To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

[Tropicana]

Re: To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">There is even a KFC on the main street of the small town we're from. </div></div>


Dem get KFC ah Kanada ???? </div></div>

JAMAICA!! I was born in JAMAICA!!

[Tropicana]

Re: To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: RichD</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tropicana</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Reached in my purse, no more film.

</div></div> film in 2007


</div></div>

Yep....I bought my first digital camera in Singapore in 2000. Never figured out how to use it. Now it's only good for a door stopper.
I bought another digital camera last year. Guess I had better figure out how to use it.

[britisha]

Re: To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tropicana</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: RichD</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tropicana</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Reached in my purse, no more film.

</div></div> film in 2007


</div></div>

Yep....I bought my first digital camera in Singapore in 2000. Never figured out how to use it. Now it's only good for a door stopper.
I bought another digital camera last year. Guess I had better figure out how to use it. </div></div>


Still use my cameras that use films bout 3 of them including a Yashica...great item...and mi hommuch digitals as well.

Hail up Tropi...Nice to see you stopping by and participating...


My reason for asking the initial question is to get a feel of whether people are just going by their imagination and memories of &quot;ole time days&quot; when they respond to some CURRENT ISSUES about Jamaica here.


The Jamaica one left even say ten years ago has changed in many ways.
Hi Tropi. gh

[britisha]

Re: To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I do know that the fear of violence has spread.. As much as I hate to contradict MGee did she notice the petrol station at Junction?????.. it is barred and yet 2 years back it was held at gun point.. driving back towards mandiville just past downs there is another petrol station... I had a conversation with my police man friend about an incident there.. I beleive last motnh there was a shooting in Black River.. last year the incident of the gun smuggling with the Cubans taking down a boat from STE that ran out of petrol and drifted into Cuban waters.. Tehre was a shooting I beleive last month in the treasure beach area.. Last year down Richpen there was the taxi driver shot....Last year too I beleive there was that take down of those gun men in treasure....

This not the corporate area this is STE.....And this is not all of the gun crime.. just what I am aware of.. My contention is that violence has long left where it could be ignored... It has now descended into gangs armed with high power weapons stealing cows with the polcie nowhere to be seen.. it is the middle class or any one with enough money behind bars...

Viokence is the first step to conflict resolution and the state is falling apart being one of the reason as people privitise justice and it has become acceptable.... But I am a pessimist and know too many bad people.. still.. here is a prime example...

<span style="font-weight: bold">BURNT alive! - Children, grandmother murdered in brutal attack
Published: Tuesday | January 27, 2009</span>


Daraine Luton, Staff Reporter

Aretha Smith, mother of the children killed, takes a drink of water as she attempts to calm herself.

ARETHA SMITH had not seen her children since December 21. She had got them ready, packed their clothes and took them from St Mary to Land Top, Port Morant, in St Thomas for them to spend Christmas with their grandmother, Angella Lynch.

Now, Smith will neither see nor hug them again. On Sunday night, two-year-old Niasha Cousins, five-year-old Thaila Cousins and three-year-old Jawara Cousins were burnt alive in a one-room board house in the eastern parish.

The children perished with their grandmother, who the police believe was shot by her attackers, who later set the house ablaze.

&quot;People try fi help dem, but di fire did too bad. Even if di fire brigade di deh next door, dem couldn't save dem,&quot; one resident said.

Smith wept while residents of Land Top, braving the heat of the midday sun, watched as investi-gators combed through the burnt-out rubble looking for clues that could help the police crack the case.

&quot;Mi head! Mi head a pound!&quot; Smith wept.

Jonathan Morrison, the superin-tendent in charge of the St Thomas police, told The Gleaner yesterday that the police were probing the incident as a murder and would be relying on supporting evidence to make an arrest.

&quot;There are leads, but it is going to rely heavily on persons being willing to come forward to give statements and also whatever forensic evidence we recover from the scene,&quot; Morrison told The Gleaner.

Morrison said the St Thomas police had not yet established a clear motive for the murder, but said &quot;it seems to be related to a long-standing dispute between Lynch and other persons&quot;.

Shooting

Police reports are that about 11 p.m. Sunday, a person or persons unknown, saturated Lynch's board house with a flammable liquid and then kicked open the door to her dwelling and opened fire at her. Subsequent to the shooting, the house was set on fire.

Lynch's common-law husband, Albert Scott, escaped, but Lynch and the three helpless children were burnt alive.

A sombre cloud sat atop the rural community yesterday but residents remained mum for the most part. Some of those who spoke told The Gleaner that the children could be heard crying for help even as the house was transformed into a fiery furnace.

Smith was inconsolable as she wept for her children. Grabbing on to the blouse of Ivoline Campbell, a family friend, Smith was still in denial as to the fate of her mother and children.

&quot;Mi want mi baby dem!&quot; Smith moaned, her voice now barely audible due to hours of crying.

&quot;Ivoline dem ova deh. Ivoline, carry mi guh a Niasha nuh, an Jawara and Thalia. Mi want mi baby dem,&quot; the mourning mother insisted as she gazed at her mother's burnt-out house.

Last conversation

One shopkeeper said that Thalia had purchased a single coil of mosquito destroyer from her just after dusk Sunday evening. It was the last time she saw her.

A few metres away, a resident reminisced on what was the last conversation he had had with the little girl he described as bright and lovely.

&quot;She hold mi hand and den she seh 'Lata'. A di last time dat mi si har, di last time mi hold har hand,&quot; the male resident said.

Ann-Marie Hibbert, Lynch's daughter, who is in an advanced state of pregnancy, could not contain her emotions. She told The Gleaner that her mother loved having her grandchildren around. Thalia and Jawara, she said, started school in St Thomas two weeks ago.

Previous occurrence

It is the second time in three years that residents of St Thomas were waking up to the horrific reality of children being slain in such a manner.

In February 2006, four children - nine-year-old Sean Chin Jr; Lloyd Marshall George McCool, three; Jihad George McCool, seven; Jesse O'Gilvie, nine, along with their mother, Patrice George-McCool, 28; and aunt, Terry-Ann Mohammed, 40, were murdered at Duhaney Park in the parish.

Jamaicans have been forced to cower in fear as the face of brazen criminality sweeps across the island, leaving no community unscathed.

More than 70 persons have been murdered in Jamaica since the start of the year. Saturday night, four persons were murdered in Hall's Delight, east rural St Andrew. Three persons were also killed in Grants Pen, St Andrew, on Sunday
</div></div>

So true Wallie.

See only a handful of Jamaicans responded...*chukkle**

[Wahalla]

Re: To the Jamaicans, when last have you been home?

There are times on here I feel the Jamaica I know and the Jamaica I lived is a completly imaginary..... I always felt an aura of violence uncertainity and insecurity is simply ignored.... Too often when violence happens it is made to seem that it is unusual.... Radom violence it seems has touched too few...or maybe they are inured to it..

Last year there was for instance an instant of a girl with whom I had a personal connection raped and killed.. There was a resolution through violence on the suspect.. It had been a particuylarly horrific incident. The comments on here struck me as if it was unusual. And the banality of sympathy seemed. Violent death is now part of our culutre and has been part for the last twenty odd years. Ignoring this aspect of our culure does not halp. It is neither acceptable nor is it right..

For the record it strikes me as if it does not matter that most of the victims are poor... Last week there was a grand headline that after 25 years they have finally invited members of the inner cities to the National Prayer breakfast... Does that seem logical ????

I cannot see myself living there and it is not the violence it is the bars on housess that I find unacceptable...