They call Jamaica the ‘Island in the Sun’, and that is my memory of it. Of sunshine, warmth and abundant fruit growing everywhere, and of love. I was born on 2 April 1960 in St Andrews in Kingston. There were two sisters ahead of me in the family, and though of course, I didn’t know it, there was excited talk of emigration, possibly to Canada but more usually to England, the land of opportunity. I guess that plans were already being made when I was born, for a year or so later my Dad left for London. Two years after that, when he had saved enough money, my Mum went as well and my sisters and I were left in the care of my grandmother. I stayed with her, in her house near the centre of Kingston, until I was seven years old. My grandmother, therefore, shaped my life, and I believe I am all the better for it.
This was all fairly normal. Emigrating to better yourself was a dream for most Jamaicans, a dream many were determined to fulfil. Families were close and grandmothers were an important part of family life so when the mass emigrations began, it seemed perfectly right and natural for them to take over the running of the families left behind. After all, they had the experience.
Grandmothers are often strict, but they usually also spoil you. At least, that is the way it was with mine. She ran the family like a military operation: each of us, no matter how young, had our tasks. I remember that we didn’t have a tap in the house, but used a communal tap from which we had to fill two barrels in our garden. Every morning, before we went to school, we all had to take a bucket appropriate to our size and run a relay from the communal tap to the barrels until they were full. In the beginning, when I was two or three, I couldn’t reach the barrel – but I still had to join in. My sisters had to sweep the yard before they went to school. My grandmother would give orders to the eldest and these were passed down — as I got older I found this particularly annoying! But I can tell you, no one avoided their duties.
My Dad came over from England to see how we were getting on. I hadn’t known him when he had left for Britain, but when I saw him I somehow knew that he was my father. He talked to us about the new country, about snow, about the huge city, and we all wanted to know more, to see what it was like. He also told me that I now had a younger brother, which made me feel excited and wonder what he could be like. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had come to prepare us for the move to England. Six months later my grandmother told me that I was going to join my parents and that she, too, was emigrating. It was the end of my time in the Caribbean, of the sheltered, warm, family life that I had known there and the beginning of a new and exciting era.
London was strange and disappointing. There was no gold on the pavements, as the stories in Jamaica had indicated. Back home it had always been warm. Everyone was friendly and said ‘Hello’ when you passed by on the street; in Kingston, you knew everybody and they knew you. Here, it wasn’t like that. The roads were busy, the buildings were grey and dull, with many tall, high-rise blocks. It was totally unlike Jamaica, the houses all small and packed close together. In my grandmother’s house, I had a big bedroom; here I had to share. At that age, it was a great disappointment.
Worse was to come because there followed a very cold winter, and I had never felt cold in my life before. Then came the biggest shock: snow. White flakes came out of the sky and Dad smiled, pointed and said, ‘That’s snow!’ I rushed outside, looked up and opened my mouth to let the flakes drop in. The snow settled on my tongue and it was so cold that I cried. My toes lost all feeling, and at the primary school that we attended, I wasn’t allowed to wear long trousers at my age. The teachers made us go out to play in the playground and I joined in with all the fun, sliding around in the snow, throwing snowballs, all the usual things. Suddenly, as my shoes and socks got soaking wet and frozen, there came an excruciating pain and I cried with the intensity of it. I didn’t know what was happening to me.