In 1942 my father, Darwin Fitzgerald (‘Gerry’) Samuel, boards a British ship and leaves his native Grenada, bound for war-torn Britain. He worked in the armaments industry, qualified as a teacher, and married Scottish nurse Nelleen Hogan. In 1950, two years after the Empire Windrush had opened the flood gates to England, our father went home with his young family: a man on the up. Pity, it wouldn’t last.
One fateful day in 1960 while living in Trinidad, my mother walked out on us without warning or nary a goodbye to her three young sons, thrusting us into the sole care of our father. To say our father was unprepared is putting it mildly: he was in a state of shock, for he had no inkling of this pending abandonment by his wife of ten years. But despite his shock, there was one thing he would never do: abandon his sons. Teacher, seeker, writer, Renaissance man, and most of all Nomad, that was my father. Unlike most of the Windrush Generation, our journey didn’t end after we got off the ship in Liverpool – that was just the beginning. By the time I turned eighteen, I’d already lived in five countries: Grenada, Trinidad, Guyana, England, and the US.
In 1971 came my father’s finest move: Jamaica. In one seminal year, my life was transformed: from a dumbed-down, low self-esteem immigrant kid in London, into a newly confident sixth former, about to enter university. Jamaica in the seventies was the world epicentre of street cred, with its heady mixture of Marley and Manley, Reggae and Rasta – interspersed with large doses of murder and mayhem. After my father died, suddenly and shockingly, my brothers and I (who really are called Tom and Gerry) went in search of our long-lost mother, and what we found was way more than we’d bargained for.
Follow me as we go from the hills of Grenada to the arse end of London in an unforgettable West Indian journey, full of dramatic twists and escapades. This is my story – my tribute to our father and to all those unsung fathers, who have ‘mothered’ countless generations of Caribbean men and women.
