Sunday, November 06, 2005

My Jamaican Culture



Hello and welcome to my blog - 'The Jamaican Culture'.

This blog was created to share information with anyone who would like to learn about the culture of this very beautiful island - Jamaica, W.I.

Visit us often to learn about the different aspects of Jamaica's history, its people, food, music and you will even be able to speak like a Jamaican!

Culture can be defined as how people behave and include their tradition, habits, beliefs and their food. It makes people from one culture behave differently from the people of another culture thereby making each culture unique.

The Jamaican culture is a unique one. It encompasses our Anthem and Pledge, our Religion, our National Awards, our National Heroes, our History, our National Symbols and our Food. My future blogs will post information on each of these items of our culture.

I am a Jamaican and I was born in the parish of St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, West Indies. Both of my late parents were teachers.

Jamaicans who live in Kingston (the Capital of Jamaica) call anywhere outside of Kingston the 'country'. If you do not live in Kingston, you live in the 'country'.

I lived in Jamaica during the era of comedians such as Bim and Bam, Mass Ranny, Miss Lou and Charles Hyatt; music such as Ska, Folk, Calpyso, Rock Steady and Reggae.

I have enjoyed eating food such as ackee and saltfish, curried goat, cornmeal porridge, hominy porridge, fried sprat (a fish), steamed callaloo, gungo peas soup, red peas soup, fried johnny cakes, fried plantains, rice and peas, fricassee chicken, cornmeal dumplings, curried goat, turn cornmeal, pone, potato pudding and stew peas and rice.

I even saw John Canoe (also known as Jonkonnu) parades at Christmas time!

My hobbies are electronics (including building cheap computers), sports (soccer, wrestling and tennis) and cooking (especially Jamaican dishes!).

My wife (Joan) is an excellent baker of wedding cakes, birthday cakes and other desserts. While living in Jamaica, she was well known for her baking especially among her family members. She was called the 'family baker'. She has baked wedding and birthday cakes for most of her nieces, nephews and friends. And... as for her desserts!.... yum! yum! yum!

I own a Web site which has a step-by-step tutorial to build your own cheap computer using cheap computer parts. The URL is http://www.build-your-own-cheap-computer.com.

In my future blogs, I will be writing quite a bit about the Jamaican Culture including its history and its people.

You will also learn about the Jamaican 'roots' such as our dialect, food and music.

If there is anything that you would like to know about the Jamaican Culture that you do not see in any of my future postings, please let me know and I will try to respond to the best of my knowledge.

I do hope that you will enjoy my posts and that there will be a lot of interaction between us.

See you soon.... "irie" ... "yeah man!"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recently visited Jamaica for the first time and fell in love with the people and the culture. It was the first time that I had ever been anywhere outside of the U.S. and I could not have chosen a better place. I cannot express how wonderful the people were. I will be returning to the island in the next month and I know that it will be even harder to go home this time.

Anonymous said...

In my first visit to the island I expected it to be just another vacation, but it was so much more. I immediately fell in love with the beautiful smiles of the people. It will be a place that I will return to as often as I can. I have never had so many strangers make you feel at home, it was actually the first vacation that I did not get home sick on. It will always be a special place for me.

Anonymous said...

Hello Ive never been to Jamaica before, buti am involved with a jamaican now for the past 3yrs now and he is so loving and kind. I would like to know as much about the Jamaican culture and the Jamaican man as soon as possible. Im lookig forward to visiting the beautiful Island of Jamaica soon...God bless....bmurphy4950@gmail.com