Jamaican Diaspora

Some work at a company for a few years and branch out on their own. Others create a blueprint and follow it to the letter; still others go with the wind letting their mistakes become their learning foundation. Incorporate these gems in whatever path you choose: 1. This is how your potential customer will want your product or service.

A 100+ year old dwelling house built in the traditional “Spanish Wall” construction method has recently been donated to us. These remarkable buildings made in the Spanish Wall construction method (limestone, white lime and earth in a timber frame), were built at a time when newly freed Africans had to sustainably use the earth for both farming and for shelter. The WARE Collective and members of the community have forged a unique alliance of skill and trust to preserve and to repurpose these small, but historically relevant and architecturally significant structures. A welcoming, multi-use space with internet access; where visitors can participate in weaving exquisitely made and naturally dyed straw hats and purses; or a space to simply have refreshments while overlooking the panorama of the south coast.

If you are planning on getting a new job, learn your worth. Before one dollar is exchanged for labor, products or services, understand what both parties are bringing to the table. Apply these nuggets when making employment decisions: 1. If you want to know what to ask for at the time of salary negotiation, visit www.

My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) ‘produce’ exporter (mostly pimento or all-spice), who died in 1939 one year after I was born and is buried in the church yard of the magnificent Anglican Church which Hamilton Brown built in Brown’s Town (and where, as a child, I learned the catechism, was baptized and confirmed, and served as an acolyte). It was a joy and a learning experience for me to hang out with the workers on the cane farm, see them wield a ‘cutlass’ (the machete) with such flourish and finesse, listen to their stories of exploits (some too x-rated for me to repeat), and sit with them as they prepared their meal by putting everything in one big ‘Dutch’ pot, cooking it over an open fire in the field and serving it out on a big banana leaf for all of us to eat sitting there. Looking back now I can say, with certainty and all due credit to Miss Iris, that it was this early intimate exposure to operation of the sugar industry at the local level of small-scale production with family labour and free wage-labour, coupled with my growing curiosity about how these things came to be, that led me, once I started reading about the history of Jamaica, to a closer study of the sugar industry.