HEARTICALLY YOURS

“Chile, you remember my Cousin Muttle from North Side?”

“Ti would be hard to forget Muttle. I kin hear er now, sayin’ ‘How sweet it is, ’ an I miss er.”

“Well yer got more to miss er cause I jus hear that Ijahnya ain writing Heartically Yours in The Anguillian next year. Ah only hope dat when she stop, Codville will start to write again.”

Since November 1, 2009 I have been truly privileged, indeed honoured to have as my fellow missionary and travelling companion, Nyahbinghi Elder Ambassador Priest Irie Lion who on this trod is also Ambassador at large to the Millennium Council. I came to know Binghi Irie in 1981 when I first linked into the Nyahbinghi Order in Jamaica and only later came to realize that the Sistren who always made sure that I got food was his Empress Yanzie and that among the very beautiful youthful Rastafarians present, were his children and grandchildren.

Today, I am writing as I wait to catch a plane to Cape Town. I have not visited the Cape before and I look forward to linking up with my Rastafari families in Marcus Garvey then driving for 5 to 7 hours to spend some time with the families in Judah Square, including Mama B, an elder Matriarch who has repatriated from Jamaica. These are well established Rastafari communities and I know how easy it would be to have a home in either of them. However, I am eastbound, finding my space in the horn of Africa.

Well it’s not literally from Cape to Cairo but almost. I am now in South Africa, not yet in Cape Town but in Johannesburg. I am in the company of Elder Ambassador Priest Binghi Irie Lions and what a welcome we received first night at a gathering of the Nyahbinghi Sistren in Kliptown, Soweto. Oh how these place names evoke the awful memories of Apartheid, the vestiges of which can still be seen by those who care to look.

First I must give thanks to those of you who are ensuring that I keep abreast of Anguilla politics while so far removed from the action. I hope that one of you will speak for me with the might of the OECS legal and political minds combined on the spot, to raise the matter of speeding up the long awaited Family Law Reform with no excuses accepted for further delay. As I thought about this, with thanks and gratitude for the receipt of another small grant to facilitate Parenting Education seminars, the principle of collective security keeps coming to mind.

Something disturbs me about Anguilla and it is the way that we do not speak out assertively from well informed positions to signal what is important to us and to make demands to resolve our issues. This article was initially entitled Anguilla Youth and Politics because of the lack of social and political awareness among 6th Formers, whom I taught last academic year, and that was also quite evident during the last National Conference on Youth and Development.

My vote is a priceless thing so bribery can get an aspiring politician nowhere with me. I remember the days when I thought that staying away from the poll on general election day was the best thing I could do. I am a proud Rastafari woman and I therefore respond passionately when some canvasser or other tries to convince me that their man is the lesser of the evils on offer and that I should vote for him. I have other reasons too.

“Please Ijahnya, dis ain’ the time to be talking bout culture no more. We want you to write bout politics.” When a third reader of this column took time out to tell me that what they want me to write about right now is politics, I thought I should try to comply. However, the Stingray October Serenade concert on Saturday night was so enjoyable that I have to say another general thank you to all those who made it possible. Our children did us proud and in their own way expressed appreciation to the elders who have been engaging with them over the years.

There are times when I moan and groan about how difficult it is to get anything done in Anguilla. This is often exacerbated by the scarcity of the range of resources required for the best outputs possible and I often feel that my very best effort is not good enough; that a mere drop is being offered to children whose needs require a whole bucketful. However, in preparing for the Stingray benefit concert, October Serenade, not for the first time, I am duty bound to give praise and also give thanks for the lives the programme has been able to touch.

There are times when I moan and groan about how difficult it is to get anything done in Anguilla. This is often exacerbated by the scarcity of the range of resources required for the best outputs possible and I often feel that my very best effort is not good enough; that a mere drop is being offered to children whose needs require a whole bucketful. However, in preparing for the Stingray benefit concert, October Serenade, not for the first time, I am duty bound to give praise and also give thanks for the lives the programme has been able to touch.

I am a traveller and my various areas of work require me to leave this land of my birth frequently but usually not for long. Much as I love leaving, I am thrilled to return to the rock where I have designed for myself, a quality of living that is pretty much like that of a tourist. I begin everyday in a very special place, with the almost daily fulfilment of a rainbow of promise.

Many of you may not know that I am a Muslim at Ramadan, hence the title of today’s article. The article was, however, inspired by my late cousin Arrindell Lewis, whose death announcement read so much like that of my late father’s that I wondered if their understanding of the concept of one God was genetic. May his family be comforted in knowing that he was such a man, a rarity in the Christian world and in my opinion one of the enlightened ones.

Nothing that I have heard so far has convinced me that there exists a viable plan for Anguilla’s economic recovery in the immediate and short terms. While I was impressed by the presence in the House of Assembly of some of Anguilla’s top technocrats, I was not impressed by the fact that, perhaps by virtue of their posts, their proposals all reflected commitment to failed policies in a failed system.

It was dry, dry, dry. The kind of dry that makes Anguilla goats eat everything. I mean hard, prickly things that they would turn up their noses at when it was green. It was the kind of dry season that brings bad blood between neighbours, families and friends because the goats knew that the little food that you nurtured and watered daily thinking it was for you, was really for them. The worst culprits were a large herd that I thought belonged to Billers but that people say really belong to Hulia.

Why do we speak of “Summer” in a Caribbean island where temperatures do not vary sufficiently to warrant the use of language associated with temperate seasons but this vacation period is so long that I suppose it could be thought of as a season. Among the myriad activities taking place at this time of year were those that involved Triple Crown Culture Yard.

Carnival for me is Kaiso. All year round I forget that I have a self and engage in a full programme of activities, some planned, some sprung upon me, that are about the greater good - youth, parents, women, elders, the unfortunate. However, when this time of year rolls around the calypso nights are for me. I say no to everything and to everyone who would have me do anything else on calypso competition night.

There is something about human nature that elevates us to the level on which we were meant to dwell but to which we tend to rise mainly in times of crisis. My life lessons this week are all about being that Higher Self and as I write this, I am still touched by the generosity of the audience at the Sizzla show in my appeal for a donation to help a Rastafari family in Jamaica who lost their youngest child in a fire on July 17. They lost all their worldly possessions too but none of those material things can take the place of a bright faced, little prince named Hosanna.

I bet you didn’t know that Moko walked across the Atlantic to ensure the survival of the enslaved Africans in the holds of the wretched slave ships. The word Jumbie was added in the Caribbean by those Africans in whose traditions Moko was both feared and revered.

I really want to write about calypso and to share my 2009 composition with you too but education is my constant friend and companion and it does not have to jostle with the crowd of my other interest so today I will share on the field of Education as a Human Right.

Today I saw group of young Valley boys pass through the yard with model sailing boats and my heart was glad. I recognised some of them as students who attend the WISE programme next door and assumed that they had made the boats themselves. On a small tropical island we do not experience the seasons of temperate climes. However, during the first quarter of the year, my sugar apple trees lose all their leaves and many lambs and kids are added to flocks and herds that pass through my yard. But we do not call it Spring.