NAME OF FEATURE | THE GLEANER | MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2022 5 Paul H. Williams/Gleaner Writer AT LATE dusk, on Tuesday, March 1, a Gleaner news team arrived in the eastern Westmoreland district of Seaford Town. The team wanted to speak with some elders before rushing out of the historic town before nightfall. While we were cruising to find a ‘chat spot’ we saw a brown-skinned, bleached-blonde woman on her veranda counting breeze. She turned out to be of pleasant disposition, admitted she was not the best person to talk with about Independence issues, and sent us to an elderly German couple, who refused to speak because the man was busy cooking. He, however, sent us to find a Roy Chambers, a retired policeman. We found his niece first. She alerted him of our presence, but refused to be interviewed formally. By the time Fritzroy Chambers arrived night had covered us with its black blanket, under which we sat on the steps of the piazza of a shop and patron-less bar. A few streetlights glowed from under the blanket which got much darker by the time the brief interview was over. It was mainly about the paucity of functioning streetlights in such a storied place. Chambers initially attributed it to the lack to the ineffectiveness of local government. He said, “Local government as it is now has no authority. Anywhere in Jamaica local government has no authority, is only the minister of local government has any talk. The local government of the parish councils (municipal corporations) have no talk. The mayors and the councillors and whosoever they want to be, they could talk until thy kingdom come, they have no authority.” There are councillors who want to improve their divisions, but they do not have the funds, he further stated, and “not all the blame the parish council should be getting, because sometimes the councillors try.” “And sometimes the very people who put up the streetlights come back to thief them, that is what Jamaica must talk about. The very people that parish council pay to put up the streetlight them, in a couple a day them would come back and thief them and sell them,”Chambers claimed, “So, Jamaica the land of wood and water is now the land of corruption.” The community historian has been living in ‘German/Jarman Town’ for over 60 years and still has vivid memories of Independence Day 1962. The first to come to mind were the“tinmugs” and the“chalk cups”that the “smaller children” and “bigger children”, respectively, got at the primary school. Jamaica Independence and coat of arms were emblazoned on them. They were also recipients of Jamaican flags. He also recalled a particular type of trees being planted on the school compound and in other places. So, how have things been since then? “The community gone back about a hundred and odd years. Because in 1962 you had more people living in Seaford Town,” Chambers recollected. At the time, banana was the number-one crop in Seaford Town to the extent that “you could hardly see a house in Seaford Town because of the banana cultivation”. Now, he said, “You hardly find a cooking banana in SeafordTown.” Jobs outside of the farming sector are also scarce. So is money to send children to school as far away as Savanna-la-mar and Montego Bay. There is a heavy dependence of remittances from aboard, and a constant migration from the community. Such is the lot of Seaford Town, not to mention the streetlight issues. While some people would love to see the diamond on the Jamaica 60 ring sparkle in the glare of the ‘moons on sticks’ (streetlights) in SeafordTown, while they celebrate on‘August Night’, Fritzroy Chambers, a devout Catholic, said he does not mind the darkness, he is used to it, and love when the place is well lit by the moon, which was nowhere to be seen on that night. “The darkness is not a problem to mi. Mi love the darkness, cause mi know when a moonshine a the prettiest thing you can see,” he said while beaming. And with that the team got ready to leave as there was no moonlight to guide us out of the place that was established in 1835 by Lord Seaford as a settlement for northern German immigrants, who were enticed by promises of land, houses and jobs. They were to encounter a hard-knock life in the dark“wilderness” into which they were deposited. Now, 187 years later, their descendants could still be without streetlights for the next 60 years. Community Historian and retire policeman, Fritzroy Chambers, says he does not mind the dark nights in Seaford Town, Westmoreland, especially when the moonshine is “pretty”. NICHOLAS NUNES/PHOTOGRAPHER HISTORIC SEAFORD TOWN TO CELEBRATE DIAMOND JUBILEE IN THE DARK jamaica at JAMAICA AT 60: WESTMORELAND
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