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Eria David For Erica David, memories of her four-year-old self growing up in Philadelphia, are still fresh as the aroma of pancakes from her visits to IHOP . So, what’s the correlation between pancakes and Erica? As it’s said, inspiration comes from unexpected places. For her, it was the pancakes ... or was it? “My mother said that I wrote my first poem at age four. It was a bit of blank verse titled ‘On the way to the IHOP’” David said. “It was a spontaneous poem prompted by a love of pancakes that my mother jotted down on a scrap of paper ... . “That’s the myth, anyway,” she hastily added. “I think that what actually made me a writer was two parts boredom, one part jealousy.” Even if pancakes being the source of inspiration was a myth … she articulated as a chef. David said, she used to get bored easily until one day her mother handed her a pencil (for the benefit of Gen Z and beyond folks, that is a writing instrument). She was jealous of her cool older cousin who used to write stor...

Ampofo Mensah Jr (right) with some of the staff and students of Lower Buxton Primary School, St Ann. One is often told – “You don’t look Indian,” to which the 1.2-billion dollar question is: “How do Indians look?”…What, one might ask, is the context of this statement? It stems from the fact that some notions are just that, notions and pre-conceived – for the celebration of a country’s unity lies in her diversity across the board. Trick question number two… “How do Americans look?”… Ampofo Mensah Jr was left to ponder this when his family moved from Ghana to the United States and settled in the Big Apple. “It was a revelation for me,” Mensah said. “I faced struggles with the paradigm of my immigrant family seeking to adjust to living in the US from Ghana, West Africa.” Mensah was getting a brush of the ‘big, bad world’ out there, but then again, his parents decided that they were going to go all out to encourage him and his siblings to focus on their goals, of acquiring ed...

Elanor Nelson (in the middle), Peace Corps volunteer at the Newstead Primary School, St Mary, with some students who helped her create a pavement from soda bottle caps. Eleanor Nelson need not hoot any whistle to marshal her little troops; from marching around the community, collecting PET bottles, making art from bottle caps, to lugging suitcase loads of books as her check-in baggage, teaching music, promoting literacy - she and the students of Newstead Primary School rally to get the job done. She takes multi-tasking several notches up. Nelson is so much potency, vibrancy, and diversity packaged in a single human being - and her energy levels are on a constant crescendo. Since this Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) literacy adviser came to this hamlet in St Mary of lush greenery and milky rivers in May 2017, she has striving, with the help of the students of Newstead Primary School, to do just that: keep the environment pristine. She went around the community to collect plasti...

Members of the 90th group of Peace Corps Volunteers in Jamaica | Photos Courtesy: Peace Corps Jamaica "How one shapes their life is always very interesting to me," says Paul Sully, country director of Peace Corps Jamaica. It is a simple yet deep-rooted statement because every one of us has as story to tell, a chapter to write, possibilities to explore, journeys to undertake - the list, and for some, the bucket list, goes on. The pertinent question here is, does volunteerism get a place in the nine yards of life? 'Perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly', and 'I don't know' could be the plausible responses. Sully, though, who has spent majority of his life and career, as the head of an organisation that has been serving Jamaica since 1962, believes that the definition of a volunteer has to be rewritten and that perceptions need to change. "We know from our experiences that service reflects and shares values of caring, creates bonds, and...