YAADOLOGY

Collected with care

Di Memory
Yard

A growing home for the photographs, voices, documents and ordinary things that carry Jamaican memory.

COME LOOK YAH SO

A yard where photographs, voices, household objects and stories sit together, ready to stir a memory and start a conversation.

What the Yard will hold

Ordinary things.
Living memory.

Some history arrives as a photograph. Some as a voice note, school programme, family letter, old flyer or a story somebody finally sits down to tell.

01

Photographs

Family faces, school days, work life and community moments that make somebody stop and call a name.

02

Audio & Video

Voices, music, interviews, performances and familiar sounds that can carry a whole place inside them.

03

Documents

Letters, school programmes, report cards and family records that quietly kept the details.

04

Printed Life

Flyers, posters, labels and the bits of printed life people nearly threw away.

05

Oral Histories

The stories people tell about school, work, food, games, family sayings and how things used to be done.

06

Community Memory

The places, characters, routines and jokes a whole community may remember differently.

From the household shelf

Objects of everyday Jamaican life

The ordinary things people ate from, worked with and gathered around also carry memory. These first objects begin a collection that will grow carefully over time.

Two brown-and-cream soup cups beside a cooking pot and crackers on a Jamaican household table
That sturdy brown-and-cream cup could handle soup straight from the pot. Many people remember seeing it at nine-nights, community gatherings, cookshops and roadside soup stalls.

CULTURAL OBJECT 001 · FOODWAYS AND GATHERING

The Brown-and-Cream Soup Cup

Where do you remember meeting this cup: a nine-night, a cookshop, a dance or somebody’s kitchen?

Lit glass kerosene lamp on a wooden table in a traditional Jamaican living room
Before electricity reached every Jamaican home, the kerosene lamp kept the evening going. Wicks had to be trimmed, oil topped up and the glass chimney cleaned so the light could burn clearly.

CULTURAL OBJECT 002 · LIGHT AND HOME LIFE

The Kerosene Lamp

Who remembers the smell of the kerosene, the soot on the chimney or being warned not to knock the lamp?

Old charcoal box iron resting on white fabric across a padded ironing board
Hot coals went inside this heavy iron, and the vents helped keep them burning. It pressed school uniforms, church clothes and household linens long before the electric iron became common.

CULTURAL OBJECT 003 · CLOTHING AND HOUSEHOLD WORK

The Charcoal Box Iron

How did the person ironing know it was hot enough, but not too hot for the cloth?

One household practice, two generations of tools

Keeping the red floor shining

The work remained familiar even as the tool changed.

Coconut-husk floor brush resting on a polished red Jamaican wooden floor
Red floor polish, a coconut-husk brush and plenty of elbow grease could bring a wooden floor to a deep shine. The work was close to the ground and nobody needed to explain why your arm was tired afterwards.

CULTURAL OBJECT 004 · HAND-POLISHED

The Coconut-Husk Brush

Who remembers polishing the floor with one of these?

Vintage electric floor polisher standing on a polished red Jamaican wooden floor
The electric polisher made the job faster, but it still required a steady hand. Once that machine started moving, you had to guide it or watch it try to guide you.

CULTURAL OBJECT 005 · ELECTRIC SUCCESSOR

The Electric Floor Polisher

Do you remember the hum of the machine, or a first attempt that nearly carried somebody across the room?

Four-panel image showing a wooden slingshot, a spinning top, a homemade cardboard box truck and colourful glass marbles
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES · Toys made, traded and played with in the yard.

From the Yard · Childhood memories

Toys We Made,
Games We Played

A slingshot, a spinning top, a homemade box truck and a handful of marbles. Sometimes, all it took was a little imagination to turn a corner of the yard into the day’s biggest competition.

Some toys were bought. Others were made from whatever children could find, including cardboard boxes, bottle caps, bits of wood and string. And if you lost your favourite marble? Well, that could spoil the whole afternoon! 😂

Who remembers playing with these? Did you make your own toys, and which game could nobody beat you at?

Come share your memories. Somebody else might remember the very same thing.

Titchfield High School students gathering around an old blue country bus in Port Antonio Square, with roadside fruit and snack vendors nearby
When school let out, Port Antonio Square came alive with Titchfield students, vendors calling out their goods, conductors loading passengers and country buses getting ready to head across Portland.

MEMORY SCENE 001 · PORT ANTONIO, PORTLAND

After School in the Square

Which bus did you wait for, and who could you count on seeing in the square after school?

A galvanized zinc washpan filled with white laundry, with a wooden washboard and washing bat in an old Jamaican outdoor washing area
Wash day meant a zinc pan, wooden washboard, washing bat, blue soap and enough strength to scrub, beat and rinse every piece by hand. Then came the race to get everything dry before the rain.

HOUSEHOLD PRACTICE 001 · WASH DAY

Washing by Hand

What part of wash day do you remember most: the blue soap, the beating, the rinse water or watching the sky?

White enamel chamber pot beneath an iron spring bed with a forest-green quilt, beside a straw rug, child's doll, small shoes and broom in a Jamaican bedroom
Before indoor bathrooms became common, the enamel chamber pot, affectionately called the “chimmy,” was kept beneath the bed for use during the night.

HOUSEHOLD OBJECT 001 · NIGHT-TIME ROUTINE

The Chamber Pot

Who remembers the chimmy beneath the bed, and the careful walk to empty it in the morning?

The collection is growing

Every Memory Has a Place Here.

The stories we remember, the sayings we grew up hearing, the photographs we kept and the everyday details that made life in Jamaica what it was. Di Memory Yard is a growing collection of the things worth remembering, sharing and passing on.

As the collection develops, we will bring these memories together with care, giving credit where it is due and seeking permission where it is needed.

Some memories live in photographs. Others live in the people who remember.

Permission

Your material remains yours.

Nothing is published automatically. Every contribution is reviewed, credited and used only with appropriate permission. Family material is not treated as something Yaadology simply owns because it was shared.

Documented history, oral tradition, folklore, personal memory, community memory, belief and interpretation are identified for what they are.

WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT?

Where possible, an entry will record not only what somebody knew, but who taught them and how the knowledge travelled.