PROGRESS

Whose biblical truth shall prevail?

By Michael Findley, STAR Writer

Recently a grade one teacher, who was very concerned, pointed out to me a picture found in one of their new text books. The picture showed Christ being represented as a Rastafarian, raising Jairus' daughter.

Now, I know what I'm about to say may offend a whole religious sect, but I think this was a gross misrepresentation of the fact and was in all sense taking things to the extreme. The text I'm speaking of was from the Carlong book series for Primary Integrated Studies entitled Living Together as a Family.

Now, to some this may be seen as cute or even laughable, but I think it's a gradual encroachment of the new liberalism in schools which tries to encompass all minority sectors in their curriculum which, although well intentioned, is an outrageous lie and a reckless and offensive attack on biblical truth.

In a note to the teachers, the authors, with the full acknowledgement of the Ministry of Education, said that the objective was to include and I quote, "A rich variety of activities that require students to talk with each other in small groups in a whole class discussion." But I have to ask, discuss what? And, are the small groups supposed to become excited in the new revelation that Christ was a rasta and probably drew from his holy sacrament of ganja before performing his miracles?

Teachers upset

Naturally, the teachers I spoke with about this "new Bible truth" were very upset to say the least. They were agitated about this picture in their text book but were unwilling to be named in this article probably due to a perceived retaliation from the Ministry of Education. One said it was a misconception as children are not used to seeing Jesus with locks.

When a child asks if Jesus was a rasta, what do we tell them? This is not what we were taught in the Bible. Because children believe in print material, it might change their belief and start them thinking that what they were brought up to believe was wrong. This teacher thinks the picture is misleading and needs to be revisited by the Ministry. "These are young minds and we should not play with them," she said.

So the controversy continued as I showed the picture to the pastor of my church. He too became upset and thought the authors of the book were taking things too far. He pointed out that Rastafarianism was basically a new religion founded in the last century, while Christ lived 2000 years ago. So, it was impossible for the locks, which was a new phenomenon, to be sported by Christ.

It is clear to see that the Ministry of Education has opened a can of worms by introducing this picture in an otherwise good text book. The fact that they would go so far shows the dilemma they have in trying to integrate all different minorities in our school system. There was a time when rastas could not send their children sporting the locks to a public school. All this has changed and for the better I might add.

We need to bring all sectors of society in the learning process. But, with that learning comes the responsibility in adhering to the basic truths and to do otherwise would be defeating the purpose of education. Although education is meant to enlighten, it should preserve honesty, clarity and above all, the truth should never be a casualty.

Jamaican Author: Velma Pollard

Kenya: On the Homestretch With Velma Pollard

The East African Standard (Nairobi)

INTERVIEW
January 20, 2007
Posted to the web January 19, 2007

Mike Owuor
Nairobi

Dr Velma Earle Pollard is an award-winning Jamaican writer, poet and academic. Her novel, Homestretch, is currently one of the optional literature set books for secondary school students in Kenya. Although she has retired as a lecturer from the university of West Indies, Jamaica, the 69-year-old has no plans of retiring as a writer.

What do you know about Kenya?

That it is the home of Ngugi wa Thiong'o who is a great literary voice and friend of Kamau Brathwaite, one of the most famous Caribbean writers. I also know that the landscape is very beautiful and the Maasai people are from there.

How do you suppose the Caribbean writer, Brathwaite, acquired the name "Kamau" which is clearly a Kenyan name?

It has to do with his friendship with Ngugi. Ngugi himself tells the story of the naming in World Literature Today, Autumn 1994, and in Brathwaite's collection, Barabajan Poems, he treats it as well.

What defines your home country, Jamaica?

In the tourist sense one might say Sun, Sand and Sea; others might say Reggae Music or "Jerk" Pork and "Jerk" Chicken but we who live here can think of many other features. "Jerk" is a popular method of preparing meat with certain specific spices and originally using a particular kiln-like wood fire. By the way, allow me this opportunity to correct two errors in the otherwise very well written Notes to Homestretch by Zipporah Mutea, which is a Longman publication meant to be used alongside the text. First, Jamaica has comparatively high temperatures all through the year and is never cold though the temperature might go down to 70 Fahrenheit (20 degrees centigrade) in mountainous parts during certain months.

Here are famous lines from "Nature" by the late H.D. Carberry: "We have neither Summer nor Winter/Neither Autumn nor Spring/WE have instead the days/When the gold sun shines on the lush green cane fields "

Secondly, Jamaica has two languages: Standard Jamaican English, which is the official language, and Jamaican Creole, known locally as Patwa, which is the vernacular and language of the man in the street.

Your seminal monograph, Dread Talk: The Language of the Rastafari, has been described as a "penetrating work of the socio-linguistics of Rasta culture". How influential are the Rastafari in Jamaican society?

Nobody can contradict me when I say that Rastafari has been the most influential movement in Jamaica in the 20th Century with regard to culture, music, language, food, fashion... you name it.

What are you reading at the moment?

Everything about the relationship between Scotland and Jamaica, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. I was invited to be one of four academics on a project originating in Italy, looking at the literary representation of the Scots in the Caribbean. I am looking at the Jamaican part in both Literature and History. The Scots accounted for about one third of the British people who came to Jamaica after 1655 when the English captured the island from the Spanish.

Do you have any favourite African writers?

This is a difficult question. I have read most of those whose work is available in English but I have to admit that Wole Soyinka captured my imagination long ago and has remained my favourite.

What would you consider a significant similarity between African and Caribbean writers?

I think when we write in English we share certain ways of using the language creatively. Some of the turns of phrase are not identical but similar in ways that allow us to understand each other immediately.

Let's talk about Homestretch. What prompted the writing of the novel?

I was tired of reading about all the bad things that happen in Jamaica. I was at a conference and had been listening to readings from novels in which everything was ugly and dirty and everybody was poor and hungry and I knew that although that represented somebody's reality it was not the only Jamaica. I decided to write about the Jamaica I have known.

Why the title "Homestretch", or rather, who is on a homestretch?

Homestretch is the last mile of any journey home. The title thinks of all the "returns" in the novel.

What sort of primary audience is Homestretch aimed at?

I wrote for Jamaicans who needed to know some of the better things about their country. I had to find a fictive framework in which to place it. Of course my pet peeve, migration, immediately came to mind.

Can Dreadlocked Children Go to School?

Zimbabwe: Court to Determine Dreadlocked Boy's Case

The Herald (Harare)
January 27, 2007
Posted to the web January 27, 2007

THE Supreme Court will in due course determine whether the dreadlocked seven year-old Glen Norah boy, Farai Benjamin Dzvova, should be allowed to attend school in his hairstyle.

Dzvova, who is popularly known as Benji, was expelled from Ruvheneko Primary School in Glen Norah, a few weeks after he started Grade One in January last year.

However, the boy won an interim relief to go back to school pending the determination of his case, which a High Court judge, Justice Tendayi Uchena, referred to the Supreme Court after his father, Mr Collin Dzvova, through his lawyer Mr Zvikomborero Chadambuka, had raised a constitutional point.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court, sitting as a constitutional court, heard arguments by both lawyers appearing for Dzvova and the Minister of Education, Sport and Culture, Cde Aeneas Chigwedere, and Ruvheneko Primary School headmaster, Mr F Nyahunye, who are listed as respondents.

Mr Chadambuka wants the court to determine whether the exclusion of the boy from school was legal as envisaged in Section 19 (5) of the Constitution.

In the event that the Supreme Court establishes that the exclusion was determined under the authority of a law, it would also consider whether such a law was reasonably justifiable in a democratic society.

Mr Chadambuka argued that the rule requiring short hair, which had been used to bar his client from school, was not a law. He said the conduct of expelling the child was done under the authority of that rule.

"The rule is clearly not a law as envisaged by the Constitution and the interpretation of the Act. Thus, the conduct cannot derogate from the Constitution and purport to limit a constitutional right," he said.

The rules used to expel the boy, Mr Chadambuka argued, were in the context contrary to the provisions of the Constitution. Benji is from the Rastafarian family and has worn dreadlocks from birth.

Mrs Revai Sweto-Mukuruba of the Civil Division of the Attorney General's Office, in her counter arguments, said it had never been contended that Rastafarianism was a religion that is protected under Section 19 (1) of the Constitution.

She said the issue at hand was whether the school rules were saved from being a contravention of the sections in questions.

Mrs Sweto-Mukuruba argued that in terms of the Education Act, the minister was conferred with powers to make regulations which provides for discipline in schools and the exercise of the disciplinary powers over pupils attending schools.

These include powers to administer corporal punishment, and the suspension and expulsion of pupils in respect of their attendance and conduct in schools.

The regulations, Mrs Sweto-Mukuruba said, authorised schools to set standards to be enforced at their respective schools.

She said the requirement to keep short and clean hair was a school standard which is not a religious instruction.

"The regulations qualifying as law, and the rules getting their force from the regulations constituted an act that is done under the authority of a law as envisaged by the Section 19(5) of the Constitution.

Mrs Sweto-Mukuruba said the requirement to keep short and clean hair was a school standard which is not a religious instruction.

"Since schools cater for pupils from different religious beliefs and practices, there is need for a school standard which apply to all pupils uniformly," she said, urging the court to dismiss the constitutional case.

Fiji Loves Bob Marley

No woman, no cry

Sunday, January 21, 2007
Fiji Times

IT'S a lament and a cry of defiance rolled into one that has become a classic. Bob Marley's No woman, no cry, is a song everyone relates to regardless of what they know of reggae and Rastafarians.

But why then did Marley, the most prolific song writer of the 20th Century, use a song he is not accredited with writing.

Check any Bob Marley and the Wailers album from Burning to the ultimate compilation Songs of Freedom and all but one track is written by the modern day prophet.

The exception is No woman, no cry, which is credited as being written by a V (for Vincent) Ford.

So who is this Vincent Ford and what is his role in a love ballad that Marley, his wife Rita and the world cherishes so much.

To find out we have to trip back to the 1960s and to Trenchtown, the Kingston, Jamaica, slum and hot-bed of criminality from where the gospel of reggae has captivated, conquered and transformed the world in a way no musician ever has, or will.

As the young Tuff Gong, as he was known in the meanest of alleys, most of Marley's friends were older than him, a sign of his maturity, and just one of the many signs of Jah that can be found in his life and work.

Everyone who was anyone or aspired to be someone had a street moniker, no matter his station.

Enter Vincent Ford, who was known as Jack Tartar, whose act of simple kindness to a bewildered country boy in the city, has immortalised him as a song writer extraordinaire and made him a wealthy man today.

They first met when Marley was 13 and Tartar, 17, and a close bond quickly developed.

Tartar started up his own street kitchen from his yard on First Street, after working as cook at a boys' town school, selling dumplings and bula, the poor man's bread made out of ground corn or maize.

Marley had no real source of income after his father had dragged him to Kingston, away from his mother Cedella in the country and then abandoned the boy in the capital city.

Most times when Marley was desperate, it was at Tartar's that he knew he would be given food and space to sleep. It was something Marley never forgot.

When Bob became serious about learning the guitar, it was Tartar who bought him a Teach Yourself Guitar chord book and then stayed up all night, turning the leaves' of the book as the young Nesta strummed the chords, peering at the diagrams of where to put his fingers in the light of a flickering oil lamp.

In the mornings, their nostrils would be black from the lamp's fumes.

In 1962, when Cedella moved to Delaware, in the US, Marley found himself moving from squatter camp to camp.

But Tartar heard of it and would have none of it.

He gave Marley a corner of his kitchen to sleep. Marley's bed was the gambling table that Tartar would set up on nights when the food didn't move too well in the day.

Marley often had to wait until the gambling had been done to reclaim his bed.

It was in that very same corner of Tartar's kitchen and on the very gambling table at which knives and guns had been flashed, that Marley first made love to Rita, the woman he was to marry and who stayed by his side despite his infidelities.

But those hard times helped to focus Marley who would strum on when everyone else was dropping off.

To provide light for their all-night sessions, another ghetto dweller, a George Headley Robinson, would gather brushwood from all over the place and shoulder it to Tartar's yard.

Georgie, some 13 years older than Marley, was a devoted believer in the talents of ghetto youths, in particular Marley and his companions.

Georgie, who made his living as a fisherman, would instruct the young in matters Rastafari, often referring to the Bible, something found in almost every home.

In Songs of Freedom, authors Adrian Boot and Chris Salewicz quote Tartar as: "Georgie would sit there shirtless all night, tending the flames as the youngsters played guitar.

When they awoke after falling asleep exhausted from playing guitar, the fire would still be burning and straightaway Georgie would boil up some porridge or bush tea, not unlike our drau ni moli.

In 1972, as Marley started on his global conquest, he penned the words for No woman, no cry while playing his acoustic guitar on a flight from Kingston to London.

As a mark of gratitude, Marley turned over the song writing credit to V Ford. Returning to Jamaica after becoming the face of reggae, Marley drove to Trenchtown from 56 Hope Road to visit one of the countless girls he had been seeing in between having children with Rita.

After going off to play soccer, Marley finally went back to Tartar's yard where Tartar and Georgie sat talking.

Without saying a word, Tartar fetched the old acoustic guitar Marley had first blistered his fingers on.

The now world star started off playing No woman, no cry, moving his friends to tears.

Today, Vincent Ford lives in comfort in Kingston from the royalties he receives for one of the all-time great songs.

But that is not the end of it. Marley's love prose is not only about his formative years in a ghetto that makes places like Jittu Estate, Wailea and River Road, Narere, seem like Tamavua or the Toorak of old.

His lament was a cry stretching back hundreds of years to the earliest settlement by the White man.

The Right Reverend Vili Vonokula, who spent six years doing God's work in Belize, a South American nation on the Caribbean coast, found out while attending a week-long seminar in Kingston, that the "no woman, no cry"call predates Marley, being buried in the psyche of a people who could not fathom the behaviour of their supposed superiors.

The Whites took with them their righteousness, their Christianity, their greed and largely lived lives of hypocrites and parasites, akin to the fat-cats in society today.

Those early brutalisers took over the land, brought in slaves and experimented with crops like cotton before finding sugar to be best suited for the Caribbean climate.

Those very same White estate owners, overseers and workers who went to church in their best on Sundays, became alcohol-infused rapists each night. It was their right to take any slave woman or child they found comely, often raping the victim in front of her parents to stamp their superiority.

As more and more mulattto, or mixed race children, were born, and reached maturity, the rapes became out of hand.

There was little a slave could do other than die in honour. The men did, tens of thousands of them killed trying to protect their woman.

Slowly, from estate to estate, across the breadth of Jamaica, when a girl child was deemed comely, and they were so deemed quite early in life in those days, she was sent away to the impregnable Blue Mountains where slaves had been taking refuge since the beginning of White settlement.

It was an area where even the "Red Coats"and later the constabulary feared to tread.

There, in the mountains, the women were safe, well, certainly safe for a lot longer than the White man would have allowed.

Over, time, the phrase "No woman no cry"became a call of defiance that bewildered the colonialist, who on seeing an attractive woman, could not work out why or where she had disappeared overnight while the slaves rejoiced because they would not have anguish at the brutalisation of yet another woman. Rastafari

Bob in Hall of Fame in 1994

Flashback: Bob's Rock Hall Induction

Jamaica - Today, for Bob Marley fans all over the world, the number 13 is not one of bad luck but one of celebration. On Jan. 19, 1994, almost 13 years after Marley's untimely death, the reggae music legend was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That well-deserved event occurred exactly 13 years ago today. By Doug Miller / BobMarley.com

Marley, who has been immortalized in the Hall in its permanent museum in Cleveland, Ohio, was honored at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York that night, brightening the traditional locale for the annual induction dinner with his music and his memory.

On the evening of the induction, the ballroom was filled with rock history--stellar talents whose work also warranted a place in the Rock Hall Class of '94, as well as Bob's family and friends who had come to pay tribute.

According to rock historian Warren Zanes, who is also the Hall's Vice President of Education, Marley's place in the Hall has always been celebrated."He has achieved international icon status," Zanes said. "He's sold an unbelievable number of records, he affected the mainstream of rock and roll deeply, and I think one of the biggest contributions that people acknowledge when they come to the Hall is that Marley brought Jamaican music here."

Zanes also pointed out how Marley's courage in speaking out against dissidence in Jamaica set an example for others in his field. "Because of the post-colonial situation in Jamaica, which is, of course, an awful situation with a lot of poverty and racial strife, because that was so much in his music, he showed what music could look like when it was deeply engaged with social and political meaning," he explained.

That concept wasn't lost at Marley's induction, given by a thoughtful and prolific musician and humanitarian in his own right, U2 lead singer Bono.

Speaking before an audience that included Bob's widow, Rita, his sons Ziggy, Ky-mani and Julian, his mother, Cedella Marley Booker, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, various members of Bob's band, the Wailers, and Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffith, the women who sang alongside Rita as the I-Threes, Bono was poetic and appropriately mystical and personal.

Highlights included his comparison of his own Irish heritage and the struggles in that country to what Marley meant to Jamaica."I know claiming Bob Marley as Irish might be a little difficult," Bono said. "We are both islands, we are both colonies. We share a fondness for procrastination. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the next day, unless, of course, it's freedom."

Bono added that Marley "didn't walk down the middle," but "raced to the edges, embracing all extremes and creating a oneness -- his oneness of love."

Bono also recalled a trip that he and his wife, Ali, took to Ethiopia, where "everywhere we went, we saw Bob Marley's face... Royal, wise," Bono said. "Solomon and the Queen of Sheba on every street corner, there he was, dressed to hustle God. ... 'Let my people go,' an ancient plea. ... Prayers catching fire in Mozambique, Nigeria, the Lebanon, Alabama, Detroit, New York, Notting Hill, Belfast ... Dr. King in dreads."

Zanes reflected on the palpable connection between inductee and the inductor."Bono was the perfect person to do it for Bob...Bono wouldn't be Bono as we know it if there hadn't been a Bob Marley before him," he said. "We've seen that it's tough to marry music and the message. Not everybody does it equally well. Sometimes people bring politics to their music and the audience turns it off.But Bob Marley and Bono shared that rare gift to get people even more entrenched in it. And it wasn't because of a moment they were in, it was because of the individuals they were and are."

Rita Marley oversaw the induction's proceedings and confirmed happily that if Bob had been alive to see this historic evening, he would "nod his head in consent."

"I remember when we were back in Trenchtown and we wondered if we would ever be able to get an award, a Grammy," she continued. "We'd laugh and say we were crazy, we'd never get there. But we did."

In addition to Bob, the night was full of reverence for the huge names of rock being inducted with Marley in the first Hall enshrinement ceremony since the groundbreaking of the state-of-the-art Cleveland facility months earlier. They were John Lennon, the Grateful Dead, Elton John, The Band, Rod Stewart, Willie Dixon, the Animals, Duane Eddy and Johnnie Otis.

And it wouldn't be an induction ceremony without some general celebrity star power. Some of the A-listers in the house included Paul McCartney, who inducted Lennon; Yoko and Sean Lennon; Bruce Springsteen; Eric Clapton; Chuck Berry; Axl Rose; Etta James, Mariah Carey and Bruce Hornsby. Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese, Whoopi Goldberg, Naomi Campbell, the late John F. Kennedy Jr. and RuPaul also were in attendance.

In yet another Rock Hall tradition, the evening was capped off with an all-star jam session of the music of the inductees, and the 1994 edition featured Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle," Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven," the Beatles' "Come Together," and The Band doing their classic "The Weight."

But for Marley fans, the high point of the night was the version of Bob's seminal hit "One Love," with Rita, Ziggy, Bono and others trading verses, smiles, the heavy groove and the glorious memories of a legend and Hall of Famer.