Resources

IntroductionI first heard Caribbean Proverbs, conversationally, as a child. Distinct from the biblical Book of Proverbs but nevertheless connected to the sharing of wisdom, these sayings peppered the language of Caribbean elders like my Antiguan grandmother. Sayings such as “Plantain sucker follow de root” (Children follow examples set by their parents) and “Wha’ na kill, fatten” (If it does not kill you, it makes you stronger), were used for emphasis. Recently, I have turned my attention to reflecting on the relevance of these sayings in my teaching practice in a religious studies department, including curriculum design, pedagogy and classroom teaching. This examination is part of a larger project. What I offer below is a brief summary of some central ideas which consider Caribbean Proverbs as a part of a larger oral wisdom tradition. I use the term “Caribbean Proverbs,” rather than “Jamaican Proverbs,” or “Antiguan Proverbs,” because while there are published sources, these expressions, or their corollaries, also exist in other anglophone Caribbean contexts.Proverbs as Oral Repository of WisdomThe Book of Proverbs is a part of wisdom literature in biblical tradition containing the teachings of King Solomon. “Proverbs” is also a term used to refer to Anglophone Caribbean sayings expressed orally in patois (also referred to as creole or Caribbean nation language) which offer teachings about how to negotiate challenging social interactions and life situations and achieve prosperity. They include practical advice on topics such as how to work towards a larger goal and sage philosophical reflections on the dynamics of “privilege,” understood as unequal access to necessary economic, physical and cultural resources. In the Caribbean, oral Proverbs emerged from the lifeworld of the enslaved and their descendants as they navigated the colonial contexts in which they lived and struggled. I regard Caribbean Proverbs as an oral repository containing the collective distillation of life experience, and hard lessons learned, passed down through multiple generations. The trimmings are left aside while the central source of sustenance remains. One gets a sense of the urgency of the communication of the lesson structured, in part, by the historical and social context in which they emerged.Expressing complex emotional lives, political and personal desires, and developing strategies to deal with the predicament of bondage were urgent matters for enslaved African people and their descendants in the aftermath of slavery.  Because of prohibitions by law and custom from literacy and the guilds of the courts, the colonial church as state religion, the vast majority of enslaved Africans had to rely on oral traditions to construct their reflections on their life experiences and to pass down what they knew to their kinfolk and others in their communities. What emerged as creole religious and cultural expressions in oral traditions, music and dance, combined elements from Traditional African religions, Christianity and spiritual traditions encountered in the Americas to create rich repositories of knowledge.From Anansi and trickster stories to calypso, reggae and son, to the spirituals, blues and gospel, Jazz, R&B and Hip Hop—to name a few—narrative and musical expressions created by enslaved Africans and their descendants are still with us today. As such, memory and orality in all of their voiced expressions, including somatic such as dance, became the modes through which solutions to practical problems, as well as engagements with larger philosophical and political issues, were addressed.Examples of Proverbs1. Rockstone a riva battam nuh know sun hot:Translation: The stone at the bottom of the river does not feel the sun’s heat. Interpretation: Situation and context matter in understanding an issue. Sometimes, a privileged position at the bottom of a cool river, for instance, would make it very difficult to understand the circumstances of someone who has no shelter from the hot rays of the sun.Teaching Practice: This proverb has guided pedagogy on teaching about social hierarchies.2. Every mickle mek a muckle: Translation: This is a Jamaican version of a Scottish saying, “Mony a mickle maks a muckle.”Interpretation: Small contributions can add up to substantial savings or incremental gains contribute towards larger goals.Teaching Practice: I have used this strategy in designing smaller, linked assignments to encourage students’ growth and skills acquisition. 3. Who cyaan hear, mus feel:Translation: Those who refuse to listen, will feel. Interpretation: If you do not listen to sound advice and warnings, then you will go through a difficult time and suffer the consequences. The lesson will be learned but with suffering.Teaching Practice: I have often referenced this proverb when reflecting on the value of mentorship.4. When trouble tek yu, pickney shut fit yu:Translation: when you are in trouble, a child’s shirt will fit you. Interpretation: When times are difficult you will make do and make necessary adjustments. You will appreciate whatever help you can get even if under normal circumstances, such help would be deemed inappropriate.Teaching Practice: This proverb affirms resilience in the face of challenges.5. Wanti want cyaan getti, and getti getti noh wanti:Translation: He who wants it desperately cannot get it; he who gets it easily does not want it or appreciate it. Interpretation: Give thanks for blessings that come your way and realize that there are many things that we take for granted which may be luxuries for others. The Bob Marley and the Wailers songs based on this Jamaican Proverb used this comment on the plight of a post-colonial Jamaica. 5. New broom sweep clean, but owl broom noe dem cahna.Translation: A new broom sweeps clean, but the old broom knows all the corners. Interpretation: It is useful to seek a balance between the old and the new. Throwing away experience over expedience is unwise Combining a fresh approach with valuable experience of the old is a better path.Teaching Practice: Bringing newer and older perspectives together in planning course designs, or instance, can yield innovative and proven strategies for teaching and learning. Suggested Reading:Brathwaite, Kamau. History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. London: New Beacon Books, 1984.Antigua and Barbudan Sayings Archives - Antigua and BarbudaJamaican Proverbs | The National Library of Jamaica

“Write your name, for me, please,” she asked, a sturdy index finger tapping on a piece of paper, on the table at my aunt’s house. She was my paternal grandmother, Johanna, or Teacher Kate, as many people called her, and she was visiting her family in Toronto from Guyana. She would have been in her sixties then, a compact Black woman with flawless skin, a kind, steady gaze, and a resonant alto speaking voice. You could hear the mixture of crisp and precise British-influenced English that would have been expected of schoolteachers of Teacher Kate’s generation, born before World War I, in a corner of Amazonia and at the edge of the British Empire. You could also hear the rhythms of Caribbean creole speech, reflecting Guyana’s cultural legacy of majority populations descended from enslaved Africans and indentured folk from the Indian subcontinent and China, among others. Teacher Kate’s work in classrooms with children began before 1930 as a pupil-teacher, a form of teaching apprenticeship of young teenagers that was regularly practiced in the English-speaking Caribbean, in the early decades of the twentieth century. “Write your name, for me, please.” It was a directive, an invitation, and a question all rolled into one as we gathered around my aunt’s dining table. This was the late 1970s, pre-Internet, and I was in my early teens and already in high school. At that point, I had attended school for almost a decade split between Antigua and Canada, having spent my infancy in England, the country of my birth, as a child of the Windrush migration. The late 1970s was a magical transitional time in Black musical cultures as it was the era of the earliest commercial hip hop recordings, disco, funk, and R n’ B. We also listened to reggae, dancehall, calypso, and soca, Caribbean popular musical genres as well, new wave, punk and pop and rock n’ roll on AM and FM radio—our musical choices reflecting our transnational existence between recent Caribbean memories, the larger social context of a rapidly changing Canadian cultural landscape, contemporary Black Toronto realities in the Caribbean diaspora with close sonic and familial ties to major urban centres in the US and England to which Caribbean people had migrated. My friends and I emulated the look of the Pointer Sisters, The Emotions, or women lead vocalists in Chic. In our stylistic ambitions, we existed on a continuum of retro 1940s, church, and our imagined Studio 54. Our looks were achieved through making our own clothes with Simplicity and Butterick patterns, and reworking and mending heavily discounted seconds (discarded mass-produced clothing with what we considered minor and correctible mistakes like crooked seams and missing buttons) purchased cheaply in the garment district in downtown Toronto. That day I wore a belted, light beige, cap-sleeved dress in a shimmery fabric. My hair was still natural, a few years away from its 1980s curly perm, and picked out into a ‘fro. This was the late 1970s and in Black diasporic girl stylistic cultures in my corner of Toronto afros, cornrows, and other natural styles still reigned supreme with the occasional hot comb pressed straight styles for special occasions. I wondered why Teacher Kate would want me to write my name as an introduction to who I was as a student and her granddaughter. Why not ask me to read out loud or to recite memorized passages of poetry, bible verses, or dramatic plays? I had already had lots of practice in public speaking at school and in church, in Canada, where my first recitation was Langston Hughes’ poem “Freedom.” I remembered the church assembly in the Jamaican Pentecostal congregation that met in the basement of a mainstream Protestant church in our Toronto neighbourhood, now called Little Jamaica. We were Anglicans but my mother insisted that we go to the church down the road and around the corner from our house that we could reach without crossing a major intersection, and where our friends from school, recently arrived kids from the Caribbean, also went to church. “Write your name for me, please.” So, I picked up the pen and I wrote my first name in cursive and print. “Write your whole name.” I wrote my first and last name. My grandmother inspected my writing and complimented it while also giving some pointers to improve the cursive. “Write it larger,” she said. I wrote my name several times and each time I did so with more confidence than earlier versions. Now, I wrote my name every day in school on assignments and had done so for years. My friends and I even practiced our autographs. I had written my name years ago in my British passport as an elementary school student. This occasion, however, felt different. In the analog world of the late 1970s, just a few years before the launch of the digital age, my grandmother was inviting me to come to the table of knowledge, to take up space, and to write myself into the narrative in my own hand, boldly and confidently and with style. Words mattered. I got it. I created my signature in that moment with its large cursive letters. Teacher Kate lived for over three decades after that night, in total just over a hundred years. By the late 1970s she had already taught several generations doing the hard work in the post-slavery and British colonial era of the first half of the twentieth century of teaching literacy. Many had entered Guyana and other Caribbean territories as transports of empire through the forced migrations of the slave trade and indentureship, without signature—perhaps an “x,” or even a thumbprint for the latter. I was only Teacher Kate’s student for that one evening but I learned a crucial lesson of accepting the invitation to take my place and to write my name and write myself into being. Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash