Meeks
Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
EVERY Jamaican knows the importance of reading.
You doubt me? When you bad-drive someone or give someone reason to believe that you "dis dem" on the road what is the worst possible thing you think they will say to you? No! Not that! Try this: "Ah gwine read bout yu."
How about if you are haunted by a string of crosses? Everything you touch turns into unmentionables. Your dearest and most knowledgeable friends are likely to advise you that you need a read-up.
The "bath" will come after that but nothing will happen without the proper reading.
And once upon a time the worse condemnation was to be told that yu so dunce and cyaan read "Yu wudda eat yu name affa bulla".
Today there is no danger of eating your name off bulla. You probably would not recognise the millennium, globalised bulla posing off in the see-through plastic wrapping on the supermarket shelf, far from its humble beginnings in the glass case in the corner shop.
Furthermore, the cornershops have had to make way for the fast food joints. I challenge you to try eating your name off a likkle joint a chicken, especially if you have a good old Jamaican name like Puncinella or Retinella, before you add your surname.
And I rather suspect that even if they were to increase the size of the chicken, the thing so greasy that your name would gently slide off before you realise that there was something there worth reading and not eating.
As to the people who work in these fast food joints, did you know that in some places they are not required to read at all?
True. The first time I saw a cash register with photos of the items sold on the buttons I knew I had been catapulted to a time when people would whisper behind your back about your inability to "carry metchis and do mental arithmetic."
But this was supposed to be a modern thing, the age of machine doing the thinking on your behalf: Just press the button with the hamburger photo and read out the cost to the customer.
Reading not required
Oops. Suppose you cannot read numbers? No problem. I have it on good authority that they will soon install one of these nasal Star Trek voices into the cash register that tells you in staccato rhythm: "Your total is one hundred dollars and twenty cents".
Never mind. The disincentives to reading are many. So congratulations are in order to Judith Bodley and company at the RJR Communications Group for the 100 per cent Literacy Programme which was officially launched on October 20, 2001.
And not a moment too soon. True, is a long time we've been trying to reach this goal with programmes like JAMAL, Each One Teach One, and so on. But we are not going anywhere if we do not succeed with it.
If you were sitting behind one of the telephones at the Build Jamaica Foundation's Telethon at CVM on Heroes Day, you would know what I mean.
SAMPLE
ME: Good day, Telethon.
CALLER: What?
ME: Are you trying to reach the BJF Telethon?
CALLER: Yes. Is what that?
And the rest was grief.
There were several exchanges that went like this:
ME: Good day, Telethon.
CALLER: Yes, I call to vote for Papa San.
ME: Why are you voting for him?
CALLER: Him on the teevee on the programme now.
More grief. Maybe that was the worst grief. We are quick to vote, join a party, take a side but we are unable to read the manifesto, question the platform, raise questions about who or what comes calling in our living rooms via the television.
There were so many persons who called to ask "What is a pledge and how yu do that?" that after a while those of us answering the phones started to bet that before the evening was out someone would have called in to say: "I pledge my heart forever to serve with humble pride..."
Sadly, in a way, no one did. A certainly quality of service and a certain kind of pride are intimately connected to the ability to read. It really is a gift to self.
How many of our performers who come a-calling from the teevee "jus a deal wid reality" but cannot access the information which would help them make sense of that reality?
How many are unable to adequately educate themselves about the tradition they have inherited and take pride in the contributions of those who went before and made their space possible?
The ability to read is fundamental to everything else which we want to accomplish: See ourselves in movies made by us, see ourselves in books which we produce.
It should not be enough that it is written, we should want to see it for ourselves, amend it, add to it, write more of it from our perspectives.
It is our primary weapon of defence. Otherwise those who continue to write about us will continue to shape our consciousness and our image in ways which are inimical to our advancement.
Time for a change and it is right that we make our children the priority.
Amina Blackwood Meeks is a communications consultant and storyteller.
