Sweet Jamaica mine.

“ Help me big up Jamaica/the land of food and wata/the system might nuh propa, but wi love di vibes, di food, and di culcha/ Woi, can’t you see the beauty of dis country/  mi nevah know a serious ting/ until mi reach a foreign…”

Today my country is celebrating 50 years of independence from Great Britain.  I am sure that celebrations of “Jamaica 50” are in full swing. I am happy for Jamaica and the people around the world who are having a good time in her honor right now. I am also, as I usually am when I think about my country, a little sad. I have a hard time thinking about her because when I do, I can’t help think of the ways people have constantly challenged my right to claim her as my own.

 When I first left Jamaica 11 years ago there was very little questioning of whether or not I was Jamaican. Although I had visited the United States, Miami specifically, a couple of times in the years prior, in 2001 I knew I was in Miami to stay and I felt like a foreigner: The food was different— I was particularly grossed out by how thick hot dog sausages were here, “patties” didn’t mean a flaky pastry crust stuffed with meat/and or vegetables, and spices, but rather, hamburger meat shaped into a flat circle, KFC didn’t have barbeque chicken sandwiches or fries only potato wedges, apparently eating rice and peas and plantains (now pronounced plan-taynes, instead of plan-tins) with EVERY meal was not the norm, and everyone did not love ackee and saltfish and fried dumplins. A new culture surrounded me—most people seemed to speak Spanish, most people greeted me with a kiss on the cheek; there were new words and phrases like oyé! Mira! Dimé, Can I hold your pencil? I’m finna go…I found myself in a new type of school with no uniforms and no morning assembly, a school that offered “free or reduced lunch,” that sold CRAP cafeteria food (no patties or pizza pockets or cooked lunch or amazing assortment of candy), that did not insist on standing up when a teacher entered the classroom to show respect, that gave out progress reports, and where you moved around for most classes instead of the teachers coming to you...I could make a much more extensive list describing my culture shock but I’ll stop here. Everything was different, everything was new.  In the beginning I processed those differences negatively and so I clung to my family, I kept in close touch with my friends back home, and made my first new friends ones who were either Jamaican or had a strong Jamaican or Caribbean background/ connection.

 Over the years, things changed. I became acclimatized to the U.S; my mother cooked run down, ackee and saltfish, fried dumplings and festival , “yellow” soup, and red peas soup  less and less often; my accent faded;  and the majority of my friends became people who knew very little about my pretty little island. I found that I liked my American high school a great deal. I was known and celebrated there because I was smart.  I began kissing people on the cheek in greeting.  I  legally became a U.S citizen. I could no longer name all the Jamaican parishes and their capitals. I could barely remember an Anancy story or the plot of A Cow Called Boy, the U.S government and U.S universities worked together to finance both of my degrees. And during these years people began to either imply or straight out tell me that I was no longer Jamaican or not Jamaican enough. They haven’t stopped. These people were strangers and these people were family and friends.  And their words hurt very much.

 For the past 10 years I have hated the question “Where are you from?” I hated that the asker didn’t realize that their question was not a simple thing to answer. “I am from Jamaica.” “No, where are you really from?”  “….My immediate family lives in Miami…but I was born in Jamaica and lived there for 13 years.” “But you don’t have an accent…can you say something in Jamaican? C’mon let me hear it.”

Nearly two months ago, I visited my country for the first time since I’d immigrated and I once again felt like a foreigner. I was there for 6 days and had an amazing time with family on both my mother’s and father’s side, with my god parents, and with friends.  I was jealous though. Jealous of the people who hadn’t had the formation of their ethnic identity disrupted the people who were so clearly Jamaican and sounded like it. I felt out of place and that the comfort I should have had being around my people had been stolen from me. I had to deal with the comments about how “Americanized” I was.  And I mourned.  I mourned the other life I could have had— the life that would have been mine, the certainty in being Jamaican that I would have possessed, if I’d spent years 13-24 there.

 The United States as a country has never felt like “home” for me.  And despite my great love for President Obama, I don’t possess an ounce of “patriotism,” and I will never ever be a “proud American” (not because it is a bad place but because it’s not “mine.”) I lived 13 years in Kingston, Jamaica, 4 years in Miami, Florida, 5 years in Gainesville, Florida, and  I've been here in Chicago, Illinois for nearly 2. Right now Chicago feels like “home” but I’ll never be “from” here and no matter which U.S city I live in and grow to love, it will never translate to me feeling like an “American.” I am very thankful for the opportunity living in the U.S. has given me, I am grateful for the life I have here for the amazing, amazing relationships I’ve formed and experiences I’ve had here. I like the privilege I receive from having this country on my passport but…

Nothing can change the fact that on July 5^th, 1988 I was born in Nuttall Memorial Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. No one can change that I spent the first 13 years of my life living on Grovedale Drive and then in Acadia Circle. No one can take away the Christmas days that I would drive to country with my family to visit my great-grandmother “Granny Blanche,” my uncle Lance and my cousins Mark and Chester “the man from Manchester.”  No one can take away the 10 years I danced at Jamaica School of Dance and all of my performances at The Little Theater. No one can take away the mornings that I would listen to Reggae and Soca music as mommy or daddy drove me to Discovery World, St. Andrew Prep, and then Campion College, or the afternoons that I’d listen to Barbara Gloudon on the way home from those places. No one can change the times I spent playing “Ring around the Rosy,” “What can you do Puncinella Little Fella,” “There’s a Brown Girl in the Ring,” or “Farmer in the Den” on the school playground with my friends or at home with my sisters. No one can change the fact that I know why the phrase “we don’t play hockey, we eat [h]ackee” is hi-larious or the fact that I used to watch Royal Palm Estate.

Who can take the jingle “Me-etric fever, me-tric fever; everybody haffi learn fi use-metric; everybody haffi learn fi use-metric;” out of my mind? Who can say that I never enjoyed Chippees Banana Chips, Cheez Zees, Kiss Cupcakes, Cheese Trix, Dominoes cookies, Cheese Popcorn, Big Foot, bag juice, box drinks, patty and cocoa bread, fried dumplings, mackerel run down, curry goat and chicken, jerk chicken, gungo rice and peas, stew peas,  guineps, and oataheite apples? Who can change that I knew paw paw and pak choy before I knew “papaya” and “bok choy”?  Who can re-write my history to not include the times I would stand to attention with my right arm crossed over my heart and proudly sing the words “Eternal Father, Bless our Land…” or the special morning assemblies at St. Andrew Prep where they would raise the flag and we would say the National Pledge?  Who can change that I grew up watching JBC/ TVJ, CVM, and Love TV? Who can change that I was born going to St. Andrew Parish Church and was christened by Father Thompson? Who can erase the fun I had during November Prizegiving ceremonies, and December bazaars and Christmas concerts at my prep school? Who can say that I didn’t take the GSAT and earn the right to be a first-former at Campion College? Who can say that I Mrs. Edwards didn’t teach me to write in cursive or read, Miss Lynch didn’t teach me art or that Mr. Stone didn’t teach me history, that I didn’t survive Mrs. Ogilve’s clasroom when I was 6 and Mrs. Frasier’s when I was 10, that I never had extra lessons with Mrs. Williams? Who can tell me what it was like for me to go to the market with my mother on Saturday mornings or to spend Sunday evenings with my family at Devon House, eating ice cream and standing on the small bridge over the pond to see the turtles and little orange fish!

 Who knows the grief I felt at leaving my home behind?  Who feels my grief now when I realize that there’s so much about it that I that I no longer remember?

 I don’t understand why people feel the need to define my identity for me and I resent them for trying. But the truth is no one can change the blood running through my veins—my mother’s blood, my father’s blood, the blood of their mothers and their fathers and their mother’s mothers and their father’s fathers and their mother’s fathers and father’s mothers. I have centuries of Jamaican ancestry to support me and I will always be Jamaican. It is the place that holds my history, the place that is the foundation of my heritage. I will never forget the words of our pledge or our anthem. I will never feel such pride for and loyalty to another country. I will never be from anywhere else. And I have only two words for the people who want to challenge me on that. I won’t say them here though.

I love you Jamaica. Happy 50^th year of Independence!

“This is the land of my birth/ This is the land of my birth/ This is Jamaica, my Jamaica/ This is the land of my birth.”