The Magic of Mount Olive

By Carrol May Coleman Nelson

Monday, June 17, 2019.

Mount Olive is situated in a misty, mystical mountain range of Ginger Ridge in Jamaica. Mount Olive is surrounded by undulating hills and a magnificent flamboyant bamboo backdrop and every day a gentle morning breeze wafts by. If you look carefully, you can see Mount Olive glowing in the morning sun.

 The mountain has always been covered in luscious leafy vegetation, fruit trees and verdant pastures. It is home to goats, cows, donkeys and horses who graze on the plentiful morning dew.

 Surrounding it, is a gentle flowing river, shimmering streams and plenty of fish to feed the kids. Legend has it mermaids lived there too. It was a playful place for fathers and their sons to fish, while little girls like to play happily catching tadpoles and throwing stones.

But the best part of Mount Olive was that it was also home to Grandma Majji’s magnificent and beautiful garden that was full of magic and mystery to Dolly and her friends. You could always hear the twittering and humming wings of the magical doctor birds and stripy bees among the flowers and the trees, working hard in the rising sun.

Grandma Majji looked after the land and its verdant pastures with bounteous and plentiful crops rich in ackee and avocado, rose and star apples, bananas and breadfruit, cashews and coconuts, corn and carrot, coffee and cocoa, guavas and guineps, mango and naseberries. Majji’s magical garden was just like her. It held a sense of magical beauty and wonder which spanned around the house and local villagers loved to come and visit. 

Sometimes Majji allowed Dolly to lend a hand, picking fruits and vegetables. Majji made her world and their world one.

Majji loved to play a game with the Maattinees called Guess Who I Would Like to Be?

‘Who would you like to be?’ Majji asked the Maattinees softly as they gathered to play in the garden.

‘Guess who I would like to be Majji…..? A Scientist,’ said Donna and Pearl as they danced around Majji.

‘Me too,’ said Leetee.

As Majji was passing around the fruit from her basket to the children she embraced the girls, ‘My dear children you are so remarkable and can be a great scientist like Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan.’

‘Who are they?’ asked the Maattinees in their surprised little voices.

‘These women were NASA’s black mathematicians who worked for the Apollo Space Programme. They helped to send John Glenn, The United States’ first astronaut, to space. He flew the Friendship 7 Space Mission to orbit the earth.’ 

‘I would like to go above the sky to see the stars,’

‘Ah well my dear child, you can be like Dr. Mae Jemison NASA’s former astronaut who was the science mission specialist on the STS-47 Spacelab –J. This eight-day mission was accomplished in 127 orbits of the earth, a cooperative mission between United States and Japan.’