- Barbara Ellington
Maya Angelou reads the poem she was commissioned to write in commemoration of the United Nation's 50th anniversary.
Barbara Ellington, Features Co-ordinator
ON TUESDAY, November 19, some 100 influential New Yorkers gathered at Embassy House, 36 East 67th Street in New York, to raise funds for and celebrate Mustard Seed Communities' (MSC), 25 years of service to children in Jamaica. Dr. Maya Angelou, poet/lecturer/ author, was the guest speaker.
The event was organised by Jack Griffin, publisher of Parade Magazine and chairman of MSC, New York.
Mr. Griffin, who visited Jamaica late last month, had pledged his assistance to MSC and Community Radio station Roots FM. On that visit, he was accompanied by friends, Traug Keller, head of ABC Radio Networks in the United States, and Walter Sabo Jr., a leader in media marketing and programming, and asked them to help the charities also.
Mr. Griffin chaired the cocktail function and showed a short video presentation on the work of the MSC.
In a thought-provoking and tear-jerking presentation, Father Gregory Ramkisoon, founder of MSC, told the gathering that the children seen in the presentation were already happy, but the ones who were still out in the cold, were the ones who needed their help.
"Give voice, hands and bodies to them. We have just reached the tip of the iceberg in the good we have shown to the world's children," he said. Using photographs of children scavenging for food at garbage dumps to illustrate his point, Father Ramkisoon told the audience, "...we have so much, we need to give out of love not just money we need to change from our way of thinking to doing and caring," he stressed, adding that MSC currently had a huge debt.
"We need to take ownership of the world's children; bring pressure on our hearts so that we die, not of a heart attack but of a love attack," Father Gregory said.
He informed the audience that in Zimbabwe 9,000 children die of AIDS annually and in Haiti, children live in severely unhealthy conditions. He laid out some chilling statistics every three quarters of a second, a child dies of malnutrition, yet US$14 billion worth of food is thrown out annually and US$7 billion of that amount is unwrapped at the time of being discarded.
ANGELOU'S POWERFUL WORDS
Dr. Angelou's presentation was interspersed with verse and song and delivered in her inimitable style. She began singing a melody whose refrain was:
"When it looked like the sun wasn't gonna shine anymore, you were my rainbow in the clouds".
The rainbow in the cloud became the metaphoric theme of her presentation as she described the workers of the Mustard Seed Communities as active rainbows, and heaped high praises on Father Ramkisoon for giving birth to the idea of MSC.
Quoting an African American poet she said, "God put a rainbow in the sky because in the worst of times when you can't see beyond the cloud, if the rainbow is there, there is hope. Mustard Seed Communities is a rainbow in the cloud".
Dr. Angelou is famous for her stirring, lyrical and powerful presentations and last Tuesday night was no exception. She told the audience that each of them had the power and privilege to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
"We have all been paid for, no matter where our ancestors came from Europe, Africa, Asia or the Caribbean. No matter where they came from, they paid a price. The Jews and Indians from New and Old Delhi, have all paid and here we are almost on Fifth Avenue all we have to do is to prepare ourselves to pay for those yet to come."
In obvious reference to the prevailing racial divisions in the world, Dr. Angelou said that "someone somewhere said we were different, but that in spite of the circumstances that brought people to places like America, we all have the same needs and wants a good job, nice neighbourhoods and "...to be paid more than we are worth we are more alike than we are unlike, so we need to claim all of the world's children and help them.
"We all want a chance to love somebody and we have the unmitigated gall to accept love in return; we want a place to party on Saturday night whether we come from Birmingham, England, or Birmingham, Alabama."
Dr. Angelou told wealthy New Yorkers and their Jamaican guests that courage is the most important of all virtues but we cannot practise the others without it. She admonished those who see "charity" as a bad word, explaining that what the word really means is, "I have more than I need so I will give some to someone who has less than he needs."
She shared her own personal experience to illustrate the power of putting rainbows in someone's cloud.
"At age 16, I was pregnant, unmarried and in high school. It was the time when the United Nations was being formed in San Francisco and people were being trained in languages to work there. I watched daily as workers went in and out of the building and soon learnt that translators would be paid enormous sums. I stood and watched people going into the building and thought, 'if I didn't have all those things going against me pregnancy, unmarried, uneducated and being over six feet tall to boot I could get a job there'. But someone put a rainbow in my cloud and today I speak seven languages, teach a few and I'm a Fellow at Yale University, I have 55 honorary doctorates and after hearing the poem I wrote for President Clinton's inauguration, that same United Nations called me and asked me to write a poem for them to be delivered at their 50th anniversary."
And again, Dr. Angelou sang:
"When it looked like the sun isn't gonna shine anymore, you were my rainbow in the cloud."
INSPIRATION
In response to The Sunday Gleaner's question about the source of inspiration for the Clinton inauguration poem, Dr. Angelou said she called, as she usually does, on God and her African ancestors.
The poem took its inspiration from the negro spirituals, Biblical stories and chorus. One of them, "I shall not be moved ...just like a tree planted by the river. I shall not be moved". The other song is, "I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside." She sang both for this reporter.
Dr. Angelou, who has been to Jamaica before, said she hopes to return one day.
HELP FOR MUSTARD SEED
In late October, Traug Keller, President of ABC Radio Networks, accompanied Jack Griffin, publisher of PARADE Magazine to Jamaica. Their mission was to see how they could best use their influence and financial resources to assist Mustard Seed Communities (MSC) and Community radio station Roots FM 96.1.
In a follow-up interview with The Sunday Gleaner, Mr. Keller who provides the ABC' network of radio stations with the services that make radio sound better in their local markets, said he has been using his radio stations to encourage Americans to take vacations in Jamaica and in some cases, "we are giving away airline tickets as prizes."
Mr. Keller has also acquired some of the promised help for Roots 96.1 FM, in the form of radio equipment such as recorders, that he will be shipping to Jamaica this month. He also presented a cheque for US$10,000 to Mustard Seed Communities.
Among those present at the fund-raiser were: Mary Alice LaPoint, Director of Development for MSC; Janice Givens, a USA Director of MSC; Patricia Durrant, Jamaica's Permanent Representative to the United Nations; Fay Pickersgill, former Director of Tourism; Courtney Hamilton, a Jamaican attorney resident in New York; Vincent Hosang, businessman; Thalia Lyn, MSC board member; Sandrea Falconer, Air Jamaica's Director of Communication; Lydia Sticky, assistant to Dr. Maya Angelou; Susan Taylor, Editor-in-Chief of Essence Magazine and her husband Kephra Burns; Anton Tomlinson of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured Peoples (NAACP); and Father Jim Sullivan of St. Paul Apostle on New York's West Side.
Trip to New York was courtesy of Air Jamaica.
