The Betty Black Blog

Chile's position in green on the Globe

On Saturday morning there was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in central Chile. Stop right there! Remove all pictures of Haiti from your mind. Imagine instead if this had happened in the United States or Japan for we are not referring to an undeveloped and poor nation but rather to the wealthiest, most developed country on the entire South American continent. This is a country where the life expectancy is 77 (Jamaica: 76, US: 77, UK: 78, Canada: 80) and literacy stands at 96%. Chile has half as many AIDS cases per thousand of population as does the United States. They have attained what many countries aspire to: zero population growth. On a scale of one to ten with Haiti being one and the US and Canada being ten, Chile would be nine.

Moon Valley in the Atacama Desert

The geography of the country is unique as Chile is barely 200 miles wide but almost 3000 miles long. The reason is simple, the towering Andes create a natural border so Chile occupies the ribbon of land between that enormous mountain range and the Pacific Ocean. The country runs through 38 degrees of latitude from the Atacama Desert in the north to the Grey Glacier in the south, with every imaginable climate in between. The northern desert is the source of Chile’s traditional wealth as it is there that the world’s largest copper mine is located. The country has also in recent decades become the world’s fifth largest exporter of wine. Chile’s magnificent wine is grown in the Mediterranean climate of it’s central region.

Grey Glacier, close to the Antarctic Circle

The ethnic make up of the country is remarkably homogenous. 65% is mestizo, the Chilean version of “Jamaica white” being a mixture of mostly Spanish European ancestry with some Amerindian. 25% is European, mostly Spanish, German, Italian, Irish, French, Swiss and Croat. Another 5% is mostly Middle Eastern. Roughly 4.5% of the population consider themselves native, though few can claim to be pure bred Amerindians. Afro-Chileans make up less than 1% of the population and again are mostly of mixed blood. I have mentioned the ethic mixture because it fascinates me. Chile seems to have almost risen above the prejudices between the European settlers and native people that is so obvious on the other side of the Andes and, indeed, so much of the world. They appear to be on the way to becoming a true racial melting pot. The official language is Spanish with German spoken in some areas. English is mandatory in school. The four native languages have unfortunately almost died out.

On Saturday morning the BBC spoke to a scientist from The Royal Geological Society who explained differences between Haiti’s earthquake and Chili’s. Hopefully I can accurately pass the information on. Haiti’s quake was caused by a crack in the Teutonic plate and was 6 miles below the surface. This caused almost the full 7.0 force to be felt on the surface though over a fairly small area. Chile’s quake was caused by one plate slipping under another and was about 37 miles underground. The gentleman from the RGS said that the distance underground would have made the epicenter less relevant with an equal force at ground level possible 50 by 200 miles in size. The full force of 8.8 (700 times greater than the Haiti quake) would not have reached the surface. The Teutonic slip, as in the Chile quake, is also more likely to generate a tsunami, hence the warnings across the entire Pacific basin. This type usually has more frequent and stronger aftershocks than when the plate cracks. I hope my explanation is accurate enough to satisfy the experts, particularly my brother-in-law, a highly qualified practicing geologist.

Of course, at the end of the day, it is patently obvious to everyone that the main difference lies mostly in the vast economic chasm between Haiti and Chile. In proper codes and practices in one and the total lack of either in the other. In the difference between total despair and the ability to deal competently with a situation. In the difference between thousands of homeless people living in the streets six weeks later and streets which are mostly empty after two days as almost everyone has a place to go (some families even have tents as part of their emergency kits).  In the difference between a strong President and Government who are front and centre within the hour and ones who cowers in shock for days. However, we have already seen wide scale looting in Chile but isn’t this also a difference, for people more used to creature comforts will loose patience quicker than those who often survive in substandard conditions as a matter of course. The Chilean government is starting to deal with the associated problems and is already putting in place a timetable for recovery. Unfortunately, they have been through all this before and likely will again in the future.

All this being said; we must send our heartfelt condolences to the people of Chile. They do not need the huge outpouring of assistance that Haiti did, but President Bachelet has appealed for help in the form of mobile hospitals and search and rescue teams. And of course, they certainly need our prayers and good wishes.

(Photos from Wikimedia Creative Commons)

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

Jamaica has been for centuries one of the wealthiest countries in the region. Correction: make that “had been” as, over the last forty years or so, we have been losing that distinction. The world recession has made the situation even more obvious. Now I’m no economist, nor would I want to be, but it seems to me that one of our problems is that we spend too much time on the past and its traditions. “That’s an odd statement,” you will say “Coming from someone who writes almost exclusively about Jamaica’s history.”  Not at all; Jamaica, and indeed every country, should celebrate and remember the past but not live in it.

In my opinion we hold on too much to “traditional exports.” We fight for a place on the world market for our bananas when the market seems to want bananas from Costa Rica. We then accept a lower price. Our bauxite industry has all but died a long and painful death. Recycling aluminium is a lot cheaper than mining and producing it from scratch. Good riddance I say to the deep red gouges in our green landscape. Sugar is no longer King. The King is dead, bury him! Jamaica is a small country; if there is a demand for something we produce we would never be able to produce enough of it to satisfy the market, the old “supply and demand” of basic business. Case in point: coffee.  Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is in great demand worldwide. Unlike bananas, we set the price for our coffee and the market pays it. In the middle of a recession, income from coffee has increased by 30%. The same is true of cocoa. There is a limited area where these crops grow so we can’t put thousands of acres more into coffee and cocoa. We therefore need other products. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane. Every year we accept lower prices on this crop which used to be the backbone of our economy. We will need some cane fields for domestic consumption and the production of another star export, rum. Some of our existing fields can be turned to the production of ethanol. This takes retooling and a fairly heavy financial outlay but isn’t that better in the long run than accepting half price for sugar?

Take a drive outside the cities. Wherever you go you are almost guaranteed to pass stands of bamboo on the roadside. In the countryside we use bamboo for fences, for scaffolding, even for homes. On small farms bamboo “pipes” are used for irrigation, small rivers are crossed on bamboo bridges and large ones navigated on bamboo rafts.  Children fish with bamboo poles and, unfortunately, some are disciplined with bamboo switches. In China and Japan, bamboo scaffolding is commonly used in construction.

There are many old wives’ tales about harvesting bamboo. But often those old wives were smart. The sugar content of bamboo rises and falls. The more sugar there is in the bamboo is the more attractive it is to insects. Sugar content is at its highest during the hottest time of the day. Harvesting bamboo at dawn during the full moon is actually the best time as the sugar content is lowest at that time! Bamboo also starts to rot from fungus after five to seven years. Bamboo is therefore best harvested between three to five and five to seven years, depending on the variety.

Bamboo grows at an incredible rate; it is the fastest growing plant on earth and can grow 24 inches (60 cm) per day. Bamboo plants reach maturity in three years. Because of this it is cheap and it is sustainable. Lumber and textiles made from bamboo are no longer niche products but are in incredibly high demand worldwide. In the U. S. one can buy bamboo flooring at any hardware store and bamboo sheets at your nearest department store. The bamboo products industry is anticipated to reach sales of twelve billion U S. dollars within two years. Why can’t Jamaica get a piece of that pie? Certainly with such an unbelievably high demand, the market would absorb as much bamboo lumber as we could produce. I can see it in my mind quite clearly: Acres and acres of former cane fields, already laid out, with irrigation in place, turned to bamboo and the huge sugar mills gutted and refitted to cure and laminate the lumber. Sugar cane and bamboo are both grasses, for all I know they could be planted and reaped using the same equipment. Maybe it’s time King Sugar was deposed in favour of the Big Bamboo!

Bamboo Avenue, St. Elizabeth

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

There is likely no Jamaican, at home or in the wider diaspora, who is not familiar with the name of J. Wray and Nephew, distillers of Appleton Rum. But have you ever stopped to wonder who the Nephew was? Well for those who don’t know, Mr. Wray’s nephew was Col. Charles James Ward CMG, one time Custos of Kingston and an exceptional businessman. John Wray had built his Shakespeare Tavern right next to the world famous Theatre Royal at Parade in the heart of Kingston. Touring companies from all over the world played at the Royal and drew full houses and Mr. Wray wanted their business. By 1860 Mr Wray was a wealthy rum merchant and brought his 22 year old nephew, Charles, into the business. In 1870 when his uncle died, Charles took over full control of the business and started the expansion of the tavern and dealership on its way to becoming the Wray and Nephew that we know today.

The Theatre Royal after the Great Earthquake of 1907

A hundred years ago Kingston was rising from the ruins of the Great Earthquake of 1907. Col. Wray was now a middle-aged businessman himself but wealthier than his uncle could ever have imagined. He was also mindful of where his wealth started and made an offer to the city of Kingston to rebuild the Theatre Royal at his expense. This was a great relief to the Council as one can imagine the public purse would have been thinly stretched with rebuilding numerous public buildings. A competition was held for the design of the new structure and this was won by Mr Rudolph Henriques of Henriques and Sons. Ground was broken and, by the end of 1912, the new Ward Theatre, completed at a cost of 12,000 pounds, was handed over to the Mayor (coincidentally my Great Grandfather) and Council of the City of Kingston. It’s very first production, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance took to the stage from December 19^th to 21^st with tickets costing between 2 and 4 shillings.

This splendid Neo-Classical building was constructed of concrete and steel, the newest method of building after the Great Earthquake. It boasts a stage of more than 2000 square feet and seating for over 800 patrons and was designed to rival the great theatres of Europe but ventilated to suit our tropical climate. The Ward also boasts perfect acoustics and every word spoken and sung on stage carries throughout the theatre without the need for microphones.

A recent photo of the Ward Theatre

My family attended events at the Ward for four generations for, as children, my sister and I were taken to Pantomime every year as well as occasional ballets. I recall watching the very First National Pantomime at the Ward. The theatre attracted international performances from all over the world: Italian opera, Russian ballet and the latest Broadway play. Many events in Jamaica’s history also unfolded there. It was at the Ward that the People’s National Party was launched in 1938 and the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943.

The Ward started its decline in the 1970s, theatre goers went downtown less often and, in a more modern time, there was the major problem of parking. Since 1982 the Ward, once the centre of the arts, has been almost permanently closed. In 1986 the Ward Theatre Foundation was formed and they have been valiantly fighting to raise funds to maintain and refurbish the structure. The Foundation and the Centennial Committee are now trying desperately to raise US$20,000,000 to bring this magnificent old lady back to her former glory in time for her Centennial less than three years away. It would be a wonderful thing indeed if our children could experience a performance on its stage and feel the grandeur that is part of a traditional theatre for the Ward is the only one of its kind in Jamaica and, indeed, the entire English speaking Caribbean.

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

In 1988, the World scratched it’s head in wonder. A Jamaican bobsled team in the Winter Olympics? But it doesn’t snow in Jamaica! The original team of four became the stuff of legend; there was even a Disney movie, Cool Runnings, about them. We’ve seen successive bobsled teams over the years. Since 2007 we’ve also followed Damion Robb, Newton Marshall and our very own dogsled team take on the Arctic in some of the world’s most arduous sled dog races. Last November, Kim-Marie Spence took part in the Kaspersky Commonwealth Expedition to the South Pole.

The 2010 Winter Olympics start today so what can we expect? The current bobsled team unfortunately did not qualify so there will be no Jamaicans this time. Wrong! Enter Errol Kerr. Read the rest of this entry »

In the hills of St. Ann, high above Ocho Rios on Jamaica’s north coast, lies Lydford. The earth is the bright red that signifies the presence of bauxite and it was here that major bauxite mining was done and here that a community of those that worked in the industry grew. Lydford is also great agricultural land, as is all of St. Ann, so farms surround the sprawling mining works. But bauxite is no longer King and, one by one, the mines are down-sizing or closing altogether. The lands are being returned to agriculture or sold off.

Into the picture comes a group of wonderful ladies who have been trying to care for the unwanted and unloved animals roaming the streets of Ocho Rios and other nearby towns. This cool and quiet rural setting would be an ideal place to relocate their shelter, The Animal House. Read the rest of this entry »

Jamaicans have opened up our hearts and our wallets to help Haiti. Our minds have turned from our own woes with the realisation that, just a stone’s throw away, is a neighbour who makes our problems look insignificant. We text, we write cheques and we drop supplies at ODPEM. But then we watch CNN, etc. and hear about American soldiers on the ground, what the American Red Cross is doing or, once in a while,  mention of Doctors without Borders and a few other international organisations. This is not surprising as it is to be expected that US based news agencies would report news relevant to the US first.

What we really want to know is how have we been helping our neighbours? An old Jamaican proverb states “we likkle but we tallawah!” and this has proven true. I’ve gathered together various news articles relating to Jamaica on the ground in Haiti. Read the rest of this entry »

Young Ian, the teenager at Campion, knew exactly what career he wanted to pursue. He wanted to be in movies, but not in front of the camera. The youngster, with a talent for art and a love of Star Wars, wanted to go into special effects so it was no surprise that, in 1985, he headed off to the California Institute of Art. His mother didn’t like the idea at all, her own father was an artist so she knew too well that there wasn’t much money in it. But a boy must follow his dream. Read the rest of this entry »

The eyes of the world have been turned to Haiti over the past two weeks since unfathomable damage was done by a 7.0 earthquake on 12th January.  We wonder what has made Haiti so poor. Certainly their history before 1804 was the same as the rest of the West Indies. Then we read Sir Hilary Beckles account which has been flying around the Internet. My point is, in my humble way, to tell the rest of the story; for Haiti’s current poverty only started with them being forced to pay restitution to France in order to be recognised as an independent nation and allowed back into world commerce. Read the rest of this entry »

Similar but Different

We would expect that two countries close both in geography and culture would have similar foods. It is therefore no surprise that neighbouring Jamaica and Haiti have similar cuisine. There are many indigenous fruit, vegetables and native animals in common. Canoes of the early Tainos plied back and forth between the two Islands. The history of European colonists and East African slaves is a common one. War in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between the English, headquartered at Port Royal and the French, later based in Port-au-Prince, also affected food as soldiers and their retinues carried recipes from one country to the other. Read the rest of this entry »

The telethon will be broadcast here (if I’ve done the codes right) Read the rest of this entry »