Week 8: Fleet Street, LifeYard, CVC & USA Elections

I have been feeling very lucky and blessed these past few days. This opportunity is truly expanding my mind and I am getting to meet the most interesting, honourable and inspirational people along the way. This blog post may be a long one because there is so much I want to say.

On Saturday, November 5th, I went DownTown to check out Fleet Street, an area known for murals. We stopped by the National Library of Jamaica and went through the history. Again- at this library, I found the materials and technology to be outdated but for them, it served to preserve their history. They had strict rules to ensure the materials would last a long time and they had archives filled with the slavery, plantations, and hardship era. As we were walking, we found ourselves in a very local residential area of DownTown Kingston. Goats were hanging out on the streets following us while children were playing ball with each other. You could hear dancehall music blasting from speakers of a nearby car with the local crowd gathering to show off their dance moves. We turned a corner and it led us to an abandoned warehouse filled with colour. We started taking photos and a young man approached us to share the history of Fleet Street.

It started out with a street-art movement called Paint Jamaica. The idea was to beautify the walls of Fleet Street and address the negative stigma surrounding the place. The images were murals that felt genuine and reflected stories from the community. This neighbourhood was known to be one of the toughest inner-city communities in the Corporate Area and has now united its community for the better. Programs were developed in place to assist disadvantaged youth, assist the elderly and reduce its crime. Although it has become an area where persons from over a hundred countries have visited, locals in Jamaica still refuse to acknowledge the area. Law enforcements would paint over murals that had any political or gang-related memoirs and when we told our coworkers where we went, they immediately scolded us because they said it was dangerous. The thing is- I never felt I was in any danger at all.

The young man’s name is Raphael Audibert, nickname- Rafiki. He is from the Mauritius Island and he is only 18 years old but I felt his wisdom goes beyond his years. He is sailing around the Caribbean islands to work on Organic Farms and his vision is focusing on artists and eco-conscious communities through a program called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (http://wwoof.net/). He is working with LifeYard right now, assisting with the farm and playing guitar. I urge you to read and subscribe to his blog as he is also raising money to document his travels. Please find more information on how to support him here: http://www.rafikihealings.com . He brought us to LifeYard which was across the warehouse, another community based organization that works in conjunction with Plant Jamaica. Behind the zinc fence walls, we found ourselves in an oasis of green. They transformed an empty strip of land into an organic garden and restaurant. It was created by a group of young men and become an intergenerational multicultural eco-village where they serve as mentors to the children in the community, ensuring they play peacefully and do their homework. We ate lunch with them, ate some sugar cane and hung around while they had jam session with the kids. They even walked us back to the bus stop to ensure our safety. This is somewhere that I strongly believe everyone should visit, if ever in Jamaica.

In the evening, I went to a Boxing Match at Barbican Beach. The matches were between local parishes, Jamaica vs Trinidad, Jamaica vs Cayman Islands and Jamaica vs USA. It was a very lively performance and we witnessed one of the first debuts of female boxing in Jamaica. Girls are still highly stigmatized in the Jamaican culture but they hope that this match is the start to creating a national boxing association.

On Sunday, we walked around Halfway Tree with a volunteer that just arrived. She is still a bit nervous walking around because their training had created a sense of fear and danger from the moment they step out of the house. We were sitting at Island Grill (a restaurant chain) and a security guard walked in with his AK16 rifle to grab dinner. It made her very nervous which I hope will slowly change. I personally have become accustomed to the guns because it is the norm here. I’ve also recently felt the urge to draw and I am thinking about creating greeting cards or postcards of some scenes that I have witnessed. More to come on that.

Specifically at work, I am realizing more and more how much I love CVC. The staff is truly becoming family. Monica and Marlon even brought us to PriceMart which was like COSTCO and I had such a blast. We have new hires so the office is getting very jam packed. This week’s focus was on the Launch of the Research into the Auditor General’s Report. We’ve actually been staying in the office late every day because it was all hands on deck. This was a project in conjunction with the Jamaica Civil Society Coalition (JCSC) to review Jamaica’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies of their mandates and financial accountability issues. The project is called Improved Civil Society Capacity for Research Based Advocacy” and it aims to build the capacities of civil society to constructively participate in decision-making. Issues that were found included unrecovered funds, weak internal controls, absence of contracts, policy breaches, unapproved staff loans, unapproved write offs, inadequate records management, and many others. Part of the project includes creating opportunities for an action-oriented dialogue which we developed three forums:

• Government Forum

• Media Launch Forum

• Public Forum

The Government forum had very engaging stakeholders and officials who attended. They were very action oriented and willing to create a national strategy. The media launch was very memorable in terms of a passionate journalist who asked the tough questions about accountability in the government officials. She felt she needed to do more as the media. The public forum is next week. This project shows that there are issues in the government but they are willing to work to solve it. The only issue would be the timeline of resolving these issues.

Additionally, I ended up at a Youth Forum on the Rights of Students in the Education System. They discussed issues such as the comprehensive sexuality education, age of consent, etc. This event was held in partnership with the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network and JAYECAN with support from UNDEF. I wrote about my experience in my third ICAD blog post that can be found here: http://blog.icad-cisd.com/?p=1511

Lastly, on November 10/11th, it was the USA Presidential Elections. It is very important to understand the politics of the world as we are all affected by each other. It impacts international trade, development and economics. The candidates were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump; both very different individuals. I will not place my position in this post but I would like to mention the events as it is a historical moment. If elected, Hillary Clinton would have been the first female president for America. If elected, Donald Trump would have been one of the first male presidents without political experience. I stayed up all night to watch the elections and woke up to the announcement that Donald Trump had won. This election has made America very divided as Hillary won the popular vote. I worry for my American friends because there are reports of racism, anti-protests, and a gray cloud over the country. Time will tell what is next for the USA. Jamaicans paid great attention to the USA because they rely on the country for support and trade. The world is sitting on the edge of their seats to see what will happen to America.

Jamaica is also holding their local elections in a couple weeks. Nomination day was on Friday with many individuals on the streets wearing colours of orange and green. We are told that they take it very seriously here and some parties will be very adamant about their voices. With all this action, I spent Friday bar hopping to release the stress and have some fun. I ended up seeing Oakbar, Cruz and Regency which all had a very elite night crowd. I am going to spend this weekend with some much needed R & R before the new week begins.

One Love,

Tara