Zebulon’s Weblog

She calls me Mr. Zeb – a name that I seemed to earn in the beginning of my service when I was teaching music class at the Accompong Junior High and Primary school. On the days that Jamaican culture seems to find every weak spot in my capacity for patience and understanding, when I begin to withdrawal from the public life of Accompong, Amanda will come knocking on my door and lights up my world with her smile. It is not just any smile. Some smiles are temporary – a fashion or façade with some particular purpose in mind, but there are a few people, those people who don’t become their work and their burdens, who find happiness as their gift and not an elusive objective, people who become their smiles. Amanda is such a person and she smiles incessantly with many other Jamaicans who, though by the standards of our culture have no reason to be happy, live with the understanding that one needs no reason to be happy and joyful.