SO HERE WE ARE... celebrating the anniversaries of emancipation and independence, the two most important events in our history, as far as I am concerned. If you recognise any other as more worthy of the honour, please let me know. Question of the day, though - where's our personal emancipation?

BARBARA GLOUDON

It's a century and a half since the disgrace of slavery was brought to a halt, beginning with the termination of the trade in enslaved Africans. Emancipation followed, albeit in stages. It took four years of unspeakable cruelty (1834 to 1838) before "full-free did come". Today, it is a pity that some among us regard this as quite irrelevant and cannot see why a word like "slavery" keeps coming up.

It is 10 years now since emancipation was returned to the calendar of national observances. For some or many persons, it is just one more addition to the roll of public holidays. For others (happily), it means a little more. So, today we observe the passage to freedom for the majority of Jamaican people, those confident enough to admit to their ancestry.

Independence came 46 years ago. By all accounts, that should be easier to celebrate - but even that remains contentious with some of us. Hard though it might be to believe, we still have among us those who maintain that we should never have opted for this thing called independence. They say we were much better 46 years ago under the flag of Brittania and would be even better now, if there we had remained.

The image of a benign motherland apparently is hard to lose. This may account for inquiries I've been receiving recently - from people who seem to think that, because they were born before 1962 and were citizens - albeit colonials - of Britain, they should be regarded as British now. I can only assume that this vain hope is fuelled by the desire to leave Babylon to escape the hardships and testings of our present age. While it is hard to believe their naiveté, it has to be noted that they're usually senior citizens with memories of a gentler, kinder society of the past, when there was a greater hope for the future.

Little is to be gained by trying to persuade our seniors that even if they were to be "repatriated" to Britain, life has changed there too - and not necessarily for the better. As the ancestral saying goes, "The same knife weh jook sheep, jook goat." The desire to find greener pastures is not confined to seniors alone. The phenomenal growth of our diaspora population is evidence enough that many of us want to find a piece of Heaven away from here.

But to return to the difficulty which some people seem to have with the imagery of slavery... It is really hard to accept that the atrocities of that time really happened. The beatings and other acts of inhumanity, engineered by people who today would be upheld as upstanding citizens, are beyond our comprehension, so perhaps that is why we say it were better left alone. With the passing of time, however, we're gradually coming around to celebrating. One issue still remains problematic, however. It is the matter of reparation - a dialogue left mainly to Rastafarians and Pan Africanists.

Should descendants of slaves be paid compensation for the abduction of their ancestors from their homeland? Shouldn't there be redress for the ultimate insult whereby slave owners received monetary compensation, while for those whose lives and history were taken from them, reparation was not an option? What recompense can absolve them now?

Last October, when John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York visited here, he surprised some people by saying he did not believe in reparation, not because there shouldn't be recompense, but what price do you put on a human life? How much was enough for the millions of lives lost? And when the payment was made, would that clear the debt? How much would be enough? The response of some was how could Sentamu, an African, say that? It could have been the start of an interesting dialogue, but strangely, it passed almost unnoticed. New times, new agenda.

AFRICA HAS BECOME strangely unfashionable with us. The proud links with the ancestral roots of most Jamaicans have diminished until they are almost out of sight. Not many of us seem to have taken note of the fact that an African leader was due to have been the nation's guest at independence, a convention which had been developed over past years.

The Golding administration seemed prepared to honour the tradition with an invitation to the President of Senegal, His Excellency Maitre Abdoullaye Wade. As it turns out, the announcement, when it finally came, was not of his acceptance, but cancellation of the visit, for reasons as yet unexplained. Nobody has said a word about it since - as far as I know. All right... so, you might say, we have too much on our plate at the moment to worry 'bout that and in any case, those Africans have enough troubles of their own. As for the rest of our celebrations, through the official cultural agencies, there is a full programme of events. Noticeable this year in the spirit of emancipation also is the number of discussions and lectures organised by churches and other community organisations to promote thoughts on a range of issues.

Most interesting of all is the forum called by a group of churchmen to discuss matters including financial investment. It is no secret that there are congregations now deeply mired in anxiety about their stake in certain investment clubs. The question which will have to be addressed, much sooner than later, is what impelled the leadership of such assemblies to place such reliance on get-rich schemes? "Mammon or God?" asks someone familiar with Scriptural injunctions. Faith will certainly be challenged if at the end of the day, prayers do not bring the solution now being sought so fervently.

NEXT WEDNESDAY, we will salute the nation's independence. We come to it more inter-connected with the rest of the world than our leaders could ever have imagined when the baton of change was passed that night of August 6, 1962.

Who then would have imagined us paying more for a gallon of gasoline than some workers got for a day's pay back then? Or, who could have foreseen a technological revolution whereby nearly every citizen - children included, are able to speak to people in any part of the world through a mobile telephone, or garner knowledge from the farthest corner of the globe, in a matter of minutes, via the Internet?

Today, we speak with words that weren't even invented back then. Can you imagine Busta calling on his Blackberry or Norman Manley listening to Mozart on his iPod? That's the nice part of it. On the other hand, however, we would be ashamed to have them experience the bloodthirst of the wicked among us, the poverty which persists, the confused vision for our children, the lack of caring for our land, the distrust of politics and politicians, to name a few.

But with all that, I believe they'd still wish us to stand up and take pride in what we do well... and we have more than some of that. We can find hope in the achievements of many young people, excelling in so many ways. We still have among us those who care, who do things not because they're getting paid, but because they want to.

I would recommend the two young Epping gas station attendants at Drax Hall, St Ann, early last Sunday morning, who did everything until they got us help for a misbehaving car... They're not singular. Many similar acts of kindness are done among us every day. It's just that the criminals occupy so much of our attention that we're in danger of forgetting who we still are and who we still can be...."Doctor bud a cunny bud (still) hard bud fi dead..."

CLARIFICATION: The US Embassy advises - fees paid to arrange visa interviews last up to a year. So, don't panic if you can't get online. Your receipt has a shelf life. (Why somebody didn't tell us before we start cuss?)

GOOD LUCK to our team to Beijing. Carry the Black, Green and Gold high. Respect!

bgloudon@yahoo.com

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