Us ambassador’s refreshing return
Ambassador N Nick
Perry is someone Jamaica can regard as one of its own. He must have felt like a man relieved to get back to his roots when he exited the aircraft at Norman Manley International Airport last wednesday evening.
The morning after, he sprung into action by meeting embassy staff at the United States Government’s St Andrew location, ready to continue running with the baton that was handed to him by his predecessors, and perhaps anxious to achieve things that hitherto were never a part of reality.
The fact that the ambassador was born on this very soil and attended one of the finest institutions of learning in the Western Hemisphere – Kingston College – means that he is a yard man, first and foremost. He could also find himself in the pages of history, becoming the first diplomat to be posted in Jamaica, whose navel string was cut here.
A US Army veteran, Ambassador Perry knows only too well how Jamaicans love the United States. Some of them adore the US so much that they tend to stay there much longer than they are allowed to visit, sometimes resulting in their host having to resort to measures that turn out to be quite uncomfortable.
Ambassador Perry understands the Jamaican mentality very well and should be quite aware that there could be those who think that now that a Jamaican is the top man at the embassy, they ought to be allowed certain special privileges. I would say to them though, “Dream on,” for as the local television commercial says, “That will never
happen.”
One of the incentives that young Jamaicans can take away from Ambassador Perry’s appointment is hope — that a boy from Kingston’s east side could do well at high school, emigrate to the United States, and eventually become a New York assemblyman, and then gain the confidence of the US political hierarchy to represent its interest overseas.
An ambassador serves, usually, for between three and four years in a location. Perry’s alma mater marks 100 years in 2025. Surely, he must have calendar at hand ticking off the days leading to that quite special occasion.