Happy and Excited

When I first knew I was coming to Jamaica I was excited, and happy, to be going on this trip. Then people started telling me stories about Jamaica; the one stories about Jamaica. We watched a documentary about Jamaica and it was called “Life in Debt”. The kinds of service we did were connecting with the Yallahs High School students and the Sankofa Elementary
 School. However, when we were at the villa, (Carleva Bay), we were visited by some young singers, by the name of Joe, Fabian, and Romaine; they were a music group called L-Rose. Another person that came to visited us was Sister Marcia Williams and her daughter Christen; they were a part of helping to maintain Jamaican culture.

            When we first watched the documentary about the “single story” and the video “Life in Debt”, I found them to be very interesting.   I felt like the “Life and Debt” video stuck with me because now I can put some interesting things in the documentary that we are doing with the students from Yallahs High School.

The video started by saying that when visitors come into Jamaica they don’t know that the economic value of a dollar is down and they don’t think of how much an American dollar is worth.

Then we saw a video about the “single story”. The “single stories” or “one story” are all I kept hearing about when I was preparing to come to Jamaica.  A “single story” is like bad or disturbing images that people have on a different country or city. For example i, people were telling me that Jamaicans steal, pick pocket, kidnap you and they don’t like Americans. Now that I’m here it’s not even like that; the people here are very welcoming.

Scholars of Sankofa Learning Center playing drums for us.  They were outstanding!

            We came to Jamaica to meet the Yallahs High School students that we are in partnership for our service project. When they saw us, they were more excited than we were. We got to know them and got straight to our project and formed our groups. The groups formed were: how does music affects us in a positive or negative way. The other group formed is; how are Jamaican memorials different from Philly. Next there was a group on how dance was evolved over time. The last group formed was how Patois is different and why from English. By the end of the day it was like we knew them for five years.

Founder of Sankofa Learning Center, Sandra Kenton-Fraser with the first three Scholars of the School

            Another reason why this trip was such a great experience was because we had some visitors come to the Villa (Carleva Bay Villa). Some of the people that visited us was a music group by the name of ‘’L Rose” and they were wonderful. They told us the reason they do music is to connected with the younger children and show them that it’s another way to the top of the mountain. The other visitor was a sister by the name of Marcia and her daughter Christen. They talked to us about how dances evolved over time and how it is a part of their culture. The dance they were teaching us are similar to the dances we do in Philly. Then she said most of these dances came out of Africa. That was a very interesting point.

            My time with the younger Sankofa Elementary students impacted my life a lot and now I can motivate my younger siblings to do better. However, when the music group came to us they gave me a lot of inspiration. Such as you don’t always have to give a message though song you can also do it through the beats. In my eyes this was a great experience and this will stick with me as l evolve into a man.        

-Shyheim Ladson