By Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor 
Amina
Blackwood Meeks
Dear Everybody,
I AM over here in Grand Cayman for the sixth renewal of 'GimiStory'. It is the storytelling festival that was inaugurated in 1999 to coincide with 'Tellabration'! That is the international festival of stories that began in 1988 in Connecticut, and which has grown into a grand celebration of stories and storytellers occurring simultaneously in more than 400 locations across the world on the third weekend of November every year.
By the way, we do Tellabration! in Jamaica but no official body pays us any mind in the cultural mecca of the Caribbean where we are still dreaming about cultural industries. In Grand Cayman now, where the festival director is the inimitable talented Henry Muttoo from Guyana, who spent some good years in Jamaica and who is also the director of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation, the festival has become one of the major activities on the national cultural calendar. Every year the list of investors expands.
The Cayman Tourist Board has become the biggest sponsor undertaking major promotions of the activity and the Ministry of Education and Culture makes generous financial contributions. The festival is free to the public, including the fish and fritters that are provided every night.
Tellabration! is not even mentioned anymore, though the thing is uniquely Caribbean in its spirit and objective. We perform in schools, do workshops for teachers during the days and at nights we are in different districts in people's backyards, on a beach or in Cayman Brac. Some people follow the festival from one backyard to the next.
In previous years we have had tellers coming from South Africa, China, Wales, Ireland, North America and, of course, from the Caribbean. This year a fellow called Ivan rampage through de place, destroyed the Harquail Theatre and the home of Cayman National Cultural Foundation. It took files, films, videotapes of previous festivals, furniture, everything. Henry was sure the festival had to go on but was not quite sure how.
RESILIENCE
The only option was a postponement. And guess what? Here we are, 22 Caribbean tellers and musicians from Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Caribbean tellers living in all over North America and in England are here for 10 days of storytelling to say to Grand Cayman life goes on, we salute your resilience. And no money changed hands. As part of the salute, the festival goes to Little Cayman for the first time this year. It is also the first year that only Caribbean tellers are participating. Caymanians turn out in the hundreds and ask for the tellers by name, it's like a family reunion. That's the spirit of the Caribbean.
Over at the Netherbow Arts Centre in Scotland, Caribbean people only want to hear that there is someone from the Caribbean taking part in their festival and they are searching you out requesting this or that Ananse story or teaching you one that's unfamiliar to you. People stop you in the streets to ask about people you have never met, who sick, who married, how they doing and to send how-de-do. There is a memory, a connection to a time past, a time when they left, a time in which they still live and which inspires them to go on.
New York, Dr. Basil Bryan requested me to transmit to Jamaica the love that Jamaicans living in the diaspora have for this little rock. It was self-evident at the November 2004 45th Annual Awards Dinner and Banquet of the Cornwall College Old Boys' Association, New York chapter. There was love in everything, from the opening prayer to the proceeds of fund-raisers for hurricane relief in Jamaica, Grenada and Haiti that was presented to the Hon. Consul, the other cheques for various projects at their alma mater in St. James, to the closing hand-holding circle of Jamaicans and their Caribbean family members singing Bob Marley's One Love.
PRIDE IN NATION
It is this pride in belonging to a certain kind of Caribbean, this love for Jamaica that we need to be courting the diaspora to share with the rock. What would we gain if we could only find the will and the way to declare a diaspora homecoming year? A year in which every month there are two or three different Jamaicans from away, as they say in Barbados, in every single parish, interfacing with young people, especially in their schools and community organisations, sharing their personal success stories, and there are many in which money is the last thing that is mentioned, if it gets mentioned at all, that are loaded with inspiration for nation-building.
Have you listened to an old boy or old girl recently talking about the link between what they have become and what their school or community did for them and how it makes it impossible for them not to do everything they can to ensure that the present generation is raised with the same enduring values? Have you heard any Jamaicans who didn't even have a chance at 'good schooling' in Jamaica share their desire for using their success to contribute to the educational development of Jamaicans?
STRADDLING THE GENERATIONS
The challenge is, of course, that the present crop sometimes does not know, does not care, is not informed that all this love and concern is being poured into their becoming by people whose names they will probably never hear and people whom they might never meet personally. There are large numbers of people straddling the generations, in the public and private sector, respected public figures as well as people who just talk on their verandahs, who have so absorbed a millennium free-market way of relating that only the money matters 'send the money come'. Returning Residents who are not bringing barrels of dough home can no badda return, are not numbered in the diaspora. Maybe what we really need is the incentive, the encouragement to make the money, the connection to the past, the imperatives for sustainability, the Bob Marley philosophy of 'if my life is fe me one me nuh want.' That is the dominant spirit in the diaspora, a desire to invest in human beings not just roads as part of the tourist product or 'brand Jamaica'.
The Jamaican diaspora is still deeply in love with the Jamaica that used to put people first.
GRATITUDE
The Jamaican diaspora is in love with gratitude. A lady came up to me at the storytelling festival in Grand Cayman to thank me for what I had done for her. Three years ago, I emceed the Emancipation Vigil in Seville. Part of that required me to oversee the drawing of the gate prize, a trip for two to an Air Jamaica destination. The winner, Hopie from St. Ann chose to go to Grand Cayman. Enterprising Jamaican that she is, she found work there, brought up her mother for a three-week holiday, and is proud of being able to contribute to her family upkeep from her salary. She sought me out in the crowd to say 'thanks'. She wanted me to know that she had 'made good use of the opportunity' and she wanted to take me into town to buy me 'something'. Wha' me do? According to her, I was there at the beginning and she always wanted to know how to find me to let me know that she trying to do good.
The Jamaican diaspora sometimes catch dey tail to try to do good. They are not millionaires, not all of them are in steady jobs or own their own businesses. The first time I went to England and ask directions and somebody show me red line-yellow line-blue line and me laas, I was struck with how much our non-reading grandparents endured in dat cold place to send home the barrel two times every year and how we come to teck it for granted and believe that we are entitled.
The diaspora loves us. The best way to love them back is to rekindle that kind of Jamaica that they remember and would love to retire in. The best way to accept their love is to give them a chance to teach us again how to be and not be so anxious to only dip we hand inna dem pocket.
