Jamaica Land We Love


My blogs rarely engage with patriotism or any variation of that, mainly because I don't know if I am a patriot; like Mel Gibson I will die for my country if it means saving the life of some-one I love. I am not sure though, if my country will consider that dying for my country or for my own notion or ideals. However, my ideals I think are not just for a country but also for a balanced earth; and as the pledge says  for "advancing the welfare of the whole human race".        

 Recently, I have been considering a famous quote by Malcolm X "A man who does not stand for anything falls for everything" as it relates to Jamaica and the phrase that this country is a majority Christian country. The phrase is repeated daily as it relates to issues surrounding sexuality, public worship, education and anything that invokes a question of morality except it turns out it does not apply to dancehall music and the crime rate.     

 Jamaica is filled with people with, if nothing else, diverse views on life which range from Christians to Muslims, to Buddist, to Hindu, to atheist to secularist to Rastafari, to bleachers, to Pan Africans, to old school dancehall fanatics, to Vybz kartel fans and Tommy Lee Sparta fans. And yet all it wants to be known for the fact there are more churches here per square mile than anywhere else in the world. A fact that for me only signifies two things the recognition of Church as a business and or the way Jamaicans are in search of Christian God that best suits their idea of him.         

 The Malcolm X quote came to me one morning after the hallabaloo about the Ministry of Education's Teachers manual for HFLE (Healthy Family Life Education) Curriculum, a news item that made me uncomfortable as the ideas expressed seemed to imply that Gays are trying to brainwash children. A fallacy that the Minister Thwaites bought into when he stated that the manual reflected an American state’s research as well as methodolgy handing to the ignorant mass that we are importing a homosexual lifestyle and then implanting this lifestyle on the Jamaican youth. If that is so, is that the most dangerous thing handed to us from America?

These are pertinent questions for a society, especially one that does not talk about sex unless it is being shouted at us in Church to abstain or from the Dancehall how to do it to and be regarded as a Jamaican "man" or "woman". So what is wrong if you dare to teach sexual education, why not teach tolerance and awareness then hope that our children are able to decipher how to treat their sexual health not because of a failed brainwashing system but because of thought and rationale? Isn't that what education is about?        

 Then it occurred to me that maybe the teachers are incapable of teaching this topic with the level of awareness that the topic deserves and would much rather sex education become another Sunday school class. By avoiding the topic and the reality of many of our children we turn a blind eye to the corrosive element labeled as the rise in STD and STI transmission as well as the growing number of rapes and teenage pregnancy that has occurred because of insufficient knowledge. By supplying them with no information isn’t it the same as hoping that teenagers will not become curious about sex and sexuality?  Here when we stand on the side of silence or ill framed questions and responses are we not as much perpetrators and isn't the nation failing because of the nothing we have decided to say?           

 But the conversation makes middle class Christians, the majority of this democratic nervous and so the blind falls into a pit.       

 But, the middle class of the country forget that there is another culture that drives the island and makes it easy and difficult at the same time for the Tourist Board to sell this country to the foreigners as a beautiful destination and that is the music industry. Over the years the conversations that the industry has had with its audience, masked as entertainment is that of guns, sex and bun “dem” (alternate sexual practitioners). On this topic, we stand for the money so Uncle and Nephew Demon can continue to create music that wreaks of violence and we are to sit in silence and call that entertainment as they say "we are for the kids you just need to grow them right is either me or the TV". Evidence that it isn’t just homosexuality we are taking from America, after all Tommy Lee says he is talking about what he sees on the cable television.       
We know the daily cries about dancehall yet we are willing to send a book back to be rewritten but we do nothing about the fact dancehall still operates on these levels of chatter about Guns, sex and bun out? Does these statements make me patriotic? Cause right now I am thinking I really do love Jamaica, and I would love if this place had more spaces where individuals could talk about their reality, beyond the judgment of the Christian majority even Tommy Lee Sparta has his place in the conversation in truth. But is that openness standing for nothing? Is our diversity nothing? 


I have grown progressively tired of the one-sided-ness of the debates this country is not just a Christian majority. In this country there are homosexuals who do not partake in domestic violence, are not promiscuous nor responsible for the death of their partners, there are Christians who are liberal thinkers and Rastamen who don't smoke marijuanna, there are men who live in the ghetto who are laden with ambition, youths who are not on the streets planning murder or looking for a spliff from your purse of hand middle, police officers who are not murderers, revolutionary artistes gathering in back yards thinking about change and not remuneration, there are gated communities filled with expatriates or their children, politicians who believe in education as a priority to hand outs, atheist who believe in humanity, farmers who understand the soil and never use pesticide, dreads on the north coast who don't believe in the tourist exchange policy. Truly out of many one. This is the Jamaica land I love; and I do recognize that this is just the tip of it, as violence, silence and injustice is married to each element of joy that is here.      

I hope at least that get talked about in civics classes without a withdrawal of any element of us, cause that would be so sad. If we remain silent about difference how can we begin to truly say Jamaica Land We Love?       

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