So I'm a writer

As a child, my mommy would take me to the Victoria Library in Grand Turk every Saturday, and check out books for the week, to which we were each allowed three. Mommy would take advantage of my youth and use two of my book allowances to up her reading haul to 5 weekly. I was envious and became silently competitive, vowing to get my lick AND my books back!

In a few months, I had improved my skill and timing so much that one fine Saturday, I marched up to the librarian where my mommy was waiting with too many books and smugly smiled while saying, "These are my three for this week". She was surprised and a little skeptical, but I knew she was proud. She dared me to read them and told me she would be taking her additional books back next week if I didn't. The next week she got a library card for my baby brother and took out extras on his.

That is one of my fondest memories of my mommy and I bonding in my youth as well as what I think played a big factor in me excelling in literacy and writing. That, constantly making me do schoolwork at home, and being from the Francis family of Grand Turk. Orators, storytellers, con artists, lovers, poets, masters and mistresses of ceremonies, singers, teachers and it goes on and on and on. I couldn't escape my lineage.

All through lil chirren school, primary school, secondary school and even in my tertiary education, I had a great command of the English language, loved story telling and had an amazing imagination that just gave everything I did a lot of razzle dazzle. I got a Grade 1 distinction in CXC English in 3rd form without any additional classes or learning ( I think), and I loved to mimic television shows and people, which developed my fondness for linguistics as well.

I love to speak in different accents like my Caribbean brothers and sisters and I'm actually quite fond of listening to and accomplishing those of my colonizers as well. My home country dialect was shunned all through my upbringing, it gave way to lots of code switching and equating proper speech with a lack of accent or colloquialisms.

I was then immersed into a very white, American, Canadian hospitality world, where you are also silently nudged into the same way of thinking because of ease of guest interaction and of course the impression you make on your employers. It's comforting and relatable. Being the lifelong rebel I am, I left hospitality, became a performer, stop saying good morning and began speaking the duttiest broken english I could find. It's been a while now and I've since found my manners again, however still find it hard to verbally marry correct speech with my duttiest accent, but when I write.......oh darling, it's magical.

When writing, I can express myself clearly and concisely, with hilarity and personality and still be very true to both having a brilliant command of the English language and showcasing the normality and beauty of my country's dialect.

Another thanks to my home circle, esp mommy, granny and aunt Nene who said and enforced that if I could not spell it, I could not say it. So here I am, writing a blog. This blog will be about all the things, some pieces old and some new, some fictional some true, some rhyming, some not, some da ga make ppl hot. Da mean wex. That means upset. :) .

This is going to be my freedom. To express myself privately but publicly, to excel in my skills I've been smothering for years and to have fun and share wit yinna.

So, love me up, read it loud and send it round.

Tanx Aye.