Tia Simms-Lyma

Tia is the latest sportswoman to come out of the hugely successful stable of athletes at Plymouth College, a private co-ed school in Devon. She started with gymnastics at the age of six and went on to try diving at seven “I got scared at the three metre board” she laughed “so I decided to do something with my feet on the ground”. She’s certainly achieved that - at 13 she is now is a champion fencer specialising in Epee and all eyes are on her for the future Olympic Games.


There would be good reason to take a bet that the quiet, charming youngster will make headline news, along with the many other athletes that have come out of the extraordinarily successful Plymouth College. Over the last few years Tia has been the double British champion, came third in the “Under 15’s” in Poland; finished in the last eight in the British Cadet Championship and is now gearing up for world championships to be held in Croatia. She recently recently fenced for Jamaica, the home country of her mother’s family, when she took part in competitions in Bratislava and Gotthenburg.

Tia now represents Jamaica in Epee and is the only athlete in the country to do so. Representatives from Jamaica (which is her mother’s homeland) asked Tia to represent them in Epee. She jumped at the chance. Tia has a great chance of reaching the next Olympics. It won’t be for the want of support from her family – or from her school. Dad Andy was a semi professional cyclist and sports coach who now works with Tia to help her with fitness. “Tia works really hard, but its important to ensure that she gets as much rest and recovery as she does training and that’s part of my job” he says.

Andy Hill is Plymouth College’s Director of Pentathlon and Fencing. He’s had 30 years of training under his belt and some of the country’s finest have been helped by his expertise over the years. “Tia is doing better than anyone else I’ve ever coached at the same age” he says. “She’s very straightforward, never misses a session, works hard and isn’t temperamental. She’s a delight to work with and she is definitely Olympic material – if not in four years, definitely eight.”

Meanwhile the girl with the radiant smile looks on. “Andy is fantastic” she says. The whole school is really supportive – it’s a very happy environment. I don’t feel under pressure and find it really helpful to be amongst so many other athletes who understand what it’s like to train competitively.”  So what are the hopes and dreams of this extraordinary 13 year old? She muses. “To have enough money to have new Puma trainers every term and to meet Levi Roots – I love his food and really admire how he’s got on in life – oh, and a gold at the Olympic Games” she adds as an afterthought.

Although Tia has a fantastic future in the sport this may be potentially hampered by a lack of funds. Tia needs to travel to international competitions Jamaica. These travel costs are at present unsustainable for her family. Tia like many other athletes desperately needs sponsorship to help her achieve the next Olympics. Without sponsorship coming soon Tia may not be able to attend the world championships in Croatia on the 29th March.

February 14th is Valentine’s Day

7 Ways to love yourself

1. Express Gratitude:
Express gratitude for the person that you are. For instance, cultivate an appreciation for your strengths and gifts. Also, feel a sense of gratitude that you are alive and well, and fully capable of making a difference in your life.

2. Nurture Your Dreams:
Why deny yourself your dreams? When you nurture your dreams, you would love the life that you are leading. Every moment that you live is a joy; you are expressing yourself. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

3. Boost Your Self Confidence:
Make a deliberate attempt to look for opportunities that can help improve your confidence. For instance, if you are particularly good at doing something, set aside more time to indulge and improve your skills on it. Knowing that you have particular gifts can boost your self esteem.

4. Relax:
Give yourself space to take breaks every now and then. If you spend your time working, without paying attention to your health, it also means that you do not love yourself well enough to take care of your own body. Fill your time with silence, soothing music and visions of beauty; anything that nourishes your Soul

5. Have Fun:
Inject some fun into your life. Life is meant to be an enjoyable. Don’t take life or yourself too seriously. If you can think of life in this manner, you automatically relax and quit worrying over things that do not matter.

6. Look After Your Body:
It is important that you strengthen yourself with proper nutrition and regular exercise. Your body is a temple and you should treat it with respect, love and care. It has been found that the lack of self love is often the root causes of conditions like eating disorders, obesity or even terminal diseases.

7. Learn To See Beauty:
When you learn to see beauty in everything, you will also see beauty in yourself. Hence, stop to smell the flowers. Notice everything. Enjoy feeling everything: the pink blush of the flowers in your garden, the greenness of the plains, the whisper of the gentle wind, or the myriad hues of an evening sky.

Source: www.abundancetapestry.com/how-to-love-yourself-in-17-ways/

SWITCH TO BREADFRUIT FLOUR

By John Anthony

The foreign taste and foreign itches that Jamaicans have developed partly through the efforts of our low self-esteem, history and of the foreign media I call the Hollywood Trojan Horses, now have the common housewife screaming for deliverance as flour prices jump and dance upwards.

Why in a land where we do not grow wheat, do we have a lust and taste for wheat flour? When I was a boy we had breadfruit falling off trees (ripened and rotten)! Why do we not have the taste for breadfruit flour? Breadfruit trees used to be easy to grow and required low maintenance and so the associated costs of production should not be prohibitive unlike yam or cassavas which have to be replanted annually.

But when a brainwashed perception (Wheat flour is the best) develops from a bias, it becomes entrenched and almost immovable. The local housewife and citizenry are as much to blame for rising wheat flour prices because they lusted after the wheat flour, developing American agriculture and did not demand breadfruit flour and so lead to the development of Jamaican agriculture. Hard choices in building a nation often means changing our tastes and preferences before crises hits. We should have developed a taste for breadfruit flour decades ago!

FOOLISH JAMAICANS NEED TO BE TAUGHT WHAT NATION BUILDING IS We thought nation building was watching cable TV and eating American apples. We thought that nation building was getting a multiple visa. We thought that profiling and styling was nation building. Or we thought it meant overstaffing Air Jamaica or using short cut methodology. Oh foolish people no one ever taught you that nation building means zipping up your pants and going home to your wife? No one ever taught you that nation building was changing your foreign taste to local one so your own farmers could develop local agriculture? Nation building means switching from wheat flour to breadfruit flour and setting a goal to plant five million breadfruit trees by 2010! Nation building means cancelling your cable TV and starting a college fund for your children and grandchildren.

WE WILL NEVER DEVELOP OUR ECONOMY AS LONG AS WE HAVE ENTRENCHED FOREIGN TASTES AND ITCHES Low self-esteem people make a low self-esteem nation and LOW SELF-ESTEEM PEOPLE MAKE THE BEST CUSTONERS! All smart marketing experts know this. Low self- esteem people will spend their money on cell phones and not on a college fund for their children. They will buy American grapes not invest in their bank accounts and cable tv before setting up a retirement account. Low self-esteem persons make the best consumers because one of the most potent drivers of human interaction is the desire for recognition and importance. These persons will go into debt and to great physical lengths to feel important and style and profile to catch the eye of onlookers.

In addition, we are destabilizing our economy by demanding cell phones when hundreds of thousands of citizens do not even need them, building the wealth of Irish and British companies who transfer our wealth potential into their bank accounts in London and Dublin, while they masquerade as Jamaican entities! Do we need Garvey to rise from the grave to open our eyes? He is not dead but alive! Open your eyes and behold him! In the future when inevitable price increases arrive we will scream then as we are screaming now when all along we should have been saving our money!

“Jahfakans”

Where is your Cultural Pride?

By Myrna Loy

While I was sitting distribution copies of “Blackbright Magazine” at the carnival, I noticed three noisy Black men. One of them was wearing a red, yellow and green t-shirt with the herb symbol on the front. He was holding a bottle of Remy Martin to his mouth and was gulping greedily. Another wore dreadlocks and was waving a half consumed bottle of whiskey over his head while being held around the neck by the third, who was wearing a t-shirt with the words “Jamaica – Irie Mon” on the front. If you hadn’t seen them laughing minutes before, you would thought they were fighting.

They were generally drawing attention to themselves and obviously under the influence. What infuriated me was that they were imitating Jamaican patios, wore symbols that identify them as Jamaicans when they were obviously not Jamaicans, and worse their conduct was doing Jamaicans a disservice. Even though their impersonation was poor, any non Blacks or non Jamaicans could erroneously categories them as Jamaicans. These men are what some call “Jafakans” i.e. fake Jamaicans. Their imitation of the Jamaican identity would not be so offensive if it did not negatively implicate Jamaicans, but it does! Onlooker seemed genuinely concerned of the affray. I was concerned as well, but for a different reason.

I was worried that non Blacks may not know that Africa is divided into 43 countries and there are approximately 21 Caribbean island territories, so that these men could have come from any one of them! I didn’t like the idea that if the affray was reported and descriptions were requested, “Witnessed” (being none the wiser), could easily say: “they were definitely Jamaican I could tell by their accent!” Hence the rap: “H’enting dat gwann a foreign, de yardie get the blame”. A Jamaican cannot be defined nor categorized. Jamaicans include Lord Ouseley, who is a member of the House of Lords; Delroy Lindo, who is a famous actor; Lennox Lewis, who is a World Heavy with Champion; Naomi Campbell or Tyson Beckford, who are supermodels; Patrick Ewing and Donovan Bailey, who are sportsmen; Dian Abbot, who is a Politician; Bob Marley, Busta Rhymes, Harry Belafonte, who are musicians to name a few. But for some reason, Jamaicans are seldom associated with high achievers, the famous and the infamous.

Because of biased media coverage that results in stereotyping and bigotry, the un-informed usually think of Jamaicans as trouble maker, aggressors, wear dread locks, smoke weed, sell coke and are gun- proud. As a result Jamaicans get a bad reputation and end up being apprehended (or blamed) for many criminal misdemeanors when the offence could have been committed by someone from another island or country pretending to be Jamaican. I am not sure why non Jamaicans try to implicate Jamaicans by mimicking their accent and their stance. Maybe they don’t realize that they are doing it or maybe, subconsciously, they lack cultural pride. All I can say is that if you from Africa, claim your African-ness. If you are from one of the island territories of the Caribbean- claim your true heritage. If you are born in this country (UK) – maintain your parent’s culture and don’t borrow someone else’s’. Everyone should be proud of tier heritage, their language and their culture and while “playing Jamaican” can be fun, if a non Jamaican is not behaving in a law abiding fashion yet imitation a Jamaican, they are reinforcing the negative stereotypes and making it difficult for Jamaicans to gain respect.

The Winner’s Edge

Written by Janice K. Maxwell

www.JamaicanDiaspora.com

If you’re going to hold someone down, you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by you won repression.

Toni Morrison

US novelist-Nobel prize winner for literature 1993

Being an optimist, I don’t worry about the past; it’s the now and the future that is all we have. Hip hop mogul, Nellie has a song about being number one. It says that two is just a number and three nobody remembers. The Olympics is seen portrayed as an excellent representation of being a winner. We see the tangible of the athlete standing on the podium representing country, the medals and the 15 minutes of fame. Many people believe this as the only way to measure success and being a winner, but it’s not.

True winners posses attribute that are not noticed initially. For quite sometime, I have been receiving the email about the old woman in the purple hat. I’ve even seen the purple hat story expanded in the short story series by Ellen Burstyn and CCH Pounder. For those who have not gotten such a positive email, the following is a summation. It chronicles her life in decades.

As a teenager, she was concerned about her looks; as a woman in twenties, she was concerned about being worthy enough to be approved by her peers, husband ect… Now in her 70’s, she looks in the mirror, smile, puts on the purple hat, goes out to meet the world head on in confidence knowing that people will never stop her. Although we all have it, many of us do not know it: we are all winners. The intangible winner’s edge is measured by how well you do compare to what you could have done, which is to quit.

Persistence is the edge that true winners’ posses. The edge for such winners is giving it your best shot, personal achievement and having the right attitude regardless of the outcome. That edge is in college students who complete their degree on the seven year plan rather that the traditional four year. That edge is in marathon runners who finish dead last. They kept running hours after the race ended; they did not stop because the cameras and crowds were not there to greet them as they crossed the finish line. That edge pushes you to keep going because in the end, the race is with yourself.

The winner’s edge is finding contentment in your current space. Where you are right now is all you have because where you should be may never come. In many cases, the disappointments and unanswered wishes turned out to be some of the greatest blessings. The unplanned pregnancy becomes your only source of unconditional love when both parents died and the child’s father leaves you in a single year. The partner that you dated for three years and just knew you would marry once you got out of college – in four years but it really took seven. Acceptance and always moving forward is the edge.

October is Black History month in the UK

Written by Steve Stephenson

Steve Stephenson MBE is a former Principal Equalities Officer in Local Government. He is the Author of “Cold Arrival Life in Second Homeland” He has been actively involved in numerous projects in the Black Community for the past 30 years.


Steve has a tale or two to tell to about the Black Contribution to history; there is also a Black History Quiz with a prize at the end of the article.

Steve has been teaching Black History for the past 30 years, long before Black History Month became the norm in 1987. Steve said “I first became interested in teaching our history when I worked as a Voluntary Youth Worker in Luton in the early 70s. He taught his first course in 1976 at the Starlight Youth Club, after attending a course that was taught by Black History pioneer Sam Morris from Grenada. At the time many Black youngsters with whom, I worked, were alienated and marginalised and appear to have an identity crisis. The vast majority of these youngsters were aspiring to be Rastafarians.

In addition Steve background gave him a good understanding of the issues. He was born in Kingston and was lucky to be taught Caribbean History at O level. He went to school with and was in the same class as Robbie Shakespeare of Sly and Robbie fame. He played football in the same park as Bob Marley. “I had friend in the band, Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rasta Fari and I used to visit Count Ossie’s home as well as listening to Rastafarian reasoning in Wareika Hill.

Steve tells the following tale;

For instance, he points out that a Black man who was able to go to school only because his parents was bought out of Slavery, he helped plan the layout for Washington DC, his name was Benjamin Bannekar and he lived from 1731-1806.

Steve said, “Bannekar is best known for his part in planning the lay –out of Washington DC, the capital of America. Disaster struck when the chief planner return to France after a row, taking all the plans with him. But, lucky for America, Bannekar was able to draw them again from memory.

“He even chose the site for the White House. In 1791 he wrote a famous letter to the President of USA. It said, however variable we may be in society or religion, however diversified in situation of colour, we are all the same family and stand in the same, in relation to god. But for luck this man would have been a slave.

Steve adds, it is generally accepted that Commander Robert Peary was the first man to reach the North Pole in 1909, but this is not true, it was a Black man American Matthew Alexander Henson. Peary lost nine toes and could not go on any longer, so Henson plant the American flag on the North Pole.

Another slice of Black history Steve talks about reveals that, a West African people discovered the star Sirius B before Western Scientist new of its existence.

He said the Dogon people lived in Mali, West Africa.

In 1931 two French Scientist went to live with the Dogon. Sixteen years later the Dogon began to reveal their secrets about the stars and planets. The dogan knew about the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter and that the earth’s moon was dry and dead.

It was a surprise to the European that these so-called primitive people had such scientific knowledge. But what really shocked them, was that the Dogon also knew of a star called Sirius B, because the star is not visible to the naked eye. The Dogon knew more about the movement of the invisible star than Western scientist.

“What was more Dogon scientist had known about it for seven hundred years. Western scientists only discovered Sirius B in the 1890’s”.

Black History Quiz

Africa suffered the twin effect of Slavery and Colonisation that still affect the continent today.

The seeds of this were sown in the year 1441, when the Captain of European Country and his crew land on the West African coast and capture two African a man and woman.

They return and raid two Villages and 12 Africans were captured and brought to Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. Before the Slave Trade started, this incident contributed to the enslavement of African people. What was the name of the Captain?

Jamaica and the relevance of Diaspora Bonds

www.DianeAbbott.org.uk

Diane Abbott is the British Labour Party's spokeswoman on public health

Bonds are a bad idea that refuses to die. They reflect the idea that members of the diaspora are just so many walking dollar bills. For too many Jamaicans the diaspora is a financial resource to be harvested. Instead of mutual respect, the relationship between Jamaica and its diaspora can seem almost predatory.


Jamaica has the largest diaspora, relative to local population, in the world. It sends home billions of dollars a year. In net terms the diaspora is Jamaica's largest single source of foreign exchange. Furthermore remittance flows are constant. In good times and in bad loyal Jamaican's find the money to send home. Jamaican policymakers have long eyed those billions greedily. They lament the idea that these billions are going into mere "consumption" ie school fees instead of "investment" ie government projects.

More recently, the World Bank has taken up the idea. It is not suggesting the renegotiation of the unfair trade agreements that the Caribbean and others have been forced to sign nor has it any interest in further relieving poor and middle-income countries of the dead weight of foreign debt. Instead, the international financial institutions want poor countries diaspora to be corralled into making good their countries lack of foreign investment. Yet it is IMF insistence on cuts in public expenditure and opening up local markets to foreign investors (to the detriment of local business) that have made jobs in Jamaica for trained professional so hard to come by. Accordingly, millions migrate. Now international financial institutions want those same migrants to compensate for the catastrophic failure of IMF policies by investing in diaspora bonds.

Banks, financial institutions and bond salesmen are also keen on diaspora bonds. They know that they will make millions in profits by merely handling the schemes, whether or not the bonds make any serious money for the countries involved. What people forget about financial institutions is that they are not interested in whether the latest scheme they are peddling is actually a good idea. All they want to know is whether, in the short term, they can make money from it. These are the people, after all, who devised the financial instruments based on sub-prime mortgages which nearly crashed the world economy. Yet Caribbean politicians continue to pay heed to the siren call of the World Bank and foreign financiers to promote diaspora bonds.

The state of Israel is often cited as an example of a country that has raised significant sums of money through diaspora bonds. But Israel is not a relevant example for the Caribbean. It has an exceptionally wealthy diaspora and a tradition of involvement in financial instruments that goes back to the Middle Ages. Caribbean policymakers would be better advised to look at the experience of African countries in trying to raise money through diaspora bonds. Ethiopia's first attempt was unsuccessful. Now it's trying again and Nigeria and Kenya are also talking about these bonds.

It is important to stress that the Jamaican Diaspora is exceptionally loyal to Jamaica. Nobody who saw the thousands who queued to get into the Independence Day celebrations in London could doubt that. And they do send billions home. But they are not fools. They work extremely hard for their money. Often they are holding down two jobs. Many remember the implosion of Jamaican financial institutions in the '90s. They feel entitled to be sceptical about being invited to give their money to government rather than family. Too many financial experts look at the billions in remittances flowing into Jamaica and assume that the diaspora doesn't care about risk and reward. They do. But they care about their family more.

World Bank experts, for instance, claim the diaspora is less worried about local instability and currency depreciation than the normal investor. On the contrary, the diaspora is very aware of instability and currency depreciation. That is exactly why they send their hard-earned money home to put food on the table and pay school fees for their relatives. But sending money home to people you have an emotional connection to and for entirely transparent purposes (eg new shoes) is very different from giving to faceless bond salesmen. The diaspora knows exactly where their remittances go. And even in the worst-case scenario (eg money sent for new shoes spent in the rum bar) they know it is being spent in a community they care about. Remittances offer the diaspora transparency and accountability. Diaspora bonds offer neither.

At the very least, Jamaican politicians should wait and see how successful African efforts to promote diaspora bonds are before wasting time and money on such a scheme.