children of the community would show off their talent (telling jokes, reciting poems, singing songs, reciting Bible passages, telling Big Boy stories and riddles). The audience always thought it was novel to have these two half Chinese Pickney reciting poems and dancing. We even told Mutt and Jeff jokes that we got from reading comic books. No one knew that we were poor because no one went hungry, we always had fruits, vegetables and the meals were excellent. Very little meat was served.

My fondest memory was that we all brought something to school for lunch---a coco, dashine, a piece of yam, green bananas, and those who did not bring ground provisions would contribute a little money (Thur-pence) that would buy a piece of chicken, pork or beef. The cook would throw it all into a big community pot and make a stew. We would all be served from the pot and a very small piece of meat would be placed on top of the food that we called the soldier man. The same Big pot would be used reduce cane juice to wet sugar that was a great treat especially when mixed with ginger. Unfortunately, an antique dealer came to Woodlands in 2008 to buy "the old things" and someone sold them the "Big Pot". Our legacy will be lost little by little.

When anyone from Woodlands had to go to Kingston, they would usually have to walk to Mocho to catch a bus or go to Ipswitch to catch a train. As no one had a clock or a watch, we depended on the sun a great deal. It was not unusual to arrive at Mocho to meet the bus and find out that we were two hours early. But never mind, time is not important. After all, we were just Country Bumpkins. One of the wonderful songs about people like to tease us about was the gentleman who went to help build the Panama Canal in Colon. With his great wealth, he bought six watches and wore all of them on both arms. The problem was that he could not tell time. So, if you asked him for the time, he would still have to look upon the sun.

Some of the interesting things about how we speak is that any part of the body below the pelvic region is your "foot" and any part of your limbs below the shoulders is your "hand". We love to repeat words for emphasis. "Rock stone", "cry eye water", "mad crazy", "reverse back", "rain shower" and "lamb meat". We do not have very in our language. So, we just repeat the word as many times to emphasize how serious we are. I can be sick or I can be sick, sick, sick, sick. If someone in Jamaica ask you for a "drive", we are not asking to drive your car just to get a ride. While Americans emphasize results, Jamaicans reward effort. Instead of "get dressed", we say "put on your clothes". In the United States, we wash coffee beans before we put them out t dry. In Jamaica, "we swim them." Farmers are planters. A rest stop is a "lay by" and a speed bump is a "sleeping policeman". A bright student is "bulby" as in a bright light bulb. If you want the driver to go faster, you would say "speed up" and Jamaicans say "mash (the gas pedal) e flat" putting the emphasis on the action rather than the desired outcome. You do not hang out clothes to dry, you put them out to sun. It is no big deal for the son from a wealthy family to succeed but we celebrate Horatio Alger stories of a phoenix rising from the ashes. We value remarkable effort regardless of the outcome. A Jamaican will not say "I don't know" or "I cannot do something". He or she will at least tell you something else that he knows. "I cannot tell you how to get to Woodlands but if you wanted to go to New Market..." And we will try to do anything as nothing defeats failure like a try.

The point is that I believe I have had a rich and extremely happy life. I have traveled extensively and enjoyed a variety of experiences that I could not have imagined as a child. I can, however, find the seeds of my personality as well as my discontent in Woodlands. Wherever I may roam, my affections hearkens back to this very small corner of the world that nurtured me.

I heard a Jamaican writer (Tony Winkler)from Atlanta tell the story of a gentleman who left Jamaica when he was fifteen years old and had gone on to receive a wonderful education and accumulated great wealth. He was explaining to the writer that even though he was born in Jamaica, he had no wish to ever return. In fact, he said, he hated the place. It is dirty. Jamaicans are slack, have no respect for human life, too much poverty, extremely reckless drivers,high illiteracy and illigitimacy and on and on. As the writer patiently listened, the plane suddenly jerked and dropped a hundred feet to which the hater exclaimed: “Rass”. You will never get the Jamaican out of me or you. It is in your blood.