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Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation in the Caribbean and Beyond: Prologue

Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation in the Caribbean and Beyond
Prologue
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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Notes on contributors
  6. Prologue
  7. Introduction
  8. 1. Loving and leaving the new Jamaica: reckoning with the 1960s
  9. 2. Why did we come?
  10. 3. History to heritage: an assessment of Tarpum Bay, Eleuthera, the Bahamas
  11. 4. ‘While nuff ah right and rahbit; we write and arrange’: deejay lyricism and the transcendental use of the voice in alternative public spaces in the UK
  12. 5. Journeying through the ‘motherland’
  13. 6. De Zie Contre Menti Kaba – when two eyes meet the lie ends. A Caribbean meditation on decolonising academic methodologies
  14. 7. Organising for the Caribbean
  15. 8. The consular Caribbean: consuls as agents of colonialism and decolonisation in the revolutionary Caribbean (1795–1848)
  16. 9. To ‘stay where you are’ as a decolonial gesture: Glissant’s philosophy of Antillean space in the context of Césaire and Fanon
  17. 10. Finding the Anancyesque in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the decolonisation project in Jamaica from 1938 to the present
  18. 11. Maybe one day I’ll go home
  19. Index

Prologue

Rod Westmaas

We are here because you were there.
Stuart Hall

To say goodbye to ‘home’ was an extremely perplexing request made by the motherland to its colonial citizens. That is exactly what was confronting tens of thousands of men, women and children who were contemplating the journey to ‘their’ England. With grip (suitcase) in hand, wearing their ‘Sunday best’, fedora donned at a slight angle, a gleaming smile with an ample supply of smokes for the long voyage, kisses were blown and hankies waved. It was goodbye, land of my birth, and hello to England.

When asked what were they going to miss most when they left home the responses were varied, such as: the sounds of rain beating hard on the zinc roof; the smell of cow dung early in the morning; the weekends spent at the sweet-water creeks; shouts of ‘Argosy, Chronicle and Graphic’ from the newspaper vendors; a juicy mango and a fleshy ginip [Spanish lime]. Most of all it was the people being left behind: uncles, aunts, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. The distance would be hard to bridge yet each knew this fresh opportunity to carve out a new life was theirs for the taking.

Getting jobs was not the problem. The employment exchanges were advertising; and factory workers, dishwashers, welders, stockroom attendants, street sweepers and nurses were a few of the positions being advertised. My father Patrick, a manager at one of the many sawmills in Guyana’s interior, was one of those newly arrived citizens thumbing through the job cards. At 37, Patrick’s managerial options were few to non-existent. No sawmills in London! His reflection to me many years later on his decision to apply for a job as a stockroom attendant at the John Lewis department store on London’s Oxford Street was that it had not been an easy one: ‘What would my father think? He was a prominent civil servant all his life in Georgetown. He was even awarded an ISO [Imperial Service Order]’. Status back home was no longer a consideration. Making a living, finding a home and sending money back for the family to join him were his priority.

John Lewis gave him the start he needed. His job description was simple: sweep the floor, take out the rubbish and pack the shelves. After a year of loyal service, management recognised his dedication and hard work by awarding him a guinea (£1.05p) raise in his wage packet. Like many of his Windrush generation, Patrick was willing to accept whatever viable offer came his way. Black and brown faces were rapidly becoming commonplace on the streets of London. The bus drivers and conductors, train-ticket collectors and porters, nurses and orderlies were all positions proudly filled by the newly arrived citizens of the Empire.

As a young family from British Guiana each day something new was being discovered. The ugly side of the English was gradually emerging. The next-door neighbours were not for mixing, often describing us as the coloureds upstairs cooking all that smelly food. The odd names we were given, ‘wog’, ‘chalky’, ‘Nig Nog’ or simply ‘the black bastards’, became commonplace.

The voices from back home had become a faded memory for many. Phone calls were expensive and a rarity, mainly Christmas or the occasional family announcement. When they did happen, it was a major production. A phone call to the overseas operator to book the call back home was the necessary first step. The crackly reception a couple of hours later would often consist of small talk: ‘How’s Granny?’; ‘The government did what?’; ‘We miss the wiri wiri pepper and some cassareep’; ‘She married who?’; ‘No I haven’t seen the Queen yet’.

The English lifestyle was gradually blending into our unique British Guiana memories. In fact, the new life, in spite of the many challenges, had its positive side: television, seaside trips, grapes and apples, double-decker buses, ice cream setting on a cold, winter window sill, and the friendships of Guianese and other West Indians that, for better or worse, made the motherland more tolerable.

‘Maybe one day I will go home … or maybe not’.

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