The only anchor now is FAITH – ” to believe what we do not see and the reward of that faith is to see what we believe “.
We are a resilient people and with FAITH in the ALMIGHTY this too shall pass. For most Jamaicans our ancestors went through many trying situations- rounded up like animals, put through the Middle Passage and according to our own Professor Colin Channer “our ancestors did not come through Immigration but through Customs because they were regarded as goods”.
Our ancestors were subjected to the most brutal plantation life and in 1775 some five thousand died from starvation and famine because of shortage of food supplies due to the American Revolutionary War when America was seeking Independence from Britain. Between 1780-87 every year there was hurricane. In 1850 there was the Cholera epidemic where 50,000 or one tenth of the population died. Cholera started in India 1848 and reached Jamaica 1850. Between October and November there were daily deaths in Kingston of up to 150 persons and that is how the May Pen Cemetery started. Mary Seacole who was born at 10 East Street now the home of the National Library of Jamaica saved many lives.
So as COVID 19 challenges, let us face it with what a vendor said to me after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. She said to me, ” Teacher don’t worry, it does not come to stay, the Bible says ,it comes to pass.”
THIS TOO SHALL PASS.
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