Madam Speaker, let me again heap gratitude on all who reached out to me with their congratulations after my opening budget presentation. I deeply appreciate all of you! You give me strength!
Let me also, Madam Speaker, pause to acknowledge the media persons who traveled over hills and valleys to go to Tydixon to check out the district ‘weh me come from’ and to write a nice article about Tydixon and me.
Madam Speaker, I hope all the media persons who went to Tydixon stopped for a moment on their way there or back to enjoy the beauty of the Worthy Park Sugar Estate, located in the plains of The Vale of Lluidas, with its unending acres of sugar cane as far into the horizon as you can look.
Madam Speaker, this scene has always held me in awe, from my childhood days until now. But Madam Speaker, there are other memories. In my childhood, many hard‐working men from Tydixon would wake up before cock
crows and walk the five (5) miles, in the wee hours of the morning, from Tydixon to Worthy Park Sugar Estate to cut sugar cane in the boiling hot sun with dem cutlass. Many women did the same journey as well but to pick oranges. At that time, there were thriving orange groves. So, thank you to the media for your visit to Tydixon.
‘De people dem whe me grow up wid sey dem luv de attention.’ Additionally, your social media post highlighted and reminded me that my mother used to sell cornmeal pudding and potato pudding under a tree to school
children at Tydixon Primary School.
Madam Speaker, with the little my mother made from selling cornmeal and potato pudding, she would faithfully put aside something, no matter how small, and it was that faithful putting aside of a little of the money she earned from selling cornmeal and potato pudding that allowed her to buy our school uniforms and a pair of Bata Shoes Store crepe (they call them sneakers now‐a‐days) for each of us children every year so that we did not have to walk barefooted to school and we did not have to wear the washed‐out faded‐out uniforms. Madam Speaker, it is the experience of putting aside something, no matter how small, that still lives on in me.