Roy Brown left Jamaica in 1961 at 18 years old, filled with excitement and anticipation on the chance of starting life anew in the ‘Motherland’.
Welcomed by his uncle, he was already at ease and could not wait to tackle the workforce which would see him on the road to independence.
He was in for a rude awakening as things he had taken for granted while living in Brandon Hill, Clarendon, were far from that reality in England. “I got a job pretty quickly but by lunch break I was brought down to earth,” he said.
According to Brown, when he went to the canteen to have his lunch he soon realised that everyone was not equal. “The white folks were given their teas in a nice clean cup while we the blacks didn’t have that luxury,” he recalled.
The treatment so demotivated Brown that he said he felt discouraged and upset. “I felt terrible and at one point I felt like quitting and returning to Jamaica, especially when I remembered how happy I was there.”
However, still wanting to accomplish something for himself, Brown said he decided then that racism was something he was going to have to accept while reaching for his dream.
After 40 years of labour there, and eventually seeing much-improved treatment of blacks, he retired in the early 1990s. “That decision was not a hard one to make. I had already decided that there was no place else to retire but my homeland,” he declared.
The transition was not as smooth as he would have liked in fact he called it a “headache”.
“I didn’t know you had to pay so much money,” he said of the relocation process which involved his transporting his two vehicles to Jamaica. There were other lessons for Brown to learn while settling back in the community of Inglewood, May Pen, Clarendon.
“Going to the market, the minute I opened my mouth to purchase stuff, the price went up! I had to take someone with me who spoke patois,” he recalled with a smile.
Brown said while he does not have any regrets about returning to Jamaica, he is troubled by the crime problem plaguing the country and in particular Clarendon. “It is troubling, and I must admit it is unnerving, but it is not enough to have me running. I love my country and I am still happy to be here.”
