An extremely young population
"Children are our future, so look out for them" is a phrase that frequently appears on road signs, and symbolizes the place of the child in Jamaica, which is highly respected. In patois, "child" is called "pickney". Jamaica is a young country, with a reasonable fertility rate of 2.01 children per woman, but very populated (density of 266 inhabitants per km2). Thus, nearly 50% of the population is under 25 years old. However, life expectancy is very high: 77 years for women and 73 years for men. Nevertheless, car accidents and crime remain high. The pension system officially accessible to men and women over 65 is reserved for the wealthy and middle classes. A large part of the population lives in poverty, which makes it impossible to obtain the necessary years of contributions in declared jobs.
Question mark origins
Slavery, which led to the deportation of thousands of Africans to Jamaica, did not allow the origin of the ancestors of the current inhabitants of the island to be identified, robbing them of their history as well as their culture. If elements of black culture have been assimilated into Jamaican culture inherited from Arawak rites, it is difficult to know more. The Dutch were the first to deport slaves, from present-day Senegal to Angola, to the Caribbean. Later, the British massively imprisoned and exiled Africans from the Coromantes, Eboe, Mandingos, Fanti and Ashanti tribes of the West coast of Africa and from the Ibo and Yoruba tribes of what is now Nigeria. The most important ancestors of the Jamaicans, although slaves from all over Africa were landed on these coasts.
Surprising names and nicknames
The African names of these descendants of slaves disappeared a long time ago. When they were sold, slaves often took the name of their owner or a nickname, in this case English. Thus, telephone books have pages of Brown, Campbell, and quite a few Macs, for the Scottish heritage. But this patronymic disinheritance remains engraved in the memories, as Pablo Moses sings in his song Give me back my name: "Give me back my name, we don't want yours, the Chinese are called Ching and Chang, the Indians Raja and Basta, Mac Intosh came from Scotland, I come from Africa and I don't want to be called that. I am a black African man but the name I have is a European man's name."
Jamaicans have a funny habit of giving nicknames. Thus, the first name for a white man is whiteman. If you're French, you'll be called Frenchie or Frenchman, bananaman if you have freckles, slim shady if you're thin or fattie if you're overweight, horsemouth if you have a strong jaw, T-man if you drink a lot of tea or mangoman if you love mangoes. In short, the labeling of nicknames is an imaginative art in Jamaica!
The Arawaks, ghost people of the island
The Arawak Indians were totally decimated by the arrival of the whites in Jamaica, both by the bloody policies of the settlers and by the diseases they imported and for which they were not immune. Yet their imprint is everywhere in Jamaican culture. Today, there are few traces of this Arawak civilization, only a few potteries and petroglyphs. On the other hand, they have bequeathed certain fishing and agricultural techniques, and above all a rich vocabulary from which the following words are derived: corn, hurricane, canoe, cannibal, barbecue, iguana, maracas or guava.
It is known that they were of robust constitution; their skin was coppery, their hair black, smooth and shiny. Their noses were arched, the shape of the forehead, wide and receding, obtained by flattening the forehead of the babies with the help of cotton strips and palms. A quiet people, accustomed to a calm and gentle life, the Arawaks lived by hunting, fishing, gathering and slash-and-burn agriculture, which they mastered well. They cultivated corn sown at the full moon, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, pineapple, tobacco, cotton and cassava from which they made a flour cake: cassave. Skilled fishermen, they fed on fish and turtles. The women wove hammocks and the nawa, a kind of cotton apron, the only mixed garment. Talented sculptors and potters, they worked with stone and wood and enjoyed music and dance. Smoking tobacco was a religious ritual. The cahoba was the main ceremony; after several days of fasting, the men inhaled a drug, causing hallucinations, which allowed them to contact the deities in order to obtain grace and healing and to practice divination. Their gods were represented by the zemes, statuettes in wood or stone, amulets and masks. The supreme god Yocahùma and his feminine double were identified with the sun and the moon, associated with the creation of the human race. Some relics of this culture can be seen at the National Museum of Jamaica.
The Jamaican Diaspora
There have been three successive waves of emigration in history. The construction of the Panama Canal was the first wave to Central America. Then Jamaicans participated in the establishment of Harlem in the 1920s, and in the development of sugarcane cultivation and sugar manufacturing in Cuba. Between 1890 and 1920, an estimated 145,000 Jamaicans were expatriates. Finally, between the 1950s and 1960s, they left for Great Britain to take up positions in the administration and the army, an immigration that was curbed in 1961 by the Commonwealth Immigration Act, which set quotas for the former British colonies in the Caribbean. Today, there are an estimated 3 million Jamaicans living off the island, mainly in the United States, Canada and Britain, but also 800,000 British, 740,000 Americans and 260,000 Canadians of Jamaican origin. These waves of migration have devitalized the country, causing demographic imbalance and social and economic stagnation, depriving the country of a young and qualified workforce. However, this migrant population contributes to economic development by sending massive amounts of foreign currency to the island. The constant queues in the many Western Union offices are proof of this. Today, even if they continue to dream of going elsewhere, the development of the country on the one hand and the restrictions of the host countries on the other hand have slowed down emigration - there are nevertheless about twenty thousand of them to leave the country each year, since the mid-1980s. However, the links established with the metropolis of the colonial era remain strong. The rural exodus is significant and the urban population represents 40% of the total
Jamaican English, a very strong accent
English is the official language, the one used in administration and education, in stores and in the workplace. An English nevertheless very Jamaican: if you think you speak English well, you will be surprised when you arrive in Jamaica, some people have an accent so pronounced that you will not understand anything! It is considered an Anglo-Jamaican dialect. If the British have left their mark on the grammar, it is strongly influenced by American English, the latter being very present on the island. More surprisingly, it is tinged with an Irish accent due to colonization
Jamaican Patois, historical and popular
In Jamaica, English is officially spoken, but the most widely spoken language is Jamaican Creole called Patwa (patois). Quite different from Jamaican English and Rasta patois, it was born from the mixing of English (whose lexical bases it has) with African languages, in particular from the Akan people, who come from the ancient Ashanti kingdom established in Ghana and Ivory Coast at the time of slavery, who had standardized their language over a large area. Arawak, Indian and other words have been added to the rich vocabulary of this language spoken in homes. It is a real experience to try to understand it!
The Rasta dialect, religious and political
Dread talk", "I-talk", "I-ance" or "I-yaric" was created by the Rasta community to emancipate itself from the English colonial yoke, whose language still rules the institutions today. It is a clearly political language that has been very popularized by reggae and its singers converted to Rastafarianism. It is built on Jamaican Creole and therefore borrows African words, but its lexical field is turned towards its favorite subjects: religion, reggae, vegetarian food and ganja. Ja" means God and "ganja" means leaf of God. The vegetarian "I Tal Food" diet that you will often see in restaurant windows uses callalo (an African spinach), and the word ackee, which refers to Jamaica's national fruit, comes from Rasta dialect. Their delivery and vocal flow are often reminiscent of religious psalms, punctuated by an "I and I" meaning "Jah, my brothers and I". "Babylon" is the city, the "rude boys" the bad boys of the ghettos. Like any slang street language, it is enriched with linguistic jargles and neologisms so rich that a dictionary would be needed to list them. For example, "I am a rasta" will be said "I a rasta" or "I-man a rasta"
