I connected with Oprah. I swear I did. It was back in 1994. But Oprah first came to my attention when she was featured on the cover of a magazine, Ebony or Essence, back in the 1980s, is anybody’s guess. She was featured with a throng of male graduates that she had put through college. It was Amazing. A Black woman who had done that and a Black woman, who could, resonated through my being. It was a sense of hope and inspiration, and no doubt, an essential life changing need fulfilled for those men. At that point Oprah couldn’t go wrong, for me anyway. If the offspring of all those men knew that she was the reason they landed on solid ground, and if she continued, she couldn’t go broke. The words of “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” took on a new meaning. I was dancing as if this was music created for me and only I could truly hear and understand… because Oprah’s doings became the second floor to that foundation. Migrating to the “land of opportunity” was far different than my vacation trips before. Following on the heels of my divorce meant I came searching for opportunities to sustain myself. Youthfulness and fun, while still in the mix, became second nature but my dreams were shot as opportunity remained elusive. I hadn’t the faintest clue of which direction to turn. Same view, same arena but now left standing alone to write my own game and chart my

Jamaica remains the pearl of the Caribbean despite centuries of struggle combined pre and post-independence. By 1962, the year of independence, Jamaica had come through the longest reign of British rule as a colony and a member of the Commonwealth Empire. But lest we forget, just post the extinction of the Spaniards, and the barbarous enactment of slavery for which Europe and Africa are equally responsible, Jamaica was known to be one of the largest producers of sugarcane, and having “the most perfected plantation system” in the Caribbean. In the evolution of time, thousands of Chinese and Indians descended on the island to pick up the slack of the 80% of Africans who had by then set their sights on other endeavors. HOW THE WEED GOT THERE The assumption is that the Indians brought the weed to the island and Rastafarians eventually dubbed it, the holy plant. This might explain why the Hindu word “ganja” is more widely used in Jamaica, as opposed to marijuana. The use of ganja soon found a foothold among the less privileged, in other words, people of a darker hue in Jamaica, and held sway within the Rasta “cult.” Not only was it deemed to have helped to deepen their faith in their own spiritual belief and black consciousness, but they had also found that ganja had medicinal values, especially when used for tea. The Rastafarian movement dates back to the 1920s and was somewhat fueled by the thought provoking Jamaican and Pan-African, Marcus Mosiah