A sketch of the bombing of an Israeli diplomat’s car patched together from tweets…
Israeli diplomat's car explodes near Embassy in New Delhi. Photo: Joji Philip Thomas @jojiphilipIsraeli Diplomat is flung from the car, seen here being helped by passersby
This morning one of my tweeps, Joji Philip Thomas @jojiphilip on Twitter, tweeted the two photos above saying that a car in front of him had just exploded. A newsman himself, Joji was on Aurangzeb Road, in the diplomatic enclave of New Delhi.”The car in front of me just exploded – a foreigner inside got flung to the other side of d road,” read his sensational sounding tweet.
The Israeli lady who was inside the car & was badly injured insisted that she be taken to the embassy,not hospital went another tweet. And shortly thereafter: hey, all u news channels who are using my photographs of the blast of the #Israeli diplomat’s car.how come no credit for the photos???
Joji also noted that despite being badly injured, after having been flung from her car, the Israeli woman had the “presence of mind to give instructions to rescuers after the blast.”
Since then the Agence France-Presse has tried to buy the photos from Joji who himself works for The Economic Times of India.
In the meantime according to @yaakovkatz: Reports of explosions near Israeli embassies in India and Georgia. Come day after 4th anniversary of Hezbollah military chief assassination.
It’s now confirmed that a man on a motorbike rode up behind the Israeli Embassy vehicle and attached a small, sophisticated bomb to it. Acccording to @geevishnu A biker planted a sticky bomb on the rear of innova and fled the scene. The lady who survived is a diplomat. So is her husband.
Meanwhile the Israelis have announced that Iran is behind the bombings in Delhi and Georgia. According to newswoman @suhasinih: Car explosion: Israeli govt confirming 4 attacks planned : Delhi+Tblisi explosives;3 arrested in Baku, Threat foiled in Bangkok.
Not everyone agrees. Tweeted the editor of Newsweek International Tunku Varadarajan known on Twitter as @tunkuv: My instinct: Iran can’t be behind Delhi bombing of Israelis. Why wd Iran sow terror in the one major US ally that is buying Iranian oil?” Indian authorities have also said that it’s too early to determine who was behind the bombings.
According to the Washington Post the injured woman is the wife of Israel’s defense attache. Their article has a lot more details on the bombing in Delhi and the foiled attempt in Tbilisi where a grenade was found attached to the car used by the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Gerberg.
A brief observation about mass media coverage of Whitney Houston and black celebrities in general…
CNN only seems to have one clip of Whitney singing/performing? I asked no one in particular on Twitter last night to which @106harlem responded: You know they don’t keep black folk in stock.
I couldn’t understand why for a couple of hours CNN kept showing the same footage of Whitney in a grey dress singing on stage, while NBC seemed to have slightly more diverse clips to accompany the sparse details of her death yesterday. @106harlem’s terse response is shocking but true. Within a few minutes @diverseworld chimed in saying @anniepaul @106harlem … If this is about the footage. I agree. Finally BBC moved from the Bodyguard…
So BBC was guilty of this as well…interesting little sidelight: media houses have to keep stock footage of various celebrities to use in case they die suddenly or for any other reason make the news. In fact newspapers and magazines have obituaries prepared and ready to roll out for a number of top political leaders, actors, musicians, business leaders and others just in case…
In this case not only did no one expect Whitney to go so soon, the two megamedia entities, CNN and BBC, didn’t even have enough stock footage of her performances on hand to round out their news coverage.
*Gallic shrug* C’est la vie.
By far the most beautiful audio of Whitney Houston I’ve come across is this one:
Carolyn Cooper who teaches a Reggae Poetry course invited Damian to give a public talk at UWI, sort of along the lines of the Vybz Kartel talk some time back. It was a quickly put together event that was only confirmed the evening before, and took some swift and skillful dribbling of the ball between herself and the Campus Prinicipal, Gordon Shirley to pull off. So dear @SharzzF who tweeted: It’s soo amazing when Vybz Kartel was invited to lecture, it was well advertised, but the same wasn’t done for Junior Gong, it really wasn’t a conspiracy, it was just contingency.
Perhaps because of the suddenness of it and the resulting impossibility of advertising the talk widely enough there was nowhere near the kind of audience that turned up for Kartel; still it was an energetic session with young Damian fielding 40-50 questions from UWI students after a very brief talk in which he highlighted the importance of talent. Asked about being a Marley and having everything he needed at his disposal he said he still had to make songs people wanted to hear coz they certainly weren’t listening to him only because he was Bob’s son…
Here’s a selection of tweets to give you a flavour of the evening…
RT @UWIMonaGuild: Damian ‘Junior Gong’ Marley will speak about his career as a Grammy-winning dancehall artist on Tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Hall.
RT @mushroomi: Anyone going Junior Gong lecture?
RT @anniepaul: BIG UP if your pumpum tight like mosquito coffin! Poet Tanya Shirley prefacing Junior Gong. Audience roaring.
RT @CultureDoctor: ‘This is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased’ Cindy Breakspeare of Jnr Gong #MonaRock
RT @Dre5IVE: A style u a style the Gong RT @Gordonswaby: Well, Junior Gong reads. Just mentioned Gladwell’s Outliers book.
RT @LIMEJamaica: Yes, Damian ‘Jr. Gong’ Marley is our newest brand ambassador. RT @Dre5IVE: Junior Gong is a LIME Ambassador?!!!!
RT @stannyha: Why isn’t LIME streaming the Junior Gong’s lecture? Since they signed him on as Ambassador? #MonaRock
RT @Savageinsight: “It’s not about being a Marley, it’s about being a human being” #DamianMarley
RT @anniepaul: I got into music because I’m a fan of music. I would put on my Dads music and pretend I was him. Junior Gong at UWI.
RT @lyn4d: I think he’s brilliant. I think he’s very smart. Fan of his music but not some of his moral choices. – Junior Gong’s view on Vybz Kartel
RT @Savageinsight: Only in Ja does a man wait in the line to say “mi no really have a big big question, mi did just waan hail yu”
At one point the stream of questions seemed never-ending. When asked if Junior Gong actively participated in any Rastafarian group, he said that he had attended meetings of the Rastafari Council; rather than simply donating money he would like to help the Rastafari community by tapping his networks, by ‘networking’ for them, for instance in building projects where professional services or architects, contractors and the like might be required. When asked if he had advice, considering his paternal family background, for others who might be considering buiding empires…he looked stumped for a moment, then said chortling, no, just tell them not to rise against MY empire…
I had been given a list of questions to put to Damian as soon as he finished, for the TVJ programme Entertainment Report, and was quite relieved when @GordonSwaby basically asked the first one on my list: Bob’s still a legend but it seems the music’s been overtaken by the merchandising…would Bob have approved of the commercializing of his name? Gordon used different words but the question was very similar. Thing is I don’t quite remember how Damian answered it…but I happily deleted it from my list. It’s not a question i would’ve chosen to ask the young lion myself, though Rohan Marley’s promotion of the House of Marley and its products does raise ethical questions…Besides as @GordonSwaby pointed out the Marley name is “…a valuable brand. That’s why they have to be careful what they do with it.”
The US Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica names its Information Resource Center (IRC) after Paul Robeson, someone who had previously been vilified and ostracized by and in his own country.
I first heard about Paul Robeson in the mid 1980s when I acquired a copy of his autobiographical book Here I Stand. Reading this first person account from a veritable giant of a man filled me with awe; I was living in the United States then, actually on the campus of Rutgers University, the very university that he had won a scholarship to attend in 1915. Rutgers had only had two black students before Robeson.
At Rutgers Robeson became a national football superstar, and later, with his powerful baritone, an internationally renowned concert singer and actor perhaps best known for the song Old Man River. He was also an indomitable champion of equal rights for African-Americans as well as the oppressed anywhere, everywhere. Regularly invited to sing in different countries Robeson was the original citizen of the world, spending a lot of time in Europe, particularly in London and the former Soviet Union, a country he admired because it was a place “where coloured people waked secure and free as equals.”
Robeson would pay dearly for this during the McCarthy Era of the fifties when he was dragged before a congressional committee that grilled him about his ‘communist sympathies’. When the committee demanded to know why he had spent so much time in the Soviet Union Robeson retorted that it was because, “in Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being—no colour prejudice like in Mississippi, no colour prejudice like in Washington.“ Then why hadn’t he remained in Russia, why had he returned to the United States demanded a committee member.
Robeson’s answer was swift and impassioned.
Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?
Robeson’s defiance and refusal to bow earned him the revocation of his passport in 1950. Hard to believe that a mere 60 years ago such undemocratic behaviour was possible in the very United States that today champions human rights left, right and centre exporting so-called democracy worldwide at the tip of heat-seeking missiles if need be. Not only were Robeson’s wings clipped, the powers that be also subjected him to slander campaigns and vicious disinformation so that his power to earn from concerts diminished and he became virtually invisible.
Lloyd L. Brown who wrote the preface to Here I Stand, ended by making the following observation:
…In Robeson’s case there can be no doubt that the ‘fascist-minded people’ whom he challenged did all they could to obscure the man and his message.
It can be expected, however, that the inquiring minds of the new generation will break through to the truth about him. Inevitably, like a mountain peak that becomes visible as the mist is blown away, the towering figure of Paul Robeson will emerge as the thick white fog of lies and slanders is dispelled. Then he will be recognized and honoured here in his homeland, as he is throughout the world, as Robeson, the Great Forerunner.
Remarkably that time seems to have come. As a recent press release from the US Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica detailed:
In early 2011, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kingston launched an essay competition among high school students to name the embassy’s Information Resource Center (IRC), in observance of Black History Month. The aim of this competition was to have the IRC named after the historical figure selected in the winning essay. The legendary Paul Robeson was the character highlighted in the winning essay which was entitled “The Soul of a Continent.” The writer was Kathy Smith, then a Grade 13 student at Manchester High School in Mandeville, Manchester. Ms. Smith is presently a first-year law student at the University of the West Indies.
On the morning of January 23, Ambassador Pamela Bridgewater, along with State Minister of Tourism and Entertainment Damion Crawford, Kathy Smith and Susan Robeson, unveiled at the entrance to the IRC, a plaque that bears the name “Paul Robeson Information Resource Center. This was followed by a ceremony in the embassy atrium to officially name the IRC in honor of Paul Robeson. The date for this event was set for January 23 because it coincided with the 36th anniversary of his death. The occasion was also used as one of the many cultural activities to celebrate Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of independence.
The guest speaker was the award-winning U.S. documentary filmmaker and Chair of the Paul Robeson Foundation, Susan Robeson. Ms. Robeson is granddaughter of the African American singer, actor, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson.
Interestingly Paul Robeson actually gave a concert in Kingston on 19 November 1948. Unfortunately the sound system failed and the concert turned out to be a disaster with the stage collapsing from the crush of people who turned out to hear him and a few children getting killed in the melee. The occasion was documented by Edna Manley in her diaries:
Last night we went to hear Robson sing at the racecourse—the largest crowd we had ever seen. The sound system was hopelessly bad, and one could hear the words but the tone was hopelessly distorted—thousands of people heard nothing at all. The crowd was around seventy thousand. We were wading through the crowd to a spot where we could hear better, and the crowd around us, quite a small part of it, began to snowball behind us—so Norman stood still. It was terribly disappointing not to hear, and to feel the disappointment.
…went to the airbase to see Robeson go—he was in a terrible mood—savage over the failure of the ‘sound system’ and deeply hurt over the death of the child and injuries to the others. So typical of the Gleaner to headline the accident and give the type of presentation that almost made Robeson responsible for the tragedy.
Edna went on to note that Robeson subsequently phoned from New York asking Norman to contact the parents of the children who were killed and injured so that he could cover their hospital and funeral expenses.
Centre: Tayo Aluko with Barbara Gloudon, after performance of Call Mr. Robeson, Feb 4, 2012, Kingston
In celebration of Black History Month the US Embassy in Kingston put on two performances of “Call Mr. Robeson: A Life With Songs,” a one-man show written and performed by U.S. actor and singer Tayo Aluko.” I was privileged to attend the Saturday performance, last weekend, which was an intense and riveting enactment of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. Aluko will be performing at Carnegie Hall on February 12th, 2012.
The Paul Robeson Information Resource Centre has the most comprehensive collection of materials on Robeson in the Caribbean, along with many other valuable documentary resources, and is freely available to the public.
Opening of SALISES 5050 conference with St Lucian Prime Minister Kenny Anthony who urged Jamaican judges to be less timid in their interpretation of constitutional rights, Feb 2, 2012
What a day, what a day. While i was busy taking in various activities at the SALISES 5050 Law and Justice Conference today news broke that a fugitive cop, Detective Sergeant Michael Sirjue, had fled the island after it was established in court that he had forged a witness statement in a case involving alleged leader of the Montego-Bay based Stone Crusher gang, Eldon Calvert and his brother, Gleason Calvert, and Michael Heron for the 2006 murder of cook shop operator Robert Green.
Apparently the witness statement was first flagged as false by handwriting expert and author Beverley East and corroborated by another expert who is actually a member of the police force. The witness in question, Artly Campbell, had been shot and killed. The discovery of the forgery has persuaded Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewelyn “that in the future she will ensure that statements are examined in cases, where the witness is dead or cannot be located.”
Now what’s interesting about all this is that the very first piece i posted when i created Active Voice in January 2008, my inaugural post as it were, involved another policeman, Detective Constable Cary Lyn-Sue, who had confessed to having not only manufactured a witness statement but the witness as well. What is really interesting is that Lyn-Sue’s supervisor was the self-same Det Sergeant Sirjue who is now absconding.
Fascinating isn’t it? With what passes for law and justice in this country is it any wonder that this is such a violent society? A lot of the crime plaguing us is the result of people taking the law into their own hands because the extant justice system just isn’t delivering.This is what gives rise to vigilante justice or informal justice systems presided over by dons.
Complementing this is a dishonest, unreliable police force that doesn’t hesitate to resort to criminality in the name of policing. A recipe for disaster that makes you wonder how many innocent people are languishing in prison today. It might interest you to read my post about Lyn-Sue…
Detective Constable Cary Lyn-Sue. The name will probably go down in Jamaican history in years to come; Thirty-one year old Lyn-Sue put the cat among the pigeons last week by doing something revolutionary. He told the truth. The detective constable confessed in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court that he had fabricated witness testimony in the trial of 22-year old Jason James, allegedly a member of the Killer Bee gang.
Well, I didn’t even know such a gang existed. Lyn-Sue openly admitted that it was frustration that had driven him to invent a crown witness complete with incriminating testimony when fear prevented any actual witnesses from testifying. He was aware of various crimes committed by the accused, he said, and thought that getting James off the streets even for a day would be doing society a favour.
Speaking on Nationwide Radio’s This Morning programme the emotional constable said that he realized that his motive did not justify his deed and that he was perfectly willing to face the consequences for his crime of perjury. However he had recently converted to Christianity and found it increasingly difficult to live with what he had done. Owning up to his misdeed had made him feel good, and he felt a sense of relief, he said, even though he realized that the consequences would be dire.
There was something moving, if not awe-inspiring, about this extraordinary admission by the young policeman whose voice vibrated at times with the tension he was obviously feeling, having decided to take this lonely step of owning up to his misconduct, in a culture which appears to prefer to keep the truth behind bars or six feet under while making the sign of the cross and singing sankeys.
PS: As i write this I’m watching Mavado tell Entertainment Report on TVJ about his friend who was shot by a policeman some months ago at a nightclub. To date no investigation has been announced and no action taken against the policeman. Nor is any explanation forthcoming.
What law! what justice Jamaica enjoys after 50 years of independence!
One of the articles I was proud to publish recently was this one in Caravan, out of Delhi, a superb magazine if ever there was one. Between Caravan and Chimurenga I think I can truthfully say I’ve published in some of the best magazines in the world. One of these days I’ll post my Chimurenga Chronic piece on Peter Abrahams, in the meantime enjoy the one in Caravan. The article was in Caravan’s January 1, 2012 edition:
VARUN BAKER FOR THE CARAVAN
DJ Vybz Kartel (left), whose decision to lighten his skin in order to better display his tattoos set off a flurry of protest and criticism.
A former British colony of slave plantations, roughly 85 percent of Jamaica’s three million strong population is of African origin. So when Vybz Kartel, born Adidjah Palmer, the most popular DJ in Jamaica, released a song called ‘Cake Soap’ in which he appeared to be promoting a blue soap bar used to bleach white clothes as a skin-lightening agent it didn’t go without notice. Just a few weeks later it was followed by a second song, ‘Coloring Book (Tattoo Time Come)’, in which the DJ bragged about women’s responses to the numerous tattoos decorating his newly bleached skin.
Gal a seh mi pretty like a coloring book
She seh mi skin pretty like a coloring book
Kartel was unabashed about displaying—even flaunting—his own considerably altered face, with an epidermis several shades lighter than his naturally dark skin. A tattoo fanatic, the DJ explained that his bleaching was motivated by a desire to exhibit the designs on his skin, making it “a living, breathing canvas” rather than a sign of low self-esteem or a desire to pass as white. He was a proud black man, he asserted, just as he had always been, and his decision to lighten his skin should be viewed in the same vein as a white person tanning theirs.
In March 2011 Kartel made his way to the University of the West Indies. His lyrics had been a popular choice of students when they were asked to select songs to analyse in a course on Reggae Poetry, and so he was invited to present a guest lecture. The university, however, found itself underprepared for the massive throng that descended onto the campus to catch the popular DJ’s words of wisdom. Taxi drivers, itinerant vendors, hair dressers, touts and walkabouts from all over the city descended upon the appointed spot, straining the university’s facilities to breaking point.
During the lecture, titled ‘Pretty as a Colouring Book: My Life and My Art’, Kartel, armed with a PowerPoint presentation, elaborated his position on the subject of skin bleaching:
In which i’m awarded a plaque for excellence in blogging…the Jamaica Blog Awards
Was honoured to get this award tonight, with lovely commentary from Corve D’Costa, Jean Lowrie-Chin and Carolyn Cooper…Some days ago there was a tweet that was piercingly true from @kishnicks Kish Tzu
#JABlogAwards is just like the elections… the best blog will surely not win. The best electoral machinery will though
11 Jan
It’s a problem that plagues supposedly democratic systems everywhere–they’re easily and often perverted. But this award didn’t depend on electoral machinery…and for that I’m proud to accept it. Thanks to Corve and the Ja Blog Awards crew for doing what’s necessary to popularize and publicize what we all do online…
Carolyn Cooper and Jean Lowre-Chin beam with me...photo by Ishango.com
A ‘dead’ man lives to tell the tale of his near execution by police…but is now under police guard!
Lie perfectly still...taken from How to Play Dead
Some years ago I had occasion to write the following in one of my Herald columns. I later resurrected the column in a post on this blog called “‘Pronounced Dead’ Resurrected Three Years Later…”
‘Pronounced Dead’
What I wanted to talk about this week were the distortions of the English language one frequently hears and reads in local media reports starting with the much abused phrase “pronounced dead”. This term often appears in radio newscasts recounting police shoot outs where “shots were fired”, “the fire was returned” and then “the injured men” (rarely members of the police force) are taken to hospital, where “upon arrival” they are invariably “pronounced dead”.
I dig up all this now because of a really great story i read in yesterday’s Star in which a man declined to allow himself to be pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The police had shot the man, the man played dead, and as soon as he arrived in hospital with doctors in attendance, he sat up saying that not only was he alive but it was the police who brought him in who had tried to kill him! What worries me now is that he is in another hospital recovering from his wounds under police custody!
Read the following excerpt from the Star article for yourselves:
A man shot by the police and believed to be dead, gave the lawmen the shock of their lives when he ‘awoke’ at the hospital and accused them of trying to kill him.
The man who had been transported by the cops to the Spanish Town Hospital to be officially pronounced dead, surprised the doctors and cops when he opened his eyes.
Information reaching THE WEEKEND STAR indicates that the incident took place on Christmas Day in the ‘Old Capital’.
It is understood that the man had been shot earlier in the day in an alleged shoot-out with a police team who claimed that he is a known associate of the recently slain Clansman gang member, Navardo Hodges.
Furthermore, it is alleged that the man was shot and thought to be dead because he appeared motionless which led the lawmen to carry ‘his body’ to the hospital for a doctor to pronounce him dead.
However, after he was transported there, he opened his eyes and began to give his account of what happened, telling the doctor who had gone to the vehicle to pronounce him dead, that the police attempted to murder him.
THE WEEKEND STAR understands that members of the police party who travelled with ‘the body’ and medical staff alike were astonished and were shaken up at what they had witnessed.
An alleged witness informed THE WEEKEND STAR that the injured man told doctors that he was at home when members of the police team kicked-off his front door and shot him unhesistantly without asking any questions.
“The man seh the police kick down the door and try kill him, him affi fake him death or else dem woulda shoot him again,” the witness said.
The man was later transferred to another hospital for treatment under police guard.
smh. “…transferred to another hospital for treatment under police guard.” I sincerely hope the media will monitor the progress of this case. Otherwise no prize for guessing what happens next. Police killings are quite common here, and this was by no means the only such event to take place recently. Only yesterday another man was killed in Denham Town by the police. What disturbs me about the case of the latter-day Lazarus who was shot on Christmas day is that we don’t even so much as know his name.
An Account of Jamaica’s Prime Minister designate Portia Simpson-Miller’s 2006 swearing in.
Portia Simpson Miller at SALISES's Prime Ministerial Series in Summer 2011One of the disdainful Clovis cartoons published by the Jamaica Observer just the day before Portia's devastating victory
Sigh! No, i haven’t been invited to the Swearing-in tomorrow…! So i’ll watch the goings on from the comfort of my living room. In the meantime below is the column i published in the Sunday Herald following Prime Minister designate Portia Simpson-Miller’s first swearing in on March 30, 2006.
Getting on the Bus
There was really no place else to be on the afternoon of March 30 than King’s House. In the end you didn’t even need a ticket, no matter what colour, though I would never have gone had a friend not called to say she had a ticket for me. So ticket in hand and clad in a red silk sari I headed to Hope Road to attend Portia’s swearing in. Yellow and red coded cards were the tickets of choice. Mine had a blue band. Oh well I consoled myself, it could have been worse; green cards (for a change) must be at the very bottom of this ranking.
The weather couldn’t have been better. Rain had washed the city earlier in the afternoon without drenching the ground and leaving puddles. The miles of white plastic chairs were wet though being dried by young men with clean rags. I saw John Maxwell and attached myself to him as we searched for a suitable seat. There were placards everywhere designating groups of seats with rather puzzling labels: Judges; Professional Associations; Caneworkers.
I temporarily lost John as I commiserated with a diplomat friend whose designated area was somewhere in the distance. I glimpsed John again; he was seated under a giant mango tree with a good view of the stage; I reattached myself. There was no placard labeling this section and according to John he had heard a rumour that the seating system had “broken down”. Discreet enquiries established that this was actually a red section but what the heck no one was checking.
We were only a hundred or so feet away from the stage, in fact we were right behind the section that must have been designated Big Business. Are you sure we aren’t going to be evicted from here I whispered, looking nervously around at the fast disappearing seats all about us. I SHALL NOT BE MOVED announced John; I wasted no more time worrying, concentrating instead on looking as much as possible like an immovable object dressed in a red silk sari. It worked.
There was about an hour to kill before the ceremony began but time passed swiftly. The band struck up at 4.30 pm exactly and shortly before 5 the central figures in this national drama appeared on stage. As former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson made his last speech red-gowned men and women constituting the combined choir of the University Singers and the Kencot Youth Choir assembled on a stage to the right of the main stage.
The choir was a beautiful sight and sound with Dean Fraser and Shirley Willis performing a gospel song especially chosen by the new Prime Minister to herald her entrance. Then Portia took centre-stage opening her innings with a prayer. I know my last column was a fulmination against a nation at prayer but there is a difference between praying rather than doing and praying and doing. The latter I think is what the new Prime Minister intends and I’m in full support of that.
Let’s hope that she meant what she said in her thoughtful, well-articulated maiden speech, That line about balancing people’s lives rather than merely balancing the books was a brilliant one and I think captures the nation’s predicament superbly. Portia also said that she couldn’t make the necessary changes without the wholehearted help and support of the people. Again this is something that couldn’t have been stressed more. It’s an obvious thing but one that only a leader who inspires and moves the people can achieve. If anyone is capable of doing this it’s Portia Simpson-Miller.
There was something symbolic about the mingling of the crowds at Portia’s swearing-in. Those who came early got good seats, regardless of the people they had been intended for. All Michael Lee-Chin was standing by the way, and other rich and powerful faces were seen waiting in vain for seats. But as Portia said money shouldn’t make some people more important than others, learning shouldn’t make some people more important than others (loud cheers broke out at this) and neither should colour, class or gender. Jesus, she’s written my column for me, said John.
The national anthem was sung and people were heading over to the West lawns for the reception. It was time to leave. I had been dropped off at Kings’ House and now had to find my way home. There was hardly anyone around I recognized, where were all the UWI folk? Except for Carolyn Cooper, Trevor Munroe, the Hicklings and John and myself I didn’t see anyone. Was there a section marked Academics I had missed?
Walking down Hope Road a man fell into step with me and introduced himself. Where was I parked, he wanted to know. Oh, I didn’t drive I told him, I live up UWI way and figured I could find someone who’d give me a ride. Alright, he said in a taking charge manner, I’m parked at Papine, I took the bus from there, why don’t you take the bus with me to Papine and then I’ll give you a drop. To allay any worry the expression on my face may have indicated he pulled out his ID and showed me that he was an ex JDF man of 34 years standing. Er, how much is a bus fare, I asked, its years since I took a bus. Fifty dollars he said.
The next thing I knew I was on a bus heading to Papine with my sari blowing in the wind. It was an exhilarating ride and before I knew it I was home, wondering why I didn’t take the bus more often.
Active Voice 