Hospitality:  Ty Ajani

       CALL TO BROTHERHOOD.  .....Speaking Out

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph--Haile Selassie

The decency of human rights should not be compromised. It’s the struggle which makes you sharp.  We are calling you. With all our goals our very soul. We’re not falling through. The trust in our faith, the tears and our ways is drowning so.  We cannot always show it, but don't doubt love... As an activist I am advocating; The Power of Love,  This is what Matters! - empty battlefields, empty prisons, literacy - never destruction. To be righteous is to love and forgive, all oppression is crime..  Deep down culture is Spirituality which brings you harmony.   'The struggle for peace is not something unexpected. Of course, you have all the ridicules and hurdles you have to get over in making a community change or positive change, but the most hardest thing in intervention is politics, however, with open communication, anything is possible. Can we honestly ask someone else to fix this for us? - Let the kids go to the market; let them go to school. Can we leave something that we don’t touch indirectly that’s [causing] death to our people?  You don’t have to kill each other to protect your neighbourhood…we have the power of thought over these youngsters. They do as we’ve done; now, if we redo this, then that’s what they’ll be doing across this country.  You and I must unite and get under some divine leadership, because without the Good God, we don’t have anything. He also admonished the clergy to be careful of condemning gang members to hell, stating, Make your hood fall in love with you…become protectors of your hood. I’m praying along with the rest of us that not another one of our Brothers die at the hands of a Brother, and that we stand together in this last hour and we declare Unity.  By all means necessary. --Author  Deeper Soul Ty Ajani

Visitors and friends—

We give thanks sincerely for the given chance to engage you. Step into the blue and  the turquoise equation, to embrace the warmth and satisfy the curiosity of your imagination. If there’s one trait that’s distinctly Barbadian it’s believing in a bright destiny out there and the quest for positive fulfillment in life. We bear witness that  if you play fast you can’t last, and if you play along just remain strong. So we’re just happy as we try honestly to make it..Our island stands in the stream. Our gift is the sunshine, we walk and breathe. The face of love smiles on our shores, in our fields and in our pores.

To strive for and to maintain unity in the family and nation has been embodied in the Barbadian psyche forever. Within the families of all the ethnicities on the island we do know our survival depends on our harmony and  that here life is a special sacrifice.

. Love, unity, oppression and abjection, these are the circumstances that dictate how complete our lives are. Within the many paths of the righteous we are  surrounded by the iniquities of greed. Despite all the traumas and trials we must never lose sight of the fertility found at the bottom of our dreams.

      We strive to embody the essence of down to earth convictions with the understanding and subtracting the intentions for extreme reaction. We try to give light the unwanted realities, which should not be faced in this civilized world of plenty. The reality of predjudice and oppression combined which rears its ugly head. There’re double standards and corruption within these so called human rights organizations, which ensures the continuance of wretched conflicts and grinding poverty across many lands.

      We must adopt the right to do what is necessary in bringing an end to these divisions among class. We need to stand up in living love for the simple sake of life and be worthy of true positive respect. The time of misinformation and mass population is sitting upon us. Computer dependency is very much a big reality, but culture and expression shall always be harmoniously celebrated in one soulful feeling of love to ensure a peace and harmony for the children to benefit. So let’s move our soul. 

Published--2014. Ty Ajani.     RAINraggamuff.


Respect CUBA.

RESPECT-- CUBA---FIDEL CASTRO---This is a man who has GG liberated his country, and has helped to liberate other countries from the darkest forces of racist apartheid and oppression---a man who is a hero to poor people all around the world---this is a man who has presided over a country that was a bordello, a casino for the criminal classes of the US, where black people couldn’t set foot in the same parks as white people or sit on the same beaches of white people. 

This was a place where hardly anyone could read or write. –A place that was only governed for the rancid interest of the mafia over in Florida just 75 mls across the straits. This man can now boast of the highest literacy in the Third World. This is a place now where people live longer than those in Washington DC the capital of the richest and most powerful nation in the world. This is a man who has presided over a revolution where children are less likely to die in infancy than any country in the Third World—infant mortality is less in Cuba than it is in Washington DC. 

This is a man who has built a health service which is comparable to the Scandanavians and much better than the UK. This is a place where ordinary people can go to opera and ballet and participate in culture of all kinds. People say that human rights in Cuba are not all that they should be. Well that’s true but then Cuba has been under seige from the most powerful country just 75 mls away for fifty years. With an education that is entirely free from kinder-garden to p h d level at university, Cuba is a country that is based on a different set of values—meaning that the dollar (cash) does not have to be king. Collectively they can provide services to infrastructure and a social fabric and social wage which make up for the relative lack of dollars in the pocket. Some people can’t support that system and want to leave, but the vast majority of the Cuban people support that system, as is evident to all that’s been there. 

Cuba, because it has been subjected to nearly fifty years of blockades—which by international law is an act of war—has been subject to invasion, has been the constant target of terrorism based in Florida, has had its leader subject to hundreds of assassination attempts, it’s hardly surprising that in that state of war certain liberties are restricted. This abnormal situation of total blockade, invasion and subversion is the principal reason for any deformation that exist in Cuba so far as civil liberties are concerned. 

PUBLISHED IN BARBADOS 

TY (AJANI) GRIFFITH CASTRO THE LIBERATOR ON  JAN 2015 






The Tree which would benefit us all


The great Nelson Mandela stated that any outspoken black man is going to be defined as a radical. We as a people must believe more in the value of education and economic empowerment. We must promote always a strong self-love and the love for others. We should be open to all controversy, as Malcolm x had also taught. If you have no critics you will likely to have no success. We must always speak out on injustice. Too many white Barbadians have surrendered to the circumstance of racial inequality, blaming racial inequality on the inferiority of disenfranchised groups rather than the systemic disenfranchisement faced by these groups. This is the negative mindset that they must abandon.  I think when you say conscious that doesn’t really mean anything—it just means you know something. We can agree with Eddy Grant when he says black people of Barbados are in trouble.  Everybody out there knows something. We can say politicians are corrupt, or lawyers are corrupt, but what are we going to do about it. That’s the real difference. Consciousness does not imply that you are actually going to take action. Before I moved to Switzerland I definitely had the idea engrained in my mind that I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my culture to be a part of it. That Switzerland was a place that welcomed other peoples’ culture. So in that aspect I drew from Mandela—let me see that direct democracy in deed and on paper. And I saw it in the museums and the governance, which gave me the grounding in achieving a diploma in a foreign country. We need that consciousness among the disenfranchised at home –in governance and culture. In the Caribbean we cannot divert economical marginalization from the spiritual, cultural or political dimension.  We’ve always believed that we were part of a great exodus of humanity involved in the search of harmony, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But now as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also closing the door on our past.  In a world that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in the highest--Almighty (God), too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. We must realize that owning things and consuming things and piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives without harmony or purpose. The damage to the ecosystem shows that a large-scale human presence on the planet cannot continue much longer. The obsession with self-interest cultivated by capitalism is so deeply woven into contemporary identity that real solidarity in societies is no longer possible. Mass-media corporations have eroticized violence at an unprecedented level, globally. The children are being brought up on violence, there are no more peace symbols of virtue in holly-wood. And we wonder why we’re slipping in a crisis?

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. This is  the mindset of an apologist which simply says we must just move on. It is indeed still very evident that the black folk are still shaped from the psychological damage of slavery.  Racial harmony can only come when there’s racial justice. So we can never disrupt what never exists. Our people are not foolish, we don’t need magic we need truth. We don’t need deception we need truth. Those of you in power you know that you’re deceiving the black masses. You know you’re making them to believe that something exist that you know.....does not exist.  If we can say that a people without the knowledge of their past history, roots and culture is like a tree without a root, why can’t we see that the importance of being a complete free nation leads towards enjoying all the full blooming and harvest from that tree. And this is a tree benefiting us all.


PUBLISHED IN BARBADOS ----TY (AJANI) GRIFFITH . Oct 2015




History and Monarchy


The consciousness of self is not the closing of a door to communication. National consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension. The birth of national consciousness in Barbados has a strictly spiritual connexion with the African consciousness. The responsibility of the Bajan as regards to national culture is also a responsibility with regard to African-Heritage culture. A responsibility simply base on the awareness that every independent nation where colonialism is still entrenched is an encircled fragile nation in permanent danger...........

A community or territory over which a sovereign rules a kingdom is what we in the English sense know as a realm. Several independent nations of the Caribbean region still exist as nations where the British regime remains the realm.These are nation states where the family line of the British monarchy ruled in barbaric and unspeakable terror. A terror which goes  by the name of slavery.      We have a whole lot of miseducated  people out there who went to school a long time but the content of their brain means nothing. They think being indoctrinated is the same as being educated.

What happened to the verse of fire
Cursing cool the empire
What happened to the soul rebel that Marley had in mind.
 
Benjamin Zephaniah, Bought and Sold.

PUBLISHED IN BARBADOS 

TY (AJANI) GRIFFITH  Sept 2015


The greater peace & social harmony springs from the dynamism of free wills, guided by reason towards the common good that is to be attained in truth justice and love. This rational and moral order is based on decisions by the consciences of human beings seeking respect to the fundamental human rights inherent in every person. This moral order shall not ignore Jah- Mungu-God, the first source of being, the essential truth and the supreme good.

Being an activist is a calling, not a career; it's a vocation, not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the workplace, you are concerned about hatred against peoples of color, the subordination of women and the institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and sisters.  It means that you are willing to fight against, and to try to understand the sources of social misery. That's what it means to be an activist,  that's why we choose to be certain kinds of human beings.


With a deep sadness on the final passage of a salient soul....I am deeply pained and my text here are of no help in expressing the sorrow I feel at this time in losing my hero, mentor, anchor ragamuffin and warrior---KAMAU   1930-2020



To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.      So as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end. Yes people, there’s a natural mystic blowing through the air and the gift of Jah is for everyone to share.  No matter if you black, brown or white. We’re all here to play and, not to stay......So my people are destroyed not because they are black or white but for the lack of knowledge.  

And if you only have love for your own race;  then you only leave space to discriminate. And to discriminate only generates hate--And if you hatin you're bound to get irate. Yeah madness is what you demonstrate.  And that's exactly how anger works and operates.  You gotta have love just to set it straight---Take control of your mind and meditate;  And let your soul gravitate to the love.....Doc. Universal love.




                The Giessbach Falls- Lake Brienz  Switzerland. 

Hear the moving water;  In the sea of your heart no time to ponder

Human love in Exodus; The strength, the soul in awe and wonder

Say why do we fuss; Come a little closer.

For the love of song; A time to call as we move along

Down by the bay of life we past; Down through the river of life it’s fast

Down to the ocean side; Come a little closer, let’s take a ride

Life is clear and love must survive; So get a little closer. –Ajani's 'HARMONY'. 2010.

 



 'Migration was not a word I would have used to describe what I was doing when I sailed with other West Indians to England in 1950. We simply thought we were going to an England that had been painted in our childhood consciousness as a heritage and a place of welcome. It is the measure of our innocence that neither the claim of heritage nor the expectation of welcome would have been seriously doubted.........'George  Lamming'   IN THE CASTLE OF MY SKIN.


 
 

In Praise Of Our Youth:  In our villages, there are tremendous reasons for optimism. The majority of our young people are not to be found drifting aimlessly in and out of inanely named blocks. Most of our young people do not take murderous instructions from their cowardly peers or surrender their cranium to the squeeze of a trigger.

The majority of our young people are those who relate their wonderful stories of personal sacrifice and dedication to achieve academic scholarships and exhibitions. The majority of our young people are those who trek to and from the Barbados Community College where they arm themselves – not with guns – but with the knowledge to become productive citizens. The majority of our young people are those who attend the Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic where academic and technical skills learned will ensure that as they prosper, so too will their country. The majority of our young people are to be found contributing to the artistic expression of the island, whether in  Song, dance, drama, creative writing, painting, visual arts, culinary arts and the like.

Hundreds of our young people are to be found in wholesome sporting activities, designing, construction, freighting, tourism, agriculture, cosmetology, legal vending – the list is endless. Some of them meet with varying degrees of success, as is the nature of life, but the satisfaction that comes with their honest, visible endeavours cannot be replaced by or be compared to the foul, fetid acquisitions in the perilous life of the underground......





Illegal Drugs  Review   Ty Ajani. 

......Three drug mules are apprehended at the International airport of Barbados ... Some are also caught by the Coast guard along the shores or at sea in high-powered boats. What’s highly depressing from statistics and availability of these illegal drugs, it’s reasonable to say that for every one caught several have slipped through. And succeeded they have with inside cooperation. Let’s not fool ourselves about this. Barbados is being abuse by the scourge of drugs and weekly we can look to the Courts and see the extent of this influx. Beyond this at the centre of the tourist circle much of the drugs are purchased and consumed. Most of the people working in the industry can testify to this.........Despite the best of efforts it’s becoming clear that the authorities are losing the war. The question to ask ourselves here is whether the time has come for a full comprehensive review of the existing strategy to enhance our anti-drug effort or shall we continue to exist affloated in drugs for the world to see? A group of friends returning here to Switzerland after a holiday on the gold coast complained that at each turn there was some invitation to buy illegal drugs. There’s no justification for it by alluding  to the habit as being worldwide.    This economy, which has been based on greed and colonial contractual arrangements for so long, has not been healthy. To be successful, all social movements of the society require a spiritual dimension. Radical social movements cannot succeed without the transformational power of spirituality. Subsequently only then can we raise a joyful noise collectively and see all Christians, Jew, Muslim living together and praying and eradicating intolerance. Shalom, Salamalekoum--Let’s give thanks and praises. Everyone must play a part...AUG 2015






African Awareness: Ty Ajani-. B’DOS Today Feb. 2015 

On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson.... Europe's very economic success has resulted in a second wave of African mass migration...

   Kwame Nkrumah: Led Ghana, formally the gold coast, to independence in 1957. Ghana’s liberation was meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of the whole of the African continent.  As a leader of Ghana he reasoned that if Ghana escape the colonial trade system by reducing dependence on foreign capital, technology and material goods it could become truly independent.....Speech

Doc. Waterstreet.



Water Saving Low cost Greenhouse Kitchen garden Farming:-  Ty Ajani.

We seriously need to get back into food productions and stop listening to those that tell us not to produce our own food and to buy it from them. Coming out of a family strongly committed to the land in vegetable and  poultry farming, we believed in our produce. From a  southern parish of Barbados, the larger part of our produce was successfully traded to guest houses. We were especially proud of our roots in the wealth of experience in vegetable farming. Farming had become a passion and a privilege.

 Today, greenhouses are especially important because of climate change. Unexpected extreme weather events can ruin a garden crop in no time, and growing in greenhouses is becoming a trend for backyard gardeners and community gardens as well as commercial producers. Most important, a large amount of water is saved...............




Barbados –Food security. Ajani

Now there are hardly any crops in Barbados that can generate its own seeds. That is because our farmers have been buying their seeds from an imported source and they have been genetically modified.--The worst part is that even if you were a farmer using natural techniques, the pollen from the plants of your neighbor who is using genetically modify seeds,  will modify the seeds of your crops on pollination.--The real danger is that genetically modified seeds do not produce seeds fit for a second crop. You have to keep on buying the seeds from the imported source. What this has done is to put us at the mercy of seed producers. We can no longer grow plants and save the seeds for the next crop. They either won't grow or give very slender yields. Farmers in India are committing suicide as a result of the complexities arising from the problem.   LET US RECTIFY THIS....Ajani.




Suffer No More:

 In some respects we have betrayed those who died to give us the right to vote. We went to sleep thinking the battle was done only to turn around and find fifty years later the same man who was merchant then is merchant now. We know that all human beings can be redeemed, and we believe in redemption.........but things are still the same. You have the right to vote... On my way here on the plane I recalled the words of a writer who described the journey to the Caribbean as the way to racial harmony — Racial harmony can only come when there’s racial justice. Our people are not foolish, we don’t need magic we need truth. We don’t need deception we need truth. Those of you in power you know that you’re deceiving the black masses. You know you’re making them to believe that something exist that you know.....does not exist. While I was visiting the museum it took every bit of strength to keep the tears from falling from my eyes. To think of how my brothers and sisters have suffered, to vote for the same people which keeps them poor, how my people have suffered to be turned into apologists. How my people have suffered for a vote to put some of you in office then you sell them out.

While I was in the museum reminiscing over people like the right excellent BUSSA, the right excellent E.W.BARROW and the right excellent Dr. Duncan O’Neil, it’s amazing to know..........we are the children of Jah, God’s chosen,  My family--blessed.

                           (Towards world peace)  Ty  Ajani.