NAME OF FEATURE | THE GLEANER | MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2022 14 Paul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer IN JULY 2020, Dr Ajamu Nangwaya walked away from the ‘academic plantation’, left his job as lecturer in Rastafari and cultural studies, uprooted himself from his home-farm in Gordon Town, St Andrew, and replanted himself in Spring Garden, Westmoreland, in a space that is very far from the crowd. Where the air is salubrious, Dr Nangwaya is residing in a log house, which he helped to build with lumber from the trees on the 10-acre property called Mukasa Farms and Eco Retreat. There, he is preoccupied with growing his own food. Rain and spring water, and the energy from the sun are integral to his survival at a place where there are no immediate neighbours, and which is many miles from the nearest main towns of Little London in the east and Negril in the west. It is literally a coming-off-the grid endeavour. Born, and bred in Greenwich Farm in St Andrew, the Wolmer’s Boys’ School alumnus has been doing backyard farming since he was nine years old. He has lived and worked in the USA, where he taught organic agriculture to students in Alabama, and in Canada, where he earned a PhD in adult education and community development from the University of Toronto. The unapologetic believer in collective development was a well-known trade union leader and activist in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), and served as vice president on the executive board of Ontario-CUPE, and six years as chairman of CUPE Local 3907. Dr Nangwaya is a staunch anticapitalist who regards capitalism as a“violent”and“oppressive” ideology ANSWERS CONTINUED FROM 12 JAMAICA AT 60: WESTMOR LAND jamaica at 1. 807km2 2. 1738 3. Nigeria 4. Sugar cane 5. 1894 6. 1835 7. Cabarita 8. Petersfield 9. Belmont 10. Negril and Savanna-la-Mar 11. Sevens River 12. Hanover, St James and St Elizabeth 13. Moreland 14. About 1730 15. Savanna by the sea 16.Queen’sTown,nowknownasCrossPath 17. 1797 18. 1904 19.1925 20. Fort George Dr Ajamu Nangwaya has left his job as an adult educator and has relocated to Spring Garden, Westmoreland in a space that is very far from the crowd. CONTRIBUTED It is a life of self-sufficiency that Dr Ajamu Nangwaya is striving to achieve at Spring Garden, Westmoreland. PHOTOS BY PAUL H. WILLIAMS Ajamu Nangwaya taking independence to ANOTHER LEVEL
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