My sister is gone

This month, October 26 to be exact, my sister would have celebrated her birthday. It has been six years since she has been gone. Born on the 26th, died on the 26^th.

The dimple on her left cheek was admired by many, but that one dimple was not an accident of nature, but really the result of an accident. When she was about three years old she fell and hit her cheek on the edge of a concrete ledge, and her cheek sunk in at just the right spot.

She was the only sister I had, along with four brothers. I was born three years before her, and although we did not always get along, we were very close. We had children the same age. We took trips together. We would talk for hours, both on the phone and in person, and many Saturdays would find us on the road together.

The fact she is not here anymore is unbelievable. It still seems like a dream. I cannot imagine what it's like for her husband, her daughter and her son.

I found the following words appropriate to my situation. I do not know where it originated, author unknown.

Those we love remain with us
for love itself lives on,
and cherished memories never fade
because a loved one's gone.
Those we love can never be
more than a thought apart,
for as long as there is memory,
they'll live on in our hearts.

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Give me a hurricane any time

I had been watching reports of the massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, and it was really scary to watch.  Here in Jamaica, we had an earthquake in 1993 that measured 5.3 and that was frightful, so I can only imagine what an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude would be like.  When the earthquake hit us, I was at work and my sons were at school.  They were only 5 years old at the time, and they said that the teacher ran out of the classroom and left the children.  I could only hope that if we got another big earthquake, it would happen at night when everyone would be home.

With a hurricane, there is advance warning of several days.  We can track the hurricane on the internet or on TV, see every wobble and turn, and prepare.  We had hurricane Gilbert in September 1988.  That was a massive hurricane, which hit us on a Monday.  On the day before (Sunday), I watched the path on the weather channel on satellite TV, but on local media there was not much information.

I drove to the gas station and filled up my tank.  At home I filled up every possible container I could find with water, including the bath and washing machine.  I had just had a case of disposable diapers delivered for my babies the day before, so I was okay there.

The walls of my house are made of concrete blocks and steel, the roof is made of concrete slab and steel, and the windows are baked enamel.  A hurricane-proof house.  The only thing I had to do was pull down the canvas awnings so they would not get destroyed by the wind.  I lost several trees, including mango, otaheiti apple and banana.  I lost my three mango trees (julie, bombay, and east indian).  I subsequently bought three mango plants to replace them from a plant store that shall remain nameless, only to find a few years later that I was sold three plants for hairy mango.

I know that a hurricane can be devastating for people whose houses are not hurricane-proof, or people who are homeless, although they can go to the shelters that are provided.  Jamaica is now more prepared for hurricanes than they were for hurricane Gilbert.  We now get up-to-the-minute information on approaching hurricanes, and the radio stations give 24 hr. coverage.

                                    My fir tree broke and fell on the lawn during Hurricane Sandy, October 24, 2012

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My take on the patois (patwah) debate

I think that patois is a verbal/oral dialect. It makes no sense to try to translate it and put it in print. And don't tell me that some Jamaicans do not understand standard english. They watch TV -- movies, soap operas, etc. They understand what they are hearing. They may not be able to speak it, but they certainly understand it.

Do you know who need to speak patois? The policemen when they are giving reports on the news. They are so uncomfortable using standard english, so unsure of themselves, that they speak very slowly and seem like they don't know what they are talking about. If only they would speak in patois, then they would be comfortable, fluent, and show that they really know their stuff.

An interesting thing to see is when out and about you hear a child speaking the most flat patois and the embarrassed parent berating that child to speak properly. Well, I think that's what the child hears being spoken at home. I am talking about things like "a wha dat?". No matter if the parents pretend to be 'stush', the child will expose them the minute he/she starts talking.

And this nonsense about a patois bible so that the illiterate can understand. If a person cannot read standard english, how will that person be able to read patois? It has no set spelling. It has no set grammar, etc. Whose patois are we going to use anyway? We all know that there are various versions of patois in different areas of the island.

e.g.

I am going down there

A going down there (upper St. Andrew patois)

Mi going down dere

Mi a guh dung deh

Mi a guh dung deh so

Mi dey gu dung deh

Mi ben gu dung deh

So, whose version of patois is going to be translated into this patois bible?

Not to mention some parts of Jamaica where females are referred to as "him". Have you ever watched the news and seen someone from the countryside relating an incident? That is one conversation that's interesting. So which him is being referred to now? The man or the woman? Will the patois bible have to refer to the Virgin Mary as 'him' so that some people will understand?

Patois is difficult to read. Have you ever tried to read a whole paragraph written in patois? Very difficult. There are some things that only patois can convey what needs to be said. That's when it should be used in written form.

The time and money which some people want to spend teaching people to read and write patois, which is only useful in Jamaica, should instead be spent on a literacy programme to teach standard english, which can be used all over the world.

If we do not buckle down and see to it that our people are able to communicate in standard english, then dawg nyam wi suppa.

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Finding your ancestors in Jamaica, West Indies

Some of the difficulties of genealogy research using Jamaican records

Some people’s surnames on their birth certificates are different from the ones they were known by, which makes tracing Jamaican ancestors difficult.  When I looked at some birth certificates, I noticed a pattern in the registration.  In Jamaica not so many years ago, if the parents were not married, the father’s name was not entered on the birth certificate. That section was left blank, even if it was the father who was registering the child’s birth. The mother’s surname was entered as the child’s last name. That is why so many older people had a problem finding their birth certificate, because they were requesting it using their father’s surname.

However, if a person is given his/her unmarried mother's surname on the birth certificate, when that person dies, the name on the death certificate would have the father's surname, because that is the name the person would have been using since birth.  This really creates a problem when searching.

Difficulties encountered when a baby is born in a hospital

If a baby was born in a hospital and the parents were not married, the section for home address was left blank. The lack of a home address makes it difficult to identify the mother, because there are usually several people with the same first and last names.  It’s always good to see an unusual name, and even then there would be other people sharing that name.

To further compound the difficulty, sometimes the child born in a hospital was not named right away, so the space for name was left blank.  The section for informant of birth is usually a help in identifying a particular family, as sometimes it would be a family member who registered the baby’s birth, and the name of the person and the relationship to the child was noted in the section for Informant of the birth.  When a baby was born in a hospital, the person who registered the birth was the Chief Resident Officer of the hospital. So just imagine a case where the space for the baby’s name is blank, there is no home address for the mother - the space is blank, and there is no family member registering the birth.  To top it all off, the mother has a very common name.

If the parents were married, the father’s home address was entered on the birth certificate.

Occupation of mother

If the parents were not married, and the mother was a housewife, that information was not entered on the birth certificate. I think the reasoning was that you cannot be a housewife if you are not a wife, so the mother’s occupation was entered as one of three things -  washerwoman, domestic servant, or labourer. Unless you were from the upper strata of society.

Women were really treated less than, and I am surprised that it was allowed to go on for so long.

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Map of Jamaica

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Think twice before you criticize

I clipped this from a magazine years ago, author unknown

Some people pride themselves on saying just what is on their mind,

no matter if their comments are caustic or unkind.

They feel they have a perfect right to probe and analyze,

and call it being honest when they cut folks down to size.

They’re always at the ready to shoot a well-aimed dart

right through somebody’s ego, straight into someone’s heart.

And yet these are the very folks who go into a spin

when they’re the ones elected to take it on the chin.

Then truth becomes a weapon that carries too much clout,

and criticism is something they would rather do without.

So here’s a tip for those of you who like to speak your mind,

no matter if your comments are caustic or unkind.

Think twice before you criticize, hold back that little dart

before it has a chance to sink into somebody’s heart.

Remember it’s just possible the tide will turn some day

and you could be the target of the mean things people say.

But if you learn to curb your tongue, your friends will like you more

and you will be a nicer person than you ever were before.

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The Story of Evadney

Evadney was my grandmother's best friend.  She and my grandmother were married to two first cousins.  They lived within walking distance of each other in Kingston, Jamaica.  My mother used to tell me that when she was a child, Evadney would sometimes come and ask for her to spend the day.  Evadney had four sons and no daughter.

Sometimes when Evadney picked up my mother, she would ride the bus with her, and when the bus got to the terminal she did not get off, but would ride it back.  This would go on for several trips.  During the bus ride, Evadney would sit silently, staring out the window.  My mother said she thinks Evadney suffered from depression.

Genealogy is one of my hobbies, so I decided to do a report on the family of Evadney and her husband (my grandfather's cousin), to extend my family tree.  First, I searched for the children's birth certificates, to make sure I got the names and date of birth accurate.  When I read the names to my mother, she said that could not be right.  Evadney had only four children, all boys, and she should know as she was very close to them growing up.  I just named eight children, and she knows nothing of those extra four, two boys and two girls.  The records showed that all eight children were born very close together, a year apart in most cases, and the four children unknown to my mother were born before the four that my mother grew up with.

Well, the record of the births were there, eight children born to Evadney and her Chinese born husband, who I will refer to as L.S.  I thought maybe the first four children died right after they were born.  Unfortunately, I could not find their death records, since FamilySearch had not yet published all of the death records for Jamaica, so I decided to google their names to see what I could find.

When I googled the names of the children, imagine my surprise to see the names of three of the four children appear at the Ellis Island website.  They were registered at Ellis Island, having arrived in New York from Kingston, Jamaica on a ship, in transit to Hong Kong, China.  The second child, a boy, was all of 2 years and 9 months old.  The third child, a girl, was 1 year and 8 months old.  When I checked the passenger list for the ship, I saw the name of an adult with the same last name as the babies, and he was listed as the guardian for the children.  It appears that L.S., the father of the children, was sending them to China, where his relatives would raise them in the Chinese culture.

The fourth child, a boy, was only 9 months old at the time, so I guess that is why he did not make that trip.  However, the following year, almost to the day, he was registered at Ellis Island, in transit to Hong Kong and travelling with his father, L.S.  The baby was 1 year and 9 months old.

I have since found a death certificate for baby #1, who died when she was 9 months old.

Evadney was pregnant when the last baby was taken away, because baby #5 was born three months after her husband left with baby #4.  He would not have stayed long in Hong Kong, because he had a business here in Jamaica to take care of.  Babies #6, 7 and 8 were born in quick succession.

My grandmother would have known about the babies, since she and Evadney were best friends, plus they lived within walking distance of each other.  Evadney and L.S. stayed married for over fifty years until he died.

One important piece of information from this whole saga, is that on the birth certificates of babies #5, 6, 7 and 8, held at the Registrar General's Department, is a note which states "No certified copy of this entry of the birth is to be issued, except on the order of a court".  It seems that Evadney finally got the courage to try and save her remaining children, by going through the court.  Without a birth certificate, there could be no passport.  Without a passport, the children could not be taken from Jamaica.  That's how Evadney ended up with four children instead of none.
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Ellis Island

Jamaica's Coat of Arms

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