A JAMAICAN WOMAN

She has been waging a fight for survival, as evidenced by the folds in her face. She gathers her wares and prepares her meal alone in the dark, cobwebbed, and fortified great house. Dinner is rice and peas, she stated with a smile that is not defined by her bubbly cheeks, but rather with the sparkle in her eyes.

Her hair is messy, and her eyes mirror the hard years she has experienced in the life she has indeed been handed. She is from Kingston, her daughter has migrated, and despite the absence of loving relatives, she perseveres because her life is at stake.

She works on the reimagined plantation owing to her limited options. She is another of those left behind by the modern economy’s violent and strangling hands because she lacks sufficient talent to enter the circle of wealth, that is so tight and exclusive that it is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a pin than for her to enter that decadent space.

As a consequence, she lives and picks her fortunes using the four-leaf clover, which really only she can see. She is a strong woman. She is self-sufficient. She is a child of her forefathers and mother. She is Africa’s Caribbean symbol. Barbara is a Jamaican woman.

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