Tag: Jamaica

Raw Vegan Food: Beyond the Salad!

So I’ve been trying to change my eating habits. Yes…I still eat meat, just less of it and no processed meats. That means I’ve put down, for now at least, Beloved Bacon and Awesome Chorizo sausage. I’m in discovery mode where beans (all of them) are concerned, and different, delicious ways to prepare them. I’ve made lentils and brown rice with portobello mushrooms and green peppers cooked with fresh herbs in coconut milk. I’ve made a wicked white bean mash which comes together so nicely with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, shallots, lemon juice and fresh parsley. I’ve made a sugar free vinaigrette with red wine vinegar, virgin olive oil, dried Italian herb mix and fresh garlic with a pinch of salt. I don’t like my salads naked. I hate them naked. And I’m on the look out for different and interesting and of course delicious ways to cook, prepare and eat the rainbow.

So when I saw an article in one of the dailies speaking about the benefits of raw foods, I took note. I also took a picture of the section where it listed some places here on the Rock where one could explore this not-quite-yet-mainstream food niche.

Zoom in for a list of Raw Food Eateries in Jamaica

Imagine my glee when I googled a couple of these restaurants and found that they actually had an online presence that was current! Business places in Jamaica need to understand that without a current, valid on line presence they are possibly missing out on so many opportunities. It is a pleasure when a customer or potential customer can click and get location, opening hours, product listings, menus, prices and consumer feedback.

Side note: Last November I had to visit York, England for school. I invested quite a few hours researching on line where to to eat and drink in York (’cause my middle name is PLAN and because food is as important as school, right?) and complied a list complete with directions from my B&B, walking time, and the dish that I would eat at each location. I also knew what it would cost me. And so I, travelling as a single woman, first time visitor to York had a blast pub crawling, eating some awesomely delish food and sampling the local ales. 

And so I looked up a couple of the places mentioned in the article and was intrigued by what I read about “Mi Hungry“.  Their website described each dish and clearly stated cost. I mentioned it to a colleague of mine who is also trying to clean up her eating habits and she confirmed that she had eaten their food and recommended a couple of things to me. See why it’s good to chat and share and live out loud?

So today, I invited Miss World to accompany me there to have lunch after we shopped for groceries. She has quite an evolved palette and has a natural (inherited!) knack for blending and combining flavours so I knew she would be game and a worthy companion on this little adventure into the world of Raw Food.

So we reach on to Mi Hungry. It occupies a small corner in The Market Place, to the rear of the complex, but there are a few tables for whose who want to eat there.

Inside Mi Hungry

I knew exactly what we were going to try: the burger and the pizza. I know there are vegan purists who resent comparisons of their food to more traditional fare. People get upset at “tofu roast” and ” meatless curried chicken” and “turkey bacon”. Calm down. More of us eat pizza and burger than not, and if your food is that good and that good for you, then you should want to share and what better way to share than to relate it to the familiar. So I ordered our selections with confidence: one half Pleaza and one Nyam burger to be shared between us. Here’s how Mi Hungry describes them:

Pleaza (Pizza): A savory crust of seeds and grains crisply dehydrated and covered with our not-cheese made from sunflower seeds, and topped with chopped onions, pineapple, tomatoes, sweet pepper, lettuce, olives, and hot pepper if you want.

Nyam Burger: Not-cheese burger, within 2 tasty buns made from walnuts, filled with our signature house tomato sauce, onion rings, tomato, lettuce, sweet pepper.

Here’s how the pizza looked:

Fresh toppings, thin crispy crust, a decent enough portion for 2 of us. It was beautiful, almost a work of art and you got the sense that someone took the time to layer and construct this by hand. The veggies were chopped up small, very neat…not at all junky and coarse. I’m happy to report that the taste was equally good. There was enough salt, a cheesy taste and enough pepper that supported an almost perfect blending of the flavours of these fresh toppings. The onion did not overpower anything, Praise Jah. The pineapple hovered underneath it all lending a delicate sweetness and her distinctive flavour that blended oh so well with the fresh tomato and sweet peppers. It was delicious.

Miss World declared the Pleaza her favourite. And while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I will most certainly get the Nyam Burger again! The “buns” were chewy and savoury and the inclusions fresh, delicious, cheesy and neatly bound together with their tomato sauce. Throughout both the Pleaza and and Nyam Burger, there was a very faint hint of fresh lime juice. Yum!  Note: nothing is cooked and no flour or sugar are added.

The owner is the chef, a quiet, slender Rasta man, who was reluctant to chat, but very pleasant and gracious when I insisted on complimenting him in person. He makes the magic happen behind this mesh enclosed space.

The floor manager, another Rasta man, was very engaging. I didn’t give him a chance, really. I asked him if his diet consisted of raw foods only. He quickly replied: “No way! Mi love my ital stew…cook down!” So I, emboldened by his declaration took faas, and asked him if he ate meat. “NO!” he said. “Mi stop eat dat from di 60s.” He shared that he didn’t eat fish and when I enquired of his blood pressure and cholesterol he shrugged and said: “Dem nuh mussi fine.”
We washed this down with deliciously cold, natural, sweet coconut water. Everything cost us JD1150.00 (approx USD 10.00). We left full and satisfied, not stuffed and heavy, and 3 hours later we’re not yet hungry. I understand that a body full of nutrients rather than calories will feel fuller longer.
Listen y’all, I have no plans at this time for going vegan or even raw food vegan. What I am is an unapologetic lover of good food…all good food. I derive pleasure from food. Seriously. These raw food offerings were delicious and I will have them again. Raw vegan fare is way more than a salad. Sure, I will continue to be more deliberate about what I put into my mouth and I will schedule indulgent experiences from time to time. Food fi nyam!

Transformation through Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Israel

Twenty two years ago, while a post graduate student in the Botany Department of the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, I did a two month course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot campus. Those were the glory days when USAID money flowed freely through the Jamaica Agricultural Development Foundation, with the aim of creating a cadre of agricultural scientists who could and would tackle Jamaica’s specific agricultural problems head on. I was one of several students who benefited from this funding. We pursued post graduate degrees in agriculture, engaged in on-farm research and solved real life problems.The Israeli government partnered with JADF in sponsoring our participation in this sub tropical horticulture course.
I was struck first of all by the aggression of the Israeli nationals on the El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv. They were noisy and boisterous and the Hasidic Jews on the flight had no problem congregating towards the rear of the aircraft to say prayers at the appointed time. Flight attendants were hard pressed to maintain order. I remember chuckling to my then 24 year old self at the realization that there were people that matched the aggression of Jamaicans.
The second thing that struck me during my stay in Israel was the obvious unity among the Israelis. The janitor who cleaned the labs was treated with the same respect as the professors churning out scientific breakthroughs, and both groups treated each other with respect. The sight of professors tutoring undergraduate students in the university cafeteria was a common one, very different from my own experience at UWI. Laboratories, classrooms and enclaves were constantly abuzz with activity and vigorous debate.  Knowledge was freely shared.
The other thing that impressed me, and that I still reference to this day, was Israel’s approach to problem solving. Israel is not a nation blessed with fertile arable land and to say that water supply is a challenge is perhaps an understatement. Yet they are the source of many agricultural breakthroughs today.  Think drip irrigation… placing water precisely at the root zone, adding nutrients to said water, enabled crop production on the most marginal of land. It was amazing to drive through the desert and see swatches of green springing up. This was problem solving at its best! How to farm in the desert? Don’t bring more water: use less more efficiently!
Israel produced temperate fruit crops like apples and pears right there in the desert. This allowed them to capitalize on the European markets that are typically out of stock of these products when traditional producers shut down during the winter periods. Israel could have accepted at face value that these crops could not be grown in their conditions because after all, there is a huge and obvious difference between Israel’s climate and that of the temperate producers. But not being satisfied with a simple, obvious answer, Israeli scientists dug deeper and determined that the bud break seen post winter in temperate climes is not as a result of weeks of subzero temperatures, but rather exposure for a specific, very narrow band of time to these temperatures and light conditions. They simulated these conditions on potted apple and pear trees in refrigerated containers and bud break ensued as they knew it would. Thereafter, it became a simple matter to move them to open fields in the desert, feeding and watering them via drip irrigation (what else?) and making a ton of money via elegant, empirical problem solving
So fast forward 22 years to today. We were bemoaning the sad state that Jamaica finds itself in today, where passing IMF tests has superseded our own vision for ourselves and our nation. We were bemoaning the absence of hope and opportunity for our children. We were bemoaning the apparent levels of corruption that compromise decision making and further impoverish us as a nation.  We bemoaned the apparent absence of leadership able to transform our circumstances.  I posited a model for economic development that called for community based enterprises to rise up, provide said leadership, generate economic activity and empower and enrich Jamaica one community at a time. This can only happen through an innovative, pragmatic approach to problem solving.
My father and sister recommended that I read Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (Senor and Singer, 2011). Suspend your politics for a moment and consider the facts. Israel is a nation that was birthed only in 1948, described by Shimon Peres, former leader of Israel, as “a poor people coming home to a poor land”.  Israel’s only capital was its human capital. They were surrounded by their enemies. They faced numerous economic and political embargoes. Yet still Israel today boasts a phenomenal number of start-ups. They are undisputed leaders in the high tech world that drives product development and commerce today. The book explained the observations that I made two decades earlier.  Senor and Singer proffered a number of reasonable questions aimed at uncovering the reasons for Israel’s relative success: did Israel’s adversity, like necessity, breed inventiveness? Did Israel have more talented people than any other country in the world? Perhaps it was the moderating impact of their military, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). But other countries have faced adversity, have well developed militaries and possess any number of talents citizens.  Through a number of well documented examples, the authors offered the following as reasons for Israel’s entrepreneurial and innovative successes: tenacity, insatiable questioning of authority (I called it aggression) determined informality (remember the professors and students, ancillary workers and academic staff?) a unique attitude towards failure and risk, teamwork and a mission orientation, and cross disciplinary creativity. 
I have tried to identify parallels between Jamaica and Israel, seeking to identify jump off points for us as far as revving up entrepreurship and innovation are concerned. I will touch on the main issues I think that explain why we, unlike Israel, have not developed since coming into our own nationhood in 1962. I dare you to challenge that last statement by the way… we are NOT better off today than we were in 1962. 
 Jamaica exhibits a cultural paradigm that cuts across public and private sectors that I refer to as “a preference for form over substance”. The “right way” seems to be more important than the “right thing”. The result is that we waste time ensuring that we don’t cause offence and we appease the right people at the expense of true problem solving.  Committees are formed and meetings are held and announcements are made and this is all applauded even when there is no transformation resulting from these activities…form over substance. Perhaps, per Senor and Singer, we should reframe our interpretation of aggression as assertiveness rather than insolence, and instead of a label of insubordination, look at it as critical, independent thinking. 
Consider too how we treat failure and our approach to risk management. Every military exercise carried out by the IDF is followed by the all important de-briefing. Here is where actions and outcomes are dissected in order to extract those critical learning necessary to raise the bar the next time round. What I observe in the public sector is an entire absence of tracking against goals, and the commensurate analysis that should be done to understand the present state against a desired state. The only meaningful tracking of government performance against stated goals, is a private sector led monitoring of performance against the IMF agenda. Where is Vision 2030 today? My own experiences suggest that the very opposite happens in some private sector settings today. There is goal setting and tracking of performance against these objectives. But a so called undesirable outcome is dealt with by a change of personnel and quiet abandonment of the original plan rather than an empirical understanding of the failure so as to get it right the next time around.  There is very little understanding and appreciation for so-called “smart failures”.
I still struggle with exactly how my (admittedly partially thought through) community based model for development will lift us from our current quagmire. Sure, private enterprises can create internal cultures that run counter to national cultural paradigms of how we perceive authority, how authority perceives itself, form over substance and so on. And certainly, the national benefits to be derived from a private sector which successfully develops an entrepreneurial and innovative culture go without saying.  But I suspect that based on where we are today, there is a critical role that state leadership must play.  You see, Israel had the direct involvement of the state from the very beginning in terms of setting policy and providing funding and setting the direction.  Israel benefited from the pragmatism of Ben-Gurion in the early days, and later on from the tenacity and can (must) do attitude of subsequent leaders. Jamaica, unlike Israel, is blessed with an abundance of natural resources…we have fertile soil, water sources, and raw materials with which to create prosperity as long as we stop abusing our environment. We have a naturally feisty people, but over the years, a culture of patronage and a swapping of colonial subjugation for home grown, ineffective (and I’m being kind here) leadership have failed to leverage our natural inclination to buck the status quo.

Is it beyond us, is it too late for Jamaica to become an entrepreneurial, innovative country and reverse our current trajectory?

The Next Willing Nigger.

Let me definitively state from the outset: I am going to use the word “nigger” throughout this piece. I know it offends the sensibilities of some. Oprah for one has banned the use of “nigger” for understandable reasons: “You can’t be my friend and use the N word.” Fair enough.  That’s her choice.  Let me also state that I am deliberately using “nigger” and not “nigga”.  Recently Rachel Jeantel, of the Trayvon Martin murder case fame, took Don Lemon of CNN to school with respect to the use of the work “nigger” vs “nigga”. Jeantel clarifies that “nigga” is an affectionate greeting between black youth, rather like “dawg” and is acceptable in today’s culture.  “Nigger” remains a slur word, most offensive when used by anyone other than a black person. I am using “nigger” today as a descriptor of an attitude, a mental and emotional stance that some black people adopt as they navigate life.  In my definition, it is not in any way a complimentary descriptor…without apology.  A la Chris Rock (from Rock This) I am seeking to differentiate between black people and niggers. Rock sees “niggers” as a subset of the black community, a group he opines that glorifies ignorance and sloth and brags about fulfilling any minor responsibility.
Now please turn your mind to the character of Stephen, in Quentin Tarantino’s  Django Unchained. The movie is not without controversy, and again, understandably so. Full disclosure: I enjoyed it immensely!  I laughed at all the politically incorrect moments (remember the Klan portrayal with the pillow cases that had the eyes misaligned so the wretches couldn’t see properly?) and left the cinema having been thoroughly entertained.  But the character that stood out for me wasn’t Django, that fantasy composite of avenging negro, whipping the white slavers into submission.  It wasn’t the Oscar winning Dr. King Shultz.  It wasn’t Kerry Washington’s Broomhilda, trembling lower lip and all. Stephen, the house slave, played brilliantly by Samuel L. Jackson stayed with me long after the movie ended.  I despised him from start to finish.  His instant resentment of the free black man Django was the prelude to exploration of his craven and yes, niggardly character so perfectly portrayed by Jackson.   
Stephen was the house slave who had served the senior slaver, Mr. Candie and was now head cook and bottle washer on the plantation run by the junior Mr. Candie.  He managed to maintain a servile posture (limp and shuffle intact) while exerting his seniority, even as a slave, by summoning Mr. Candie to the library to discuss his doubts as to the true intent of Django and Dr. King Shultz.  He freely expressed his dismay when Monsieur Candie communicated his intent to have the free black man, Django sleep in the Great House:
Calvin Candie: Well, good. They’re spending the night. Go open the guest bedrooms and get two ready. 
Stephen: [mortified] He gawn stay in the Big House? 
Calvin Candie: Stephen. He’s a slaver. It’s different. 
Stephen: In the Big House? 
Calvin Candie: Well, you got a problem with that? 
Stephen: Aw, naw, naw. I ain’t got no problem with it. If you ain’t got no problem with burnin’ the bed, the sheets, the pillowcase, and everything else when this black-ass motherfucker’s gone!  
It was Stephen, the Head Nigger in Charge who spotted the vulnerability in the situation when he sensed that Django knew Broomhilda, another female house slave and somehow knew that he was there to rescue her (in fact: Broomhilda was Django’s wife, and she was the reason why he came to Candie Land).  Stephen sensed that weakness, if you will, and alerted Monsieur Candie and the script flipped from there.  A free, independent black man somehow threatened the existence and identity of this Senior Slave and in order for this comfortable, albeit far from optimal, status quo to be maintained, the Head Nigger in Charge felt obliged to get rid of this affront to his own existence. You see, the primary objective of the Next Willing Nigger is for him to gain entry to the Great House, to be recognized by those in power, to be identified amongst those he perceives as important, to the exclusion of anyone else.  His aim is not independence. Rather, his aim is to profile alongside those who rule. 
Dr. King Shultz was killed and Django was captured, tortured for a bit by said HNIC, and sold off to work in mines forever and ever amen.  Of course, you know how the story ends.  Django escapes  his captors,  goes back and kills a couple white men, rescues his wife and naturally, confronts Stephen before ending his life on earth:

Stephen: [singing] In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore… 
[continues signing] 
Stephen: In the sweet… 
Django: [Django appears and starts singing] By and by… Ohhhhhh! 
[Stephen, Miss Lara and everybody else in the room jerks up to Django, who is standing on the top balcony lighting candles] 
Django: Ya’ll gonna be together with Calvin in the “bye-and-bye…” 
[Django pauses as Billy Crash walks up] 
Django: … just a bit sooner than ya’ll was expecting! 
When Stephen realizes that the jig is up, miraculously, his limp and shuffle disappear.  He cusses Django out. He rails some more. Even when Django kneecaps him, in the midst of his pain and impaired state of being, that HNIC chooses to berate Django, evidence of his resentment of the free black man standing proud and undefeated before him.

Here we are, 52  years after independence from Britain. And things are not good.  The IMF is now our economic master. We glory in “passing their tests” because to fail will mean that New Massa won’t dispense money and we won’t be able to handle our affairs.  We have set aside our own vision for ourselves, our Vision 2030 and all attention is placed on our performance with respect to New Massa’s agenda.  We are smack dab in the middle of an environmental crisis. Raw sewage in our streets and in our seas. gullies chock full of plastic waste, uncollected solid waste is a reality in communities across the island. One may argue that our national debt, high crime, high unemployment, widespread poverty, the decline in our public education and health systems is as a result of poor leadership.  Dig deeper.  What does poor leadership really mean? Why do we have it? We took charge of this island in 1962 with basic infrastructure and systems of governance in place. Fast forward to 2014. Stop and think.  “It pap dung” would be a fair assessment.  But to simply explain our failure away by “poor leadership” doesn’t offer a precise enough diagnosis. “Political corruption” as an answer gets us closer to a more accurate diagnosis.  But what is the motivation that drives our leadership to make decisions that enrich them at the expense of Jamaica’s development? That motivation is, simply put, part of the Next Willing Nigger construct.      

Think of that promising young politician who comes to prominence on a ticket of change.  He promises to operate differently, to emphasise education and empowerment of the next generation and comes up smack dab against “The Way We Do Things Around Here.”  The Old Guard puts him in his place, and because his desire to be part of the Great House establishment supercedes his articulated desire for change, he becomes the Next Willing Nigger and plays ball with the Old Guard. Empowerment of the next generation dies as he charts a certain course towards the Great House.
Think of how decisions are made in this country, a nation in the throes of economic hardship.  Brand new SUVs are procured for representatives of the political hierarchy, while schools lack water tanks, fire engines are absent in key areas, pit latrines are the status quo in many rural schools and the elevators in the KPH remain in need of repair.  The Next Willing Niggers are all standing in line to enrobe themselves in the trappings of the Master en route to the Great House.

Think about this some more: we see Stephens everywhere on this island, every day of life.
Think of that co-worker who refuses to be guided by principle and instead chooses how he dispenses discipline, the final decision depending on who the subject is.  That over-riding dimension of “loyalty” instead of “principle” informs every single decision. The result is a promotion of mediocrity in an effort to remain in the good books of the perceived power brokers in the organisation.  That Next Willing Nigger now rests easy in the C-suite. Well done.
Prominent dailies are grabbed up and even that day’s headlines play second fiddle as readers turn eagerly to see the Beautiful People captured on page 2, living The Dream. Oppressive car loans allow the Next Willing Nigger to sport the latest luxury model, even though he parks it in a rented house, simply keeping up the appearances that he is certain will take him into the Great House.

As long as the Next Willing Nigger exists, as long as a system which rewards the Next Willing Nigger exists, those who operate on Principle will forever be marginalized, and Jamaica will never realize its full potential.

Vision 2030 what’s the latest?

LETTER PUBLISHED IN TODAY’S OBSERVER
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/What-has-become-of-Vision-2030-_17571027

Dear Editor,
I encourage Jamaicans everywhere to have a look at Vision 2030. It is easily accessed online at http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/.
Vision 2030 has as its central aim, the vision of “making Jamaica the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business”. Vision 2030 is the result of true consensus across political divides and various civil interest groups and, to my mind, is truly something that all Jamaicans everywhere can embrace. It is for and about Jamaica and Jamaicans.
Making Jamaica the place of choice to live, work and raise families is defined via a series of easy-to-understand goals. We are able to know if goals are being realised by more detailed outcomes that are assigned to each goal. And the document goes even further than merely listing goals and outcomes. It goes into some detail on how these goals will be achieved by assigning what I would call “to-dos”, specific initiatives, which, if implemented, will result in the stated outcomes.
Vision 2030 was launched in 2009. The same online link mentioned earlier points us to how we are tracking against the goals. Here’s the issue: The progress tracker takes us only as far as 2011. How have we been doing since 2011? Is Vision 2030 regarded by the present Administration as the national plan for moving us towards developed country status by 2030?
Richard Byles and the Economic Programme Oversight Committee have been doing a great job of monitoring Jamaica’s performance against International Monetary Fund (IMF) targets. Madame Lagarde said as much in her recent visit to the island. No doubt the IMF intervention in our affairs, at our behest, has been inevitable. Yet, 52 years post-Independence, I can’t help feeling let down that we monitor with such alacrity an agenda imposed on us, and we are here because of how we have (mis)managed our own affairs.
But monitoring our performance against an IMF agenda does not mean that we should discard Vision 2030. I would like to hear from the present Administration if Vision 2030 informs our sectoral strategies. I would like to hear from the PIOJ how we have been tracking in terms of the Vision 2030 goals since 2011.
Kelly McIntosh
kkmac218@gmail.com

can’t have a clean country without the state playing its role!!!

LETTER OF THE DAY PUBLISHED IN THE GLEANER SEPT 12 2014
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140912/letters/letters1.html

THE EDITOR, Sir: The garbage that is piling up, certainly around Kingston and St Andrew, is most certainly contributing to the heavy mosquito infestation we are currently experiencing and the spread of what is suspected to be the chikungunya virus.
Although not being reported by the authorities, and although not definitively confirmed by blood tests (these tests are done in Trinidad and the results are available after three weeks), there is strong anecdotal evidence of many persons coming down with chikungunya-like symptoms, including several of my own co-workers and their children.
No doubt, we as people have poor solid-waste management habits. We see people throwing plastic bottles out of car windows and people stopping along lonely suburban roads in the hills of St Andrew to dump full bags of garbage. Check out the roads and sidewalks the morning after any community dance: full of litter.
After a good shower of rain, our gullies become a raging torrent of muddy water with waves of garbage, the indisputable evidence of our careless and nasty solid-waste management practices and our wanton disregard for the environment.
Some say a public-education campaign is in order right now to change this nasty paradigm. There are calls for citizens to take personal responsibility as far as their own practices in this regard are concerned. But these efforts cannot and will not succeed without the active participation of the State.
What happens when garbage goes uncollected for more than a week? The householder has sorted and bagged and stocked his waste in receptacles for the NSWMA truck to pick up and dispose of. After a week, these receptacles become full and animals get at it. Rodents have a field day in it. It rains (hallelujah!) and water settles in the heaps that are forming. More days pass and no collection occurs. More waste is generated.
What are the options?
What is this well-informed citizen to do now? What is this responsible, not-inherently nasty taxpayer to do now? Carry the garbage in her car to where? To the dangerous Riverton City dump? What if she doesn’t drive? What then are our options in the face of uncollected garbage? Incur the expense to pay a private service, this after paying our taxes on our income and on our expenditure?
We need published garbage collection schedules for every community, that are actually adhered to. Where garbage collection cannot be done at least once per week, the NSWMA must go back to providing public skips where citizens can dispose of their waste. This is where public-education campaigns can be useful in terms of guiding the efficient, proper use of public dumping sites.
The citizens cannot do this alone. The State MUST prioritise good solid-waste management or face the inevitable outcomes of a nasty country and pay the price of rodent infestations and mosquito-borne diseases.
KELLY MCINTOSH
kkmac218@gmail.com

Productivity in Jamaica…we aren’t inherently lazy.

PUBLISHED IN THE GLEANER SEPT 14 2014
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140914/focus/focus6.html

Kelly McIntosh, Guest Columnist
“Hard work they had left behind with slavery.” These were the words of no less a person than former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man credited with transforming the fortunes and future of tiny Singapore. He made this observation about us as a people, during a visit to our island back in 1975.
We have heard time and again that Jamaica’s problem is low productivity, a sentiment underscored by a now well-known statement made popular on talk radio some years ago: “One Chiney can do five smaddy wuk.”
Productivity is defined as the effective and efficient use of resources (labour, capital, material, energy) in the production and supply of quality goods or services. So essentially, productivity measures how well we convert our resources into goods or services.
The Jamaica Productivity Summary Report 1972-2007 paints a damning picture of productivity in Jamaica. Apparently, labour productivity in Jamaica has been declining at an average annual rate of 1.3 per cent over the period 1973-2007. This is made worse by the reality that during 2003-2007, the decline increased to 1.8 per cent per year.
When we compare our situation to our Caribbean neighbours, it gets even worse. Over the same period, Trinidad & Tobago saw its labour productivity increase by an average of 1.5 per cent per year. By 2007, the productivity of a St Lucian worker was 1.6 times that of a Jamaican worker. The report ended with a very gloomy forecast of decreasing productivity going forward in Jamaica.
So was Lee Kuan Yew right? Did the talk-show caller speak truth? And what do the labour-productivity numbers really mean? Consider some other numbers as we seek to wrap our heads around this issue of productivity. The Economic and Social Survey of Jamaica 2013 shows that the number of reported industrial disputes increased in 2012 by 33 per cent. In 2012, the manufacturing sector reported the greatest number of man days lost because of industrial disputes relative to other sectors.
Turn your attention now to remittances. Gross remittance inflows in April 2014 were US$183.3 million, the highest on record. To further put the importance of remittances into perspective, consider that in 2011 they contributed 15 per cent to GDP, compared to tourism, which contributed under 10 per cent to GDP. These remittances, by and large, come from Jamaicans working overseas, especially in the USA.
So far, I’ve cited declined productivity numbers, drawn attention to our industrial relations climate, and cited the importance of money, which is generated outside of Jamaica, by Jamaicans and sent back to the island – three seemingly disparate issues. I now turn my mind to some personal observations that I will seek to link to productivity statistics, industrial relations climate and remittance inflows.
THE HANDCART LADY ON CHRISTMAS EVE
I remember one Christmas Eve I was making my way home in heavy traffic with my children. It was after 7 p.m. The light had just changed to green. Slowly making her way across the road, preventing me from moving on was a woman pushing a heavily laden cart with produce. She strained and pushed wearily, obviously heading home from selling all day. I wonder what conclusions we can draw about productivity in this instance.
CLEANING UP WINNIFRED BEACH
We were at Winnifred Beach in Portland two weeks ago. It was a Tuesday and very few people were there. We drove up and cautiously exited the vehicle. No one rushed to us, trying to hustle us for money. We walked from food stall to food stall, with no one harassing us, eventually made our dining decision and went to wait on the beach itself. A man and a woman were silently working, raking up seaweed, boxing it, and disposing of it some metres away. They were sweating in the Portland sun.
I knew that this was a public beach, not yet controlled by UDC, and I could stand it no longer. I went up to the man and asked him: “Who is paying you to clean up the beach?” He replied with quiet dignity: “We make our living on this beach, and it is therefore our responsibility to keep it clean.” I wonder what conclusions we can draw about productivity in this instance.
BOWDEN PEN FARMERS’ ASSOCIATION
We’re still in the parish of Portland. But now we’ve ascended into the interior of the parish, up in the John Crow Mountains. There is an eco-tourism outfit called Ambasabeth Cabins. Ambasabeth is 100 per cent powered by the sun, and watered from nearby rivers. Income is supplemented from farming, mostly ginger. The association is a community group, a cooperative that is largely run by women, complete with a mission and vision, supported with a 10-year plan. Formal management meetings are held, books are maintained, plans are formulated, implemented and reviewed. What conclusions can we draw about productivity in this instance?
LINKING IT ALL TO PRODUCTIVITY
The numbers indicate that productivity in Jamaica is indeed low. Yet Jamaicans are able to, in another context, generate income, live overseas from that income, and still send part of that income back to Jamaica, such that these inflows sent from overseas are the single largest contributor to our GDP. Why is that?
There are examples of small groups of people and select individuals in the island who exhibit a strong work ethic and who make a living. What makes these people different from their brothers and sisters who operate in a more formal, corporate or production setting in terms of their attitude and output?
Perhaps there is something about our Jamaican context that does not encourage productivity. Perhaps the ways that we have chosen to reward and incentivise labour, and manage labour relations in industry, do not encourage productivity. It is not coincidental that as labour productivity in Jamaica declined, so too did the real wage of workers in Jamaica (it fell by 1.2% between 1973 and 2007).
Basing the success of any enterprise on the inherent goodness and morality of the individual is not as sensible as basing success on sound and robust policies, systems and procedures. So in formal work settings where the worker knows that employers will find it difficult to sanction for lateness, absenteeism and so on, how will overall productivity be affected? What is the incentive for the worker to turn up and show up on any given day?
In private enterprise, when incentive schemes do not exist, and where they do exist on paper, do not in reality incentivise performance, how will this affect productivity?
We all know that the same worker that was repeatedly late for one job here in Jamaica will go overseas and show up on time for not one, but two and sometimes three jobs! The context overseas does not tolerate lateness and the worker knows this and conforms.
The citizens on Winnifred Beach have concluded that they benefit directly from having a clean beach. Patrons enjoying a clean beach environment will hang out there and more than likely buy food and drinks from them. There is an incentive that redounds directly to them if they keep the beach clean.
The Bowden Pen Farmers’ Association has discovered the dignity and independence that comes with owning and controlling the means of their subsistence. Largely independent of the system and the largesse of politicians, these farming folk plan and produce because they have discovered that their prosperity is directly proportional to the effort they put in.
The driving motivation behind Jamaicans generating money overseas, behind the workers on Winnifred Beach and behind the members of the Bowden Pen association is an inherent belief in the value of work, illustrated by the woman pushing the handcart on Christmas Eve.
Perhaps we could change the productivity metrics by changing the Jamaican context to one that leverages our natural propensity for work by incentivising and rewarding labour, while making no excuse for indiscipline. Shifting the paradigm in Jamaica to one which rewards productivity and sanctions indiscipline can happen, but this comes through effective leadership having a vision of what a productive Jamaica actually looks like, modelling the appropriate behaviours, and implementing sound public policy in support of this vision of a new Jamaica.
Kelly McIntosh is operations manager of a major food-export company. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and kkmac218@gmail.com. Follow Kelly’s blog at kellykatharin.blogspot.com.

Principle of Legitimacy and Crime Fighting in Jamaica

PUBLISHED IN THE GLEANER AUG  17 2014
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140817/cleisure/cleisure2.html

Kelly McIntosh, Contributor
We have been doing the same thing as it relates to ‘the fight against crime’ and expecting a different result for a few decades now. The latest iteration, the latest variation on the same tired theme, is a rehash of a unit formed in 2012 to ‘fight crime’.
The new MOCA is now a merger of the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Anti-Corruption Branch and the former Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Task Force. Yawn. We’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Successive administrations have resorted to the time-worn tactic of creating/renaming a ‘special task force’ or creating/renaming a new ‘squad’ when their backs are against the wall for their abject failure to create a safe environment for the citizens of Jamaica.
Let’s go back just a little, shall we. We have had Echo Squad (1976), Ranger Squad (1980), Eradication Squad (1980), Area Four Task Force (1986), Operation Ardent (1992), ACID, shortly renamed SACTF (1993), Operation Justice (1995), Operation Dovetail (1997), Organised Crime Unit (1998), Operation Intrepid (1999), Crime Management Unit (2000), Organised Crime Investigation Division (2003), Operation Kingfish (2004) and Operation Resilience (2013).
At the beginning of 2014, National Security Minister Peter Bunting announced his plans for adding resources to this ‘fight against crime’: more boots on the ground, more vehicles, and new legislation to ‘get the bad guys’. I’m stifling yet another yawn. But try as I might, I cannot continue to merely exist, seeking to protect my psyche from the constant bombardment of warmed-up dishes of yesterday and grand announcements.
Has it not occurred to those tasked with the responsibility of leading us, of protecting us, of serving us that they have failed? That this ‘strategy’ of announcements and task forces and squads has yielded nothing? Have they not stopped to consider that perhaps their philosophical framework needs to be challenged at the very least and most likely discarded?
How successful has this approach of ‘getting tough on crime’ by way of a bigger, better squad/task force been? Look at the murder statistics! In spite of more than one dozen task forces/squads since the 1970s, this little island at the end of 2013 was declared in a UNODC report as having the sixth highest homicide rate in the world.
But let’s go back again, shall we, to track our progress on the road to this dubious honour: 1972: 152 murders, 1980: 899 murders, 1990: 543 murders, 2000: 887 murders, 2010: 1,428 murders, 2013: 1,200 murders. The 2013 murders represented a nine per cent increase over 2012 murders. Yes, the minister has been quick to point out that at the end of 2013, shooting was down by one per cent, rape was down by 16 per cent, and aggravated assault by 14 per cent. Only that persistent, niggling little metric, murders, was up.
Principle of legitimacy
So I return to the need for a new philosophical framework. In his most recent book (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants), Malcolm Gladwell outlines the ‘principle of legitimacy’ and how it applies to effectively dealing with crime and insurgency. He speaks about the three-decade-long unrest in Northern Ireland, despite more and more force being added to quell the situation there. He speaks of the tome Rebellion and Authority by Leites and Wolf (1970), which has served as the template for many governments and administrations, essentially recommending the addition of resources and coming down hard and with evident power and authority against those who dare to flout the so called rule of law. Leites and Wolf’s philosophy served as the template for the terms of engagement of the USA in Vietnam. We know how that worked for them.
The principle of legitimacy may seem counterintuitive at first glance, as its focus is not ‘how can I clamp down’ in the face of rebellion and antisocial activity. Gladwell states that when people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters first and foremost how they behave. Jamaica has been seeking to fight crime per the tenets of Leites and Wolf: more resources, more force, and more show of force.
It simply has not worked. It makes sense, therefore, to consider changing the philosophy that guides strategy. This theoretical framework, the principle of legitimacy, holds that desired behaviours will result when three conditions are met. First, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice. Second, the law has to be predictable; consequences must be the same today, yesterday and forever despite who the lawbreaker is. And last, authority has to be fair – one group cannot be treated differently from another.
Think about your own effort as a parent to instill order in the home: chaos will reign if you punish the same infraction one way today, and ignore it tomorrow. Chaos will reign if you punish Child 1 but turn a blind eye to Child 2 who disobeys. And chaos will certainly reign if the children feel as if they don’t have a voice. The minute you turn your back, they will seek to give vent to any and every desire they have, like watching a forbidden show, or sneaking candy when they know they’re not to, or hiding to go online in spite of your instructions to the contrary.
Brooklyn example
Gladwell goes on to illustrate how using the principle of legitimacy to influence policing strategy in Brownsville, Brooklyn, resulted in a sustained fall in robberies in that town between 2003 and 2006. The police there recognised that they were seen as the enemy and deliberately set out to demonstrate in tangible ways that they were interested in the community (youth programmes, inserting themselves in family life, consistently and fairly applying sanctions) and not merely interested in simply laying down the law. Gladwell summed it up nicely: When the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it doesn’t produce obedience. It produces the opposite: backlash.
What have we to lose in considering this philosophical framework in the ‘fight against crime’? Do the Government and police force exhibit legitimacy? Does every Jamaican feel as if they have a voice? Scenes of poor, black people holding placards and blocking roads demanding justice keep looping in my mind – different district, always the same demographic, same plea.
Is the law predictable? Does every spliff smoker fear being arrested and jailed and possibly dying at the end of the day? It seems to me that laws are sometimes used as a tool of selective oppression, an instrument used to capture and condemn subjectively per the whim/agenda of the law enforcers. Are our authorities seen to be fair? Whether or not so-called police death squads really exist, it is a matter of record that extrajudicial killings in Jamaica are alarmingly high. In 2012, 219 Jamaicans were killed by the police, nine more than the 210 killed by the police in 2011. And in 2013, 245 Jamaicans were killed by police.
Police abuse
Think about reported beatings and verbal abuse at the hands of the police, and even death of persons in police custody. Hark back to the case of Agana Barrett in 1992 who died of suffocation in the Constant Spring lock-up after being crammed into a small cell with 16 other men. It took the State 11 years to award his mother $3.5m.
Fast-forward to 2014 where Mario Deane was arrested and taken into custody for possession of a ganja spliff. He died days later as a result of the beating he experienced while in the custody of the police. It took six days after Mario’s death for the personnel on duty to be interdicted. Can our authorities really be deemed legitimate?
I implore our Government and our police force to challenge their current assumptions about what it will take to fight crime in light of past actions and past results and this very compelling principle of legitimacy put forward by Gladwell. For if Mr Gladwell is indeed correct, continuing along the present trajectory of simply a greater show of force in the absence of an engaged citizenry, and fair and predictable law enforcement, will result in only one certain outcome.
Kelly McIntosh is operations manager of a major food-export company. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and kkmac218@gmail.com. Follow Kelly’s blog at kellykatharin.blogspot.com.

Negril’s 7 Mile Beach… here today, gone tomorrow… or not…

About a year ago, I did a post speaking to beach erosion in Negril.  Read it here.  That post had pictures of a severely eroded shoreline right by Negril Tree House Resort, Negril, Jamaica.  I took those pics April 2013.  In March 2014 we returned to Negril Tree House resort and I noticed something different.  Where water once lapped up against the bar, there was solid at least 25 feet of powdery, white, gorgeous Negril sand.  The beach appeared to have magically extended.  Naturally, I started to ask questions of the staff.

“De sea did tek it weh, and it gi we back now”.

“A so it go enuh…give and take”.

So there was no addition of sand?  No one came and dumped sand here to reconstruct the beach?”

*laughing* “Noooo, Man…a so it go.  It just come back so.”

There’s the bar in the back ground…see how much sand now between bar and sea

That low concrete ridge is where the sea used to lap up against…only glorious sand now

No sea encroaching here anymore….at least a brand new 25′ of white sand

Ok, then.  I really want to understand what is happening here.  This last week, Negril has been very topical in the news. This commentary in the Sunday Gleaner of May 5 gives a useful summary and perspective I think.

And you know my  love-affair with that piece of Paradise that was simply gifted by God to us. We didn’t have to buy it. We didn’t have to make it.  All we are asked to do is two things: enjoy it and take care of it.

I already enjoy it. Please help me understand what is happening so I can do my part to take care of it.

Rasta is still a problem in 2014 Jamaica?

Rasta is still a problem in Jamaica? In 2014? Really? Here’s why I ask this…
Two weeks ago I was with a small group of third graders at my church’s learning centre where I volunteer. We were doing reading comprehension.  The passage under review was a story about a little girl who hated school because she had no friends.  The story went on to recount how she found another little girl who looked lonely at play time and how she struck up the courage to make friends with her and they all lived happily ever after.  Of course, we discussed the story and we had lively discussion, answering questions and rendering opinions about play time, friends and school. Much to their dismay, I then asked them to write a short story about what happens at  their own schools at break time. There were groans and moans: “me cyan write no story, Miss”. “How much sentence mek up a story, Miss?”  “Nutten nuh gwaan a fi mi school at breaktime, Miss”.  I answered every single question: “Yes you can write a story”.  “I will accept a 6 sentence story”.  “Use your imagination.  Write down what you would like to have happen at breaktime”.  Once they started, they couldn’t stop!  I helped with spelling and punctuation, but the ideas were all theirs. 
There’s a little boy in the class who I fell in love with from Day 1.  I will refer to him as Kimani.  That’s not his real name.  He is tiny for his age, has smooth black skin, and dread locks down to his shoulder.  Sometimes he lets them out.  Sometimes they’re in a neat ponytail.  He can read well.  He is lively. He dances like James Brown. Sometimes he looks sad though.  Sometimes he gets real quiet and doesn’t talk.  Sometimes he looks angry.  He always asks quietly if there is any extra food that he can carry home for his mother and baby brother.  I have always had a soft spot for Kimani. 
So they completed their stories eventually (I had to set a cut-off point for them…they just wanted to go on and on once they got started!) and then each child read their story to the class.  The first little girl, I shall call her Janelle, told of a boy in her class named Kimani that the children did not like because his hair was different.  She didn’t even try to hide the name. The real Kimani said: “Yes, mi know dem nuh like mi.  But ah nuh mi hair!”. She countered with certainty: “Yes, ah yuh hair!  Mi ask Lisa and she tell me she she nuh like yuh hair! Mi ask Rashawn and him tell mi she ah yuh hair too!  A yuh hair dem nuh like.  Dem seh yuh a Rasta bwoy!” I was stunned.  We discussed tolerance, empathy and that appearances ought never to be the basis of judgments.  I tried to be calm and neutral and understanding.  Then Kimani gave me his story to read.  He refused to stand up and read it aloud.  His story started off in the third person about a little boy who he didn’t name, but as his story went on, he slipped into the first person and named the boy Kimani.  Kimani was a little boy who didn’t have friends because everybody “hated him”.  It ended with Kimani feeling very alone and unloved. 

After class ended I hugged Kimani and told him that his different-ness is what made him great.  That he was to be proud of his family and his heritage and that he wasn’t to make anyone cause him to dim his light.  I told him to flash his locks when the haters start up.  I don’t know if this will make a difference. 

I didn’t know that rasta was an issue in Jamaica today.  Remember when Babylon used to hold rastas and trim dem? Used to lock dem up? When locks were infra dig in civilized Jamaican society?  So many middle class women sport locks today!  In my office, in my family, in senior government positions, women and men with multiple degrees, in traditional professions…so why is Kimani vilified for the same hairstyle?  Are dreadlocks are acceptable within the educated middle classes, but scorned in the ghettos, the very roots of the religion that birthed this look?  Is Kimani’s experience symptomatic of Jamaica’s bipolar society, so aptly portrayed daily on page 2 and page 5 in the papers? Is the scorn of Kimani’s hair style linked to bleaching practices in some way? And at the same time, why are locks de rigueur amongst the middle classes today? Is society confused? Are our identities split somehow, seeking to be what we really are not, to identify with something that we aspire to?    

Why can’t I watch the Winter Olympics? Why is our murder rate so high?

Have you ever had something denied to you that you knew was rightfully yours? Or have you ever been blamed for something that you never did? How did you feel?  A tight knot of resentment right in the middle of your core, growing bigger with each passing second… If it had a colour it would be deep red…and the worst part about it is that there was nowhere for it to go… it just sits there getting hotter and redder and bigger with nowhere to go and you can’t even touch it or scratch it because your hands are tied tightly behind you… The rage.  The indignation. The helplessness.
I wanted to watch Winter Olympics last week.  I merrily turned to NBC only to see the increasingly familiar message from the cable provider: “no video” and a black screen.  Kiss mi teet.  It turns out that the only way I will get to watch the Sochi games is if I fork out more money to my cable provider and subscribe to SportsMax.  Something feels so wrong about this arrangement.  Something feels so unjust.  I have paid for a service which ought to allow me the pleasure of watching the games.  And some bodies here on this island have decided that they must make some money so I am denied what I have paid for and pay over monies to them to get what I already paid for. 
I am not watching the games on my laptop.  I don’t have a smart TV.  I don’t have the cord that connects the laptop to my TV.  I am not going to go through the trouble to block my IP address so I can find a good feed.  I want to turn on my TV, switch to channel 104 and watch the freaking games, in my bed, or from my couch or wherever the hell I choose to watch them from.  I want to see triple Lutzes, the luge, speed skating and ski jumping!  I remember watching ski jumping as a teenager with some friends. One young man, today a famous entertainer in his own right (Hi, Terry!) summed up so articulately, so elegantly what I felt inside while I watched the intrepid gents soar off the ramp into the clear winter skies: “ Da bredda deh mus feel f*#! up just a sail tru di air wid him hand stiff a him side!!!”
Photo courtesy of National Geographic
 So I pretend as if the games don’t exist and settle for another Law and Order or House Hunters marathon.
And if I feel this rage at this relative inconvenience, pause as I did, if even for one minute, and think about the MAJORITY of our Jamaican citizens who face injustice in even more real and frightful circumstances daily… the man who is in lock-up without being charged, without a “good lawyer” to get him out; without a family who can represent his case… the youth who is rounded up and herded with blows unto a truck by agents of the state, not nuh gunman or criminal doing this to him, but agents of the state, simply because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time… the woman who has to go to the Family Court and is verbally abused or at best treated with indifference because she feels, maybe she is, unable to articulate her case with poise and clarity…
Photo courtesy of the Daily Gleaner   

I felt like stoning supn when I was denied a TV show that I had paid for.  And we wonder why our murder rate is so high.  And we wonder why our society has become so aggressive and brutish.