Rastafarian group impacting inner cities through books

At the start of this upcoming academic year, I-Nation – a Rastafarian group which sells solely pan-African books and necessities – is gearing up to change the way in which the thousands of unaccounted for students in the pandemic are reached, by packing old fridges with books and leaving them on the streets of inner-city communities in the Corporate Area.

This forms part of an ‘Inner-City Book Drive’ which co-founders, Ras I-Nation and Jahsun, developed in recent months, started promoting this summer, and now only have two weeks left to fill numerous fridges and start leaving them on the street corners and hangout spots of inner-city communities such as Tivoli Gardens, Denham Town and Stand Pipe.

In April, the Ministry of Education and Youth gave an update that around 87,000 primary and secondary-level students at the time, remained unaccounted for since there was a radical shift from face-to-face to strictly online classes. During the first announcement, it was estimated that some 120,000 students were unaccounted for since the pandemic started.

I-Nation’s hope is that some of these children will go to the fridges of their own free will and in their own time, and choose from the pool of books to either read or practise for their educational benefits. In an interview with The Gleaner on Sunday at the Jamaica Poetry Festival at AC Hotel in Kingston, Jahsun better explained about the Inner-City Book Drive initiative.

“We’re going to be in the various inner-city’s building libraries; little communal libraries in the communities. We started off in Tivoli Gardens and then we’re going to Denham Town, Rose Town and move uptown to Standpipe until we touch all of the inner cities in the area,” Jahsun explained.

Ras I-Nation, author and co-founder of I-Nation, is pleading for other Jamaicans to support the initiative by donating books to the Inner-City Book Drive.

“We’re collecting the books now, that’s the main thing. The fridges will be like book stands. We put shelves in them and put two/three fridges on each of the corner where the youths dem gather, particularly so-called gangster dem, yu nuh, and just try and change the mind-set from there,” Ras I-Nation told The Gleaner.

“We’re welcoming sponsorship as well to set up the fridges,” he said.

GOAL

The drive will be ongoing as one of I-Nation’s goals is to establish libraries in all inner-city communities across the Corporate Area. At least one educator, Rachael McDonald, has thrown her support behind the duo and already collected some old fridges that will be used to stash books inside.

It was Ras I-Nation who first developed the idea to start I-Nation after reading the book titled The Wretched of the Earth by the author Frantz Fanon. He saw the need to import more pan-African-based books, and roped in Jahsun on the business venture.

“We couldn’t find them in our regular books store [so] we start read them and source them for ourselves. We share them with brethren and we saw the need for them and we started selling them from my bicycle riding around,” Ras I-Nation said, before adding that he has been selling pan-African books for over a decade.

Jahsun, who was one of the previous customers of Ras I-Nation told The Gleaner that he chose to co-found I-Nation “for the love of books”.

Ras I-Nation said his developed a love for Rastafarianism started while he was a student at Ardenne High School, while Jahsun chose to follow the faith after studying what the Rastafarian faith is about.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com