You know you are getting old if:

1 You had an exercise book with the Queen and Prince Philip on it and covered your books with brown paper.

2 You wore Bata crepe to school.

3 You know what a gig is.

4 You ate Asham and Busta.

5 You remember what a thruppance looks like.

6 Your school graduation was called “prize-giving.”

7 You got a washout and worm medicine at the end of summer holidays.

8 You used to listen to Rediffussion.

9 You remember when the Lou and Ranny show used to come on the radio.

10 You know what the initials T. A. D. P. stand for.

11 You know who Tony Verity and Dennis Hall were.

12 You remember when television signed on and signed off.

13 You (or your first boyfriend) wore Pirate’s Gold.

14 You know what boxing title Bunny Grant held.

15 You danced to Rock Steady.

16 You know what Fanta and Nu Grape are.

17 You know what a Woolsley and Zephyr are.

18 You remember the police traffic kiosk at King Street and Harbour Street corner.

19 You still call Norman Manley airport “Palisados.”

20 You still have a BOAC bag somewhere in a closet.

21 You still go to the airport just to stand on the waving gallery.

22 You used to go to movies at Premier.

ANSWER KEY:

1-5: You still a yout’.

6-10: You listen to your parents’ stories.

11-15: You’re getting there.

16-19: Viagra and Botox!

20-22: You have Limacol on the night stand and a chimmey under the bed!

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

The Oxford English Dictionary defines allspice as: Jamaica Pepper, Eugenia Pimenta: Native Tree the berries of which are a popular spice which tastes like a combination of several other spices. Botanically, it is Pimenta dioica of the family Myrtaceae.

According to legend, when the Spanish arrived in Jamaica they thought that the dried berries were black pepper or pimienta and the name stuck. The native Tainos used allspice as medicine and for preserving meat. Meat, mostly wild boar, was preserved by flavouring with allspice and smoking over fires of allspice leaves and branches. The result was called boucan, which ultimately gave us the word buccaneer. As you may realise boucan was the earliest form of jerk pork!

An evergreen tree, rarely more than 15 ft (4.5m) tall, both leaves and berries can be used to achieve the distinctive flavour. However, it is the dried berries which are used both locally and for export as the leaves lose all flavour when dried. The berries are picked green and dried on special “barbeques” in the sun. The essential oil is also used in medicine including the treatment of indigestion and arthritis.

Pimento grown in Jamaica is in high demand for, just as with coffee, our soil and climate produces the best flavour. We produce 90% of the world’s pimento.

Allspice is popular worldwide and is used in an amazing range of dishes: cakes in England, Cincinnati Chili in the U.S.A., curries in India and sausages in Germany, meat dishes in Middle Eastern cuisine, pickles of various kinds in various countries and, of course, absolutely everything here!

When the trees bloom their small white powder-puff flowers the scent is amazing. In 1755, the botanist Patrick Browne wrote: “Nothing can be more delicious than the odour of these walks, when the trees are in bloom, as well as other times; the friction of the leaves and small branches even in a gentle breeze diffusing a most exhilarating scent.”

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com.

There is no Jamaican over the age of forty who did not grow up on Leandro cartoons. Every day for roughly half a century, in Jamaica’s oldest newspaper, two simple characters said in two sentences all we needed to know about politics, economics, world events and life in Jamaica. And he did it in patois! He may well have been the first person to put patois in writing, even before Miss Lou’s poetry.

Born in Trinidad of Guyanese parents, Urban Leandro moved with his parents to Jamaica in the early 1930s. He joined the Gleaner’s staff as a cartoonist in 1937 and there he remained for almost fifty years until 1985. He died in Kingston in 1989. Leandro chronicled an important chunk of Jamaica’s history; the early labour movement and universal suffrage, Independence and events surrounding it, the volatile politics of the 1970s and everyday life in general; but the odd thing is that we can find very little of his own history. I met the man; he lived in Barbican, next door to a boyfriend of my youth. I never got to know him though as he was very quiet and unassuming.

I was very fortunate a few years ago to have been given the opportunity to offer for sale a collection of his works spanning 1961-1986. If you feel for a tongue-in-cheek walk down memory lane and a reminder of some of the high (and low) points in our history, drop me a line and I can arrange a copy for you. The book is US$25 plus shipping and is 11″x8.5″ soft-cover format and is in black and white, as were Leandro’s cartoons. Caveat emptor: If you are not Jamaican you might not understand a single word!

If you wish a copy of Jamaica (in Pen and Ink) please use the Paypal Button below or <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0pt; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

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Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

Happy Heroes’ Day!

On Monday 19^th October Jamaica celebrates National Heroes’ Day. Our seven National Heroes all contributed towards making Jamaica free. The eighteenth and nineteenth century ones freed us from the curse of slavery and the twentieth century ones spear-headed the Labour Movement and Jamaica’s Independence.

There are many, many other people who have contributed greatly to making our Homeland what it is today; some have had volumes written about them while others have barely a line in the annals of History. I have set myself the ambitious task of selecting only seven of these individuals to write about and have laid down only two criteria: 1.They must have done something a) to improve the lives of Jamaicans or b) improved the name of Jamaica internationally. 2) That they not be freedom fighters or politicians as all of our official heroes fall into one or both of those categories.

Chris Blackwell

In 1964 My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small hit #2 on the British Charts, this was the first time that a Jamaican song had made the Top Ten outside of Jamaica. In 1972 The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff hit the big screen. In 1973 Bob Marley and the Wailers, after eight years of popularity at home, hit the world by storm and music was never the same. Then there’s Burning Spear, Third World, Grace Jones. All of these were produced by Chris Blackwell. Not just Jamaican Music either, but Cat Stevens, Melissa Etheridge, The Cranberries and should you admire the boundless philanthropy of the hard working Bono; well, U2 is also produced by Blackwell. Outside of music, Blackwell is CEO of Island Outpost, which owns and operates several unique resorts in Jamaica and the Caribbean including Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels. Not forgetting his roots, Blackwell has been a philanthropist in his home parish of St Mary.

Edna Manley

Wife of a National Hero and mother of Jamaica’s most controversial Prime Minister, Edna Manley was so much more.  Edna Swithenbank attended art school in England and, in the early 1920s, started to produce cubist sculpture. She returned to Jamaica upon marrying Norman Manley and, while her husband shaped Jamaica’s political future, Edna shaped our art. Her cubist work became more rounded as her own style developed. In 1935 her great work Negro Aroused, inspired by the Labour Movement, shocked Jamaica and the world. Along the way she taught and mentored local artists and in 1950 co-founded the Jamaica School of Art. In 1965 she created the statue of Paul Bogle which stands in front of the Morant Bay Courthouse, the very first statue of a Black man erected in Jamaica. In 1976 the Jamaica School of Art merged with the School of Dance and the School of Music and was renamed the Cultural Training Centre. In 1995, eight years after Edna Manley’s death, the Cultural Training Centre was renamed the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. The National Gallery contains a permanent exhibit of her work.

Rex Nettleford

Prof. the Hon. Rex Nettleford is a man with a brilliant mind. He studied Political Science at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and has written numerous works on politics and culture and won many honours and awards. In fact in 2003 the Rhodes Trust established the Rex Nettleford Fellowship to mark the Centenary of the Scholarship in the Caribbean. However, his mind is not the reason I included him on this list. In 1962 Nettleford founded the National Dance Theatre Company and brought his own unique style of dance to the world. A mix of ballet, modern and West African dance all seamlessly combined into the perfect Jamaican Dance. For many years, in addition to his cerebral pursuits, he served as choreographer and principal dancer of the NDTC, at home and on tour across Europe and the Americas. Even now, well into his seventies, he still choreographs at least one dance each season.

Keble Munn

A scion of the Jamaican plantocracy, Keeble Munn was also a politician. But his life’s work was not politics but rather in regularising Jamaica’s most famous agricultural product, our fine Blue Mountain Coffee. An accident of birth caused him to come into this world on a two century old coffee plantation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains but he was not satisfied with enjoying his legacy. In 1950 he founded the Coffee Industry Board and set out to craft the stringent rules and regulations which guarantee that each and every berry, no matter which plantation it comes from, has exactly the same perfection when brewed into a cup of coffee. The specific rules which govern area, altitude, reaping time, colour and a host of other criteria were crafted by this dedicated man. His historic family plantation is now the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory.

Eugene Desnoes and Thomas Geddes

On the 31^st of July 1918 Desnoes and Geddes was incorporated in Jamaica and acquired the businesses formerly operated by Eugene Peter Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes. They went on to formulate and brew Red Stripe Beer. Need I say more?

Richard Ho-Lung

Who could have imagined when the soft spoken man was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1971 that he would make such an impact, not just on Jamaica’s Roman Catholic Community, but on the entire Island. Somewhere along the way he thought he could encourage more people into churches if there was something livelier to sing than the staid European hymns. This man, who had never written a word of poetry nor a note of music, started to create upbeat hymns, most with a reggae beat and some in the vernacular patois. This led to an annual Musical, number twenty-eight of which, Jam Reggae Opera, is currently on stage. As if his plate was not full, in 1985 Fr. Ho-Lung founded the Missionaries of the Poor. At first a few priests wandering Kingston’s inner city feeding the poor; now a large Order, recognised by the Vatican, housing the poorest of the poor, AIDS patients, unwanted babies, lepers; in India, the Philippines, Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and North America as well as in Jamaica.

Lenworth and Beth Jacobs

I can find almost nothing about these pioneers of Family Planning in Jamaica. Dr Lenworth Jacobs and his social worker wife, Beth, were the founders of Jamaica’s first organised family planning service in the mid 1950s. One can imagine that advocating birth control at that time was not very popular and they faced great opposition from both “polite society” and scores of “baby-fathers.” Today the average Jamaican woman has 2.3 children, much easier to care for properly than the 5.7 of the late 1950s and early 1960s. We are left with scores of family planning clinics called the Lenworth Jacobs Clinic or the Beth Jacobs Clinic but very little written word about this dedicated couple.

I promised only seven to match the number of National Heroes. Without even thinking I had listed twenty three names. I then began the task of whittling the number down to seven. I first crossed off those that I’ve already written about: Mary Seacole, T.P. Lecky and Jacob Decordova. Two more were crossed of as I had promised no political figures. Then there were those I could find very little on, like Mr Swaby(?) Who developed the ortanique. I then went on to the more popular names; most people already know a lot about Bob Marley and the other reggae greats as well as our great sports figures. Of those that were left, I eventually brought the list down to the seven who I think best fit my criteria.

Any other nominations?

Read more about Jamaica at my website Jamaica-Allspice.

For those people who know only canned coconut cream and dried coconut in packages here’s something mind-boggling. In ancient Sanskrit the coconut palm was called kalpa vriksha, which translates as “the tree which provides all the necessities of life.”  No modern language could describe it better. Were you stranded on the proverbial desert island with a few coconut trees you would be provided with food, clothing, shelter and medicine. The juice of the young coconut, coconut water, contains vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates and anti-oxidants. The high electrolyte content makes it a better sports drink than any commercial product. This coconut water can also be used as intravenous fluid. The sap from the flowers can be fermented into wine.

Antique print by Koehler

The dried meat, known as copra, is used as livestock feed and to make the oil used in manufacturing commercial soap. A more refined oil is produced by boiling coconut cream, great for cooking and cosmetics. The dried husks can be used, like gourds, as small bird houses or, cut horizontally, for household brushes. They also make pretty decent drinking vessels and orchid pots and are used as musical instruments in the Philippines. The dried husks also make excellent kindling.  The shredded husk, coir, is woven into ropes and mats and used in flower baskets just as other countries use sphagnum moss. A woven-looking fabric which grows on the tree under the fruit was used in ancient times as loin cloths.

The tree trunk provides excellent lumber and is now gaining popularity as a sustainable wood. The stumps are used in some parts of the world as drums.

The leaves or fronds are thatch and most of the huts on tropical hotel beaches are thatched with coconut. The thatch is also woven into hats and baskets. The centre ribs can be used as arrows, skewers or fishing spears. In times past many a Jamaican child was disciplined with a coconut switch.

An infusion of the roots is used as mouthwash and as a treatment for dysentery.

And when you get sick of your desert island, hollow out the trunk of a tree into a canoe and get the hell out of there!

Read about more Jamaican plants at Jamaica-Allspice.com

7. The multiple time zone clock was invented by a Jamaican.
In 1935, P. L. Huffstead, who worked for the New York Rapid Transit Company invented a “tell the time around the world clock.” The clock, which was installed in Grand Central Station, was three feet in diameter and had large hour, minute and second hands which told the time in New York. Within the main dial were eight smaller dials which gave the time in eight other world cities, including Kingston. Huffstead was born, and trained as a watchmaker, in Kingston. (The Gleaner, The Negro Yearbook 1946)

8. Jamaica’s first team sent to the Olympics won Medals.

400m, 1948. Arthur Wint Gold, Herb McKenley Silver.

In the1948 Summer Olympics, 59 nations competed in 136 events. Jamaica’s first team consisted of Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley, George Rhoden, Les Laing, Byron LaBeach and one lone woman, Cynthia Thompson. Accompanying the team were Coach Joe Yancy and Manager Herb MacDonald.
That year we brought home three medals: 400m Gold: Arthur Wint 400m; Silver: Herb McKenley; 800m Silver: Arthur Wint. (The Gleaner, JamOlympic.org)

9. The first breed of cattle developed in the Western Hemisphere was in Jamaica.
As a child growing up in rural Jamaica, T. P. Lecky was concerned about the difficulty of farming European cattle breeds in Jamaica’s climate. After years of training in Jamaica and Canada he embarked on his research programme to develop a breed more suited to tropical conditions.
By the early 1950s he had developed the Jamaica Hope bred from Holstein, for milk production; the Jersey, compact size and the Indian Sahiwal, tropical and disease resistant. On the 25th of June 1952, members of the Governments of Jamaica and other Caribbean countries as well as cattle farmers and scientists from all over the world gathered at the Bodles Agricultural Station near Old Harbour, St Catherine for the introduction of this new breed of cattle, the first developed in the Western Hemisphere. (National Library of Jamaica, FAO)

10. James Bond was “born” in Jamaica.

Fleming at his desk at Goldeneye (Getty Image)

In 1952, Ian Fleming, journalist and former intelligence agent bought a home in St. Mary which he called Goldeneye after his wartime operation. Here he spent winters formulating a secret agent who would carry out exploits roughly based on some of the missions he had planned during wartime.
He wanted a name for his protagonist which was very ordinary and English. While visiting a neighbour in St Mary, he picked up a book from their coffee table; the book was Guide to the Birds of the West Indies by James Bond. The final detail in place, he could now complete his novel. (IanFleming.com)

11. Jamaicans were part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Most of us are more than aware that Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Books had been written, a documentary had been made and an Oscar had been won. What many people don’t know however is that the IPCC included a team from the University of the West Indies: Dr Leonard Nurse, Dr John Agard and team leader, Prof. Anthony Chen. (The Gleaner, IPCC.ch)

12. Jamaica has more cellular phones per capita than either the USA or Canada.
In 2007 one of our major providers claimed that Jamaica had more mobile phones per capita than anywhere else in the world. As suspected this was just advertising hype, we are actually 53rd but here’s the interesting bit. Jamaica’s population of 2,670,000 own 2,495,000 cell phones: 93% of the population. Compare this with the USA’s population of 307,210,000 owning 255,000,000 phones: 83% or Canada’s population of 33,490,000 owning 18,750,000 phones: 56%.
(CIA World Factbook, STATIN)

I have lots of other interesting facts on my website www.jamaica-allspice.com so please visit.

1. Jamaica has a prehistoric forest.

Forestry Department image

This is not like the rolling hills that form much of Jamaica’s landscape nor like the majestic Blue Mountains soaring thousands of feet towards the sky. The Cockpit Country more resembles the landscape of an alien planet invented by Asimov. Take an egg carton and turn it upside down. That is precisely what you see if you fly over the Cockpit Country. Twelve million years ago Jamaica emerged from the ocean with a large birthmark. This resulted in a vast limestone karst area where hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of flora and fauna, extinct elsewhere in the world, still grow and thrive. (CockpitCountry.com)

2. The first iron bridge in the Americas was erected in Jamaica.

The old Iron Bridge which crosses the Rio Cobre on the outskirts of Spanish Town was cast in England and erected in 1801. The bridge has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1931. It is reputed to be the oldest bridge of it’s kind in the Americas and is on the World Monument Watch’s list of the 100 most endangered sites in the world. The foundation of the bridge was restored in 2002 and other areas are now being restored. (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

3. Florence Nightingale was not the only woman tending the sick in the Crimean War.

Mary Jane Seacole (Grant) was born in Kingston in 1805. Her mother ran a nursing home for British Army and Navy personnel and had a reputation for being skilled in herbal medicine. Mary learned her mother’s skills and improved upon them through her travels. During the Crimean War her thoughts turned to soldiers she knew. In an effort to offer medical care on the battlefield, Mary travelled to London carrying letters of recommendation from many high ranking members of the military . There she met head on with the twin discriminations of sex and race.

Being the typical Jamaican woman, even 150 years ago, Mary did not give up. She made her way to Turkey and put herself up in the British Hotel, all at her own cost. She travelled to the Crimea to the hospitals set up by the British, where Nightingale was already working, and the two famous women cared for the injured even on the battlefields though not together as the official team were said to have snubbed the mixed-race “doctress.” (MarySeacole.com)

4. Jamaica’s most popular Newspaper has been published for 175 years.

The Gleaner first came off the presses on 13^th September 1834. The original Paper was a four page weekly published by Jacob and Joshua deCordova, natives of Spanish Town. The newspaper outlived all its competition, changed hands a few times, and today still has the largest circulation in the Island. (www.Jamaica-Gleaner.com)

This leads us to:

5. Jamaicans helped build Texas.

Jacob deCordova left Jamaica for the United States in 1836, later settling in Texas. He travelled extensively throughout the territory. He gave lectures in the cities of the eastern United States as well as in England encouraging his audiences to settle in Texas. He wrote and published several books about Texas and published two newspapers. At one time he was one of the biggest land agents in the territory, owning over 1,000,000 acres of land in Texas. The territory became a state in 1845 and in 1847 Jacob became an Assemblyman in the second State Legislature. He also created The Map of the State of Texas in 1849; this was used as the basis for many subsequent maps of the state. The American Civil War brought a downturn to his fortune and he died in 1868. (The Handbook of Texas Online)

As a side note: Dallas Texas was named after George Mifflin Dallas, US Vice President under James K. Polk. His father was Alexander James Dallas, sixth US Secretary of the Treasury and native of Kingston. (Wikipedia)

6. Black River was wired for electricity at the same time as New York City.

In the mid eighteenth century Black River was one of the wealthiest towns in Jamaica mainly because it was the centre for the export of logwood, royal purple dye. One of the wealthiest of its citizens was John Leyden. In c1875 Leyden wired his home for electricity and by 1893 the entire town was electrified with a steam powered generator supplied by Leyden Bros. Street lights and public and commercial in Kingston followed and by 1899 Kingston had an electric tramcar system. The Edison Company opened its doors in New York City in 1882 and between then and 1910 both they and the Brush Arc Lighting Company electrified most public and commercial buildings in that city. (The Gleaner, JNHT)

I have lots of other interesting facts on my website www.jamaica-allspice.com so please visit.

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