United Nations of Fruit:

immigration in the produce department, and privilege on farms and airplanes.

Have you ever taken a flight that has influenced your produce shopping habits?

The produce section is usually my first stop when I go for groceries, and wherever possible I try to buy local. There are many imposters in the produce section. At some sly grocery stores, items grown in other countries (you can tell by their little passport stickers) are grouped under a sign that says “grown in Canada” or “grown in Ontario”.

Like illegal immigrants, these imported fruits and vegetables try to sneak their way into our baskets from under the “locally grown” signs. I try to buy local because I know it might also be supporting some fellow Jamaicans; many migrant farm workers who come here come from Jamaica to work in farms and greenhouses.

“You are the only female passenger on this flight” is not something one expects to hear when checking in at the airport. But this was the case when, in the mid-fall of 1999, I was returning to Jamaica after finishing grad school in Waterloo, Ontario. It had taken longer than I expected to finish my thesis, and so it was I found myself leaving not at the end of August, when I would have been traveling with end-of-summer travellers.

Instead my flight was later in fall, when I travelled in what turned out to be a plane whose entire passenger list (but for one sole delayed engineering student) was migrant farm workers, returning to Jamaica.

It was a big plane, the kind that has a centre row of seats flanked by two aisles, and then the seats that are closer to the windows. By the time I got to the airport for check in, the seat available was towards the back of the plane, and smack-dab in the middle of those centre aisles. So I got my boarding pass, checked in my excess luggage, and headed for the departure lounge to await boarding.

Moving back home after over two years of school, I had more than my two pieces of luggage. There was nothing of great commercial value in my luggage – mostly things that were precious to me because of the stories of friendship and love they told. I think I traveled with one large suitcase and at least one or two packed cardboard boxes, secured with tape and cord. I checked in not knowing how I would open those boxes at customs when I landed – and, perhaps providentially, entrusting that detail to God’s hands to provide boxcutters.

So, you know how usually when you board a plane, you look for the seat number printed on your boarding pass? On this most unusual flight, upon entering the plane, the other passengers started inviting me to sit beside them, and asking their seat mates to move! Welcome to a flight filled with Jamaican men!

I politely declined, waving my boarding pass and saying “its ok, they assigned me a seat back there somewhere”, and making my way to my designated seat. The gentlemen who found themselves beside an empty seat greeted me with big grins, promptly standing up and offering to help me with my overhead luggage. Never before had I had such help and welcome on a flight!

I settled into my seat, and before we were presented with the “in the event of an emergency” schpiel, my row mates introduced themselves to me by name and a gentle getting to know each other began. In turns, the two men beside me shared how many times they had travelled on the farm work program. One was well on his way to building his house in Jamaica from the savings from this program. The other was still relatively new.

While we talked, the flight continued to board, and I watched men come on wearing sometimes 2 or 3 hats, one atop the other, or multiple shirts – because it was not considered luggage if you wore it – my row mates explained “and every body a yaad a look a likke sumting when we come back” … roughly translated, back home, folks will want a little gift from our travels.

You see, the jobs these men came to take, that often local people would not even consider doing for the pay that was offered, when converted to Jamaican dollars and into the economies of our Jamaican context, made it a privilege for those who could get away to work in “the farm work program” … this was before COVID … this was before the time in which the news headline said “96 of 98 new cases of COVID-19 in Windsor-Essex county are among farm workers”

As I listened to the stories of my row-mates during the almost 4 hour flight, direct from Toronto to Kingston, I had mental pictures I could draw from. My parents back in Jamaica brought home many a tradesman to help in our home with various tasks from gardening to tiling to cabinet making to painting and plumbing.

My parents never just employed people, but always in their own way, be-friended those who came into our homes: my mom fed everyone, and my dad always took the time to work alongside the tradesmen who came to our house – sometimes sharing a cigarette, or on hot summer days involving outdoor work, a midday ice cold Red Stripe Beer.

My mental pictures came from the homestead of one of these tradesmen who had invited us to his home for some reason. He lived in the country (meaning some distance away from Kingston, in a rural setting), and I remember on that visit to his home, as he walked us through his house, he told us which trip in which year built which rooms, tiled which floors of the house in which we visited. I think this tradesman was a tile layer – I think his invitation might have been a way to help my parents see the work he could do.

As a teenager though I was more captivated by the idea that each overseas work stint built something so tangible and solid for this man – in a rural neighbourhood where many homes were not comparable to his own. In his home context, this man was privileged to have become a “regular farm worker”. This paid, hard labour, built his home, brick by brick. Each trip accomplishing a room, or tiling, or some other major expense item in his home-building economy.

The scales of privilege are such that the work that Canadian residents would not condescend to do, was the privileged work of another man, from another context, where fair wages are understood very differently. It reminds me of a sesame street song I particularly love, whose words go “When the big becomes the little and the little becomes the small, that’s about the size of it.”

For men coming from Jamaica, where 20 C is considered “cold cold”, arriving in the mid- or late-spring and staying through to late-fall meant encountering the sometimes-frosty mornings of colder weather here in Canada. When I asked what was hardest, one of the men said his knuckles would crack from the cold and the exposure, or sometimes from the heat, and they would bleed.

But in usual Jamaican style, he had found his own solution. He learnt to bring cocoa butter cream from home for his knuckles which he said helped except for “when the cold hot me bad”.

The other man said being without his wife was hardest. He described the living conditions with “a bull pen full a man”, meaning a confined space filled with men, but he also said, when you love your family and want good for them, there are few sacrifices you won’t make.

At the end of May, 2020, farm worker Bonifacio Eugenio-Romero – 31 years old died of COVID.

Within a week, farm worker Rogelio Munoz-Santos – 24 years old died of COVID.

On June 21, 2020, CBC news reported a third death of a migrant farm worker … this one not named.

I wonder whether they had had the chance to figure out the cocoa butter trick, or the Latin American equivalent. I wonder which room in their homes would have risen from this summer’s work? Which tiles or plumbing fixtures might have gone in to give their families some of the amenities we have here, and perhaps take for granted?

And I think of the fruits and vegetables that pass for Canadian in the sly grocery store produce sections, even though they aren’t really. Or the fruit from other lands for which welcome in Canada is so readily extended.

And I wish it could be so easy for human beings. For men from less privileged contexts, to pass for Canadian, despite the passports they hold.

As the plane began its descent, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Passports and boarding passes were being passed down the line, for me to help fill them out. Literacy wasn’t necessarily to be taken for granted on this flight. But the common ground of our shared humanity was so palpable. From that common ground, the fruit of fellowship was abundant. Would this fruit be welcome on Canadian produce shelves?

When we landed in Jamaica, a land from which we could not be deported as we all held Jamaican passports (though mine was by naturalization, not birthright), God’s hands did indeed provide boxcutters. I didn’t have to lift even one box or suitcase, let alone struggle with cord or tape. The gentlemen who travelled with me looked out for me until I was met by the welcoming arms of family outside the airport.

“When the big becomes the little and the little becomes the small, that’s about the size of it.”

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apples Photo by gibblesmash asdf on Unsplash

lemons and limes Photo by Irina on Unsplash