Yesterday morning I attended my first meeting of the Canadian Women’s Club. It is held at the Canadian High Commission, which is a handsome building adorned with lots of red maple leaves. The CWC is a group of Canadian expat women who either work in Jamaica or are spouses of men who do. They do a lot of good work in the community such as fundraising and providing badly needed materials to schools or businesses. It seems like an interesting group and I will soon be taking over from a departing volunteer to write their blog, as well as helping with the newsletter. The meeting included some regular housekeeping stuff, as well as a presentation from a female architect who works with young women. She uses art to help them express themselves and find positive role models- she brought a piece of her artwork and it is stunning.

I had to leave early, but my thoughts stayed with one fascinating aspect of the meeting. One of the women I met is a member of the Matalon family, which is a prominent and very wealthy Canadian family, mostly based in Toronto, I think. While I was not familiar with the Matalons in Canada, the name sounded so familiar. They are active and prominent in Jamaica as they are involved in the business community and own a lot of land. Then I realized their name is so familiar because it is quoted in a song by reggae artist Vybz Kartel that I listened to all the time in Canada called Poor People Land. It is a reggae song that talks about the plight of poor Jamaicans and their lack of rights and opportunity and how the rich don’t care. Visit here if you want to read the patois lyrics. It was a surreal moment: being in a room with a person indicted in a Vybz Kartel song as contributing to the social problems in Jamaica. It brought home to me some of the realities of what us volunteers are doing here. We hover in an in-between world; caught in a strange gap and sandwiched on one side by the privilege, power or status that white skin or relative wealth provide us. On the other side is the opportunity to use these tools to help the people afflicted by poverty or lack of opportunity that we are here to help. Not sure if that is explained sufficiently- I am still working it out in my head.

Maybe it will help to quote a fellow volunteer who said this after reading the lyrics to Kartel’s Poor People Land:

“This is all about “show” methinks: he talks about not being rich, etc. yet Kartel is a multi-millionaire based on his music (?) / reputation / criminal associations. Yes, he may have been born/brought up poor but he is now using that history and ignoring that he is the baby-father to many and dissing those who actually work for a living (and some of them, like the Matalons, made money legitimately along the way).”