Daily Passionfruit

  Writing a blog is more interesting than I expected. I believed blog writing was just a place where you could speak your mind, but it’s becoming clearer to me that the same amount of work you’d put into an essay or research, you have to put into blog writing. When I first created The Daily Passionfruit, I thought of writing posts as less of an assignment and more “lax”. Because I wrote so “laxly”, it was easy to forget the requirements for my posts to meet the blog standards. A relevant post would have relevant and creative content, easy for readers to learn and analyze, while being open enough for readers to discuss and respond to; it would contain embedded media, such as hyperlinks, images, examples, to help engage the reader and appeal to the audience. My first few posts didn’t include much media content or sources to engage my audience, just a lengthy paragraph and a picture of two. Although I put my best foot forward into my writing, reviewing and revising my work before pu...

          In the 1930s, the “Rastafarian” movement developed in Jamaica. This is a religion classified as part new religion, and sociopolitical movement. Rastafarianism is believed to have sprouted from the suppression of the Afro- Jamaicans in ‘Babylon’, who had been traded as slaves and exiled as captives. According to BBC.uk, the movement began with Marcus Garvey, a political leader who led the Universal Negro Improvement Association, with the intention of bringing blacks back to their homelands, “Ethiopia”, being Africa.           Haile Selassie I, born “Ras Tafari”, was crowned emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 – 1974, he became regarded as the “Second Coming of Christ”, the “Black Messiah”, the Redeemer. With Marcus Garvey’s push to, ‘look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned, [where] he shall be your Redeemer’, Haile Selassie I became God incarnate among Rastafarians. Today, there seems to be a misconcept...

          Jamaica, another beautiful island of the Caribbean, is the third largest island of the Caribbean. It is home to many different peoples, making Jamaica rich in culture and history. According to historians, long before Christopher Columbus sailed what would be known as the "West Indies", the Arawak and Taino peoples inhabited the land of Jamaica, calling it ‘Xaymaca’, the land of wood and water. Once ‘Xaymaca’ was acquired by the English in 1655, after an attack against the Arawak and Taino peoples, the English renamed the island Jamaica. Under English rule, enslaved Africans grew tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and were traded through the Middle Passage for rum and molasses.             In 1865, the Morant Bay Rebellion changed the course of the island’s progress. Paul Bogle and his men stormed the Morant Bay Courthouse, which led to Governor John Eyre being recalled to England. This movement brought growth and development...

          Right now, in the dead of winter of January in the United States, the one thing we need right now is an escape. An escape to a tropical island, sipping on pina coladas with. Somewhere hot and sunny, to lay on sun-dried sand, looking out to clear blue seas. What we need is a trip to the Bahamas.        Northwest in the Caribbean region, the Bahamas lies just south of Florida of the U.S. consists of 700 islands. These islands make for great getaways and vacations, where there’s nothing but beaches to wind down to. The Bahamas seems to have always been a site for tourism. In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered an island of the Bahamas, which encouraged expansion to the area. Tourism brought the islands out of its economic decline after the effects of the American Revolution reached the Bahamas. The expansion brought diversity to the islands. Although 85% of the island is of African descent, the Bahamas are home to Asian, Europea...