October 19 Is Nanny Day in Moore Town, Portland

National Heroine, The Rt. Excellent Queen Nanny of the Maroons, will be honoured at a Nanny Day celebration, in Moore Town, Portland, on National Heroes Day, Monday, October 19.

Moore Town, which is the home of the Windward Maroons, is a village in the Blue Mountains.

The annual event, which begins at 10:00 a.m., will feature cultural performances and drumming by different maroon groups and a civic ceremony, which begins at 12:00 noon. Speakers will include colonels from maroon villages and representatives of cultural agencies of the Ministry of Youth and Culture.

Professor of the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, Hubert Devonish, will also give a brief presentation on the languages of the maroons.

Patrons at the event will be able to taste traditional maroon dishes and local dishes, which will be on sale.

Colonel of the Moore Town Maroons, Wallace Sterling, said residents of Moore Town will also be celebrating the recent inscription of Jamaica’s Blue and John Crow Mountains on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Prestigious World Heritage List.

“We are glad and we are thankful that the culture of the maroons was highlighted and we were included in the presentation to UNESCO and we were able to get this inscription; so this year, at Nanny Day celebration, we want to highlight that,” he said.

He said the Moore Town community, in collaboration with the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), will be developing several community tourism initiatives, such as Coney watching at nights, butterfly watching, and hikes through trails leading from Moore Town to Nanny Falls.

Additionally, Colonel Sterling said the Moore Town Maroon Council is making every effort to pass on the culture to young people.

“We are trying our best to pass on the culture and to get young people to know how to blow the abeng, how to play the drums and to teach them the songs,” he said.

Colonel Sterling  noted  that the young people are beginning to understand how they can benefit economically from the culture.

He also revealed plans to re-create a traditional maroon village, with cabins, as a result of foreign visitors to Moore Town always requesting to see a real maroon village and how they lived during the 18^th Century.

“Visitors can come and stay overnight or for a week. You will get live cultural performances and also provided with meals specific to the maroons and that will make a big difference. People will understand and appreciate the life of a maroon and experience how the maroons lived,” he added.