The Wailers Wings of A Dove

"...3 little birds pitch on my door steps... singing sweet songs..."

HAPPILY EVER AFTER ..... The FUTURE is NOW...

✎📑📖📚

I listen to Motown classics, gospel  music and pulsating reggae, he unwinds to raw Hip Hop and Youtube Reality vids (without headphones no matter how I insist! )

Thirteen years of living (age difference) separates us but an island living experience weaves a binding thread that keeps us connected in myriad ways. 

When he looks at me he sees a younger version of his Grandmother who raised him and a mother who was often times physically absent but who loves him regardless. 

And quite often, the aroma of my cooking pulls him back to the house in Bellefield, Manchester, where he grew up before he left for Canada at the age of 15.

COVID'S GIFT - DREAMS TO REMEMBER

     

Nine (9) years ago, when I was clutched in the harried throes of surviving, a faculty support staff at York University in Toronto, Canada, where I was a student, looked me dead in my eyes and uttered words that would alternatively haunt and inspire me for years to come; "remember who you are!" 

I guess that was her way of encouraging me to continue to keep trying to land elusive jobs in my career field in non-profit program management and  implementation. 

At the time, her words rang hollow to me, who was a single mother, and mature student, who had recently relocated to Canada from Jamaica with the determination to carve out a better life for myself and my daughter. 

I remember having to balance the near impossible task of single motherhood with my role as a full time international student at YorkU, in fulfillment of the strict requirements of my then student visa. Initially, I did not qualify for a work permit, so I had to find legal and ethical ways to earn in order to financially provide for myself and my daughter including keeping a roof over our heads, all without a work permit. 

Despite the overwhelming odds stacked against me; by a combination of +Divine Favour+, strategic planning and determination, I managed to successfully complete my first semester at YorkU with qualifying grades that allowed me to apply for an off campus work permit. This meant I could then widen my search for jobs, which up to that point, had been restricted to on campus jobs, none of which I was able to get, despite the many times I applied for different positions.

In reflection, somehow, no matter what I did, the doors I tried to push open remained firmly closed despite the myriad ways I tried to advocate for myself. Self-advocacy was a honed skill which stemmed from my innate ability to lobby for improved circumstances for others and which, through frequent, applied use and proven results, had become a default setting. As I navigated during my early days as a new immigrant in Canada, self-advocacy was an instinctive and proactive mode which I switched to automatically, when faced with challenging situations  My ability to effectively self advocate is influenced by the many years I worked as a journalist and development advocate in media and non profit in Jamaica, the Caribbean and other parts of the world.

To help provide some background for context; I began attending York University in September 2012, but did not secure a job on York University's campus until April the following year (2013), one full year after I moved to Canada. 

How did I survive that first year?!!

1. >> By NOT listening to my childhood friend who I had attended high school with and who, when she became aware of the difficulties I was facing finding suitable work in Canada, candidly advised me to "dumb down" my resume by excluding some of the work experience and academic qualifications from my two page resume which I had already reduced from a five page CV! In retrospect, I feel fortunate that I did not listen to her, because it was the remnants of my 5-page CV (which I kept at two pages despite her advise to shorten/curate it even more), which ended up impressing an employer who visited a job agency where I had registered shortly after arriving in Canada. And that not only landed me the up to then elusive job I had been seeking, but would prove to be the beginning of doors previously closed swinging wide open to let me in. Doors which I had been desperately pounding on, even while I +PRAYED+, anxious to be let in, anxious and sometimes impatient for job opportunities that would take me back onto a path that was more towards the accomplished, professional self who I was, before I migrated to Canada and morphed primarily an International Student; which unfortunately, made little provision for the other aspects of myself I needed to be to survive in a full sense. I was able to successfully juggle the role of being a mother to my daughter and my other responsibilities,  because I am a Jamaican woman with a history of hardships and pain which I had learned how to successfully navigate in order to remain sane, viable and functioning from day today. This new experience of having to reinvent myself, from the very outset, seemed destined to simply add to my already lived personal traumas during a 50% lived life. I migrated to Canada when I was just past 40 years old, and was headed towards the BIG FIVE O = 50. So believe me when I tell you, that when I arrived in Canada in April 2011, I had LIVED!! I had LIVED and LOVED and GIVEN birth and MOTHERED and ENAMCIPATED so many persons from social and economic EXCLUSION in a Jamaica which struggled with the challenges of the remnants of a colonial past tied to slavery and the myriad social and other maladies that accompany that. Yet when I arrived at the Pearson Airport with my carryon luggage and a single suitcase as I had deliberately packed 'light' and my very precious daughter in tow, I had to mentally and psychological dial back all I had been and had become, and allowed myself to be morphed and moulded into something else. I had to be so pliable that there were times when I was simultaneously everything and nothing all at once. The immigrant experience is so complex, that it defies exact narrative or written explanation. Like they say: It id better FELT than TELT; meaning, it is more adequately experienced than explained / told.
2. ALSO, through +DIVINE INTERVENTION+, when another Jamaican student whom I had met in the tutorial for a course we took together at York University, forwarded an email to me with a call or invitation to submit an essay of 100 words. The essay should focus on poverty as an environmental issue in keeping with the focus of my then Environmental Studies Undergraduate degree program in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University  As Providence would have it, my friend sent the email to me after the deadline for the International Student writing competition had been extended. It appears that they either had not received any submissions or were not satisficed with the calibre of any essays they might have received by the initial deadline. It has been my experience that whenever God has gifts for those who HONOUR him, he usually sends #DIVINE opportunities via specific channels and often, in the beginning, those persons who are God's emissaries, bearing beacons of #HOPE camouflaged as opportunities, usually realize that they have been given a DIVINE assignment which will last way beyond an initial contact. To make a long story short, I wrote and submitted an essay in the Writing Contest and was contacted directly by thecsenior Faculty member from The Faculty of Environmental Studies who had coordinated the writing contest, and advised that I had been selected as the Winner.  That #WiN sparked an AVALANCHE of opportunities that effectively took me from the desperate place where I had been existing, towards job opportunities that the Senior Professor referred me to as well as other job opportunities off campus which included a 6 month stint at my first ever job in a call centre working with a third party company on a Bell Mobility campaign for Bell Canada. That job qualified me sufficiently to land a job in a similar but expanded role at one of Canada's top five (5) banks working on an internal campaign for the bank's client . I worked in that position for close to two years. Before that, I landed two (2) part time jobs on the York University campus as a Research Assistant to one of my Professors who was working on a Canada-wide community research project and I also held a Knowledge Mobilization and Online Content Coordination Role with The Centre for Refugee Studies at York University for one (1) year (2013-2014).

The Bible says "A man's gift will make room for him." If anyone reading this is going through difficult times, keep going! Keep praying and believing God for miracles and rescues. God will come through for you in the end. 📿🙏📿

   

📿🙏🙏🙏🙏📿

Buju Banton on BBC Radio 1Xtra - MARCH 2020 at PENTHOUSE Studios, Kingston, 🇯🇲 Jamaica

🦌Buju Banton🗣👂 Speaks - Onstage TV - March 14 2020 via YOUTUBE LIVE

🦌Buju Banton🗣👂 Speaks - Onstage TV - March 14 2020 via YOUTUBE LIVE

#STEPPA 👞👣🦵

 BUJU & WINFORD WILLIAMS - THEN & NOW -2008 vs 2020

#HOLY_MOUNTAIN

REVELATION 6

Andrea Downer-Ashley is a former Staff Reporter of The Jamaica Gleaner who now lives in Toronto, Canada. She has been recognized globally for her journalism work and writing skills by international organisations including The US Department of State, United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA),  Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), World Health Organisation (WHO) and in 2008 from the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre, (CAREC) for her publication on Health Care in Jamaican Prisons. In 2003 she copped the Press Association of Jamaica’s Investigative Journalist of the Year Award. 

Andrea specializes in Human Interest and Development Journalism, with a special focus on human rights, gender based violence, human trafficking, youth, migrant, marginalized and displaced populations including the homeless, people at risk of being homeless and the elderly. A focus she describes as “Journalism with a heart”. 

In 2013 Andrea won York University’s International Student Writing Competition in Toronto Canada. She actively volunteers with community organisations in Canada and has helped to guide the development of public policies in Canadian communities while serving on advisory committees for a number of organisations including the North Harvest Food Bank, WHIWH and York University's Student Accessibility Advocacy Organisation.

BUJU BANTON FOUNDATION FANNING FLAMES - DEDICATED BUJU FAN ALSO FEEDS HOMELESS IN JAMAICA... AGAINST GOVERNMENT's ORDERS

Bridgette Barrett of Mandeville, Manchester in Jamaica has been feeding and assisting homeless people in the parish

Last year, there was a collective, gasp of disbelief when the Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSMAC) banned Buju Banton from feeding the homeless who live on the streets of down town Kingston.

The reggae artiste, who last December returned to Jamaica after serving almost a decade in US prison on a drug trafficking charge, launched  the Buju Banton Foundation  in January 2019, a charity aimed at providing hope and help to vulnerable young young people hampered by poverty. The Foundation made its first donation in May 2019, to the Possibility Program Youth Hostel, a care facility in Kingston, Jamaica that houses at risk boys between the ages of 13 and 21 years old.

A subsequent media report cited Buju Banton as saying he would still find a way to continue to feed the homeless in Kingston despite the Jamaican Government's restriction. On the heels of massive public backlash at what appeared to be a targeted sanction of Buju's charitable feeding of the homeless in Jamaica, the Government back-pedaled and tried to explain in a Jamaica Observer article with a recommendation that any attempt to feed the homeless should be coordinated with existing, government approved feeding shelters located in downtown Kingston.

Bridgette B. Barrett, who hails from the parish of Manchester, and an ardent fan of Buju Banton, shares the Reggae Artiste's also feeds street people in Mandeville, a tradition started by her parents who sadly have both transitioned, something she says continues to do against the expressed wish of her local parish council office.

Bridgette's parents: Dolly and Victor who bequeathed her with the PASSION for SERVICE to OTHERS and Community Activism before they passed away a few years ago. May they REST WELL.

Bridgette said she grew up seeing her mom and dad and older siblings feeding and caring for the homeless on the streets of Mandeville, so its a family tradition that came naturally to her to continue after both her parents died.

"I have a homeless outreach in Mandeville and I am also Executive Director of a non profit organisation; RSVP Caribbean Volunteers. The homeless outreach initiative caters to the needs of the homeless in Mandeville. We do monthly outreach activities such as taking care of their basic and hygienic needs. We cut their hair and nails and give them care packages with bath soap, (wash) rags and medication." Bridgette explained as she spoke to me from her kitchen, her sweat moistened, dark ebony skin a silent testimony to the fact that she had only just come in from her back yard where she had recently tussled with a basin full of mango and won.

Mangoes are Bridgette's favourite fruit and she applies herself to consuming them with the same enthusiasm with which she bends down to gently ease a brand new pair of flip flops onto the weathered feet of Mandeville's homeless and elderly during her weekly

Bridgette putting a pair of slippers on the feet of a homeless man.

When asked how she funds her homeless outreach activities she said she networks among family and friends who donate to the cause and she also uses funds from her own pocket. Explaining that the price tag on her homeless outreach activity

Networking among family friends, etc.workign 43 Homeless people  with plans in to take 5 off the streets and (Started 3 years ago) did a needs assessment and decide how you are going get them off the street .transition them into society. One back to his family found his mother .. who is schizo, the homeless also has challenged . he wanders away from home and goes to the market, Has been doing this since she was 8 year old. Mother had father had a practive out monthly to feed the poor once a month so it stayed with me. Due to cognitive challenges. $45,000 per month. Have a Research ad Trainigjn consultantcy business .

No assistance from her locak govt. Govt no care about this population becusd they don’t have ID of vote. Me and dem fight all the time wbat the policy they have say we not supposed to feed them on the road. Food provide support and a few other companies who when reach out will assist. Lasco give thoothpaste and soap and stuff 7 of the 43 are women, the youngest is 22 and oldest 66. Not targeting any women, the cases for the women are very extreme, women are my priority first usually but lack the kind of resources that wld be needed to successful reintegrate them back into society. We really need help. However, we recently helps in mobilizing some funds to erect some rooms at a soup kitchen and the priority for those rooms when completed will the females. Raise $850,000 which has been poured into the project ( 8 rooms ) just needs windows doors flooring and fixtures fully blocked up and thing. Construction started March this year in planning stages since 2017. Have had some persons reaching out to us which we followed up on and we are thinking of doing a fund raiser sometime later this year. No clear idea of what the fundraiser might be.. Fraklyn Rose had reached out to us so we were thinking of doing a WI team against a community team. ONE IDEA Found out us on social media and reached out. Post up

ANOTHTHER IDEA IS A BRUNCH  originally from heathfield in Mandeville now live in mandveillse,