Dear Editor,

I would like to thank Horace Levy for his insightful reflections on divisions in Jamaican society, then and now, as published in the Jamaica Observer, Thursday, August 29, 2019.

I have a question for him and any of your readers who may have an opinion on it.

I left Jamaica in 1978 to complete my doctoral studies at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. With my studies completed, I returned to the island in December 1981. Immediately on my return, even while waiting in the Montego Bay airport to travel on to Mandeville, I felt that I had returned to a very different country from the one I had left three years before. This sense of being in a very different place deepened as the weeks, months and years went by, and is still with me nearly 40 years later. I felt, and still feel, that something of vital importance was knocked out of Jamaican society during that period of unprecedented social unrest and political violence. I still live with a sense that whatever it was that was knocked out will never return.

The deeper tribalism which Levy claims began then was part of that difference. For there was a much greater desire on the part of the people I met to try and figure out on which side of the political divide I stood. But there was a lot more to it than that. There were so many other things in the society that contributed to my feeling that I had returned to an alien place.

This was not my first return to the island after studying overseas. I had done so three time before. On all of these earlier returns I felt that I had returned to a familiar and much-loved country. So why was this return different? I wondered, and still wonder.

I have put this question to several friends and colleagues, and although I have received some interesting answers, none has satisfied me. I am wondering if Levy or other readers of your paper may have some thought on this matter.

Dr Earl McKenzie

Former lecturer in philosophy

The University of the West Indies

sthopemckenzie327@gmail.com