Six Flags Exchange

Recently we went on a family outing to the local Six Flags amusement park. It was great. We went through the Safari, got one on one interaction with an Ostrich we named Peck-Peck and did most of the kids rides. We had a wonderful time. Halfway through the excursion I noticed a certain pattern. It seemed to me that a lot of the ride operators and park attendants were Jamaican.

Could this really be true? If so, how did it happen that such a large concentration of Jamaicans ended up being hired together in a random township in New Jersey, not particularly known for a having a large indigenous Yard population, like Brooklyn, New York for instance? I had to find out.

So soon I happened to put the children on a ride that was by and large ignored by the rest of the park attending population. The lone operator of the ride was a young Jamaican girl who was quite friendly and we got to talking while my girls enjoyed the ride. She soon told me that she had come up for the summer to work and was staying in a township nearby but that there were a number of other young Jamaicans from Brown’s Town Community College in St. Ann who were a part of a college work program.

I found this to be fantastic. Young people who probably never travelled before were given the opportunity to work, travel, earn coveted US dollars which could benefit them and their families back home a great deal upon their return. When I was growing up there was AFS and the International Baccularate that helped students gain the benefit of residing in a foreign country and being exposed to diverse cultures but this was different on so many levels. As one young man that I spoke to put it he couldn’t think of a better way to spend his summer holidays.

I’m not sure if the selection process was academically linked but it seemed to me that for the program to take youngsters from a rural community college rather than from one of the more resourceful Kingston high schools, its ability to do more good for a larger cross section of people was evident. So Kudos, what I have come to call Brown’s Town Six Flags Summer Work Exchange Program, long may you benefit deserving young people in the Jamaican countryside. Selah.