Ms Singh, Ms Garcia, and Jamaica’s confoundedness
MTHE EDITOR, Madam:
Y HEARTIEST congratulations to Ms Toni-Ann Singh on her not only winning the Miss World 2019 contest, but on representing Jamaica well. In subsequent interviews, she came across as a genuine, unpretentious Jamaican. But like HG Helps confessed in his ‘Sunday Brew’ of December 22, I too must confess that before December 14 last, Ms Singh’s name did not cross my radar. And neither did the name of Ms Iana Tickle Garcia. The latter, however, crossed my radar, as Miss Universe Jamaica 2019 – the lady who offended some by donning an Annie Palmer costume.
Not too long before Christmas, I had plunked all of U$35.00 to buy Dr Orlando Patterson’s latest book ‘The Confounding Island’. If I had read it in its entirety, then my confoundedness in trying to understand Jamaica might have been ameliorated somewhat. But in reading a review of the book, it appears that on ‘Matters Jamaica’, Dr Patterson is just as confounded as I am. And that has left me feeling somewhat relieved.
Dr Patterson’s confusion and mine remind me of ‘Sonny’ Levy’s response to his Jamaica Shell Shield cricket captain ‘Bull’ McMorris, I think, when asked to go out and bat as nightwatchman for the great Lawrence Rowe: “Skip, if ‘Yagga’ caaa seeit, then how do you expect me to?”
Needless to say, and as not unexpected, Jamaicans everywhere, both at home and abroad, celebrated Ms Singh’s triumph. But it has not gone unnoticed – at least to me – that nobody is calling Ms Singh who left Jamaica at nine years old ‘a foreina’! And, of course, nobody should.
THE JAMAICAN ‘FOREINA’
But contrast that to this. Over the years, I’ve heard in more than one place, the experience of some Jamaicans in the Diaspora, who migrated at an age, much older than that of Ms Singh’s, who, in their quest to return to Jamaica to work, have been met with a cold reception capsulated in the expression, “Is come yu comin’ from forein fi come box-food out a wi mout!”
I can’t help but asking the question, which is: ‘Is it only when Jamaicans living abroad bring global glory to Jamaica that they are welcomed?’ And did Ms Dahlia Walker-Huntington, a Florida-based immigration attorney, not capture things accurately? In her July 15, 2018 Gleaner commentary ‘Petrojam and the Diaspora’, Walker-Huntington asserts: “One of the chief complaints (of the Diaspora) is that we are only seen as a source of revenue for Jamaica, whether it be remittances, investments or donations to non-profits, without any respect.”
A Dr Gregory Roberts, in his December 17 letter to the editor (Jamaica Observer), sees virtually the same – shall I say – dysfunctional Jamaica-Diaspora relationship. But he adds an insightful twist: “The (Jamaica) Diaspora is seen same as Europeans saw their colonies – purely to extract”.
WHAT IF MS GARCIA HAD WON HER CONTEST?
And then there’s poor Ms Iana Tickle Garcia – Miss Universe Jamaica 2019.
Ms Garcia, in choosing to don an Annie Palmer costume, drew ire, ridicule and scorn from some Jamaicans for not being ‘a real Jamaican’. To some, ‘a real Jamaican’ only mentions or reminds of aspects of our past, in petitions for reparations. Otherwise, ‘how dare her?’! But yet, as one dissenter pointed out, Jamaica makes money off guided Rose Hall Great House tours, fact or fiction, the former habitat of the same ‘Wicked Witch’.
But what if Ms Garcia had won her contest? I’d bet that there would be dancing in our streets as well.
During an intermission of Champs 2018, under the shade of a mango tree at the National Stadium, just east of the statues of some of our world-beating athletes, I asked the now deceased Mr. Michael Fray how come Jamaica has not seen it fit to include a statue of the great Olympian Dr Lennox Miller?
“Do you notice something about those statues?” Mr Fray in turn asked me. “Those athletes all won gold medals.”
“And,” he continued, “Jamaica only likes winners.”
In other words, forget about ‘the inspiring stuff’.