IFYE Program Newsletter

You Have the Right To Remain Silent

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. As you may have already guessed, this article has something to do with the police in Jamaica.

On the evening of Tuesday evening, October 10, I was returning to my host home in the parish of St. Thomas after watching a local high school net ball match. It was dark at the time, but I had another Jamaican 4-Her there to escort me to "mi yard." Just after rounding the first turn, I heard someone off in the dark behind me yelling and cussing.

I turned around to see what was going on, and this younger Jamaican guy came up to me cussing me and asking me where I was from. At first, I just thought it was a friend of Jason's, the guy who was escorting me home. However, I soon found out otherwise.

This stranger continued to cuss me and ask me where I was from. I looked at him and said, "Excuse me now mon! Mi no talk fe ya if ya talk ta mi like so!" He still continued to cuss. My comment only made him even angrier. Jason pushed the young guy around the corner and we continued on towards "mi yard." We made the final turn and headed straight down to "mi yard."

However, on the way there, the mad man came running up to a neighbor's yard and began to cuss me once again. This time he took a little more action with me, when he stepped out into the road and began to throw stones at me. Luckily I was at "mi yard," so I just stepped in the gate and avoided being hit by any of the stones.

My host mother, Miss Ross, just happened to be the president of the citizens association for the development. She went right in and called the police on the matter. It took them about and hour and a half to two hours to get to the house. When they pulled up, I walked out to the gate and explained to them what had happened.

It was a little scary, because down here they carry M16s rather than the little handguns, so I was staring down the barrel of one while I talked to the policewoman. They asked me to get in the car to ride with them around the corner to point out the boy that I was talking about. Now, that was an exciting experience, getting to ride in a Jamaican police car with two police in the front packing M16s.

When we pulled up to the yard, the out-of- control boy was standing there in the yard. I pointed him out to the police and they called him up to the car. When they asked him about me and the incident, he tried to tell them that he had no clue what they were talking about, and that he had never seen me before. I told the police that he was not telling the truth at all, and they went on to talk to the kid's mother.

We called Jason over to back me up, but he was afraid to talk to the police. I will explain that one in a minute. The boy was just under six feet tall and only fifteen years old. He had been born here in Jamaica, but now lives in England. At the time of this incident he was staying here on a two-week vacation. His mother/ guardian came out and apologized and the police gave him a little slap on the wrist.

They just told him that if they had to come back again they would have to take him away. I did not push the issue anymore with the police, because I like Jason. He, like many other Jamaicans, was a little scared of the police. Down here the police training is not that good at all. Most of the time you hear stories on the radio or television of where police have just walked up to people and shot them rather than arresting them. The other day they just walked up and shot a guy for smoking ganga in public.

Schools In! Schools in! Teacher let the Bulls In!

Being an elementary education teacher in the making I have to write a little article on the schools and the education system down here. It could be summarized best with the words "very poor." That is speaking both in terms of money and in terms of the learning aspects.

All of the students are required to wear uniforms to school. The girls' uniform for most primary schools consists of a dark blue dress with a blouse underneath that varies in color from school to school. The older girls get to wear a white blouse and a skirt that is the school's color. They sometimes wear ties as well, if they can afford it.

The younger guys wear tan pants and a tan short sleeve dress shirt and the older guys wear khaki pants with a white short sleeve dress shirt and tie. Everyone is required to wear black or brown dress shoes with their uniform.

Now, about the actual learning that takes place. There has not been much of that at all in the schools that I have been in. Most classes are very over-crowded in the primary schools. I worked in one school that had 70 students in a second grade classroom, and 66 in one third grade class.

The second grade class was lucky enough to have two teachers in it; however one older woman was the solo commander for the third grade class. The teachers get up and walk out of the rooms all the time and leave the children unattended for at least fifteen minutes or more. While they are gone I have seen the children beat, cuss, scream and throw things at each other, and about everything else that you could think of to do to get in trouble.

If by chance the teacher catches them, he or she either uses a part of a strap or their hand to beat them. That really does not seem to bother the students, because after the crying stops and the day goes on, they still continue to act up. I have not seen anyone sent to the principal's office as yet, and do not even think that is an option.

What do they get done in a single day? Well, in all the classes that I have observed that answer is not much. I was in a first grade class in the parish of St. Thomas one day working at a school called Yallas Primary. That day they went to their daily morning devotion from 9 - 10:30 a.m.

Next they went to their classroom where they read two sentences in their reading book. Following the reading time it was time for their break, so they stopped working to enjoy snacks for about 45 minutes. After the break, they took an hour to copy one sentence off of the blackboard, which took them up to lunch time. An hour-long recess took place after lunch.

One math problem and three fill- in-the-blank sentences were all the learning that went on in the afternoon, before the students were dismissed for the day. Here it doesn't matter if a student does not have the needed skills to move on to the next higher grade. They are just pushed on through anyway.

One fifth grade class that I worked with had about ten students in it that did not know how to read or even their alphabet. The teachers just place those students in the back of the classes and go on with the new information, leaving the ones who are behind even farther behind. I have to say that from all my experiences down here that I could never be a teacher in Jamaica. No sir, too stressful and out of control for me down here.

A Brief History of St. Thomas the Parish

From September 26 through October 14, I was hosted by a family in St. Thomas Parish. There I stayed just outside the parish capital city of Monsorat Bay in a place called Red Hills Housing Scheme. St. Thomas is bordered to the west by the parish of St. Andrew, to the north by Portland, and to the east and south by the Caribbean Sea.

It is the home of the eastern most point of the island, known as the Morant Point Lighthouse. The 18-foot wide, cast iron tube, was erected in 1841 by freed African slaves from Sierra Leone. It is the oldest lighthouse on the island and is listed as an historical monument. There is a plaque at the base that tells its tale. Today the lighthouse is merely a rarely visited tourist attraction due to the long muddy drive through the cane fields that it takes to get there.

Another historical part of the parish is the Morant Bay Rebellion that took place on October 11, 1865. Even after emancipation took place on the island in 1838, the local black population still faced widespread unemployment and extreme hardships. Heavy taxation and the harshness of local magistrates added to the problems.

In the 1860s Paul Bogle, a black Baptist preacher in the small town of Stony Gut, organized passive resistance against the oppression and injustice of the local authorities and planters in St. Thomas. Bogle was supported by a wealthy planter named William Gordon. Both men would go on to become two of the country's national heroes.

On October 11, 1865, Bogle and 400 supporters marched to the Morant Bay courthouse to protest the severe punishment given to a destitute who had been arrested on a petty charge. An armed militia shot out into the crowd and a riot ensued in which 28 people were killed and much of the town, including the courthouse, was burned to the ground. The countryside erupted into rioting. Bogle fled with a 2,000 British pound bounty on his head, but was soon captured by Maroons and hanged the same day from the center arch of the burned-out courthouse.

Meanwhile, Gordon was captured by authorities in Kingston, brought back to Morant Bay and later hanged as well. My last week in the parish happened to be National Heritage Week in Jamaica. I spent that week teaching in the local school where my host mother was a teacher. I taught and worked with a first grade classroom.

During that week, the school had all kinds of heritage week activities, which included a play acted out of the Morant Bay Rebellion by the fifth graders. Thursday, my final day in the parish, I helped to chaperone a field trip with fifteen 4-H clubites and my host mother to the official Heritage Festival in town. There, different schools sent representatives to perform historical dances (Maypole and Kumina), and play traditional music (Calypso and Mento).

Chris