Winston Story

Mek Ah tell yuh 'bout mi fren Winston. Ah buck up pon Winston when Ah fus reach Seattle fram ovah foreign likkle more dan two year ago. Fus time Ah sight Winston me ax 'im seh, "Guy, weh me a go find some proper food fe nyam 'roun' disya blouse-an'-skirt town, ca me love mi Ital stew an' mi guava jam, mi callaloo an' mi poom poom yam?" When 'im seh 'im was a cook Ah was shock. Me seh, "But wait, yuh is a cook? Den cook I up some ackee an' sal'fish fe mi bruckfas' nuh, ca yuh know seh I man cyaan eat dem damn rass krispies!" Not only is Winston a cook, at one time Winston cook fe Bob Marley at 56 Hope Road, Kingston, JA. We became friends.

Winston a 'riginally fram one a Kingston garrison communities, same one dem call Waterhouse. Is officially name dat, but when de 'lection politics drap dem bus' so much gunshot 'roun' de place dat people dehso call it de Fiah'ouse. Winston seh a jus' so tings stay inna Kingston, de place divide up between Tivoli an' Jungle, Southside an' Gully, Rema, Wareika, Waterhouse, all dem place, an' rule by de politricksters dem.

Mek Ah drap a likkle 'istory inna de mix. Winston was twelve years old when His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, made his one state visit to Jamaica. That was on Wednesday, 21 April 1966. A couple of months earlier the Queen of England had made her first visit to the island in over a decade. When the Queen came it was an important time for Jamaica's rulers who primped and preened like peacocks in their finery and pranced about before England's Queen, as obsequious, licky-licky and deferential to her if not more so than they had been before Independence in 1962. When the Queen came the police were under strict orders to keep Kingston's restive sufferahs, poor people who make up the majority of Jamaica's population, from getting within squinting distance of the Queen.

The coming of King Selassie I was a whole different matter, it was poor people time now. People began streaming toward Palisadoes airport where His Majesty was due to arrive since early that morning, clogging the roads leading from the Wareika hills, the Cockpit country, the John Crow Mountains of Portland, Morant Bay. People came by bicycle, dray, some a dem drive donkey cyart, tek bus, some a dem walk foot. Virtually every squatter's shack in the slums of West Kingston, every tenement yard, every hovel cobbled together from flattened tin cans and scraps of wood and cardboard, the burnt-out hulk of every old car used for habitation, was empty on the day King Selassie I came to Jamaica, the sufferahs who lived in them either on their way to the airport or already there, waiting in the rain behind police barricades on the tarmac.

A current of Garveyism runs through the Jamaican national psyche. Garvey, champion of pan-Africanism and repatriation, was born in the parish of St Anns as was Bob Marley. It was Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Marcus the Mosiah, Mosiah meaning Moses, the same one who led the Israelites out of Babylonian captivity, who foretold the coming of Jah Rastafari. In the 1920's Marcus Garvey prophesied and said, "Look to Africa for the crowning of a divine black king, for the day of deliverance is near", a prophesy supported in Psalms where it says "Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God." Garvey's prophesy was borne out on 2 November 1930 when Ras Tafari Makonnen of the House of David, the 225th direct descendent of King Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and given the titles King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, an event which electrified Africans everywhere scattered abroad through slavery.

The first conscious Rastas began appearing not long after King Selassie I's coronation. Jah message, the message of One Love, Peace and Inity that will one day free all oppressed peoples, spread slowly at first. Early Rasta preachers threw their corn and called no fowl, but the kernels they scattered did not fall on fallow ground. Early prophets were jailed and locked away as madmen for daring suggest the "sedition" that black people pay homage to a divine African king at a time when it was perfectly all right for black people to bow before the throne of King George of England. When the first Rasta commune was raided and shut down by the police scattering Jah people, it only spread Rasta further. When the Back-O-Wall shantytown was subjected to the vicious bulldoze-and-burn treatment that left hundreds of sufferahs homeless and standing in only the rags on their backs to sleep on sidewalks and in the cemetery at Maypen, Babylonian oppression only made Rasta stronger.

There were more than 100,000 people there to greet King Selassie I at Palisadoes airport that day, probably 20,000 or more of them Rastas. A gentle rain fell like a benediction on the waiting crowds. When the drone of the engines of the royal aircraft was heard in the heavens, the sky brightened and seven white clouds resembling huge dogs sheared off from the low-hanging overcast. When the royal plane, emblazoned with a roaring Lion of Judah and trimmed in the red, green and gold of the Ethiopian flag, touched down on the runway, blinding sunlight flashed from the firmament and countless jaws dropped in unison. Most of those present sank to their knees.

The door of the plane swung open and as King Selassie I stepped out, a deafening roar went up from the jubilant masses who beat on calabash drums, waved bunting, Rasta flags and held aloft signs and banners that said "Behold the Lamb of God" and "Human Rights Now" and "Lay Not Thine Hand on the Lord's Anointed." They sang and cheered and chanted exhortations like "Hail the Man!," set off firecrackers, blew blasts on huge Abeng bullhorns whose echoing cry remained unchanged since antiquity when they marshaled fighters in the Ashanti wars of West Africa. Many bredrins fired their chalices of holy herb, giving thanks and praise to the most high, Jah Rastafari.

All protocol was swept away in the passion of the moment, police batons and army bayonets were thrust aside as the faithful surged forward and swarmed the runway, each one pushing to touch the plane. King Selassie I, standing at the top of portable steps, raised a trembling hand, a hand that bore the holy stigmata of the crucifixion, in a gesture impossible to interpret. And then he wept. The people wept with him, many of those present remembering the biblical passage which says that Christ wept when he beheld the multitudes.

The following day at Kingston stadium, after what history books now call the Seizing of the Welcome, the official welcome took place. Schools from all over the island sent delegations of children to welcome His Majesty. One child from each school was chosen to present King Selassie I with a bouquet of flowers in welcome. And my friend Winston, being the good student that he was, was given that honour by his school.

When Ziggy Marley come fe nice up Seattle wi' sweet reggae music, the King's music, an' waan some proper food fe nyam, yuh know 'im haffi check mi fren Winston. And you, good reader, haffi check 'im too if yuh waan full up yuh belly wi' some lovely Jamaican food. Check de Caribbean cafe right dehso pon Western an' Vine. Know that the hands that prepare your food there have not only cooked for Bob Marley but have also touched the Elect of God. An' be sure fe tell Winston seh dat Jack Tafari send yuh come. One Love.