Celebrating My Heritage

Initially, when I considered what I wanted to write on this subject and particularly from a Black perspective, I had to ask myself - what is culture and what is tradition? So I sought the help of my reliable companion, Oxford Dictionary, which defined them as:
culture - 'state of manners, taste and intellectual development'
tradition - 'unwritten body of beliefs, facts etc handed down from generation to generation, custom, practice of long standing'

The meaning of tradition, culture and heritage, according to dear old Oxford, sums up my lived out understanding and experience of my inherited Jamaican traditions and culture. It's both definitions rolled into one.

Reflecting on my growing up years I remember so fondly and not so fondly the many things that affected my decision making process from what I eat, drink and wear, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, manners, God, Church, respecting my elders, etc. The list is endless.

One would never dare to address an adult in the first name. It always had to be Good morning Mr Smith or Good evening Mrs Jones etc. If you ever said Hi Mr or Mrs… you'd receive the sternest disapproving look, which implied, 'where's your manners' or 'who do you think you are talking to'.

When it came to discipline the fear of God was put into me about what would happen to me if I did this or that and ultimately the beating (with the belt) I would get if I disobeyed or overstepped the invisible boundaries. They certainly knew how to enforce the Scripture "spare not the rod and spoil the child"!

As for education, having lived in Jamaica for a number of years, I certainly know what it means to 'learn yu book'. If you are given homework, make sure you complete it or else the good old Mr cane or Mr Strap would be conversing with your bum or another part of your anatomy! Failure to meet the required standards resulted in the repeating of that year. So, if you continued to be a 'dun-de head' (a dunce to you British) the whole school would eventually know.

Now you can understand why some children left school two years after their classmates!

The Western World calls countries like Jamaica, Third World. All I can say is that my handwriting and complete level of education, at primary and high schools, went up several notches compared to schooling here in the UK. In Jamaica, educational expectations whether it be primary or high school were high. There was tremendous drive from the teachers to do achieve high standards and do well. There methods of achieving this could have bordered on cruelty but it got the desired results, most of the time.