What My Jamaican Nanny Left Me – The Other Side of the Story

Nurse and Child - Mary Cassatt
Photo - Wikimedia Commons

The Huffington Post published a poignant story about a Jewish man reminiscing about the legacy of love left to him by his Jamaican nanny, a story that’s heartwarming and touching.  Or is it?

The story is indeed well-written and moving. But suppose we read between the lines? The question the story raises for me is whether this is a classic case of a Jamaican woman who was forced through economic circumstances to leave her children back home to raise other people’s children far away. It’s possible that her children were already grown, but the story says she had SEVEN children back in Jamaica and another child in the United States, for whom she prayed every night.

I’m not judging her, or other Jamaicans who feel the need to migrate to support their families. Many feel they have no choice. But the fact is that this has been recognized as a major contributor to our societal problems like juvenile delinquency, and yes, crime.

Coco bread with a Jamaican beef patty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So when Ross Urken speaks lovingly of the evenings his Jamaican nanny spent reading to him and his sister, ask who is reading to the thousands of kids left motherless back in Jamaica. When he speaks about how she exposed him to Jamaican patties and jerk chicken, ask about the exposure of the children left behind.

Lecturer in Social Work at the University of the West Indies Dr. Claudette Crawford-Brown reported on the phenomenon she termed the “barrel children” syndrome in the 1990s.

UNICEF (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A 2007 UNICEF report cited her seminal work as follows:

“As early as 1993, Dr. Claudette Crawford Brown, from the University of the West Indies (UWI) came to the conclusion that the absence of mothers was a key determinant to the involvement of children with violence.

In a survey she found that 80% of children in conflict with the law had their mothers absent, while this was the case for only 30% of other children, and migration was the second most important reason explaining the absence of mothers.”

Those left behind are particularly vulnerable to abuse, which should be of interest, given the recent focus on the sexual abuse of children.

A 2009 UNICEF study on the impact of migration in the Caribbean stated that:

“The impact of parents’ migration on children can be devastating as it threatens the long-term well-being and development of Caribbean adolescents into adulthood…

“Many children left behind suffer from depressions, low self-esteem which can lead to behavioural problems, and (are) at increased risk of poor academic performance as well as interruption of schooling.”

The potential for abuse is especially great when the mother migrates. The study states that:

“According to the evaluation of the Health and Family Life Education programme, 18% of the respondent children (average age of 14.7 yr) experienced forced sex. The vulnerability to abuse significantly increases when a child loses the protection of a parent(s)…

When the mother migrates, abuse whether it is physical, emotional, sexual or neglect is more likely to occur.”

Interesting, although the reason given for migration is to help the family, often the migration of the father impacted the family left behind by reducing the available financial resources with “little remittances coming back …”

Boeing 737
Photo - Wikimedia Commons

The children left behind have been found to suffer a range of psycho-social issues.

“The most common psycho-social problems are feelings of abandonment, sadness, despondence, despair, anger, lack of trust, low self-esteem, and inability to concentrate at school. The abandonment of a parent(s) sometimes has permanent effects on the child’s life, and many spend their entire lives struggling with feelings of rejection and loss.  The many broken promises of reunion with their parents further tend to result in emotional instability.”

The paper concludes that:

“These implications of parents’ migration on children threaten the long-term well-being and development of Caribbean adolescents into  productive adults.”

Many of those issues remain.

Dr. Audrey Pottinger was quoted in the Jamaica Observer in 2008 as saying that she had conducted a small study in which children whose parents had migrated to North America or the United Kingdom, reported feelings of loneliness, anger, anxiety, fear of rejection, abandonment and sadness.

Speaking at a Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) Symposium, she said:

“I compared children who had parents divorced, died or migrated. We found that migratory loss seems to affect more areas of the child’s life compared to divorce and death.”

She found that migration caused mental consequences even though parents stayed in contact with their children and sent money and gifts.

Seventy-seven per cent of the children said they were concerned about who would take care of them once their parents left and 71 per cent had increased somatic illnesses (triggered by depression) after the migration. Forty-five per cent said they did not understand why their parents had migrated, even after family discussions,  and 20 per cent said they were never informed prior to the migration – they just came home one day and were given the news that their parent left.

She noted that there were statistically significant differences in the occurrences of depression in children whose parents migrated compared to those whose parents had not.

“Depression was found significant in both the Trinidad and the Jamaican group,” she said. “In addition, in Jamaica the children were more at risk for suicidal ligation and poor school performance.”

So forgive me if I’m not clicking my heels with joy at the legacy this Jamaican nanny left her American charge. It leaves me wondering about the impact on her Jamaican children. And even if this nanny’s children were all grown and well-functioning adults when she left, it reminds me of the thousands of other children suffering from absent parents. No, this story doesn’t warm my heart. It saddens me.

Note

Links to the UNICEF reports are provided, but for completeness, the citations are:

1. The Impact of International Migration: Children Left Behind in Selected Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Anna Lucia D’Emilio et al. Division of Policy and Planning, UNICEF. 2007.

2. The Impact of Migration on Children in the Caribbean. Caroline Bakker, Martina Elings-Pels and Michele Reis. UNICEF Office for Barbados and Easte

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Would we care if Trayvon Martin had died in Jamaica?

Trayvon Martin Protest – Sanford (Photo credit: werthmedia)

Jamaica has jumped enthusiastically onto the Trayvon Martin bandwagon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m following the story closely as well, and have had several discussions on radio about it. But some Jamaicans have been asking why we are so focused on Trayvon’s story, but you rarely see that level of interest in the many cases of killings in Jamaica – many of which also involve children. Here are a few ideas.

1. It’s much easier to do veranda commentary than it is to jump up from your computer and get involved. Protesting is a hot, sweaty activity that usually involves missing work and risking your face being on national TV or in the newspapers, associated with, gasp, a cause!

 

Witness the poorly supported civil society protest outside the Ministry of National Security to call for better policing. This was shortly after the killings of Immaculate High School student Vanessa Kirkland, which I wrote about here and 13-year old Niketa Cameron, both allegedly by police.Vanessa’s death, in particular, provoked outrage. Should that outrage have translated into support for that protest? Why would Jamaicans who were expressing longing to join a march for Trayvon, not have supported a local protest?

Most local protests, however, are organized by groups like Jamaicans for Justice, which are viewed, at best, with scepticism by many Jamaicans, and at worst, with downright hostility, as I said here. In fact, JFJ has recently written to the papers, trying to change the perception of the group. Is that attitude to the human rights groups a factor? I believe it probably is.

2. The US media cover such stories in a way that the Jamaican newsrooms don’t (can’t?) Blow by blow coverage, digging into everybody’s backgrounds, camping out outside offices and homes, and hours of hours and HOURS of airtime devoted to the story. They bring victims to life. Trayvon sounds like the kid next door, and you are drawn into the story in a way that doesn’t seem to happen often here. Here’s an example. Quick –  what do you know about Niketa Cameron? Probably nothing. I bet her name didn’t even ring a bell.

3. The racial element to this story has proved irresistible. Many, or most of us, have family in the US.

Trayvon Martin Protest – Sanford (Photo credit: werthmedia)

Our fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles, cousins and friends are black men living in the States. They could have been Trayvon Martin. That’s certainly what it feels like.

Having said all this, a colleague said to me that she does not believe the cases are comparable. INDECOM, the Independent Commission of Investigations,  investigates police killings in Jamaica and immediately started to probe the killings of Vanessa and Niketa. In other words, the responsible government agency sprang into action, and made this known publicly. On the other hand, she says, in Florida, the authorities failed to act.

She points to the outrage over the case of the Kingston College student allegedly killed by the X-6 driver, and the way the authorities here in Jamaica were forced to react to that public outrage. She argues that if a teenager walking in Cherry Gardens had been killed by a resident on neighbourhood watch patrol, there would have been similar outrage here.

What do you think? Is she right?

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Requiem for a Jamaican teenager

I don’t know Vanessa Kirkland. I don’t know her family. And I certainly don’t know exactly happened on Tuesday night. What I do know is that a 16-year-old girl is dead, a high school student who was preparing to sit exams, and whose future stretched out ahead of her, full of potential and possibility.

There’s an empty space in her house this morning, her bed not slept in, her school uniforms not worn, her notes for exams never to be used. Reports are that Vanessa had recently taken graduation photographs. When they arrive, there’ll be no girlish giggling over them. Instead, there’s a good chance those photographs will only be greeted with tears.

Her mother has lost a daughter, and her siblings, a sister, in a manner that must be hard to accept.  The future her mother dreamed of for her no longer exists. We grieve with her, and we know it could be us. Today fi you, tomorrow fi me.

And although we don’t know precisely what happened, the circumstances under which Vanessa died and the disjointed “PRELIMINARY REPORT” are sufficiently cloudy and questionable to raise inevitable feelings of mistrust and anger. This is where Independent Commissioner of Investigations (INDECOM) Commissioner Terrence Williams’ complaint about the inability to get ballistics tests done speedily must raise renewed concern.

Because the least we can do now for Vanessa is to insist on a speedy and effective investigation. Let her mother, and the country, know exactly what happened. She deserves that much.

Human Wrongs Groups

human rights (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

I get it. People don’t like Jamaicans for Justice, and a lot of people probably believe the name should be changed to Jamaicans for Injustice. Former controversial cop Reneto Adams wasn’t shy about his dislike of the organisation, which he dubbed, along with like-minded entities (think Amnesty International) as “human wrongs groups.”  He wasn’t alone.

Jamaica has high levels of violent, horrendous crime. Human rights activists have been painted as criminal lovers and defenders of criminals because they dare to take the hugely unpopular position that each and every one of us (including gunmen) should have our human rights respected and should not be abused by agents of the state. Their insistence that force should be a last resort and that the level of police killings in Jamaica is unacceptable makes them targets of hostility.

Photo courtesy of freedigitalimages.net

I get that. I hold no brief for JFJ although I’m sure it sounds like it sometimes, since I feel obligated to correct the wrong and unfair comments made about the group by callers to my programmes.

eg they never speak out when police are killed. NOT TRUE. JFJ issues a statement of condemnation whenever policemen are killed. I know this as a fact.  I see the statements when they come into the newsroom and I see them included in the newscast.

They only take up for criminals (whether alleged, accused or convicted). NOT TRUE. JFJ has, for several years, maintained an active and spirited advocacy on behalf of children in the care of the State that has resulted in the Government of Jamaica being forced to defend itself before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights.

http://www.jamaicansforjustice.org/nmcms.php?snippets=news&p=news_details&id=1488

But I digress. So I get why Jamaicans dislike them. Here’s what I don’t get. JFJ speaks out when they believe there have been human rights abuses by agents of the state. That is the cause which they have chosen. So what’s with this constant call for them to speak out on behalf of victims of crime, incest survivors, children abandoned in the jungle and left to be brought up by Tarzan and Jane, etc etc?

Whether you like their mandate or not, they have chosen it, and they are executing it. If we think those other causes are important, why not take them up ourselves? I am sure Tarzan’s adopted kids would appreciate it.