The following are feedback letters to our popular Roving With Lalah series published yesterday. The column was part of the series, 'From Kingston to London ... The Jamaican Immigrant Story', which started on Sunday.

Dear Robert:

I welcome that story with homesickness in my heart. I know everyone who leaves Jamaica to work or live elsewhere feels pretty much the same as Derrick, and it is good to see it so genuinely expressed from the heart. He wasn't talking about the things one can do and get away with in Jamaica or some other petty, nonsensical grievance like most people do. No. He talked about the simple things such as the minibus and other such things that are part of Jamaican life; things that set it apart from everywhere else one might go. Those very things he spoke of are a few things I miss about home.

I am a Jamaican living abroad (in another Caribbean island) and the way one is made to feel sometimes by people's attitude toward us is depressing; we are often stereotyped as thieves, rowdy, ignorant and desperate. I miss my home so much and would love to come home this minute. I miss the 'handcyaat bwoy dem', the jerk pan, the market people and the closeness of communities. Only in Jamaica have I seen someone roast a breadfruit and take a piece for his or her neighbour.

Please continue what you do with your columns.It is quite an experience in the mornings to be able to lose myself in the articles by virtue of the expressions that come out. I find myself close to tears sometimes when I think about how much happier I would be if I could do what I do now in Jamaica.

I am, etc.,

Homesick

Diania Tomlin-Perkins