Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
"COMMON courtesy dictates..."
That must be the number one "momily" in Jamaica.
Few Jamaican mothers, if any, have never uttered that phrase, to be followed by something like "that you never fight or quarrel over food".
Next to that cardinal sin is earning the reputation of being "mean".
One Sunday morning recently, I set out with some students on a field trip to Port Antonio to dig up some more Jamaican traditions. Somewhere in St. Margaret's Bay they insisted on a bathroom stop. More than 15 of them came off the bus and went, God knows where.
Twenty minutes later I went in search of them. I found a few of them sitting in a kitchen.
You know those old-time Jamaican kitchens? The ones that are not a part of the main building but connected to it by a roof? You often find orange skins hanging from the roof.
I am yet to peel an orange without breaking the skin into several unrecognisable pieces. But the orange skins in these kitchens are always intact, curling down from the roof like a work of art. They hang there until they are crisp and become multi-functional.
First the skin becomes a natural aromatic, "aromatherapeutic" air freshener, especially when the heat from the brick stove just below comes in contact with it.
Secondly, you could actually light some of these skins as a mosquito repellant. And thirdly, it makes the most delicious tea. It was one of those kitchens.
Other things were hanging from the roof. Bananas left there to ripen, for example. Enamel mugs on racks specially made for this purpose.
Well, there sitting around a nice home made wooden table with linoleum nailed down on it, was my colleague and what remained of my students.
The others had gone for a walk by the sea - not quite a beach outside the back. Two of those I found in the kitchen were still finishing up what had kept them there. They saw me coming.
One of them looked up and with a grin that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame and gave out, "Amina, yu late!"
They were finishing breakfast. The ones walking by the sea were enjoying the little post-repast stroll of the totally and utterly civilised.
I asked them everything at once. Whose kitchen? Who let them in? And were the roast breadfruit come from?
And then the most hospitable of Jamaican voices accompanied the most gorgeous of Jamaican woman who enquired whether I wanted to use the bathroom as well. It turned out that after she had ascertained who these "weary travellers" were (that's my mother's phrase. She was always doing extra for some weary and nameless traveller who just might happen along) she had allowed everyone the facility of her "inside" bathroom. And then she had set to work, like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, multiplying the breakfast she had been preparing. It struck me that she could easily have been the mother who taught Jesus how to stretch food.
Every one of the 15 students and my colleague had received an equitable one slice of roast breadfruit, one piece of salt fish and a mug of bush tea.
And she had made them sit at the table to have it. (Dat's how comes ah ketch dem. De table cudden hold everybody one time).
'Resign' from Kington
So anyway, I was really too late for the meal. Although I suspect that if all of us had come off the bus, or if someone (one a de greedy one dem who dun eat) had intimated that there were others "outside" she would have worked more miracles.
But you know me; I sat down anyway for a chat. What a delicious piece of Jamaica I enjoyed that morning. We wondered whether we could have found any similar experience in Kingston.
That's when her husband said, "Well dat is why I am a "resignist" from Kingston".
Fourteen years and he is not coming back to reside.
"Everybody around here look after everybody". And they were proud of it. They actually have a little restaurant at the entrance to their property.
Some days they serve breakfast and lunch. Dinner, if pressed. But on Sundays, "Like how people sleep late and have church and such" they make a barbecue/jerk session around mid-day.
The Jamaica Tourist Board needs to find these people and others like them and include them in the Meet-the-People programme. Red Stripe needs to promote some sessions on their strip of the sea such that these "Real Jamaicans" are assisted to match their economic conditions to the size of the love in their hearts. Level the vibes.
And then there is my cousin. Couple Sundays ago we had a gathering of cousins. 'Bout 40-leventeen of us congregated as we had been invited "to have an input" into the wedding plans of this male cousin.
Skip the three hours of carousing before some kill-joy reminded us that "is wedding we come to discuss". Okay. So here we are at agenda item "Reception". One whole page of notes of nothing but food. Well, one time I had been to a three-day wedding feast in Guyana and never saw so much food.
Me: Who is going to eat all of this?
My Cousin: People!
Me: Which people?
Cousin: People who come!
Me: But you only inviting one hundred people.
Cousin: To the church and that's mostly just us. You can't stop other people from come to the reception.
Me: How you mean?
Cousin: Is country you know Amina, is like is everybody wedding.
Me: Lock de gate!
Silence. Only the town cousins seemed to understand me.
Then my country cousin, with a proper country upbringing, without raising the level of his voice and with an indulgent smile said, "Yu mad, Amina? Lock de gate? Look here, we have to find food. Food kean be de problem. Make something else be de problem. Like if somebody behave bad or something like dat. But yu kean lack out people who jus come to wish yu well an dat's why dem come. Never meck a a soul ever sey dem never get chance to wish you well."
Silence again. That's me this time. Totally ashamed of the manifestations of Kingston in me and glad sey me madda never hear me.
And yet I know that there is an abundance of the country way of mothering and being right here in Kingston. After all is nuff country people come to town and surmount untold obstacles to raise children born in town as if dem born and grow a country.
Caring for
one another
Take, for example, the women at the Women's Resource and Outreach Centre - WROC on Beechwood Avenue, who live and work in the communities from Maxfield Avenue to Seaview Gardens.
They amaze me with their generosity. Every Tuesday, they reach out to the elderly in these communities. They organise for up to 50 of them to spend the greater part of the day at WROC.
They entertain them, take them through some exercises, prepare a proper Jamaican sit down meal for them and then organise for them to return safely to their homes. It doesn't stop at the Tuesday encounter.
These women ensure, among other things, that the elderly who come to them are registered in the Drugs for the Elderly Programme (JADEP) and that they have their special passes which allow them the concessionary fares on the public buses.
Are these women of means and leisure? That's what amazes me. They do this for the same reason my cousin so patiently chastised me, for the same reason my students were so lovingly treated in St. Margaret's Bay, by a total stranger:
"We have to take care of one another". Body and Soul Food.
Thank God for the mothers who refuse to allow us to forget how to do that.
Happy Mothers' Day!
