Chart of the male reproductive organs. Image.
That first day at Abel Bravo College I found myself in our classroom pretending to read a book in my attempt to isolate myself from the rest of the boys. This, after all, had been the way I had developed to protect myself from any emotional attacks I feared would follow me from Panama City. Continue reading
Posted in Abel Bravo School, Colon
Tagged Abel Bravo School, family dysfunction, teenagers in trouble, Tito Johnson
Image thanks to Wikipedia.
Those events of my youth and our history, as West Indian Panamanians, up to and following my experience in Abel Bravo College, had always managed to shock me. It had always been difficult for me to understand that what unfolded before my eyes were the first steps toward madness and family dysfunction in the making. So that all those years in our upbringing had us hauling around all that emotional baggage and, in fact, tripping over it. Continue reading
Coming from a legacy of a colonial era gone by when betrayal and self-hatred was part of the way of life for our people, I could safely say that Iwas really suffering in its aftermath. It had begun leaving its imprint on us as individuals and as a community in many sickly ways. Even today we continue to manifest these traits of a disastrous inheritance leaving us as an unsound people. Continue reading
Don Quijote de la Mancha and his trusted servant Sancho Panza. My dream of completing High School had become almost a Quixotic quest. Image.
I was eagerly awaiting the beginning of the school year and, soon, my entrance into Abel Bravo College, as my Westindian people proudly referred to it. By then, however, the ability to find work at all, any kind of honest work, had become one of the prime reasons for the demoralization of an entire generation of black youngsters like myself. Colon, not to mention Panama City, had become a desert of human hopes for young job seekers like me and the many youths I was meeting up with who desired to continue their quest of seeking an education at the “College.” Continue reading
Image thanks to La Alameda.
Year after year, as the day we call El Día de la Raza approaches here among Latin American countries, many authors focus upon themes like racial stigmatization, slavery and social differences as evils that we must fight in the path toward “improving the race.” For this year, however, we want to expose what we believe to be some of the evil “ghosts” that keep haunting us as members of La Raza which our societies are most reluctant to mention, thereby offering a remedy; something we will call secret crimes. Continue reading
I was blessed to be reunited once again with my step dad Bobby Grant a few months before his decease. He had reached the ripe old age of 95 years. Rest In the arms of Jesus, Bobby.
We were able to get a smile out of him.
I was now in Colon and wondering if I would be able to recognize that part of the city while managing to cling to that simple cardboard box as if I were ready to give my life for it and its contents. All it contained were some of my meager possessions, things belonging to a sad teen like used note books, two or three changes of clothing, primarily underwear and the like. I was still prepared to return to the home of my grandmother and my aunts in Panama City if need be, but only some time in the future to pick up more of my clothing, things like my new marching band uniform and some shirts I would need to use for school in Colon. Continue reading
Posted in Colon
Tagged Aminta, Bobby Grant, family dysfunction, teenagers in trouble
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