标签： Jamaica

On a quiet Thursday in Kingston, Jamaica, 100-year-old Vera Green woke to mark a historic milestone few ever reach: her centennial birthday. Though a recent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) diagnosis has left her movement limited and breathing labored, the soft-spoken centenarian says she feels nothing but gratitude for the century of life she has lived.

“I can hardly catch my breath, so I mostly have to stay in one place, but I thank the Lord and I am quite satisfied,” Green shared in an interview with the Jamaica Observer during a home visit Thursday.

Born as one half of a pair of twins in the rural community of Stanmore, St Elizabeth, Green and her brother Vivian were the youngest children of their working-class parents. From an early age, she showed a sharp curiosity and love for learning, enrolling at St Albans Primary and Infant School with a clear dream: to become a teacher. That ambition was cut short, however, when crippling family financial hardship forced her to leave schooling after sixth grade to help support her household.

“I wasn’t backward in school; my head was very good and everything. I wanted to be a teacher, but my parents never had the means to support my studies,” Green reflected. “I made sure all my own children got an education, went to school, church, every opportunity, and they turned out well. If my parents had been able to help me pursue my goals, I know I would have achieved something great too.”

After leaving primary school, Green took on casual day labor for local families, and later supplemented her income with small-scale farming, she said. Her granddaughter Lisa, who now helps care for her, shared that Green’s resourcefulness extended far beyond standard work — for decades, she served as an uncertified community midwife, helping dozens of local women deliver their babies at a time when the nearest hospital, Black River Hospital, was miles away and inaccessible for many rural families.

“In the rural countryside back then, there weren’t formal career opportunities for women like her, so she took on whatever work she could do, from housekeeping to farm work that local community members hired her for,” Lisa explained. “What always stuck out was how she stepped up when people needed her. Any time a woman went into labor, people would come running for Vera, and she would go help deliver the baby — no questions asked.”

Today, Green lives with COPD and hypertension, which has slowed her movement considerably, but she retains her sharpness and daily devotional routine. Remarkably, she still reads her Bible every day without needing prescription glasses, recites scripture daily, and maintains a steady practice of prayer, Lisa added.

Even as Green embraces gratitude for reaching 100, she acknowledges that advanced age brings unignorable challenges. “When you get old, everything fades. You can’t take care of yourself the way you used to. If people don’t help me, if they don’t put what I need in my hand, I can’t get it for myself,” she said. “But still, I thank God, and I bless the people who take care of me.”

Members of Green’s church community, the Kencot Seventh-day Adventist Church, gathered to celebrate her milestone this week. Christopher Johnson, leader of the congregation’s Seniors Ministry, who hails from the same St Elizabeth community as Green, said the centenarian is a beloved member of the church, and currently the only member of the congregation to reach the 100-year mark.

“We are delighted to share this 100th birthday with her. It’s an extraordinary milestone,” Johnson said. “We have several other nonagenarian members, three women aged 97, 98 and 99, but Vera is our first centenarian. She is quiet but always active, incredibly warm and friendly to everyone she meets.”

KINGSTON, Jamaica — When intense downpours swept across eastern Jamaica late Tuesday, the rainfall triggered dangerous landslides that shut down the critical primary highway connecting the communities of Maryland and Woodford. Days after the blockage, People’s National Party (PNP) caretaker candidate for the St Andrew East Rural constituency Patrick Peterkin is sounding the alarm, demanding the National Works Agency (NWA) move immediately to clear debris and reopen the impassable route.

In an official public statement issued Saturday, Peterkin outlined the far-reaching fallout of the road closure, which has cut off access to multiple local communities including Happy Gate District, Cambridge, Woodford, and Free Town District. For thousands of residents in these areas, daily routines have been upended by the loss of the main thoroughfare. With the direct route blocked, locals are forced to detour through winding Norbrook Hill, a diversion that adds 30 to 45 minutes to every one-way commute. Beyond the lost time, transportation costs have jumped by at least 100 percent, piling new financial pressure on households already struggling with rising cost-of-living burdens across the island.

“This outcome is completely unacceptable,” Peterkin emphasized. “Residents are already feeling the strain of this disruption, and they deserve immediate relief to restore their access to work, school, and essential services.”

Beyond the urgent call for debris removal and road reopening, Peterkin stressed that national and local agencies need to adopt a more coordinated, rapid response framework for weather-related infrastructure failures. He argued that quick action is non-negotiable to restore normalcy and stability for the thousands of residents impacted by the closure.

Most notably, Peterkin is pushing for permanent, long-term solutions to address the recurring cycle of landslides and road damage that plagues the hilly St Andrew East Rural region. He linked the increasing frequency of these weather-related disruptions to growing climate volatility, noting that Jamaica has seen more unpredictable and extreme rainfall patterns in recent years.

“We cannot keep relying on a reactive, patchwork approach to this problem,” Peterkin said. “We need sustained, targeted investment in robust drainage networks, engineered slope stabilization, and climate-resilient infrastructure that can prevent these disruptive closures from becoming a repeated nightmare for local residents.”

Peterkin closed by reassuring constituents that he would continue amplifying their concerns to national infrastructure agencies. He committed to both pushing for immediate action to reopen the blocked road and advocating for long-term interventions that protect resident access and livelihoods across the St Andrew East Rural constituency for years to come.

Jamaican-born educator Karen Francis has turned her decades-long commitment to youth development into action, completing a grueling 12-hour dance marathon at Trench Town’s iconic Culture Yard this Wednesday to raise $500,000 for a new youth entrepreneurship initiative tailored to the tight-knit community in St Andrew.

The effort, designed to unlock the latent creative talent of Trench Town’s young people and turn that skill into sustainable, globally connected livelihoods, will breathe new life into a shuttered local reading centre, which will serve as the headquarters for the upcoming Trench Town Community 4-H Youth Entrepreneurship Programme. Alongside fundraising for the programme, the dance marathon also marked the official launch of the Founding Supporter Circle, an international outreach campaign that invites 500 donors across the globe to contribute $1,000 over one to two years to hit the $500,000 target. Interested backers can choose to sponsor individual segments of the marathon or make direct donations to the youth-focused project.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer on the day of her performance, Francis explained that the idea for the programme grew out of her observation that the unused reading centre – once supported by a sponsor that could no longer sustain funding – was leaving local children without access to a critical community learning space. Drawing on her years of experience organizing and leading 4-H clubs, she saw an opportunity to repurpose the space and leverage her own skills to uplift the neighborhood she holds close.

The programme will equip participating young people with three core pillars of training: entrepreneurship basics, cultural arts skill-building, and business English instruction, all designed to help participants access and engage with international markets. Unlike traditional community aid models, the initiative focuses on empowering youth to build their own independent trade relationships, including connections with young creators and businesses across other African nations. Leveraging 4-H’s existing global network, the programme will help integrate Trench Town creators into an established circular economic ecosystem, turning untapped local talent into stable, long-term income.

Francis, who now resides in the United States and has led youth-focused projects across the world, emphasized that Trench Town already boasts a vibrant informal local economy full of skilled creators – from seamstresses and garment makers to artisans – that just needs intentional structure to scale. “Anything that you need, they have here. This is what black economy looks like, and it just needs to be properly structured and organised,” she noted. Participants will learn to design, produce, and market a range of cultural goods for local and international sale, including handmade jewelry, crocheted goods, original paintings, pottery, and branded Trench Town merchandise.

To enrich the programme’s training offerings, Francis has arranged for alumni from the U.S. State Department’s English Language Fellow Programme and other international exchange initiatives to join as mentors, guest instructors, and supporters. She stressed that fluency in standard English is a critical tool for global commerce, noting that while Jamaican patois – the primary daily language of most Trench Town residents – is a culturally rich and valuable part of local identity, the ability to code-switch between patois and standard English is essential for international trade. “It is important for all of us to be able to switch from patois and back into English. We need it to engage in trade, which is what all countries are pretty much engaged in,” she explained.

Beyond economic empowerment, the initiative also seeks to reshape harmful public narratives about Trench Town. While the community is globally celebrated as the birthplace of reggae legends including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, it has long been stigmatized due to past violent incidents, and many local young people lack access to structured entrepreneurial opportunities. Francis aims to rewrite that story by centering Trench Town’s youth and their creative work.

The programme will position products made by participants to sell directly to tourists visiting the Culture Yard, moving beyond a handout model to a mutually beneficial exchange that helps youth recognize the inherent value of their work. “Rather than handouts, they are able to come and spend their money; we want them to see the value in their products. They are not begging; they assign the value to it and they exchange it that way so they learn the value of what they’re producing,” Francis said. This model, she added, will help young people build lasting personal pride and a stronger sense of connection to their community, laying the groundwork for long-term, community-led growth.