By Trudy Simpson, Staff ReporterJAMAICANS FROM all walks of life welcomed 2003 with a mixture of cautious optimism and raucous celebrations early yesterday morning.
The streets of the Corporate Area were teeming with activities as thousands of persons turned out at various venues to ring in the new year.
The buzz in Papine and Barbican Squares began early with jerked chicken sellers and vendors setting up pots to cook and laying out snacks early to tempt passersby while deejays began mixing music.
At the Priscilla's rootftop restaurant and lounge on Constant Spring Road, candlelight, loud music and champagne were being provided for the more than 200 patrons who turned out for the club's New Year's party.
Half-Way Tree square was a cacophony of sounds from music systems, car horns and exploding firecrackers as crowds decked out in the latest fashions, converged on Mandela Park in the square or at the Stone Love event at the nearby Marketplace to welcome 2003.
A complimentary fashion show was provided at the Doctor Bird Club in Clock Tower Plaza, Half-Way Tree while party favours were all the rage at the Red Bones cafe in New Kingston. Over one hundred guests dined or paid $500 to ring in the New Year with as much noise as they could at Red Bones.
At the Pegasus Hotel's New Year's Ball, relatives from abroad and old school friends were among the revellers but the night belonged to couples, dressed to the nines in dapper suits or ball gowns with matching shawls, shoes and handbags.
The all-female singing ensemble, Fourth Street Sister and Peter Phillips Disco had patrons in the ballroom hopping as the young, and young-at-heart pulled off pricey shawls, dragged eager or reluctant partners to the dance floor and demonstrated they still knew how to do the ska and rocksteady dances.
As the clock ticked towards midnight, they were in a frenzy, waving party favours, blowing whistles and wringing every drop of sound from the various noisemakers that had been distributed for the hotel's annual New Year's ball.
With 30 seconds to go, the crowd started chanting the countdown along with MC Norma Brown Bell, the volume getting louder until the clock struck midnight. Then the room erupted into deafening cheers then slightly off-key singing to Peter Phillips Disco's playing of Auld Lang Syne.
Many of the patrons in the ballroom and some people on the streets had different views about last year and their expectations for the coming year. Most of those interviewed thought 2002 was a bad year for Jamaica because of the level of crime and violence and hoped this year would bring peace and prosperity to the island.
Cuban-born Jane Montrose said, "It's very hard for foreign people. We feel like we are in prison because with the violence, we can hardly go anywhere." She has been in Jamaica for just over a year. "Here everything is so dangerous, very dangerous. While it's not everybody, the people are very violent. So I pray that God work on Jamaican people's minds and souls. I hope for 2003, peace in Jamaica," she added.
Joseph Powell saw 2002 as a sad year and hoped for change. "What I'm looking for in 2003 is much more happiness, a lower crime rate. I'm hoping for more prosperity, more love in the country and more love between us as people here," he said.
For some persons though, 2002 was a great year at least at the individual level.
Police Sargeant, John Gardner, was still celebrating his acquiring a new car in 2002 and hoped to save more money and buy property during 2003 because, as he sees it, "land is power."
Other persons said they hoped to ask their partners to marry them or to meet a good man or woman with whom they can start a relationship in 2003.
