Home Sickness

Home Sickness, by Louise Bennett

Me dah dead fe drink some coaknut  wata

Se a breadfruit tree,

Lawd fe walk eena de broilin sun

An bade eena de sea.

Me nyam cabbage an pittata chips

An gwan like sey me please,

But me belly disa halla

Fe a plate a rice an peas.

Fe a dumpling a duckoonoo

Fe a bulla fulla spice

An fe cool mi sugan-wata

Wid a quatti lump a ice.

An fe board a market train an hear

De people dem a chat

Bout de good foot weh dem buck up

Or de bad dream weh dem got.

English county road dem pretty

An sometimes wen mi dah roam

An mi se a little a lickle village

Me feel jus like me deh home.

But me galang and me galang,

Me no see no donkey cart!

Me no meet no black smady

An it heaby up me heart.

For me long fe se a bankra basket

An a hampa load

A number- eleven, beafy, blacky,

Hairy mango pon de road !

An me mout top start fe wata

Me mout corner start fe foam

A dose a hundry buckle hole me

An me want fe go back home.

Go back home to me Jamaica

To me fambly! To me wa?

Lawd ha masse, me feget,

All a me famble over yah!

‘Home Sickness,’

Migration is cultured within the minds of Jamaican as it is believed that an abundant of opportunities waits in another land. However there are always consequences to be faced with migrating to a place where the culture is different.  ‘Home Sickness’ is a poem written by Louise Bennett in the Jamaican dialect, using the ballad quatrain style of writing.  Here she incorporates a narrative dialect as she humors the experience of Jamaicans abroad, who are missing home. She uses the opportunity to highlight some significant elements that distinguishes Jamaica from the new land which they have settled. Each four line stanza is used to dramatically package and reveal details about the landscape, food and customs of the Jamaican people. These are also the same elements that have been promoted to boast the Jamaica’s tourism industry.

Coconut water, bread fruit trees, the Sun and the sea are things highlighted within the first stanza as being missed. In a dramatically exaggerating style the poem begins, “Me a dead fe drink some coconut wata…”( line1) and she goes on by listing the other things that are being missed. These are always the very first things that visitors and returning citizens appear to want to dig into, immediately after landing in Jamaica and getting off the plane, while those already at home look forward to the foreign goodies being brought. It has become a customary practice for families, friend and other Jamaicans to trade these goods and associated services with visitors. Visitors also look forward to taking roast breadfruit along with other items with them, when they are leaving. By the time the narrator gets to the third stanza she had already expresses in a sarcastic manner her disgust for cabbage and potato chips (a Europeans main dish). She did this while expressing how much she would love to have some rice and peas, her longing for dumpling, dukoono, spiced bulla and sugar in water “wid a quattie lump a ice” (line 12). Rice and Peas is a national dish of Jamaica that is customarily cooked on Sundays. The other foods listed are also customary to the Jamaican dish.

While moving about on the English the soil the character reminisces on the market settings of Jamaica, thinking about the market train, donkey carts, bankra basket and the people. She then sadly expresses, “Me no meet up no black smady an it heaby up me heart.”(lines 23-24) She is longing to see some of her own kind of people to the point that at the ending she decided that she wanted to come home to sse her family; but in a twist irony that expresses how vast the foreign land must be, she remembers that all her family are there in England. It also points back to Jamaican mentality towards migrating. Today there are no market trains and dockey carts and bankra baskets are no longer popular, however these things are a part of Jamaica’s history. The market is however still alive and active.