ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author reflects on the emotional and psychological challenges that he faced as a 'returnee' to the country of his birth, Jamaica, in 1993 after living thirty years in England. Even the use of the supposedly neutral term, 'returnee', begs more questions than it answers. The return journey to Jamaica was undertaken after years of discussion with a very close Jamaican friend, also residing in England. The author interrogates and explores some of these highly personal issues. In a flash, Home Alone summed up the dominant feeling of the author, since he returned to Jamaica after spending thirty years in England. As visitor or a settler, one expects to be alone in a strange land. By his own research he found that inter-island rivalry, common in the Caribbean, was alive and well amongst young people in these communities in the UK, young people who have never even visited the island their parents or grandparents were born in.
