ABSTRACT
Port Antonio, Jamaica is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The high mountains overlooking the ocean are both breathtaking and stunning, the landscape so lush and the land so fertile that it seems, perhaps, that it is a place only found in dreams. However, Port Antonio, like many other beautiful cities around the world has an unfortunate past, a history shrouded under the veil of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery. It seems that not even such an awe-inspiring city could escape the wrath of capitalism and its insatiable thirst for wealth. As a resident of this city I was compelled through education, propaganda, and naivety to believe that there lies a country beyond our shores where the streets were literally paved in gold and anything you wanted was at your disposal. It is for this reason that in 1989 when my mother departed for America, many in our community envied her. She had hit the proverbial lottery, and it seemed the world reminded me of this during those many years that I longed for her. You see, reader, I was a child who lacked the understanding that small cities such as the one I resided in were so completely exploited during slavery and beyond that all that was left was for us was to make our escapes to our imperial motherland. The following summer after my mother’s departure, my brother and I, along with some friends, went mango picking. It was a bountiful season, and we took advantage of every opportunity to venture out into the woods for our prize. We considered ourselves expert climbers, so it was to everyone’s surprise when I came tumbling two stories out of a tree. I was unconscious. I could hear my brother and our friends beckoning me to awake, but I could not respond. All I could think about at that moment was that I would die and that I would never be able to see America. I hadn’t thought of my mother and the fact that I wouldn’t see her again; I only thought of America and all her glory. Presenting this memory to you may portray me in a particularly vulnerable light; however, it’s important to understand that the mind of a young colonized child is an impressionable landscape and fertile ground where the seeds of inferiority had long since been planted, and for that reason I was compelled to believe the unbelievable and accept the most unreasonable ideas as truths. You see, the wheels in my head had begun turning long before I had an understanding of myself
or even the familiar world around me. In his text, Wheels in the Head Joel Spring (2008) argues that
[t]he wheel convinces people that they should willingly submit to the rule of the few who claim to have knowledge of true goodness or the good. Embedded in this wheel is the acceptance of the idea that some people are better than others as a result of education.
