Ireka Jelani possesses a deep inner strength that has fostered the tight bond one detects in this Rastafarian family. It is a “faith trod” says Ireka.
“When you pray you are strengthening self and it gives you an inner energy to keep going. Learning to cope is the key, but you can only cope if you have a strong faith base.”
The matriarch of the Jelani family has held her family together through thick and thin and she is proud of her four children.
“I think it is an honour to be able to bring children into the world. It is a wonderful thing but not an easy road because I find that as small children, you care for them, you nurture them, you try and train them in the best way that you can manage.
“I think sometimes it is just a matter that as soon as they enter the school system that sometimes you get different moods and attitudes. Still as a parent you have to instil discipline and principle within your children that they can still hold a firm discipline and firm meditation and don’t succumb to peer pressure.”
As a Rastafarian mother, she has raised her children to embrace the tenets of Rastafari. She explained: “All of our youth from the time they are born grow dread longs, natty dreads and the other thing is the whole discipline, livity, creation, the natural mystics of the earth, dealing with self, self-realisation and trying to be health-conscious and self-aware because at the end of the day in terms of spirituality the person that you have to revere more and enhance is yourself.”
Order rules in the modest home at White Hill, St Andrew. Seeing the children interact with their mother and father Princepine Jelani, it is clear there is a lot of respect and love in this household.
Twenty-year-old Kweku, a jazz trumpeter and former student at the Alleyne School, has just arrived home from an overseas trip and huddles with his sister Subira, 17, and their 11-year-old brother Baruti. The two younger siblings are excited to see what their brother has brought them.
Ireka is proud of her children’s achievements. Kweku has an associate degree in music from the Barbados Community College and plays on the local circuit. As he prepares to join the rest of the family for a photograph before heading out for a gig, his mother says “I am proud of him. Don’t mind sometimes I don’t like the late hours, but that is the give and take of a career choice.”
Subira gained seven CXC certificates at the Alleyne School and on this particular night 11-year-old Baruti is breathing a sigh of relief after taking the Common Entrance Examination earlier in the day.
“Being a mother, you want the best for your children. We try to work as a family unit and try and discuss and reason and deal with things but sometimes we have to deal with discipline and punishment in more ways than one,” Ireka remarks as she talks about how she and her husband are raising their children.
“We don’t deal with sky-gazing, looking for God in the sky” she said. “You got to try and harness and develop self because that is where the Godhead dwells and that is what we try to instil in our children, to try to live to the higher end of yourself because there is always negative and positive and you have to try and accentuate the positive.
“Sometimes you talk to them, sometimes you might take away certain privileges, sometimes you might ground them, and sometimes lash them but that is a last resort.”
This family has endured some difficult times but Ireka refuses to complain. Both parents are self-employed and once operated a promising craft business in Pelican Village. Ireka went to Africa on a Commonwealth Scholarship to enhance her knowledge of basketry for the Roots and Grasses business.
Those business fortunes have been declining with little activity at the craft village. But the multi-talented person that she is, Ireka intimated: “That is one thing about being a Rastafarian woman. You try to be multi-skilled and you learn to do a variety of things so that when one thing is not working you can always have an option.”
She and her husband have turned to farming, cultivating ten acres of land at Turners Hall, part of the Land For The Landless project.
The Jelani children have learnt to be content with whatever their parents have to give.
“I don’t get serious problems with my youth because they always tend to be more homely children, doing things around the house” Ireka said.
As vegetarians they survive off the land eating “ital” food (ground provisions) supporting their natural lifestyle.
“The financial situation could be difficult but we live and raise the children to be satisfied with what they have. We are vegetarians, we live from the land. In life you have to learn to be contented with the little you have.”
Ireka and Princepine suffered the devastating loss of their eldest daughter six years ago, at age 20, but Ireka used it as a stepping stone to transform her life and her thinking.
“It made me to be more humble, more self-aware, to know that everyone faces their own mortality when things like that happen.”
“In those days I used to be out there in the craft world lobbying, agitating for the craft sector, as an ambassador for the arts and crafts community. But I said, ‘You know what? Who really cares? I told myself, ‘Look, I am dealing with family and self’.”
Deciding to pull herself “out of that grief zone and live again”, she enrolled at the Barbados Community College and enhanced her creative skills with a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts.
She has since embarked on a two-year part time programme of study for a Master’s in culture studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and has already completed the first year.
Along with the farming and limited craftwork which supports her family, she is engaged in a project for her second and final year that has seen her researching vending at Cheapside. She is also looking at Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions.
This mother in her early 50s wants her children to see themselves as responsible citizens. She is grateful for “good children”.
“I love all of my youth and I pray for the best for them and I know they have to be equipped to make the right choices and they can only make the right choices based on the knowledge they have and that is why we try to encourage them to live a righteous life.”
Ireka looks at her attractively dressed teenage daughter with long dreadlocks falling neatly from a head scarf and says, “I am still talking because I don’t want her to go down the wrong road, so sometimes I got to hold the reins really tight. Some people say let go but you can never let go when you are a parent. Once you truly love your children you can never let go.”
She praises her husband for his support, claiming she is the “yin” while he is the “yang”. Together since schooldays, they have been married 22 years.
“Both of us made up our mind to make it work. When you get children, the dynamics change. You have to turn your attention to rearing the children,” she said.