THIS is what I want to do for the summer

I'm trying to figure out what to do for the summer and this article came out today in the Jamaica Observer (national newspaper).

Even the way the article was written speaks to an innumeracy in the both the writer and the audience.

I'm about to have a Masters in Math. I'm passionate about education. I'm willing to learn. I think I can help.

New Business

There is this article about our generation... "Generation sell" they say. That the essence our generation is the essence of the saleman. Our generation thinks about owning our own business more than any other. Maybe that's because that is the only way to really ensure a future... working for someone else is no longer all it's cracked up to be.

So it is that I am returning to Jamaica for Thanksgiving to start a business with my brother. I will be grad student by day; greentech entrepreneur by night. Sounds implausible? So's a Jamaican girl studying math in Nebraska.

Cheerio

How to get a visa

Went home for Xmas and got my H1-B visa. The guy who interviewed me was crazy cute... I wonder how one gets into the foreign service? The window next to him was servicing the other types of visas. There were 20 rejections to every visa granted. People cried. Worse than that the whole process was kind of inhuman - waiting in line in the sun.. being shunted from here to there with no order or explanation. The US embassy in Jamaica really needs to learn how to treat human beings.

I got my visa a week later. It's a simple process if you have a job like mine I guess. It's a simple process if you are educated too and have a history of travelling. Next step... green card?

Anyway, on the way back into the country yesterday the customs officer looked at my documentation, smiled and me and said "welcome home". He was so warm, yet it sent shivers right through me. Is the US my home now, even if it doesn't feel like it is? Is Jamaica my home?

I saved my first million JA this year. I'm thinking of buying an acre of land out in Lucea. Is this a smart business move or just a way to mark my territory?

The Mother Land

Hopped into a taxi the other day at Logan airport and the taxi driver wasted no time in asking where I was from.

"Jamaica" I said proudly, and he was shocked because the driver of the taxi behind him (who had seen me approach and enter this cab) had sworn that I was Ethiopian or Somalian.

Now I had never thought I was an odd looking black woman until I went to Ghana - where my people (and most Jamaican people) are actually from. There, a Ghanaian man looked at me dispairingly and said I couldn't pass. Then while I was at Oxford, back when I frequented a Lebanese store, the owner was one day shocked to discover that I couldn't speak Arabic. Apparently I have the look of some mysterious arabic-speaking people. Then I began to think... one grandad was a whitish jew, the other was a dark skinned black Cuban of unknown decent and unusual features. One grandma had the Ghanaian roots - with some Scottish (?) mixed in - and as for the other... no one really knows! I do, however, know that my brother has no cheekbones and epicantic folds in his eyelids and that my own Ghanaian people would disown me if all they had to go on was looks. Which country would open up it's arms to me? Where can I go and blend in? Everyone should have a mother land - it would be a comfort to know that while I stick out among all these Bostonians, there is somewhere where I can go and be called one of "us".

So I was thrilled when this taxi driver finally named a country for me. I have no idea what Ethiopian or Somali women look like... but perhaps they look like me :).

My Company

pic courtesy of the bbc:

My company is approximately 3% black. Of the 10 people in that 3% about 2 are African American, or rather, American at all. How does that make you feel?

In other news, the economy went to shit today. What the US need was a good Finsac-king. Jamaican style. Omar Davies style. Ah well.

I found out today that in about 2 years, people in my position usually do an externship with another company/organization. I wonder if I can get a job in Jamaica... in the government somewhere. I guess I can start planning from now eh...

Cool Runnings

So, every Jamaican who has ever left the island has had to encounter the world's obsession with certain Jamaican things. They play Bob Marley in McLeod Ganj - a small Northern Indian city near the Tibetan border, home of the Dalai Lama. They fake Jerk Chicken in Williamstown - a small one street town in the bushes of Massachussets. But everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY has watched and LOVED Cool Runnings.

Yeah it's a heart warming story. Sure, I'll give you that. And those fake Jamaican accents are so cute and charming. But really... can the world get over it please? The actors werent even Jamaican! Did you know that they show Finnish children the movie and have them send money for the Jamaican bob-sled team.

Either way, I came face to face with this odd phenomenon yesterday when my co-workers insisted that we have a bonding cool-runnings party. They did it in good faith and in good taste. Maybe I'll play along this time...


Today I retire today's confession : I am lazy. Instead let's confess something else: I don't know how to manage money. I spend too much. Where did I get these expectations for the kind of life I want to live? Perhaps I have illusions about who I am.

Late night bad poetry

I plan to write everyday. This means that some days you will be subjected to filler. So here goes. My brother refuses to comment on how bad this is, so I will let others decide:


I measure time in displacement;
in fractions and time zones 'till i touch down on the island.
But more time,
breaking through jet lag,
from flight attendants and bus drivers,
quiet girls with straight backs behind counters,
mothers who borderline manhandle their children
and children who shut up
same time,
are the slow rhythms of not dialect, not creole
just patois without qualification.
The "Jamaican", understood
all by them
who don't understand a word.

Colonial Girls School

I was home recently right after hurricane Dean. I had the rare pleasure of sitting and talking with an old church sister of mine. She is now 15 and attending Mount Alvernia High. I noticed that in the 8 month since I had last been at home she had straightened her hair. What a shame. Once you start that it's hard to get out. But worst of all it wasn't really her choice. The principal of her school had said (according to her) that " We are black and we are proud but we don't have to wear our ethnicity on our heads." What colonial bullshit. As if the natural hair of a black woman isn't presentable. Her mother thought it wasn't a battle worth fighting; her daughter was going to graduate soon anyway. But things like that are not acceptible in a school in 2007, least of all a school associated with the Catholic Church. When my little church sister was telling me how they harrassed her when she had natural hair, I remembered how many times I was pulled into the principal 's office in my high school days for wearing my hair natural and in twists. I wonder what lessons she is going to take from school- what self-image, what idea of beauty. I know in my day, my English teacher was nice enough to let us know what was going on; we attended a colonial girls' school.

(this poet attended my school, and wrote this poem about it)

Colonial Girls School by Olive Senior

Borrowed images
willed our skins pale
muffled our laughter
lowered our voice
let out our hems
dekinked our hair
denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers
harnessed our voices to madrigals
and genteel airs
yoked our minds to declensions in Latin
and the language of Shakespeare
Told us nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
How those pale northern eyes and
aristocratic whispers once erased us
how our loudness, our laughter
debased us.
There was nothing left of ourselves
Nothing about us at all.
(Studying: History Ancient and Modern
Kings and Queens of England
Steppes of Russia
Wheatfields of Canada
There was nothing of our landscape there
Nothing about us at all
Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave.
Thirty-eight was a beacon. A flame.
They were talking of desegregation
In Little Rock, Arkansas, Lumumba
and the Congo. To us mumbo-jumbo.
We had read Vachel Lindsay's
vision of the jungle.
Feeling nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
Months, years, a childhood memorising
Latin declensions
(For our language
-'bad talking' -
detentions)
Finding nothing about us there
Nothing about us at all
So, friend of my childhood years
One day we'll talk about
How the mirror broke
Who kissed us awake
Who let Anansi from his bag.
For isn't it strange how
northern eyes
in the brighter world before us now Pale?