Ital rhythms and rhymes

Gareth Manning, Gleaner writer

Like the golden honey produced from her 14-year-old son's apiary at the back of their house in Porus, Manchester, poetry flows effortlessly from the lips of Charmaine Stobbs, also affectionately known as Charmaine Ital.

Rhythms and rhymes come naturally to this contented 51-year-old Rastafarian, who still avidly climbs trees with her sons and even hangs upside down from the limbs of trees.

Her knack for skilfully weaving words comes not merely from the 'livity' she embraces, but also from the womb which cradled her for nine months.

"My mummy was like a warrior type ... she didn't take cheque," Stobbs says. The conversation pauses for a moment as her son's vicious honeybees take aim at the visitors around.

"It's good for you man. The sting is medicine," she assures.

Following the ordeal of nearly a dozen stings, the visitors sit under a mango tree at the front of the yard as the farmer and mother of two continues her story.

The one-acre property, on which she raises her two sons, Richaydo, 14, and Addwyn, nine, was once 10 acres, inherited from her grandparents. Her mother had to battle community and family members to maintain a hold of the inherited wealth for her two daughters.

"There was this day in particular when a woman came and she (her mother) jus strip off all her clothes - everything - and fought her properly!" Stobbs recalls. "When the police came, is like they could not manage her. She was tearing them down too to put on the stiff jacket and straight to Bellevue (Hospital)."

Stobbs' mother, who was affectionately called Miss Birdy, was nine months pregnant with Charmaine at the time of that incident.

"That was on the 9th of February and on the 10th, she started feeling labour pains and they drove her over to Jubilee (Victoria Jubilee Hospital), where I was born on the 11th of February," she tells.

Two days later, Miss Birdy was taken back to Bellevue and the incident would become the subject of one of Stobbs' first poems:

Pure observation fi true

Now no matter what the heathen do and

even wuk voodoo

Me personally will never go back to Bellevue

Unless a bear observation fi true!"

The rest of her childhood would be coloured by litanies of poetry, reciting for school concerts and for community gatherings from works of the renowned 'Miss Lou' and Stobbs' own writings. She is now mature with four grown children, a teenager and a nine-year-old son, and has earned a certificate from the School of Drama, and although farming is her sustenance, her life still centres on the rhymes and lyrics dancing in her head - the life force of her free-spiritedness.

"It's just me. I'm poetry. I just look around me and I see things and chat it. That's poetry," she declares, her smile showing a woman pleased with her conclusion.

The main subject of her verses is ordinary everyday Jamaican life. But national historic events are like golden nuggets, and are carefully captured and preserved in her simple rhythmic lines.

"I always love my Jamaican people, in particular, especially when they show potential," she says. "They (athletes) are there to uplift the country, so I always gaze at what they are doing and have an interest, especially when I see the victories. It gives me joy. Sometimes I cry ... sometimes I sigh ... and with that joy and that ability to write, you just see ideas coming and you just start write cause you don't want to miss a drop of it," she relates.

Stobbs has written a poem for nearly every single gold medal winner in the 2008 Beijing Olympics - from Usain Bolt to Veronica Campbell-Brown. But dearest to her heart is the reigning 100 metres double Olympic champion, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

Shelly-Ann Fraser

Sharp like a razor

Faster than laser

Blazing like when cane field ketch fire

Yes I

Jamaican athletes inspire

We good at what is required

We always say a prayer and we love to bun a fire

Yes I

Fire purify wha dem cyaa samfi

Yes I

Jamaicans chant higher, higher, higher

Fire drop out of I prayer

Jah gave us just what is required on every hand

Shelly-Ann Fraser

Sharp like a razor

Faster than laser, catch di place a fire.

And as the Jamaica 50 and Olympic Games jubilation fade, a contented Stobbs, far removed from the troubles her mother faced with neighbours and family, sits with a notebook and pen, her thoughts on the recent historic moments, on the track in London and at home.

"Greater is He that is in I than He that is in the world. So if you identify something good in yourself, whatever it is, if is even to pick up trash, pick it up good. Be happy with what you are doing because out of that, although it might look simple, it might come great. It's all about the faith," Stobbs says.