Chapter 3
Every I is an I, from the bottom to the Most High.
Every clover you step over is a companion to our lives.
Every flower has the power that flows through you and I.
Like the motion of the ocean, we flow with the surge of life.
Earth is alive! She is spontaneous,
But oh, she’s tired, she’s been beguiled
By her children who’ve lost sight of their own humanity, reality,
Lost the ability to see with the one I that can see.
Every star near and far, a necessary number for the human race,
The chemical balance of the universe leaves nothing to waste.
The more microscopic the topic, the more it looks like outer space,
This world that’s before us is a pretty amazing place!
Rastafari: Where I-niversal Culture Meets Economic Globalization
Rastafari can help sort through the smokescreen of daily life because of the historical perspective that informs our livity (lifestyle). If we follow Rastafari livity, we are better attuned with the goods we consume, our relationships with our neighbors, the hair on our bodies, and the grass in our yards—we are attuned to every clover. Having a reverence for life’s intricacies is so important. Nature’s function in our lives governs how we relate to everything else—what we fear, how we love, and what role religion and/or spirituality plays. A symbiotic relationship with nature is true wealth, and its worth in our culture sorely needs to be reexamined. As Haile Selassie said, “The forests, the rivers, the mountains and the plains constitute wealth.”[80] Without seeing our cosmic interconnectedness, without respect for each other—every I—and for nature, we are destined to repeat the same cycles that have plagued humanity for centuries.
Rastafari Ites (heights) shine a light into the darkness and allow a pathway for humanity to progress forward more peacefully. Through the heartbeat rhythm of the Nyahbinghi, even Rastafari’s drumming is attuned to the human form. Its message is positive, its wisdom vast; Rastafari holds a key to healing the human condition—individually and internationally—while repairing our relationship with nature.
A few years ago I had the chance to travel to Jamaica in order to cultivate interconnectedness with co-ops in the Southeastern US. My personal goal was to help the Jamaican people receive their due, especially the Rastas, because their culture has given me such valuable guidance throughout the years. My interest in working with Rastafari elders materialized while I was living in western North Carolina. A group of colleagues and I created the Rastafari Ancient Living Arts and Kulture Festival (RALAK), where we hoped to raise enough money for others to develop a Rastafari trust fund. The idea behind the fund was simple: Rastafari symbols should be treated as the intellectual property of the Jamaican Rastas. Funds would be accumulated from the profits of products utilizing the imagery of Rastafari. A board would then vote on ways to disperse the funds throughout the Jamaican Rasta community.
The Rastafari Millennium Council worked to spearhead this mission and we were set to help. That meant our group had visits and conference calls with people like Ras Michael from the foundational Sons of Negus reggae band, Bunny Wailer, representatives of Stephen Marley, and other prominent Rastafari scholars and advocates. According to the Rastafari Millennium Council, their vision is to “speak with ONE VOICE for all those that professes the Rastafari Faith, in order to promote, protect, and preserve the sacred legacy of the Rastafari Indigenous Culture worldwide.” They have been very effective in fostering cooperation between the various mansions of Rastafari in Jamaica, as well as networking with Rasta communities worldwide. One of their primary focuses has been “to advocate and negotiate with appropriate bodies in order to further the interests of the Rastafari Communities, in matters of Repatriation, Reparations, Cultural Heritage projects, Human Rights and Welfare, Intellectual Property, and the like.”
In my area we formed the Black Mountain/Asheville Rastafari Collective (BMARC), which was started when Ras Sela Juda Fari and Empress Iffiya Seales moved to North Carolina with their family. Ras Sela was involved with the RMC, and Empress Iffiya had been raised in the Nyahbinghi mansion. In 2008, Empress Iffiya became their first female chairperson. Because of the Theocracy Reign Ivine Order of Nyahbinghi’s patriarchal history, her appointment was a significant accomplishment.
Due to my work with Ras Miles Jacob Marley and the Rastafari UniverSoul Fellowship Prison Ministry, it was inevitable that our paths would cross once they moved to the small town I was living in. It was particularly gratifying whenever I interacted with Binghi Irie Lion, Empress Iffiya’s father, and Ras Michael, because I wanted to be more exposed to the wisdom elders like them carry. By way of the festival, we also had contact with other movers and shakers within the Rasta movement, including elder Ras I-RICE and members of the International Development of Rastafari (IDOR). The festival was a gathering of Rasta visionaries from all over the US and Jamaica.
While in North Carolina, Haile Israel from Ras Michael’s band and Binghi Irie Lion accompanied us to the Alexander Correctional Institution to visit with Rasta inmates. Because of my growing connection within the Rasta community, I also joined Ras Sela on a trip to the United Nations to meet with Under-Secretary General Francis Deng, a descendent of Mandinka royalty. He was South Sudan’s first ambassador to the UN and had taken a keen interest in Rastafari because, as he said, it was the fastest-growing religion in Africa. He contacted us because his son had come to our festival, where one of the defining events was an interfaith reasoning, featuring a panel with many different spiritual perspectives.
After the following year’s festival a group of us met with H.I.H. Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie, Haile Selassie I’s grandson and president of the Crown Council of Ethiopia. Jake (John) Homiak, director of the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution, arranged our meeting. We discussed hosting the RALAK Festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, so that it could coincide with the restoration of the statues of H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, which were taken down during the 1974 Ethiopian civil war. Prince Ermias was extremely appreciative that Rastafari communities like ours continued to celebrate the great emperor.
Rastafari, Co-Ops, and Organics in Jamaica
I arrived in Jamaica on the eve of their 2016 presidential elections and was met at the Kingston airport by Nkrumah from the Source Farm Foundation. One immediate thing that struck me while driving to their ecovillage was the appropriation of the term Jah by the Jamaican Labour Party on their campaign billboards. Jah is the Rasta term for the Most High (or God), and it was evident that the political party was trying to appeal to voters with Rastafari’s pervasive cultural influence. Rastas, however, are quick to disavow what they call “poli-tricks.” They have been repeatedly persecuted on their own island by the same political forces that were now trying to use their symbols to appeal to voters. With the recent decriminalization of marijuana, many Jamaicans are worried that the forces of appropriation will swallow up the ganja industry.
I was invited to Jamaica by the Source Farm Foundation and the Jamaican Sustainable Farm Enterprise (JSFE) to potentially establish multiple co-ops to spread organic produce and natural food products throughout the island. Together we wanted to create direct links between Jamaican farmer and retail co-ops with cooperatives in the US. I had recently seen the masterful documentary Life and Debt, a film that examines the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s involvement in decimating the Jamaican economy. Because many Jamaicans had been repeatedly ripped off by the “establishment,” developing co-ops would instill sustainable economic opportunities for local communities.
As I traveled through the island and met with people, I witnessed the primary cooperative tendencies coming together: organics, sustainability, gender equality, transparency, and accountability. I would actually argue that the organic movement would not be as internationally prevalent if not for Rastafari people speaking truth to power and sending out their messages with such an inviting soundtrack. Rastafari has always been about sustainability, collective security, the interconnectedness between all living things, and a reverence for nature.
A primary reason for establishing cooperative roots within Jamaica was reiterated in my JSFE materials. “The people of Jamaica and the greater Caribbean region,” the materials said, “have long been buffeted by manmade and natural disasters that have left them in a state of economic, social, and environmental crisis.” While the intricacies and specifics vary on each island, they’ve all been subject to the same predatory international bankers, which has affected everything from their agricultural practices to the prices they’re able to get for exports. Spreading cooperative and organic practices in Jamaica is so important because there, “people are vulnerable due to national dependency on unaffordable, less healthy, imported food, lost skill sets needed to produce certain crops without expensive chemical inputs, and natural disasters that wipe out farmers’ crops with regularity.”
Clearly, democratic control over local Jamaican industries could be a big help in turning these problems around. The JFSE materials also highlighted the internal dynamics at play in the region where I was headed:
The Parish of St. Thomas and the other eastern parish of Portland have systemically been the most forgotten and underdeveloped parishes in Jamaica for over a century. Because of the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, St. Thomas was labeled as a “troublemaker parish” by government and has suffered from little to no effective representation by both the past and present governments of Jamaica. This neglect has resulted in poorly maintained roads, lack of functional infrastructure, high unemployment, poor living conditions, and a great sense of hopelessness amongst the youth. St. Thomas is a farming parish however, since the liberalization of the banana industry by the European Union and NAFTA all the banana plantations have closed leaving few agricultural avenues for profitable employment in the parish. Many of the people of St. Thomas still rely on small cash crops and seasonal tree crop production for their livelihood, but are only marginally compensated for their crops, with most of the profits going to middlemen and retailers in Kingston and local markets . . .
As evidenced by a grocery store operator I met with who said he was building the Whole Foods of Jamaica, there is an increasing demand for healthy organic food products. JSFE sees this both as a challenge and an opportunity. Their materials identified “a long history of support for clean food and organic agriculture in Jamaica and farmers are thirsty for new effective methods of improving production and distribution. Marketing structures are in their infancy and need direct technical assistance to support their success.”
The Source Farm Foundation, based in St. Thomas, Jamaica, is JSFE’s primary partner and has been busily working to provide training to counteract the global economic forces that have been squashing Jamaica’s economy. One of their more prominent programs helps farmers understand the benefits of organic agriculture and permaculture practices. The Source Farm Foundation also helped fuel the Ujima Natural Farmers Market, Jamaica’s first organic farmers market.
One of my tasks in Jamaica was to help farmers with their postharvest processing so they could enhance their offerings at the market. When a local market gets flooded with one crop, the competition is fiercer than it needs to be. If farmers organize into co-ops, or at least become willing participants in an overall strategy, they can grow complementary crops and sell what they need to keep themselves afloat.
Humankind’s Subjugation of Itself
In a chapter titled “Rastafari and the New Society,” Terisa Turner points to research done by Maria Mies that reveals the synchronicities of historic tendencies:
[Mies’s] integrative methodology links the historical emergence of European science and technology, and its mastery over nature, to the European witch killings and the attendant deskilling and economic marginalization of women. And both the persecution of the witches and the rise of modern science are linked to European slave-based triangular trade and the destruction of self sufficient, autonomous economies in Africa and the new world. As capitalism developed in the 20th century, and especially after WWII with the more pronounced unification of the world market, first world women were concentrated in the work of reproduction and consumption. At the same time, third world women were forced to produce cheap export and wage goods, according to specific demands of colonial and imperial capital.[81]
The current global economic system is primarily parasitic in nature. It would be a mistake to blame this strictly on the Europeans, although in our current era the so-called first world is typically at fault. Power brokers in developed and developing nations participate in unethical behavior and work together to generate suffering around the world, and much of this suffering is tied to global economic inequality.
Oxfam crunched the numbers and their results don’t look good: “In 2015, just 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.6 billion people—the bottom half of humanity. This figure is down from 388 individuals as recently as 2010.” While there has been an increase of more than half a trillion dollars for the wealthy elite, “the wealth of the bottom half fell by just over a trillion dollars in the same period—a drop of 41 percent.”[82]
One of the key trends underlying this huge concentration of wealth and incomes is the increasing return to capital versus labour. In almost all rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has been falling. This means workers are capturing less and less of the gains from growth. In contrast, the owners of capital have seen their capital consistently grow (through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing. Tax avoidance by the owners of capital, and governments reducing taxes on capital gains, have further added to these returns. As Warren Buffett famously said, he pays a lower rate of tax than anyone in his office—including his cleaner and his secretary.[83]
The Oxfam report also illuminates an alarming economic trend occurring in Africa: “Almost a third of rich Africans’ wealth—a total of $500 billion—is held offshore in tax havens. It is estimated that this costs African countries $14 billion a year in lost tax revenues. This is enough money to pay for health care that could save the lives of four million children and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.” Shielding wealth from tax regulation is one of the key factors preventing any kind of trickle-down economic effect.
Contending with similar forces in 1964, Haile Selassie I worked hard to stem the trend. At the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Cairo that year, he argued that “long-established patterns of trade are not easily or quickly reoriented.” He implored the dignitaries to not be fooled into thinking that this fact could be lost on them in the remaking of their future. “But let us, at the same time, toil with all our strength to alter them,” he said.[84]
A United Nations–sponsored study reported in 2014 that this type of inequality “matters not only for those at the poorest end of the distribution, but for society as a whole—as it threatens social cohesion and hampers social mobility, fueling social tensions that can lead to civil unrest and political instability. Large income disparities can even undermine democratic values.”[85]
Many people will no longer stand for this corruption. Economic starvation encourages rebellion and this trend cannot continue without formidable resistance. But before such a resistance can coalesce, an effective analysis of global trade is necessary.
Globalism and Dependence: One-Crop Economies
Every island in the Caribbean Sea has been manipulated by European colonial powers, so when the World Bank and IMF took their turn at interfering with the Caribbean economies, it was simply a transfer of power. In the early eighties, Don Rojas served as the press secretary under Maurice Bishop in Grenada, around the same time the US invaded that nation under President Ronald Reagan. The pretext for the invasion was the apparent civil unrest following Bishop’s assassination, which many believe was the result of a covert CIA operation. In his book One People One Destiny: The Caribbean and Central America Today, Rojas offers a local perspective in response to the economic and social difficulties that come with what he calls “imperialist bullying.”
Instead of giving back to the countries whose resources were sapped, the US often coerces them with propagandist aid. In the guise of the savior, the US imposes economic programs in developing countries that function in the “totality of US interests,” not through force, but through “influence.”[86] Susan George argues that this political framework has created and furthered world hunger:
The West has tried to apply its own conceptions of “development” to the Third World, working through local elites and pretending that the benefits showered on these elites would trickle down to the less fortunate, especially through the wholesale application of Western-inspired and Western-supplied technology. These methods have not produced a single independent and viable economy in the entire Third World—and in fact were not meant to. “Development” has been the password for imposing a new kind of dependency, for enriching the already rich world and for shaping other societies to meet its commercial and political needs.[87]
Many people are left to their own limited devices, merely grasping for survival. Like the parish of St. Thomas in Jamaica, the whole island of Haiti seemingly had to pay for its successful slave uprising between 1791 and 1804.[88] In his book In the Parish of the Poor, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide explains how “aid” agencies actually destroyed his country’s development. He observes that “the same free foreign rice the pastor feeds to the peasant’s children is being sold on the market for less than the farmer’s own produce.” Local elites benefit in the marketplace because they have freely acquired food to sell. “Would it not be better . . . to force the landholders to increase the peasants’ pay . . . to help the peasant learn to organize? Isn’t this a better way to stop the children’s cries of hunger forever?”[89]
US foreign policy continually leads to subtle and not-so-subtle disasters. In Walter Rodney’s book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, he discusses the historical “contradiction between the elaboration of democratic ideas inside Europe and the elaboration of authoritarian and thuggish practices by Europeans with respect to Africans.”[90] “There is a type of false or pseudo integration,” he writes, “which is a camouflage for dependence. In contemporary times, it takes the form of free-trade areas in the formerly colonized sections of the world. Those free-trade areas are made to order for the penetration of multi-national corporations.”[91]
Rodney continues to elucidate the West’s denial of interconnectedness: “In the short run, European racism seemed to have done Europeans no harm, and they used those erroneous ideas to justify their further domination of non-European peoples in the colonial epoch. But the international proliferation of bigoted and unscientific racist ideas was bound to have its negative consequences in the long run.”[92]
Although Walter Rodney was writing in 1972, he already saw how NAFTA, the WTO, and the TPP would transform the world economy. “Free trade” is a slick misnomer for a controlled economic environment where powerful governments and corporations create rules to suit their own ends. At the 1964 Organization of African Unity Summit, Haile Selassie I spoke about these effects:
Neo-colonialism today takes two forms: economic and political. We recognize that economic dominance is not only often the more difficult to eliminate, but often serves as the entering wedge for political domination. We further recognize that, given the history of our continent, and the conditions under which we came to freedom, it is not unusual that, despite our best efforts, the economic independence which we seek is long and difficult in coming.[93]
Ethiopians have always fervently valued their independence, and this ethic has been passed on to Rastas. Rastafari emphasizes self-reliance and inspires its followers to lead productive and self-sufficient lives. Because Rastafari is not about escapism, adherents are aware of current events and how they relate to their personal lives. The constant presence of reasoning among Rastas keeps dialogues progressive rather than dwelling on the past. Neil Savishinsky identifies these traits in his essay “Transnational Popular Culture and the Global Spread of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement”:
By encouraging young people to take an active interest in the land through their establishment of small-scale agricultural projects, by promoting the use of ganja as a substitute for alcohol and other more harmful drugs, and by creating an appreciation and demand for locally manufactured goods, Rastas in Trinidad have served as a positive social force, especially among the island’s poor.[94]
A British Cup of Indian Tea with Caribbean Sugar
Plantation-style mono-crop systems across the world have decimated many peoples’ ability to be self-sufficient. In Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney Mintz considers the tremendous influence British trade with India and the Caribbean islands had on its society:
The first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis. We must struggle to understand fully the consequences of that and kindred events, for upon them was erected an entirely different conception of the relationship between producers and consumers, of the meaning of work, of the definition of self, of the nature of things. What commodities are, and what commodities mean, would thereafter be forever different.[95]
The developed world needs to reexamine its relationship with imported goods in order to produce a commerce system that benefits more people. Although a growing number of consumers are recognizing the benefits of buying local, political forces continue to perpetuate a dependence on mass production. In Wild Fermentation, Sandor Katz acknowledges the role government and the economic elite have in determining mass production:
The enormity of the economic and cultural changes wrought to the entire world by the mass production and global trade of chocolate, coffee, and tea cannot be overstated. These stimulants recognized today as addictive substances were “the ideal drugs for the Industrial Revolution,” according to ethno-botanist Terence McKenna . . . Europe married them to sugar and they became that important new mass commodity’s marketing partner.[96]
The colonial powers and their private partners dominated this trade explosion and subsequently seeds of dissent were planted everywhere they went. Not only were these nations and companies plundering proud people and their land, they were manipulating their own constituents who were hopelessly dependent on the crumbs of their spoils. As long as the ruling elite could demonize the people they plundered, the gentry felt justified in cracking the whip to keep the slaves in line.
St. Thomas in Jamaica was an early colonial landing spot for the British, who took over the former Spanish rule of the colony. The Spanish had set up minor cattle ranches and agriculture developments, but the British established full-blown plantations. The Plantain Garden River Valley, where I met with farmers on my trip to Jamaica, had originally been home to sugar estates and banana plantations. More recently, it had been turned into an agro park, land set aside for farmers to grow mostly onions for export. At the time I was there things hadn’t gone well. Here’s what Source Farm had to say about these developments:
Small farmers have had many challenges over the past decade due to the liberalization of the Banana Industry by NAFTA’s ruling, the closing of the Eastern Banana Estates and the recent failure of the onion crop at the PGR Agro Park. It is our hope that with the introduction of the Jamaican Sustainable Farm Enterprise Program, we will be able to re-energize agriculture in Eastern St. Thomas while we address a number of environmental challenges around sustainable land practices and address issues of climate change, which is impacting the region.
Chuck Marsh, a coordinator of JSFE and site plan creator for the Source Farm Ecovillage, organized my visit to Jamaica. I first met Chuck at Earth Haven Ecovillage, near where my kids spent the majority of their early childhood. One morning during my Jamaican stay, Nicola “Coda” Shirley-Phillips—the Source Farm Foundation’s executive director—and I headed down to the PGR Agro Park to find a specific group of farmers she had been communicating with. PGR is southeast of the Blue Mountains, where the majority of Jamaican coffee is grown. Coda instructed me before I left the US, however, that if I wanted good coffee I should bring my own. It turns out many local Jamaicans can’t get the famous Blue Mountain coffee their country produces. It’s almost entirely exported. I made sure to bring them extra Ethiopian coffee from my co-op in Asheville.
As we met with the farmers, their cautious approach with us was understandable given their experience with exploitation, although they made it clear that Coda was trusted. Because a few of the farmers appeared to be Rastas, I cited Haile Selassie I’s nod to cooperatives as a viable alternative to the neoliberal policies of the IMF and the World Bank. His Imperial Majesty stated that the “co-operative movement has long been known throughout the world, and We Ourself have on numerous occasions urged Our people to join increasingly in co-operative enterprises. Co-operatives must, ultimately, play a highly important role in the growth of Our economy, and no time can be lost in availing ourselves of the benefits to be derived from them.”[97]
According to the Jamaica Observer, the nation’s farmers had already been exploited by the mismanagement of the Agro Invest Corporation, which “resulted in the loss of a projected $50 million worth of onions.” Meanwhile, the PGR Agro Park is “among those touted to produce Jamaica out of debt under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement.” I assured the farmers that our goal in assisting them was to form an “iron sharpen iron” kind of relationship; this is a phrase borrowed from Proverbs 27:17 that was also incorporated into a popular song by the reggae band Culture.
Despite my best efforts, I saw that words only went so far with these stoic farmers; they needed to witness actions to believe our words. For a fruitful relationship with the US cooperative sector, we needed to make sure to follow through in a meaningful way.
Journey to Maroon Town, and a Nyahbinghi Groundation in Portland
On March 1, 2016, the 120-year anniversary of the Battle of Adwa—a defining moment in the Ethiopian fight against Italian colonialism—Nkrumah and I left Source Farm at 5:45 in the morning on what turned out to be a very long day. We purchased some hearty fish soup with okra, carrots, and scallions from a street vendor outside of Lyssons before traveling to a rendezvous with Binghi Irie Lion, Maxine Stowe, and noted Jamaican journalist Dickie Crawford.
The day before, Coda and I had met with Jah B (Bunny Wailer) and Maxine Stowe. We discussed how the SFF could successfully work with them to establish an ecovillage like Source Farm as somewhat of a retirement home for aging Rasta elders on land Jah B had purchased. They were also hoping it could be a tourist destination for African Americans. At that meeting, Maxine let us know about a ceremony the next day where the Maroon community was going to be receiving a delegation from Sierra Leone which was interested in rekindling and acknowledging their shared lineage and history.
The Maroons from Jamaica had been a formidable foe to the British colonial encroachment, and their resistance resulted in a peace treaty. I was acquainted with some of their history and learned about their fearless female leader, Queen Nanny. This was a resistance movement comprised largely of escaped slaves. After fending off the British, they became an integral part of Jamaica’s history despite existing independent of the Rasta community.
During my post–high school forays into Washington, DC’s vibrant African American cultural centers, I frequently visited Georgia Avenue, near Howard University. Georgia Avenue housed Soul Vegetarian, a vegan eatery run by the African Hebrew Israelites; Delights of the Garden, a raw food deli; the House of Khamit, an Afrocentric bookstore run by scholars who regularly engaged in insightful discourse; and the House of Knowledge, a three-story dwelling that held Revolution Books (a Socialist-oriented Afrocentric bookstore), a health food store, and a Nation of Islam outpost. After the closure of many of these businesses, Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima, who made an important film called Sankofa starring reggae singer/poet Mutabaruka, opened a café nearby, and the African Hebrew Israelites opened a health food store called Ever Lasting Life (run by Onam, a close friend of mine from the DC punk scene). On the same side of the street was the long-standing Blue Nile Herb Shop where the tonic I regularly bought there—wood root tonic—was made from a Maroon recipe. Reading the label gave me my first introduction to Maroon culture, and I was able to follow up with research in books I bought at the House of Khamit and the many street vendors in the area.
That day in Jamaica, as Nkrumah and I drove to Maroon Town and back, we swerved around both slow and speeding cars, trucks, bikes, pedestrians, and goats. After driving through Spanish Town, we met up with Maxine and Dickie and headed to Bog Walk to pick up Binghi Irie Lion. Binghi Irie and I had a chance to catch up in the car. As previously mentioned, he had traveled to a North Carolina prison with the RUF Prison Ministry and me. Binghi Irie’s insight during our visit was pivotal for Rasta inmates to overstand the true nature of the faith and its history. That day in the car I looked on as Rastas from the street celebrated his presence when we drove by.
During the trip, passing mountains that overlooked Ocho Rios and the coastal town of Falmouth, I saw my first cruise ship since arriving to Jamaica. It was a startling site after being immersed in local communities. The floating country club was an intrusion, to say the least, on the rich vibes the locals were living. As I knew from growing up in DC, tourists serve an industry that may or may not be needed, and their presence was not entirely welcome.
We were heading to Montego Bay, also a tourist destination, which provided a stark contrast with St. Thomas. Driving through the city, we passed the Hyatt Hotel, Holiday Inn, and Hilton, virtual compounds flanked by massive golf courses and chlorinated swimming pools. Tourists are warned by these hotels not to venture out among the natives. We drove past the hotels through to lunchtime. We stopped at a grocery store so Dickie could visit an ATM, and Nkrumah treated us to soup he bought from a street vendor. We were on our way.
We headed into the hills above Montego Bay to Maroon Town, also known as Flagstaff and Trelawny Town. The Maroons settled in these hills in 1690; escaped slaves fled there and waged guerrilla warfare against the colonial regime. It was in 1739 that the British were forced to sue for peace due to the decimation of their forces.
The ceremony was already underway when we got to Maroon Town; the Maroons were singing their anthem. Among them was Chief Michael Grizzle and Mama G (Gloria Simms). The Sierra Leone delegates were on the walkway above, which overlooked the Maroon domain. Once out of our car, Binghi Irie was already chatting with Rastas there. Meanwhile, Michael Grizzle was talking with his diverse set of guests—he had invited delegates from the Muslim and Rasta communities. Along with another Maroon “paramount chief,” Michael Grizzle kept the proceedings in order, welcoming a group of students from a primary school nearby and two university professors from the US. Mama G was also a vital participant—her powerful presence was a reminder of the many strong women elevating Jamaican culture.
It had already been a long day, and Nkrumah and I were now charged with getting Binghi Irie to the Groundation in Portland on the east side of the island. After partaking in a local treat from some women across the street called “Blue Drawers” (“Du Ku Nu,” as called by the locals), which was like a banana and coconut dumpling wrapped in banana leaf, we headed out along the northern coast. Our only stop was for some food in Buff Bay, after listening to a radio show on Mellow FM along the way.
When we finally got to Portland for the Groundation, I was determined to only stay for a short while, although this was an important event for Nkrumah and me. Unfortunately, the Groundation was taking place fifteen hours after we had left Source Farm and we still had to drive home. I was surprised at how inclusive the Groundation was. What surprised me most was how graciously we were welcomed. After all, we were two baldheads—my dreads were just starting to form again and Nkrumah was a Jamaican with no apparent allegiance. It didn’t seem to matter—we were just more branches on the tree.