#Selling homes in Jamaica

[jamaicahomescom]

Expert Strategies for Real Estate Negotiation in Jamaica

Negotiation is at the heart of every successful real estate transaction, especially in a market as diverse and dynamic as Jamaica’s. While you might feel confident in your abilities, there’s always room for growth. As the saying goes, “iron sharpens iron,” and continuously refining your negotiation skills can make a significant difference in your real estate career. In Jamaica’s competitive…

[fatehbaz]

In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad [...]. [T]housands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work [...] on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War. [...] Recruited and reviled as "coolies," their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.

In places where sugar cane is grown, such as Mauritius, Fiji, Hawaii, Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname, there is usually a sizable population of Asians who can trace their ancestry to India, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. They are descendants of sugar plantation workers, whose migration and labor embodied the limitations and contradictions of chattel slavery’s slow death in the 19th century. [...]

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Mass consumption of sugar in industrializing Europe and North America rested on mass production of sugar by enslaved Africans in the colonies. The whip, the market, and the law institutionalized slavery across the Americas, including in the U.S. When the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791 and Napoleon Bonaparte’s mission to reclaim Saint-Domingue, France’s most prized colony, failed, slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. British emancipation included a payment of £20 million to slave owners, an immense sum of money that British taxpayers made loan payments on until 2015.

Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system.

In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment with “Gladstone coolies,” as those workers came to be known, inaugurated [...] “a new system of [...] [indentured servitude],” which would endure for nearly a century. [...]

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Bonaparte [...] agreed to sell France's claims [...] to the U.S. [...] in 1803, in [...] the Louisiana Purchase. Plantation owners who escaped Saint-Domingue [Haiti] with their enslaved workers helped establish a booming sugar industry in southern Louisiana. On huge plantations surrounding New Orleans, home of the largest slave market in the antebellum South, sugar production took off in the first half of the 19th century. By 1853, Louisiana was producing nearly 25% of all exportable sugar in the world. [...] On the eve of the Civil War, Louisiana’s sugar industry was valued at US$200 million. More than half of that figure represented the valuation of the ownership of human beings – Black people who did the backbreaking labor [...]. By the war’s end, approximately $193 million of the sugar industry’s prewar value had vanished.

Desperate to regain power and authority after the war, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. They, too, looked to Asian workers for their salvation, fantasizing that so-called “coolies” [...].

Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. Bound to multiyear contracts, they symbolized Louisiana planters’ racial hope [...].

To great fanfare, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters spent thousands of dollars to recruit gangs of Chinese workers. When 140 Chinese laborers arrived on Millaudon plantation near New Orleans on July 4, 1870, at a cost of about $10,000 in recruitment fees, the New Orleans Times reported that they were “young, athletic, intelligent, sober and cleanly” and superior to “the vast majority of our African population.” [...] But [...] [w]hen they heard that other workers earned more, they demanded the same. When planters refused, they ran away. The Chinese recruits, the Planters’ Banner observed in 1871, were “fond of changing about, run away worse than [Black people], and … leave as soon as anybody offers them higher wages.”

When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.” That racial reasoning would justify a long series of anti-Asian laws and policies on immigration and naturalization for nearly a century.

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All text above by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022. [All bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[solarpunkbusiness]

Mexico's agrotourism cooperative: saving the axolotl

“The whole concept of this agrotourism cooperative started because we wanted to save the axolotl species, a salamander-like amphibian that is only found in Xochimilco,” said Del Valle. “We’re all about preserving this way of life. We plant small crop beds and sell our flowers to buyers from Jamaica. Our products also go to alternative outlets and directly to consumers. Top-notch restaurants like Chantico, Tetetlan and Antolina Condesa also buy our seasonal products.”

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Just come across this the harkles angry that their images were being used by a business without their permission only they can sell their images to make money? Maybe they should consider putting their names to luxury timeshare developments in Nigeria and Jamaica. by u/Harry-Ripey

Just come across this, the harkles angry that their images were being used by a business without their permission, only they can sell their images to make money? Maybe they should consider putting their names to ‘luxury’ timeshare developments in Nigeria and Jamaica. Not new, but worth a look. It dates back to their flight to freedom, wanting to work towards being financially independent (while still sponging off the RF and tax payers)No sense of humour?Petulant?Property developer forced to remove adverts featuring Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which claim their homes are 'fit for part-time royalty'Another of the taglines used by Hagan Homes on the controversial adverts read: 'If after many months of reflection and internal discussions, you have chosen to make a transition this year to start to carve out a progressive new role as a home owner and if you intend to step back as "senior" members of your family and work to become financially independent, we have the first time buyer home for you.'So Meghan Markle, you have been a laughing stock, joke, since your freedom flight.https://ift.tt/H8GxL7d post link: https://ift.tt/ghV32D9 author: Harry-Ripey submitted: June 06, 2024 at 09:59AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[jerzwriter]

Meet Addie Larkin

Addie is a longtime friend of Tobias, who is introduced in Chapter 2. While they've known each other for nearly a decade and cherish their friendship, they know very little about each other's personal lives. For example, Addie had a partner this whole time, but Tobias only met them once in passing. While their friendship is not deep, it's still very important to them.

Name: Addie Larkin

Hometown: She grew up in Boston. A bit of a nomad, she moves frequently but stays nearby. She has lived in Jamaica Plain, South Boston, and Alston neighborhoods of Boston, as well as Brookline and Somerville in recent years.

Age: 35 years old at start of story.

Sexual Orientation: She doesn't like labels, but if forced to identify, she'd say she's pansexual.

Relationship status: She has a long-term partner, but little is known about them.

Occupation: An artist at heart but a business owner by trade. She owns a store in Cambridge that specializes in Boho-style clothing and arts, as well as metaphysical products. She manages a successful business but is not as capable of managing her personal finances.

Faceclaim: Bree Larson

Personality traits: Artistic, creative, strong-willed, practical, ethical, genuine, assertive, confident, devoutly loyal to those she loves, open-minded, non-conforming, aloof at times, blunt, friendly if she likes you, can appear cold, detests organized/traditional religion, but is spiritual, can be forgiving, or very non-forgiving dependent on the person involved.

More information below...

Other information: Addie is 100% Boston Irish but is estranged from most of her family. She left home for New York to attend art school at 18, and her conservative family did not approve of her lifestyle choices. When she refused to bend to their demands at the end of her sophomore year, they cut her off financially. She stayed in New York for six months but returned to Boston, where she had a network of friends soon after. She loves Boston and her life there. A non-conformist, she started her own business because traditional ventures, schedules, and lifestyles never worked for her. After years of trying to find her niche, she started a small business selling boho-style clothing she made. It eventually grew into a thriving lifestyle/metaphysical store in Cambridge.

Some backstory: She and Tobias met at a bar on his third night in Boston. They got along instantly, and she showed him around his new hometown and introduced him to people who were not involved in the medical world. He provided medical care for her during a period of time when she did not have adequate health coverage, and after that, a deeper bond was formed.

They consider each other close friends, but they know remarkably little about each other's personal lives. For example, Tobias knows she has a partner this whole time, but he's only met them once or twice in passing. Tobias has shared many stories about his conquests with her, but she couldn't tell you a name or face associated with them. Still, when she learns he has an official girlfriend, she's eager to meet her. And while not seeking approval, Tobias hopes they'll get along.

Many assume Tobias and Addie had something more than friendship at some point in the past. But the only two who know the answer to that are Tobias and Addie, and they prefer to leave people guessing.

Mono~Poly Original Characters Mono~Poly Series Information Mono~Poly Series Masterlist

My Main Masterlist

[ashintheairlikesnow]

“What’s wrong with your friend?” For 5 sentence game

CW: Some frank references to dubcon/noncon, also Juliet is fucking calculated and I love her

Beringer's masterlist is here

-

"What's wrong with your friend?"

"What?" Juliet looks over her shoulder, blinking a few times, trying to figure out who in the hell Gina could possibly be talking about. There's at least a dozen people eating dinner in here already, and the other two dozen or so will come in on their own, stragglers fighting the wind cutting their cheeks and freezing their lungs.

"Who... who do you mean, Gina?"

She doesn't exactly have a lot of friends. She holds her bowl out while Gina ladles the soup into it.

It's been bubbling on the stove all day in a giant pot and smells like sheer heaven, slow-cooked pork with hominy and tomatillos and a pile of cilantro as big as her head waiting for everyone to decide what they want. Juliet looks down at her steaming bowl and adds cilantro, radishes, cabbage strips, a dollop of sour cream. The others add different things, and she thinks about how when she worked, she mostly just ate shit from the convenience store. Sometimes she was lucky enough to snag a tamale from the tamale cart.

Sometimes, her clients took her out to fancy dinner at restaurants that had four-month waits for reservations, but none of that food ever tasted as good as the tamale straight from a big plastic bucket, wrapped in corn husk, making her fingers damp and slick with lard and condensation, burning her tongue. Sometimes Romeo was with her and would buy her one with money he got washing dishes at restaurants, paid in cash with no question asked. He used to make more selling his mouth and hands, but he's got too many scars for that, now, he said. People want Romantics to look young and flirty and like innocence defiled, and it's hard to look innocent when half your face is a twisted line pulling your mouth to one side.

Still, he made life work.

She hopes, sometimes, that he's still out there, still making it work. But life expectancies for runaway Romantics aren't more than a couple of years, and he'd already outlived his by the time she met him.

She'd love to see him one more time, though. Those tamales, sitting on the curb with Romeo giggling over them with fruity jamaica soda fizzing up her nose, those were the greatest things she ever ate, the best times she had. Those tamales, and Romeo's good-natured cursing, tasted like home, like laughter and Christmas, in ways she isn't allowed to remember.

The posole that Gina makes, though, that brings memories, too. Headaches, sure, but lately she can get through the headaches, more and more.

Gina snorts. "Him," She says, gesturing with her ladle. Broth shimmery with pork fat drips off of it, unnoticed. She has tendrils of dark curls stuck to her forehead and cheeks and the back of her neck, where her heavy hair is swept up in something both like and unlike a bun. "That one. He's with you all the time lately."

Oh. Beringer.

Juliet shrugs. "He's not really my friend. He's the one that came in with the handler out in the shed. I've been helping him figure stuff out here. Might as well be useful before Brock notices I don't do shit around here."

"Brock's a softie, he won't make you do anything you don't want to do." Gina leans around Juliet to look more closely at Beringer. "Huh. Ophie said he was a daycare pet."

"He was, I think."

"Really? But he's..."

"Handsome?"

Gina smiles, slightly shamefaced. "Well... I just. He looks more like one of your kind, is all I'm saying."

Juliet snorts. "My kind. Right. The whores, you mean. The giant fucking sluts."

Gina turns bright red. "I didn't say that!"

"Thought it, though. Anyway, we're all good-looking, remember? It's part of the draw of the whole damn system. Get a pretty person to do whatever degrading shit you dream about with a smile on their face and a song in their heart." Juliet laughs without humor. Outside, the wind whirls snow past the windows. It stopped actually snowing a while back, but it's dry stuff, easily lifted by the breeze that whistles past the corners of every house. It races itself over the salted, plowed roads like horses hellbent on making it to the horizon.

"Well. Not everyone has to... you know." Gina's smile fades, and she won't meet Juliet's eyes as she says it.

Juliet lifts her chin. It's not her fucking fault, she reminds herself, that she only knows one way to get by. It's not her fault, she was made that way, and you can't blame someone for doing what they know. "Trust me. You might not have had to fuck them, but you still had to act like less than a person, and that's a kind of fucking, too."

Gina swallows, hard. Silence draws out, and then Juliet stomps away, over to the table where Beringer sits. The daycare pet watches the window, lost in his own mind, a cup of coffee long since gone cold in front of him.

"When's the last time you ate, huh?" Juliet sits her tray down a little too loudly, watching him jump in surprise. There are scars on him, too - she can see it on his hands, creeping up the side of his neck, just barely visible. He has more under his shirt, like cobwebs of dead skin.

"Wh-... oh, hi." His smile is brief, but gentle. She could see how he worked well with kids. There's no malice, in a smile like that. No aggression like the men at bars she'd pick up, no desire or demand like the more expensive clients who scheduled in advance. It's just a soft smile, easy as an older brother waking up for church on a Sunday morning so your mother won't know you slept in.

The little girl that's usually glued to his side is off in the play area in the big building where everyone eats, giggling through tag with another girl. One of the Domestics had come with a child in tow, too, unable to bear the thought of losing her. No one has asked if the child is hers.

Juliet wonders if she was a happy kid, when she was that age.

She'll never know.

"Hi doesn't answer my question, Beringer."

"Oh... uh. I don't know." He goes back to watching the window, and she sighs.

"He's not coming out of that shack any faster because of you making goo-goo eyes, you know."

"I know." Beringer leans forward, resting on his elbow, hand in his hair and palm against his forehead. "Rye says he's got a cough starting up. If helping me escape is what gets him killed-"

"Then it's exactly what he fucking deserves."

Beringer looks up, startled, at the flat, sharp edge of her voice. She watches his adam's apple bob as he swallows, sees the slight flare of whites around his eyes. "... Juliet. I told you, he didn't want to do it anymore-"

"Yeah, I hate to let you in on this, but that doesn't matter. Not even a little bit." She smiles to cut the sting in her words, but it doesn't work. His own eyes narrow in response. "Look. Just. You're still in it, I can tell, and it makes sense since you're so new at being out. But he's a handler, Ber. He was a handler, he's still a handler. You don't stop being a handler once you sign their fucking contract. We all know that."

Beringer's jaw works, but he only looks away, back to the window. "He's..."

"What? Nice?" Juliet laughs, bitter as raw chocolate. "Oh, sure, no doubt. Nice to you, you were taking care of his precious baby girl. But I bet he beat the shit out of someone else as soon as he got downstairs to the training rooms, or had one with a mouth on his cock and told the poor trainee it's breakfast. Handlers aren't nice."

"... he isn't like that-"

"They're all like that. You think it was just Romantic handlers who came to my training room to have their fun?" She smiles, and it's a grimace. A snarl. "God, no. I had to spread my legs for every kind of handler you can imagine. At least the Romantic handlers were fucking honest about it."

Beringer stares at her. He has beautiful dark eyes. The kind you could fall into. She can see why the handler out in the shed followed him here, brought him. She'd have done anything for those eyes, too, once upon a time.

"Stop," he whispers. "He was never like that."

"Guarantee he fuckin' was."

"You don't know him."

"Neither do you. Handlers go through fucking months of training, Beringer. They only keep the ones they know will do the dirty work, the worst sons of bitches, the worst bastards, the worst people on earth. I probably sucked fifty handler cocks in training, or more, and you know what?"

He looks like he'll be sick, and some part of her feels good at seeing one of the lucky ones realize what it takes to keep existing when you've been what Juliet had to be to survive. "What?"

"The only ones I saw wearing wedding rings weren't wearing them anymore a few months later. They can't stay married because they don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves."

"His wife-... Marc's wife hated what he did for work, she left-"

"She left? Lucky woman. You should be that smart. Take the kid, go to Canada, and let the handler out there rot. He deserves it. He let plenty of us rot, didn't he? That great good man out there? Looked the other way, probably did plenty of shit he isn't telling you about. While his little girl learned her ABCs upstairs, he taught one of us how to clean grout knowing they'd get shocked half to death if they ever paused for a single. damn. second."

Beringer's eyes go back to the little girl. She's stopped playing. She's watching a show about a cartoon dog, now, standing with a stuffed tiger crooked in her arm. "I-I don't-... know. I haven't really asked him... if he..."

"I know." She sighs, trying to soften her voice, and reaches out to lay a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. I'm being really rude about this, but I swear, it's because I'm worried. If you let him take you to Canada, he'll just want to keep you, to use you. They just have people they want to use. He's using you, Ber."

"He's not." Beringer shakes his head, running his hand over his mouth. He's pale, haunted around the eyes. "He's not. He wouldn't have thought of it on his own. I... I talked to him for months, let him think I'd kiss him, made friends... flirted... did the things I saw them do on TV. I used him."

"Now you don't need him any longer." Juliet nudges his foot under the table with his own, until he looks back at her and she can give him her best wry smile. It's as much a performance as the flirty little grins she'd been so good at once upon a time. "So let him go. Thanks for all the fish, thanks for your baby girl, now go to hell."

"... Rye, he was Rye's handler. Rye said he was always so nice-"

"Right, sure. Bet he was. Then, once Rye knew how to count pills and give baths to old ladies and smile his face off, he sent him on to a house where he got the shit beat out of him by his owner's daughter over and over and over again until he ended up in the clinic four times in a year. Even when he's nice, he's not nice."

Beringer is silent for a long, long time. "What do I tell Mallie when she asks where her daddy is, then, huh? What do I tell her?"

"Tell her he died." Juliet shrugs. "He will anyway, if you're not here to vouch for him any longer. Tell her whatever the hell you want. She's not even old enough to remember you lied. She'll never know. She'll call you daddy after a few months, dad in a few years. You'll be the only father she ever knows. You can watch her grow up, knowing that he can't. Erase him from everyone who mattered to him. Just like they do to us. Take his life and make it serve your needs, what you want, leave him for dead when you're done, and once he's gone through all of it and died after, he'll have paid for everything he ever did to the rest of us who weren't you."

Beringer's breath catches. She thrills, just a little, whenever she lets a man see inside her mind and he looks that frightened afterward. She's never hurt a man in her life - but she's frightened a few, and it's always felt so good.

Romeo was never scared of her, though. He would just find some way to twist her idea and make it even more terrifying. They laughed all the time about the things they could come up with to have their revenge.

"Christ Almighty," He whispers. She's not even sure he knows he said it.

She eats her soup, delighting in the heat and lime and salt and spice, in silence until she's done. She stands to take her dishes back over to the pile of them next to sink, deciding she'll make sure she washes for a half an hour or so to help earn her keep, and pauses.

He's staring out the window again.

"You don't owe him anything." She makes her voice as calm and as gentle as she can. "Understand?"

He doesn't look at her, or answer, but she knows he's thinking about what she said.

Outside, the snow blown by the wind makes sure you can't even see the shack where that handler is being held. Only the fence, and the darkness beyond.

Right where every handler belongs.

[ceekbee]

😂😂😂

THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY "THOMAS COOK VACATIONS" FROM DISSATISFIED BRITISH CUSTOMERS:

1. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."

2. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."

3. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."

5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."

6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."

7. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."

8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."

10. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."

12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."

13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."

14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."

15. "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."

16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."

17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."

19. "My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

Source: Peter Dickinson

[247reader]

Day 29: Mary Seacole!

Mary Seacole was a Jaimaican Creole woman, daughter of a Scottish soldier and his Jamaican wife. Her mother, who ran a boarding house, was also a talented folk medicine practitioner, and between her mother’s teachings and the military doctors she met though her father, Mary became a talented midwife and nurse. In 1836, she married Edwin Seacole, but though their marriage was happy, it was relatively brief, leaving Mary a widow. In 1851, Mary travelled to Panama to visit her brother, but quickly found herself in the midst of a massive cholera epidemic. She nursed a neighbor through the disease, and then more and more patients, eventually coming down with the disease herself, but not before saving several lives. She continued nursing patients back home in Jamaica, and in 1853, volunteered for the Crimean War - or, rather, tried to. The War Office declined her offer; Mary, undaunted, headed for the front. In Crimea, she opened the “British Hotel,” in fact a restaurant and general store built of salvaged materials. In the words of one observers she “redeemed the name of sutler,” traveling out from the hotel not only to sell her goods but to deliver tea and treatment to wounded men. The soldiers called her “Mother Seacole,” and Florence Nightengale, though suspicious a hotel would lead to drunkenness, praised her work as a healer.

Her work in Crimea wiped out Mary’s business savings, and she returned to London impoverished. Hearing of her state, soldiers and admirers held fundraisers to support her. In 1857, she published an autobiography, and her patients in the 1870s included Alexandra of Denmark, the then-Princess of Wales. She died in 1881, widely mourned in Britain and Jamaica alike.

[beardedmrbean]

Haiti is fast descending into anarchy.

Over the weekend, the violence in the capital Port-au-Prince ramped up once again. Heavily armed gangs attacked the National Palace and set part of the Interior Ministry on fire with petrol bombs.

It comes after a sustained attack on the international airport, which remains closed to all flights - including one carrying Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

He tried to fly back to Haiti from the United States last week, but his plane was refused permission to land. He was then turned away from the neighbouring Dominican Republic too.

Mr Henry is now stuck in Puerto Rico, unable to set foot in the nation he ostensibly leads.

Among those who did manage to get into the stricken Caribbean nation, though, was a group of US military personnel.

Following a request from the US State Department, the Pentagon confirmed it had carried out an operation to, as it put it, "augment the security" of the US embassy in Port-au-Prince and airlift all non-essential staff to safety.

Soon after, the EU said it had evacuated all of its diplomats, fleeing a nation mired in violence and facing its biggest humanitarian crisis since the 2010 earthquake.

Millions of Haitians, however, simply don't have that luxury. They're trapped, no matter how bad things get.

The situation is dire at the State University of Haiti Hospital, known as the general hospital, in downtown Port-au-Prince. There is no sign of any medical staff at all.

A dead body, covered by a sheet and swarming with flies, lies in a bed next to patients waiting in vain for treatment.

Despite the overpowering stench, no-one has come to remove the body. It is rapidly decomposing in the Caribbean heat.

"There are no doctors, they all fled last week," said Philippe a patient who didn't want to give his real name.

"We can't go outside. We hear the explosions and gunfire. So, we must have courage and stay here, we can't go anywhere."

With no prime minister and a government in disarray, the gangs' power over the capital is near absolute.

They control more than 80% of Port-au-Prince and the country's most notorious gang leader, Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier has again told the prime minister to resign.

"If Ariel Henry doesn't step down and the international community continues to support him," he said last week, "they will lead us directly to a civil war which will end in genocide."

Meanwhile, the police, outnumbered and demoralised, are struggling to keep looters at bay. The Salomon police station in Port-au-Prince was attacked and burnt out, and charred police vehicles lie outside the still-smouldering building.

US evacuates Haiti embassy staff amid gang violence

Haiti's main port closes as gang violence spirals

Haiti gangs demand PM resign after mass jailbreak

Nevertheless, even in the face of the total collapse of law and order, people must still venture out to make a living.

At a nearby market, several street hawkers told the BBC they had no other option but to leave their homes, even with gunmen roaming the streets.

"I have three kids, and I'm all they have - I'm their mother and their father," said Jocelyn, a market trader who also didn't want to give her real name.

"So, I'm obliged to take to the streets. Yesterday gunmen came here and stole all our money. A lot of vendors lost all their money. But there's no way to stay at home when you have three mouths to feed."

"The anxiety is killing me when I'm in the street," echoed an older woman selling fruit. "I keep thinking what if I get shot dead? Who will take care of my children then? I have no family to support me."

To the west, in one of Haiti's nearest neighbours, Jamaica, the dignitaries, diplomats and heads of state of the Caricom regional group are gathering for an emergency summit.

The instability in Haiti is a problem for the entire Caribbean community, and for Washington too. The idea of a nation of some 11 million people being run by gangs is of huge concern, particularly the potential impact on outward migration during an election year in the US.

It's clear Caricom favours seeing Mr Henry resign as soon as possible, from outside of the country if necessary.

The Biden administration in the US has publicly said the unelected prime minister - who had promised to hold an election in February - should return to Haiti, but only in order to stand down and begin a transition to a new government.

Privately, though, US diplomats are increasingly aware that it might now be impossible for him to return, and that even attempting to do so could further destabilise Haiti.

A UN-backed plan for a Kenyan-led rapid reaction force to tackle the gangs is still far from becoming a reality.

To add to the lawlessness, a week ago, around 4,000 inmates escaped after the gangs attacked the main prison in Port-au-Prince.

Those prisoners are now back on the streets and bolstering the ranks of their gangs.

In the aftermath, the cell doors are now wide open, the facility is virtually abandoned and there are blood stains on the ground after gunmen overpowered the guards.

A prime minister unable to return, violent gangs in control of the capital and dead bodies piling up on the streets: Haiti is currently a nation about as close to a failed state as it's possible to be.

[phvrvohxo]

dunno what i want to be, famous photographer? maybe i dunno, i just want my photos to sell to people that will hang them in their homes, i think that i’m a good photographer, been shooting for 12yrs but i feel like i’m nowhere near the level i want to be… wish i had a mentor to guide me, there are no photographers that i look up to in jamaica, everyone here are just instagram photographer & clout chasers

[lenbryant]

Adieu, Mr. Belafonte.

(NYTimes) Harry Belafonte, who stormed the pop charts and smashed racial barriers in the 1950s with his highly personal brand of folk music, and who went on to become a major force in the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 96.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said Ken Sunshine, his longtime spokesman.

At a time when segregation was still widespread and Black faces were still a rarity on screens large and small, Mr. Belafonte’s ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic. He was not the first Black entertainer to transcend racial boundaries; Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and others had achieved stardom before him. But none had made as much of a splash as he did, and for a few years no one in music, Black or white, was bigger.

Born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants, he almost single-handedly ignited a craze for Caribbean music with hit records like “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell.” His album “Calypso,” which contained both those songs, reached the top of the Billboard album chart shortly after its release in 1956 and stayed there for 31 weeks. Coming just before the breakthrough of Elvis Presley, it was said to be the first album by a single artist to sell more than a million copies.

[jasminebutintaiwansojiemin]

July 13th, 2024 星期六 - 西門地 + 東三水街市場_新富市場 + Taipei Botanical Gardens

We met around 9:30 am and headed on the green line to the blue transfer station where we rode the MRT to the Longshan stop. As soon as we got out of the station, the Longshan Daoist/Buddhist temple was in view. It was very beautiful and colorful. First, we headed to the wet market. By the name, I assumed “wet market” meant mainly fish/seafood but it was just an outdoor market selling fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and other goods. Our tour guide said that when he was a kid, he would go with his grandmother. It heavily reminded me of how I would go to very similar markets with my grandmother in Jamaica. As we entered through the dragon side, the wide variety of fresh produce could be seen everywhere you look. I noted that it was mostly older people buying and selling at the market. Our tour guide noted that there are increasingly less and less wet markets in Taiwan, as many opt to go to grocery stores instead.

After making our way through the market, we headed towards Longshan temple. A place of worship mixed with the Daoist and Buddhist beliefs, it was extremely colorful and adorned with porcelain, gold, and jade. As we walked through the temple, we got to see and try out using the moon stones to answer our questions. In the Daoist part of the temple, there were several shrines for different gods such as the gods of love, war, and health/wellness. There was also an area where one can buy talismans/good luck charms. I definitely want to return tomorrow to buy good luck charms for my friends and family.

After the temple, we rode the MRT again and ended up at the Taipei Botanical Gardens which we walked through before ending up at a museum for a famous Taiwanese Architect. After exploring the museum, we took the MRT once more and ended back in Ximendi, where class was dismissed. Afterwards, I went along with some of my classmates to eat hot pot. After lunch, the girls all went shopping around Ximendi for some cut clothes. We also colored the Red House and surrounding flea market shops before returning home on the MRT green line. Before entering the hotel, we stopped at a Family Mart so I could buy a special Kyoho grape redbull—something we definitely don’t have back home.

Academic Reflection

I was very interested in the wet markets we visited today. I ended up doing some research on wet markets in Taiwan, especially the differences between those in Taiwan and those in Mainland China. I found that apparently that has been a large increase in regulation of the wet markets in recent years. Live-killing of animals and the selling of live animals have been cracked down on, but you can still buy snakes, turtles, and live fish sometimes. I also found online how the Jianguo Wet Market in Taichung was torn down and re-made into a building that even includes industrial refrigerators and breastfeeding rooms.

Our tour guide also told us about a jade market that happens on the weekends a wet market like the one we visited today. Turns out it is the a similar area to the Jianguo market previously mentioned. This immediately sparked my interest because one of the things I really wanted to buy in Taiwan is jade jewelry. At this market, one can also buy an array of gorgeous flowers and plants. Located in Da’an and open from 9am to 6pm, there are about 700 stalls selling many goods from and flowers, to ceramics and furniture. I most definitely plan on going tomorrow to buy jade jewelry.

[ryguy5382]

Stole this from Facebook: THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY "THOMAS COOK VACATIONS" FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS:

1. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."

2. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."

3. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."

5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."

6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."

7. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."

8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."

10. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."

12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."

13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."

14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."

15. "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."

16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."

17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."

19. "My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

Source: Peter Dickinson

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - JACQUELINE BISHOP, writer and visual artist, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and who now lives and works in New York City. She has held several Fulbright Fellowships, and exhibited her work widely in North America, Europe and North Africa. She is also an Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Studies at New York University.

On one hand, the market woman/huckster is the most ubiquitous figure to emerge from plantation Jamaica. Yet, as pervasive as the figure of the market woman is in Jamaican and Caribbean art and visual culture, she remains critically overlooked. In this set of fifteen dishes, I am both paying homage to the market woman—centering her importance to Caribbean society from the period of slavery onwards—and placing her within a critical context. In particular, I place the market woman within a long tradition of female labor depicted in diverse imagery that I have sourced online, including early Jamaican postcards, paintings of enslaved women from Brazil, the colonial paintings of the Italian Agostino Brunias, and present-day photographs, which I collage alongside floral and abolitionist imagery.

I work in ceramics because all the women around me as I grew up—my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother—cherished ceramic dinner plates. These were centerpieces kept in one of their most important acquisitions, a specially made mahogany cabinet. To fabricate the plates, it is important that I am working with Emma Price, a British ceramicist based in Stoke-on-Trent in the former Spode factories. In the realization of the series, that connection imbues them with a meaning that shows the long and enduring relationship between England and Jamaica. For that same reason, British Art Studies is a fitting venue for their first ever publication and partner to create an accompanying film exploring the plates and their themes.

Though the likenesses of none of the women in my family are represented in this series, centering the market woman is my way of paying homage to my great-grandmother Celeste Walker, who I grew up knowing very well, and who was a market woman/huckster/milkwoman par excellence. Celeste was born in the tiny district of Nonsuch hidden high in the Blue Mountains in Portland Parish on the island of Jamaica. Her mother died on the way home from a market, when my great-grandmother was too young to even remember her face. In her adulthood, while my great-grandfather farmed the land, my great-grandmother was the huckster who could easily carry bunches of bananas and baskets of food on her head; the market woman who travelled to far away Kingston to sell in Coronation Market, the largest market on the island. She also hawked fresh fish, and prepared and sold coconut oil, ginger beer, cut flowers, and cocoa beans that were pounded in a heavy wooden mortar. I remember her in my childhood as the milkwoman waking very early in the morning and walking through the district selling fresh cow’s milk. The tradition of huckstering would be passed on to my grandmother who relished the role in her older years. My hope in doing this work is to give much respect to the market women of the Jamaican and larger Atlantic world who have fed, and continue to feed, nations. The market woman is the defining symbol of Jamaican and Caribbean societies.

My work integrates the mediums of painting, drawing and photography to explore issues of home, ancestry, family, connectivity and belonging. As someone who has lived longer outside of my birthplace of Jamaica, than I have lived on the island, I am acutely aware of what it means to be simultaneously an insider and an outsider. This ability to see the world from multiple psychological and territorial spaces has led to the development of a particular lens that allows me to view a given environment from a distance. Because I am also a fiction writer and poet as well as a visual artist, the text and narrative are significant parts of my artistic practice.

Oftentimes I utilize a process of competing narratives to have the viewer participate in the creation of meaning. In my “Folly” series I recount a story I heard as a child, of two tales of a “haunted” house. In time, I researched the history of the house and through a process of photomontage combined photographs I took with archival footage to try and tell the two stories. The ghostly images of the past occupants are integrated into the walls and on the grounds of the present-day ruins. The overall effect is spectral and haunting. I also used this process of photomontage in an ongoing series of ethereal and transcendent “Childhood Memories,” in which characters are often split between heaven and earth. There is a palpable sense of loss in these images as characters seek to inhabit a time and a place long gone.

The “Babylon” and “Zion” paintings are about the Rastafarian ideas of Babylon being a place of captivity and oppression while Zion symbolizes a utopian place of unity and peace. In the Babylon series, I write the lyrics from songs and poems to create text-based drip paintings leading up to the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” in which I use popular dancehall posters to evoke the inner-city Babylonian “walls” of Kingston. The Zion series is comprised largely of monochrome paintings to delineate this symbolic paradise. Glitter is present in these works not only as a representation of the paradise that Rastafarians seek in the Biblical homeland of Zion but also as a commentary on the ‘bling and glitter’ culture that has enveloped much of Jamaican society. Consequently, my work is very much engaged with helping me to understand my heritage.

[remaxelitejm]

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[mixdgrlproblems]

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Today we lost a legend. #HarryBelafonte was a #mixed #American singer, actor & activist, who popularized calypso with international audiences in the 50s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. He was best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)" & others. He recorded & performed in many genres, like blues, folk, gospel, show tunes & American standards. He starred in several films, including Carmen Jones with #DorothyDandridge (1954), Island in the Sun (1957) & Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).

He was born on March 1, 1927, in Harlem, the son of #Martiniquean born father, Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef & #Jamaican born Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper. Both of his parents were mixed. His mother was #Scottish & #AfroJamaican. His father was #BlackAmerican & #DutchJewish with #SephardicJewish descent.

Growing up, Harry dealt with hostility, racism & discrimination; sometimes it came from his own home. His family lived in a mostly White neighborhood which subjected him to bullies, his family was in poverty & to make matters worse, Harry Sr. was hostile with his wife & showed favoritism toward Harry's younger brother, Dennis, because he was lighter skinned. His father was a #colorist & had marked caste ideals. When he was 6, his father ran off with a White woman, leaving them to fend on their own. This left quite a void as well as anger, confusion about his identity & loneliness.

Fortunately, his mother raised him with dignity & care & was the total opposite of Harry Sr. but when the bullying at school turned into fighting & joining a gang, his mother moved them to Jamaica. She hoped a new environment would help Harry but unfortunately his relatives had the same ideals as his father, the #British culture was different & he was homesick. If it weren't for calypso, he would have had a different end. After school, he joined the Navy during WWII but when he had the chance to see the American Negro Theater, he found his passion.

He was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. RIP. 🇯🇲🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇳🇱