School Attire Out of Synch!

Beautiful Saturday morning. I have just come downstairs to make my usual morning brew. Blue Mountain today. I saw the “Blue Mountain” words on the label during a recent visit to my local supermarket and was drawn to it. Blue Mountain coffee is Jamaican, and so am I. That is the reason. I am not…

Loving Me Some Reggae on a Friday Night!

I may sound biased, but I don’t think I am. Reggae music is the best. Now, there are different eras of reggae – call them styles if you like — that may have different degrees of bestness, but I am talking about the era of the classic Bob Marleys, Dennis Browns and Beres Hammonds. Some…

Me and Milo

My son have a dog name Milo. A male dog. We adopt him from a rescue place down Miami from him was a puppy. Him did have another name when we get him, but we decide to give him a new one. Well, because we come from Jamaica, we say we have to pick a…

Goodbye Artical Don

Facebook has its detractors. Some folk feel it is a privacy-invasion slippery slope. Facebook also has its supporters. Despite all the issues of privacy currently swirling around the platform, I am one of the latter. Not that I am not concerned about privacy. One of the things that pisses me off, for example, is Facebook’s…

What’s in a Name?

I stepped up from the street, scuttled across the sidewalk and slipped through the front door of the small building. The sign hanging over the door had caught my eye from across the other side of the street and magnetized me. It read: Trace Your Ancestry Through Your Surname. I should have known better immediately…

Languages: An Avenue for Life Exploration

I speak several foreign languages. Thanks to my teachers at good old Morant Bay High School in St. Thomas, Jamaica, who gave me the start. French is one that I learned. I am fully fluent today, to the point where I switch registers easily, depending on the need, moving from standard to the very informal….

Missing Jamaica

I have lived more than half of my life overseas. Outside of Jamaica where I am from. I am not that young anymore, so you can imagine it’s been a long time living in foreign lands. But, I miss Jamaica like Day 1. After all these years. I imagine only those who have lived overseas…

The Enigma of My Jamaican Passport

The chill of the night air on the outside still clung to the windows of the bus, but it was warming up on the inside. I shed the jacket the driver had lent me earlier when it had started to get cold. I had not expected, and so was unprepared for any weather like this….

What’s In An Accent – A Jamaican One, That Is?

The cadence of our speech, our accent, is often a marker of where we come from. What country, or even what region of a country. Sometimes, an accent may be an indicator of not only where we are from, but also of where we may have lived outside of our country of origin. Some accents…

On the Road to Africa

“Free seating, free seating! Sit anywhere you want!” He had to be talking to me, as it was I who had posed him the question about whether or not he was in the right seat. By the way he pitched his head though, and his voice too, he seemed to be addressing all of the…

Caribbean Christmas in Flight

The Air France flight just took off from Toussaint L’Ouverture in Port-au-Prince, headed for Miami, after a pit stop coming from Pointe-a-Pitre. On the way up from Guadeloupe there was an older man and a younger-looking woman seated beside me, just behind the exit row on the left hand side of the plane. Haiti was…

The Evolvement of My Driving

This is embarrassing. Really dreadful. I know the car is going to buck again like a raging bull and shut off in a huff! It has done so already, three times in a row. Each time followed by laughter. From derisive giggles to roaring, fatuous hoots. I have always been good at learning new things,…

Upon the Departure of My Mother

I did not cry when my mother died. Not when I got the news. I was in the kitchen at home in Florida, tooling around the stove trying to fix a quick breakfast, when the red, car-shaped phone rang. I reached quickly into the corner of the counter where it was parked and grabbed it…

Things I Am Grateful For

A few weeks ago, a friend invited me to participate in a Gratitude Challenge where, for each of three days, I had to list three things for which I was grateful. I posted the lists on Facebook, per the challenge, and have decided to repost them on my blog. Perhaps my decision to repost them…