BY next Monday morning, members of our Diaspora family will have assembled in Montego Bay for the Sixth Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference. The participants will come mainly from the US of A, Canada and England, but in a time when members of “our tribe” can be located in almost every corner of the globe, it wouldn’t be a surprise if some had travelled from more distant lands. Who knows?

We are to be found everywhere. You could almost say Jamaica tek over the world, in case you didn’t know. It was not snobbery which caused me to respond with surprise when I met a man we would call a higgler, who informed me, quite cooly, that he has travelled to China more than once to buy stock for his store. His store is actually a stall outside one of our biggest markets, the stock ranging from yam to wigs.

The computer says the distance between us and China is well over 8,000 aeroplane miles. However you count it, we are not off-put. Today, we go everywhere and anywhere we want. Don’t be surprised if one day you hear that “Brother Higgler” is living in China and talking the language, too. It can happen, whether you believe it or not. Senior citizens can recall the legend of “Colon man”, as told in song, returning from Panama “wid ‘im brass chain a lick ‘im belly, bam, bam, bam”. Well, we’ve moved way past Colon Man to travel further.

Today, our kith and kin take the plane from here to everywhere. In a past generation, we colonised England in reverse, as Miss Lou reminded us. Today, we have representation in the Congress of the USA. We have students taking up scholarships in the Far East. We go on expeditions to the North and South Poles. We haven’t made it to the Moon yet, but keep watching.

For the time being, however, we concentrate on three neighbours — the USA, Canada and Britain. Canada emerged first in my family history, where three of my aunts found themselves in the 1930s, travelling by steam boats from Lucea harbour in Hanover and landed on Canadian soil without anyone asking them for visas, passports and nuff and plenty paperwork. “Embassy” and “High Commission” were not in the vocabulary of those times. What the aunts found was bitterly cold weather and the French language. They could not parlez-vous at first but, in true Jamaican style, it was not long before they were parlay-vooing with the best while they conquered the weather, from winter to spring and proceeded to live long and content lives as Canadian citizens, until they passed away many years after their landing.

As for ‘Merica, you had better believe it, that is fi wi territory. From sea to shining sea, there ain’t nobody like we. We roam everywhere. If you feel in need of getting the full story of how we “plant wi pole” in America yard, I recommend, for a good read and useful information, the book Jamaica’s Children of God in the Promised Land, by Dr Basil K Bryan, who represented us as consul general to New York, 1998-2007. This was preceded by the role of deputy ambassador to Washington, DC, 1991-98. He spent several years in research and travel around the US to document the story of our people ‘taking over’ America — my words, not his — but Dr Bryan would agree that take over we did; from the cane-cutter days in Florida to apple pickers in Eastern States, to acquiring education in all kinds of institutions of learning, in several of which our people went on to assume leadership.

We graced every state with our presence. I commend Dr Bryan for his well-documented history in which he was assisted by fellow Jamaicans doing research and data gathering. The book is very instructive and easy to read. I would recommend it to the many hopefuls waiting in the Embassy lines if they want something to prepare them for the journey.

Libraries and other places of education at home and abroad would benefit from adding the book to their collections. This is no pyah-pyah, lickle reading book. It is a stout, naw-gie-up kind of book which, despite its size, is worth a read for the importance of the story it tells.

Dr Bryan is retired now and lives in Florida, like many other Jamaicans. In the words of the P J Patterson, one of the groups of distinguished fellows, who testifies to the merit of the work, “Bryan’s treatise offers a discerning insight into the Diaspora and compelling stories of the road travelled by several generations of Jamaicans before”. True wud!

Our people have continued to cling to their heritage and keep the title of Jamaican in the limelight, no matter how their lives have developed in a strange land. We here still look to the remittances, which play an important part in keeping the link with Yard. The Diaspora is more than that. Life is not easy for anyone these days.

A whole new world is out there now. Unfortunately, a bad name for which our homeland is too often criticised, can create difficulties for the Diaspora as much as us, even as the black, green and gold still flies proudly. All too often and too sadly, however, the wider world and our family have come to associate our name with the negatives; and who hasn’t heard, we will not hesitate to tell them.

Without Facebook and Twitter, for washing our dirty linen, what would some of us do? The murder and all that kind of mayhem, which leads to the carry-go-bring come and the daily chat-bout must one day be replaced by respect for ourselves, who we are, who we used to be, and what we must strive to be again.

SO-SO CHAT: So the minister of education is proposing that some students who sit the Grade Six Achievement Test and live far-far away from the areas where most of the established schools are located, be sent to schools nearer their homes. This was argued long before this, so why there is hell and powderhouse now that it seems the idea could bear fruit? Have we forgotten the complaints about how far the students had to travel each day, in some instances crossing up to three parish boundaries? Now that something can be done, what is the quarrel about? Why is it suddenly forgotten that there are students who have to begin their journey from as early as 4:00 am or 5:00 am each school day? Why is it all right now? Upgrading the quality of the schools should be the focus instead of the round and about arguments we’re hearing.

SAY WHAT?: Is there going to be another kass-kass because Minister Lisa Hanna went to a private hospital to pay her way and get treatment after being in a car accident? Is the sin she is being accused of that she paid her own way? A wha do wi?

LEST WE FORGET: Bob’s voice still echoes in Mr Garvey’s paraphrased words: “None but ourselves can free our minds.”

gloudonb@yahoo.com