February 25, 2024 - Week 5

One month.

Sometimes time floats by counting every second and sometimes it rushes by like a waterfall. This month has rushed by but every moment of it was memorable, every new discovery journalled and every new person I've met, someone I don't want to say farewell to in a year.

Although I am still getting adjusted to my daily routines; I would like to think I am more comfortable now - even with my cooking. This week was a week of new food and other surprises.

For those who know me, I am not an adventurous cook. However this week I managed to cook with green bananas, jerk sauce and carribean sauce. I even made chicken foot soup (admittedly I did cheat and got the prepackaged version) and learnt the hard way what a scotch bonnet pepper is. At a lovely house party, I was introduced to hard dough bread (still steaming from the bakery), breadfruit, curried goat, roast pig on a stick, mannish water (google this one!), tamarind and june plum juice and Red Stripe beer.

As to the surprises, it really should not be a surprise that my work scope keeps changing. On Wednesday I was asked to accompany the choir teacher as the pianist and to consider teaching keys; but when I arrived Thursday morning, the Program coordinator dragged me into her office with my backpack still on and said the students were ready for my drumming lessons. Well, what can I say, I taught drums ad lib that morning to much banging and clanging that the other students and teachers popped by with curiosity because the whole school could hear my class! Now I am one of the honorary co-curricular music teachers assisting with vocals, drums, and keys.

I am often reminded of how blessed these students are to be in an environment of love and support. One teacher shared her story with me and explained how she suffered a terrible seizure as a child resulting in mobility and growth issues (even her dad wanted to turn off her life support). She said that often people would stare, ask her insensitive questions, and assume she is mentally disabled. However, she recounted how one of her school principals gave her the best present. The principal requested she start school a month after everyone else; to her surprise, it was because the principal used this time to educate the whole school on being inclusive (i.e. including people with disability) and to also set up ramps around the school. As a result, this period of her life was the only time she was never bullied at school!

To wrap up the week, I'm leaving you with a patois poem Ms. Williams, the horticulture teacher wrote:

Food security

"Food Security is dat we a sey

Sustainable farming come ya gal a whey you did deh?

Agriculture a di key for dis ya country

Let us open our doors for a blooming economy.

Noh wait till you drop a grung fi yuh hands get dutty.

Rush! Hurry! Rock and come een we di farmers a did Kings and Queens.

 Mex we rear the animals

Cultivate the land

Cause yuh know wha food haffi naym.

 Food security is serious business 

Di cost of food it a attract too much high prices.

Lawd! What a crisis

If we no cultivate the land

Rear the animals

We will be in a jam.

I start di the relay

With two she goat and a big black anglo nubian Ram

An a plot with some sweet potato

Yellow and nego yam.

Please mi a beg yuh

Continue di marathon

It noh matter if you a boy, girl, woman or man 

Or even if you have a disability,

Don’t drop the baton.

Farm, cultivate, grow the land

We will have plenty

Fi feed the nation

Even fi last for our future generation

A food security we a seh!! "