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Notes of a native son
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
MUCH has changed about Jamaica in the past 27 years. Some changes have undoubtedly made the island better. Other changes have made the island worse off. But some things, like the weather, have really not changed at all.
Franklin W Knight
Evaluating changes under the influence of nostalgia is not easy and the resulting ambivalence constitutes an essential dimension of these notes of a native son.
Despite the ravages to man and nature, the island is as breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring as ever.
The Blue Mountains rise majestically and their magnificent sunrise vistas, when the peaks are still covered with a blanket of clouds after an early rainfall, remain unsurpassed in sheer beauty.
Those magnificent hills inspired Roger Mais and John Hearne and many other writers. Red Hills, Stony Hill, and the Long Mountains still frame the harbour in a perfect postcard picture.
The green St Catherine plains are still a vision of loveliness. In the 1950s a tourist was moved to write poetically: "I have fallen in love with your paradise isle. Its scenes are a mansion of beauty. And as I travel each marvellous mile, my camera is always on duty." And so it remains from Negril to Morant Point.
Thank goodness Devon House remains predictably good. The ice cream, pastries and patties remain as impressively delicious as ever, although its entry, exit and parking lot require urgent attention. For such a significantly hospitable location, entering and leaving should be less painful for man and car.
Twenty-seven years ago, the New Kingston high-rise building now functioning as a popular but not very distinctive hotel housed a branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At that time a supercilious, arrogant, marginally competent official, inebriated with the exuberance of her loftiness and narcissistic admiration, shifted her considerable protoplasmic mass forward in her nondescript government chair and upbraided a visiting professor who had been sent to her by her minister. His idea was a simple one designed to improve the island's flagging tourist industry. The minister obviously thought so too.
Without listening, the self-absorbed functionary proceeded to expound incoherently on her utter disregard for what she termed the exaggerated importance of Jamaicans returning to help their island. Stretching her feeble, ill-informed intellect, she observed that the professor had no background in tourism and dismissed him abruptly.
History can be harsh, ironic as well as unpredictable. Twenty-seven years later the professor's simple idea that was dramatically rejected in Jamaica has been successfully implemented in many places, including Cancun, Padre Island, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and the Dominican Republic. The bland Foreign Affairs building, appropriately refurbished, now serves as a modest hotel. The professor gained international accolades, though none in tourism. The civil servant lost her job and when last heard of was an itinerant, marginally employed minor journalist.
The roads of Jamaica have, in general, got much worse. Even the ribbon of highway from the airport to King's House, created for the inauguration of the first female prime minister just over a year ago, now bears damaging potholes and unsightly ruts. It is strange that the Romans and the Incas lacked our modern technology but could build durable roads that lasted for thousands of years.
The secret, of course, lies in the design and the foundation, both of which are appallingly deficient in Jamaica. Either by design or inadvertence, road signs are singularly lacking all over the island. The new toll road appears to be more competently constructed than the other general highways, but only time will tell.
The city of Mandeville has not aged gracefully. The unsightly city centre presents a permanent hazard to pedestrians as well as motorists.
It used to be such a lovely parish capital, with small, attractive stores, a great bakery, and two outstanding historic buildings standing like sentinels at either end of the square. The idea of beautification appears never to have been contemplated in Mandeville.
The same could be said of Christiana. Yet an interesting experience in Christiana on a cool Saturday midday provided much food for thought. Both floors of the public library teemed with industrious young students absorbed in serious academic preparation. Just to see so many eager, disciplined students was sheer delight. Some had tutors accompanying them.
They were all neatly dressed, all seemed under the age of 12 - and overwhelmingly female. Gender imbalance in education seems to begin very early in Jamaica. Where were the young male students of Christiana? Were boys not given homework, or did they have other, more urgent responsibilities? What does this say about the youth of the island?
The unmitigated joy at seeing such serious students gainfully applying themselves on a weekend contrasted sharply with the wall-high reproduction of the 1964 Washington DC speech of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr in the library. Certainly King's speech represents an excellent example of exquisite oratory. No one denies that.
It ranks alongside the Gettysburg address of President Abraham Lincoln as outstanding elocution. But why not use an example of a great Jamaican orator, something by Marcus Garvey, or Claude MacKay, or Roger Mais, or Norman Manley, or Alexander Bustamante, or Michael Manley? Carefully chosen icons and images are an integral part of nation-building and should not be done lightly. Moreover, feeding young children a diet of foreign models runs the risk of creating a sense of inferiority and self-deprecation.
One very good thing that has not changed is the ability of the University of the West Indies to stage a ceremony. Its graduation ceremonies over two days under that monstrous tent on the Mona campus were excellent exercises in pomp and ceremony.
Processing thousands of students and co-ordinating the complex event are far from easy, but accomplished with flair and impeccable punctuality. That bodes well for the year-long celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the university in 2008.
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
MUCH has changed about Jamaica in the past 27 years. Some changes have undoubtedly made the island better. Other changes have made the island worse off. But some things, like the weather, have really not changed at all.
Franklin W Knight
Evaluating changes under the influence of nostalgia is not easy and the resulting ambivalence constitutes an essential dimension of these notes of a native son.
Despite the ravages to man and nature, the island is as breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring as ever.
The Blue Mountains rise majestically and their magnificent sunrise vistas, when the peaks are still covered with a blanket of clouds after an early rainfall, remain unsurpassed in sheer beauty.
Those magnificent hills inspired Roger Mais and John Hearne and many other writers. Red Hills, Stony Hill, and the Long Mountains still frame the harbour in a perfect postcard picture.
The green St Catherine plains are still a vision of loveliness. In the 1950s a tourist was moved to write poetically: "I have fallen in love with your paradise isle. Its scenes are a mansion of beauty. And as I travel each marvellous mile, my camera is always on duty." And so it remains from Negril to Morant Point.
Thank goodness Devon House remains predictably good. The ice cream, pastries and patties remain as impressively delicious as ever, although its entry, exit and parking lot require urgent attention. For such a significantly hospitable location, entering and leaving should be less painful for man and car.
Twenty-seven years ago, the New Kingston high-rise building now functioning as a popular but not very distinctive hotel housed a branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At that time a supercilious, arrogant, marginally competent official, inebriated with the exuberance of her loftiness and narcissistic admiration, shifted her considerable protoplasmic mass forward in her nondescript government chair and upbraided a visiting professor who had been sent to her by her minister. His idea was a simple one designed to improve the island's flagging tourist industry. The minister obviously thought so too.
Without listening, the self-absorbed functionary proceeded to expound incoherently on her utter disregard for what she termed the exaggerated importance of Jamaicans returning to help their island. Stretching her feeble, ill-informed intellect, she observed that the professor had no background in tourism and dismissed him abruptly.
History can be harsh, ironic as well as unpredictable. Twenty-seven years later the professor's simple idea that was dramatically rejected in Jamaica has been successfully implemented in many places, including Cancun, Padre Island, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and the Dominican Republic. The bland Foreign Affairs building, appropriately refurbished, now serves as a modest hotel. The professor gained international accolades, though none in tourism. The civil servant lost her job and when last heard of was an itinerant, marginally employed minor journalist.
The roads of Jamaica have, in general, got much worse. Even the ribbon of highway from the airport to King's House, created for the inauguration of the first female prime minister just over a year ago, now bears damaging potholes and unsightly ruts. It is strange that the Romans and the Incas lacked our modern technology but could build durable roads that lasted for thousands of years.
The secret, of course, lies in the design and the foundation, both of which are appallingly deficient in Jamaica. Either by design or inadvertence, road signs are singularly lacking all over the island. The new toll road appears to be more competently constructed than the other general highways, but only time will tell.
The city of Mandeville has not aged gracefully. The unsightly city centre presents a permanent hazard to pedestrians as well as motorists.
It used to be such a lovely parish capital, with small, attractive stores, a great bakery, and two outstanding historic buildings standing like sentinels at either end of the square. The idea of beautification appears never to have been contemplated in Mandeville.
The same could be said of Christiana. Yet an interesting experience in Christiana on a cool Saturday midday provided much food for thought. Both floors of the public library teemed with industrious young students absorbed in serious academic preparation. Just to see so many eager, disciplined students was sheer delight. Some had tutors accompanying them.
They were all neatly dressed, all seemed under the age of 12 - and overwhelmingly female. Gender imbalance in education seems to begin very early in Jamaica. Where were the young male students of Christiana? Were boys not given homework, or did they have other, more urgent responsibilities? What does this say about the youth of the island?
The unmitigated joy at seeing such serious students gainfully applying themselves on a weekend contrasted sharply with the wall-high reproduction of the 1964 Washington DC speech of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr in the library. Certainly King's speech represents an excellent example of exquisite oratory. No one denies that.
It ranks alongside the Gettysburg address of President Abraham Lincoln as outstanding elocution. But why not use an example of a great Jamaican orator, something by Marcus Garvey, or Claude MacKay, or Roger Mais, or Norman Manley, or Alexander Bustamante, or Michael Manley? Carefully chosen icons and images are an integral part of nation-building and should not be done lightly. Moreover, feeding young children a diet of foreign models runs the risk of creating a sense of inferiority and self-deprecation.
One very good thing that has not changed is the ability of the University of the West Indies to stage a ceremony. Its graduation ceremonies over two days under that monstrous tent on the Mona campus were excellent exercises in pomp and ceremony.
Processing thousands of students and co-ordinating the complex event are far from easy, but accomplished with flair and impeccable punctuality. That bodes well for the year-long celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the university in 2008.