Our smarts
Time to get ourselves super ready.
Let’s talk about our smarts.
At age 13, in 1992, I was on my first aeroplane heading to America, after leaving the island of my birth, Jamaica, for a “better life.”
On the journey, I had to figure out how to stay seated for hours, while being bored out of my mind, slowly swallowing reheated food using plastic utensils.
When I arrived in this new society to live with my cousins, I had to figure out how to use an escalator without falling over.
Then the elevator.
I then had to get used to the smell of car engines daily and visits to the supermarket weekly to buy junk food, and fruit and veg in plastic packaging.
I then had to figure out why some of my new friends in junior high school, in Washington D.C., kept cutting class, when they got all their schoolbooks and sports equipment for free.
They even had TVs in every classroom, which most of the teachers had tuned to MTV for at least two or three lessons every week.
And a library full of books, yet often empty of people, where I spent most of my time after arriving at the school and learned about African American history, and slavery.
I then had to figure out how to leave America and move to England where my grandparents lived.
Landing in England a few weeks before my 15th birthday, after spending several months sorting out some stuff in America, Jamaica, and England, I had to figure out how the new school system in London worked.
New ways of being.
No calling out to your school friends, even if they are across the road and you want to get their attention.
No raised voices.
Not like up country, in St. Ann, where our voices were also filled with laughter as we skipped over feeling happy to run into a friend.
An immigrant in a new cold country, I had to figure out how the U.K. immigration system worked.
Which left me wondering why so many Jamaican passports were being kept up a “big yard” for years on end. Keeping our highly skilled people from going home to visit their families, or to attend births, christenings, graduations, weddings, funerals, while being on edge as they cannot get on with their lives and instead live in fear daily.
And years later wondered again why so many of the Windrush generation were being wrongfully detained or deported?
Looking back, I was lucky, because for some reason my Jamaican passport was returned, at age 16, with a stamp to say I had been, “Given leave to remain in the United Kingdom for an indefinite period.” After sending immigration a letter about my case.
Since then, I have been spending time learning about the world and how societies are created, while gathering and leading inclusive super creative people, who care about the world and its people, home with me to Free Jamaica and free the world, creatively.
From mental slavery.
And save the planet.
We are in a revolution.
Our smarts are our superpower.
Having that back, thanks.
Best wishes,
Kenisha (her / us)
Sherry-Ann Collins
Sherry Collins
Jamaican Freedom Fighter
Fighting for the creative freedom of the Jamaican peopledem.™
