Afternoon joy for Prime
As we made final touches for the opening of the st John Bosco Vocational Training Centre in Hatfield, manchester, last Wednesday, we received a call from the office of our guest speaker Prime minister Andrew Holness that he would be delayed.
It had been a hard day for the prime minister. “I was delayed in arriving here because I had to deal with circumstances caused by some of our citizens who obviously did not go through this process [training] of treatment,” he shared. “Obviously they did not get the character-shaping and the moral standing and saw it as an easy endeavour to take the lives of six persons in my constituency over two days in an internecine gang war.”
He continued, “So I’m standing here today saying I need more John Boscos to be training and reaching out to those young minds who are being pulled into gangs and criminal activities…we need to pull them out of that, and if we had many more of these right across Jamaica maybe we would begin to see an impact on our youngsters who get pulled into these nefarious activities.”
Prime Minister Andrew Holness heartily commended the success stories of past student Damian Simpson and current student Kenroy Hyatt. Referring to the advice they received from Sister Susan Frazer, he noted: “After they’ve gone through this process they will take away if you fall behind run faster, work harder. They will take away that it is your ambition that will change your circumstances.”
As Prime Minister Holness toured the new facilities and met the students, his sombre mood lifted. He chatted and joked with the eager students, some attentively barbering, others in computer cubicles learning IT skills, and others being taken through the paces of good hospitality practice. It was as the Psalm says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Marcia Tai Chun, the CEO of Sisters of Mercy Jamaica, which counts St John Bosco as one of its many islandwide institutions, spoke of the 48 years of leadership which Sister Susan Frazer had spent at St John Bosco. “Sister Susan is also a visionary,” she said. “In 1977, when she returned to Jamaica and to Bosco, she took on the task of trying to make St John Bosco self-sufficient in providing food for the 180 boys in residence.
“What started out with two pigs from Bodles being carried in the back of a van by two nuns [Sister Susan and Sister Noreen] has grown into a state-ofthe-art piggery with 300 pigs; a retail outlet with the best pork and chicken products around, which is delivered to customers in Mandeville and Kingston; a 3,000capacity chicken house; two greenhous- es producing excellent produce; two catering halls; and the Falls restaurant and bar. All of these enterprises have two things in common: They are income-generating, but primarily they are training facilities.”
Indeed, the prime minister said he knew that Sister Susan was not only a great leader but a strong one because on his previous visit she had instructed him to remove his shoes before entering her greenhouse.
The Sisters of Mercy Jamaica honoured Digicel Foundation and patron Denis O’brien with a plaque acknowledging their Us$1-million donation to building projects at the Alpha Institute (formerly Alpha Boys School) and at St John Bosco.
Farewell, Queen elizabeth ii
There have been contrasting responses to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II as reflected in The Guardian article written by our former Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison. In it Goodison recalled, as a seven-year-old, reluctantly lining up with her schoolmates on King Street and waving the Union Jack as The Queen was driven through the streets. She wrote about our love, then, for things British, including Horlicks, a drink which our parents ensured we had daily.
“The prevailing wisdom was that everything of worth came from abroad and to most Jamaicans, at that time, abroad meant England,” she opined. “Even the sugar cane that Jamaicans cultivated under the most inhumane and brutal conditions was, in its final stages of