Building a Better Jamaica

BY HG HELPS Editor-at-Large helpsh@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, August 29, 2010

AS difficult as it may seem to those around her, Ann-Merita Golding is trying to maintain a normal life as the daughter of Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding, and continues to do what she can to keep that posture intact.

The 26-year-old Ann-Merita is enrolled as a student at Nova Southeastern University where she is pursuing her doctorate in Audiology, a branch of science that studies hearing and balance-related disorders.

Describing herself as a very light-hearted person who is always smiling or laughing, the last child of Bruce and Lorna Golding has found life as the daughter of a political leader as easy-going, yet challenging, as much the way the ordinary citizen finds it.

"Life as Bruce's daughter is pretty near to normal. I consider myself common folk," she said in response to an article in the Observer, which described her as mingling with 'ordinary' folk while on tour with her father at the recent Denbigh Agricultural and Industrial Show earlier this month.

"Had I not been there with my father (at Denbigh), had I been there with a friend or alone, I would have walked through that crowd and nobody would have noticed who I was," she said.

"I take solace in the fact that I can live a normal life, despite the fact that I am one of the daughters of the prime minister.

"All the attention that a celebrity would have, I don't have to deal with that. I am comfortable. My father is very protective of his family, especially me. I am the youngest and he and I have a very close relationship. He is not just my father, but I consider him one of my close friends. We share a closeness that you might not find with any father and daughter and I know that if he felt that I was in any danger, at any time, he always sends somebody with me."

With the kind of relationship that she has with her father, does that make her his favourite, was one of the questions put to her.

"I wouldn't say I am his favourite, but we understand each other well. We all have our individual relationships with him. My sister (Sherene) is the oldest. He calls her kitten. And he calls me his little something.

"My brother (Steven) does not have a nickname, but he is his only son and they share their close relationship, because they do a lot of things together like fishing and bird shooting," she said.

Ann-Merita, named after her grandmother, Merita Charles, the mother of Lorna, Labour and Social Security Minister Pearnel Charles, and lawyer Wentworth 'Rocky' Charles, was born on December 12 at St Joseph's Hospital in South East St Andrew. She would obviously share a special bond with her father, whose birthday is celebrated seven days earlier.

The abundantly attractive young Golding enrolled at Hillel Preparatory and later, Hydel Preparatory, becoming one of the first sets of students when the Hyacinth Bennett-started school opened to the public.

Following four years at Campion College, she took the long trek to St Ann, where St Hilda's High accommodated her for a further two years.

"After I left in fourth form at Campion, I wanted to go to boarding school; it was something that I asked my parents for," she said. "I wanted to go to boarding school abroad, but Mommy and Daddy weren't prepared to let me go so early and I said 'well, if I can't go abroad, I'd like to go to St Hilda's', because I had friends who went there. So I left Campion, repeated fourth form at St Hilda's and did CXC there," Ann-Merita recalled.

Describing her time at St Hilda's as different, Ann-Merita said that she had always been flexible and adapted to wherever she lived, including a later stint in Switzerland, under a cultural exchange programme.

"I went to Switzerland by myself, under the AFS inter-cultural exchange programme, where I lived with a family. I never spoke a word of German but learnt German. I am by no means fluent, but learnt enough to get by," she said.

"I later went to Howard University where I majored in communication sciences and disorders, specifically speech and hearing. I really like the hearing aspect of it, which is called Audiology. I had gone to Howard not knowing what it was that I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to do business, but I wasn't too sure, so I spent a week in the business school, but after that I changed my major. I hadn't known about Audiology before, but when you go to Howard University, they have counsellors who give you an idea of the bigger programmes that they offer and what they entail.

"I came across a pamphlet about Audiology, took some courses, liked it and have stuck with it. So now that I have my Bachelor's of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders, I have decided to go on and do the doctoral programme in Audiology," she said.

Describing her latest encounter in education as "extremely challenging", Ann-Merita said that although she was not prepared to encounter the volume of work which she faces, daddy Bruce always reminds her of the amount of work that he had to do.

Despite a tight schedule, Ann-Merita returns to Jamaica on holidays, although she took a semester off in January to prepare herself for a specific challenge at university.

A former creative dancer, present fitness buff and lover of a wide range of music, from rhythm & blues to gospel, dancehall and calypso, Ann-Merita still has a great love for netball, which she played in prep and high school.

Regarding herself as a spiritual person who has a relationship with Christ, Ann-Merita is yearning to see a different Jamaica soon, in which the positives are projected.

"I am anxious to see a Jamaica where people have good intentions, not just for themselves but for their neighbour," she said in between sips of fruit punch at picturesque Vale Royal during the interview.

"A friend of mine, Alaine, just did a song called You or Me and it's a song that hit home for me, given all that I have seen Daddy go through in the last couple of months.

"If all of us really treated each other the way we treat ourselves, I think that we will be moving in that direction, the one that we need to move into quickly... one filled with love, appreciation not just for self but for others and we will really begin to understand what it is to have pride in our country.