Mavado is seen here hanging with Drake and in a shirt with Drake’s logo on it..Mavado yuh a real farrin nung nuh?

Dear Taiwo,
My heart is heavy, and I need solution to my problem. I tried to cover a past experience but it has resurfaced to haunt me. What would I do? How would I pacify my daughter? How do I make her understand that all I did was to protect her and her future? Everything I made in life belongs to her, why does she want to throw everything away now because she met someone who claimed to be her father?

The question I have been asking her that she had refused to answer was how she met Kanmi. How did he also know where to find her?

I did not intentionally kept my daughter in the dark; I admit that it was wrong for me to have told her that her father was dead. I did this to protect her but she does not seem to understand. What would happen now? I wish she would speak with me. Please, Taiwo, I need your advice and those of your readers to tell me how I would get at my daughter.

I came from a very poor background, where my mother, despite the fact that we had a father was the breadwinner. My father during his lifetime was a loafer, all he did was drink himself into a stupor, stake pools and beat up my mother if she could not put food on the table.

I never knew if he ever had a job, but mother told my siblings and I that he once worked with a newspaper house, but since he lost his job, he was unable to get another and he became a liability to our mother and would take out his frustration on her by beating her up at little or no provocation.

He died when I was 18. I had finished my West African School Certificate Examination, I could not proceed to a higher institution because I had to work to support my mother with my three siblings, being the first born.

I got a job at a big supermarket not too far from our house. The owner of the super- market then was a very young woman who needed someone she could trust because she made trips out of the country frequently, her husband then was also abroad. As God would have it, I was able to prove my integrity and as she learnt to trust me, she was able to rely on me and God also used her in a great way for my family and I .

On one of his trips to the country, she introduced me to her husband who was also receptive of my family and I. In fact; he helped to sponsor my immediate younger brother’s education to the university.

In no time, I became aunty Nike’s family member. She trusted me with everything and sometimes when she had to travel out of the country, I used to stay in her house and take care of her children.

All others who came to work in the shop after me never knew that I wasn’t related to her. We were really close.

It was while she went on one of her trips and I had to stay at home and look after her kids that I met Kanmi, her elder brother who was holidaying in Nigeria from the US.

I was young and naïve, his beauty and suaveness swept me off my feet and before I knew what was happening, I had fallen in love with him. He promised me heaven and earth before he went back to the states. Aunty Nike came back to the country before he left, she warned me about her brother when she suspected that I was having an affair with him.

My mother also did not approve of him. Her complaint was that Kanmi was too old and worldly for me and that he would only use and dump me. I was deaf to all the pieces of advice then. I was young and in love.It however dawned on me when I realised that I was pregnant after Kanmi travelled back to the US. I wrote to inform him, but he denied the paternity of my daughter.

He was my first man, he deflowered , impregnated, and denied me. I went through hell, if not for Aunty Nike’s support, I don’t know what would have happened to Funmilayo (my daughter) and I because I knew my mother wouldn’t have been able to support us.

All through these times, she never stopped asking her brother to take responsibility of me and my unborn baby and even when I had Funmilayo. I appreciate her for all her support. And thank God, I did not attempt to do anything to the pregnancy because due to the complications I had during delivery which was not due to the fact that I did not have enough attention or good medical care, I lost the ability to have other children.

After Funmilayo’s birth, Aunty Nike insisted that I should go back to school while my mother took care of my baby. Because I had to work, I studied on part-time basis and I graduated as an accountant. I had my National Youth service, but I ,however, did not practise because , Aunty Nike died in a motor accident.

It was a great loss for my family and I lost a benefactor, sister and friend. Her children were still small, so Uncle Tade, her husband ,took them abroad and he offered that I buy the supermarket off. I paid in instalments; that was how I stood up and became relevant.

Aunty Nike’s husband and two children did not forget me, neither I. They were the first to take Funmilayo and I overseas. But Kanmi never asked for my daughter and I.At a point, I was curious about him, I asked Uncle Tade, but he said he hadn’t heard from him since his sister died.

All these were yesteryear . Then, what does he want now? My daughter turned 19 recently.

She is in one of the private universities studying Law. I didn”t know how Kanmi knew about her or where to find her.

I got a distress call from my daughter’s best friend in school; I rushed to her school and I was confronted with what I never bargained for. My daughter was not in a good state; she had cried herself to a very bad state. The school’s counsellor advised that I took her home to sort things out.

I did; for over two weeks now all she had asked were questions, but she had refused to answer my questions. Please, I am running out of patience. My reaction could be in two extremes, either I become very hard on her and risk losing her or I break down.

The description of the man who visited her in school fitted Kanmi, no doubt it was him. What did he tell her and how did he find her? Please, somebody help me. Funmilayo is my life. I lost my mother few years back, maybe if she were alive, she would have known the best way to handle this situation.

Anthonia .

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This is the body of Daymeon aka Veronica a transexual male who was found dead two nights ago in a Hotel room, Kingston Jamaica. It is alleged that a third party (male) walked in on Daymeon, a fight ensued in which he was stabbed and his throat slashed. His body was taken to the Kingston Public Hospital.

Dudus gets his due
Jun 13th 2012, 20:07 by M.W.

NUMBER 23, which is accompanied by a picture of a black man on the poster for Jamaica’s Cash Pot betting game, was the contest’s winning pick on June 9th. Small gamblers in Tivoli Gardens, a poor district in Kingston, the capital, cleaned up on bets as small as fifty cents. But that number was not so lucky for Christopher “Dudus” Coke, Tivoli’s former “don”, or gang leader. The day before, he received a 23-year prison sentence in a New York court.

Mr Coke was Jamaica’s most prominent mobster. At his sentencing hearing, which began last month, Jermaine “Cowboy” Cohen, a former associate of Mr Coke’s, shed new light on his organisation’s operations. “Dudus” took over the Shower Posse gang from his father, Lester “Jim Brown” Coke, who burned to death in a jail cell almost 20 years ago. Under his leadership, the gang was mainly known as “Presidential Click”, and its best-known source of revenue was drug trafficking. But according to Mr Cohen, it also dabbled in visa fraud (using a high-school athletics team) and extortion (charging small traders in the nearby Coronation Market for “protection money”).

The gang also benefited from close political ties. Tivoli Gardens forms part of the Kingston Western parliamentary district. The seat was held for years by Edward Seaga, the long-time leader of the right-of-centre Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). He was succeeded by Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s prime minister until last October. That helped Mr Coke diversify into legitimate businesses: his construction company won numerous government contracts and gave out jobs to Tivoli’s residents.

Within Tivoli Gardens, the gang operated a virtual para-state. It ran a harsh vigilante justice system. According to Mr Cohen, petty thieves could be punished with a bullet in the hand or foot, and those judged guilty in a domestic quarrel risked a beating. A man accused of stealing from Mr Coke was allegedly tied down and killed with a chainsaw.

Facing intense pressure from the United States, the Jamaican government sent security forces to recapture Tivoli Gardens from the gang in May 2010. More than 70 people were killed—some of them in what witnesses allege were extra-judicial killings by the police and army. Amnesty International called last month for an independent commission of enquiry into the assault, and Jamaica’s public defender, a government watchdog, has received 1,000 complaints. The attack failed to snare Mr Coke. But with no safe hiding place, he was forced to turn himself in a month later, and was extradited to the United States. Last August he pled guilty to charges of drug trafficking and assault.

There is little question that Jamaica is safer without Mr Coke. Although the country’s murder rate remains one of the world’s highest, it fell sharply after the Tivoli gun battle, and remains more than a third below its previous level. And the government made a powerful show of authority by re-establishing control over the country’s most notorious gang-dominated “garrison”, or district, and proving that the country’s mobsters are not untouchable.

Nonetheless, the decapitation of Mr Coke’s organisation represents a small, if significant, victory in a very long battle. The island remains awash in guns: Mr Cohen testified that the mobs received regular shipments of AK-47s and M-16s from New York. They were distributed (under close supervision from gang lieutenants) to hundreds of young recruits or “shotters”, some of whom were only 14 years old. Among Mr Cohen’s most explosive (and unproven) allegations is that some of these gunmen were deployed in JLP election campaigns. Mr Coke’s younger brother, Leighton “Livity” Coke, was held for two years on gun charges, but was just freed last month because of shaky identification evidence. (He was detained again on June 12th for questioning about murders in west Kingston).

Moreover, the urban poverty and discontent that feed the gangs remain as entrenched as ever. And violence still runs deep in Jamaican popular culture. A leading musician, Vybz Kartel, currently faces a murder charge. Tivoli residents, who vowed to “die for Dudus” when the government invaded the district, still revere “Prezi”, as Mr Coke was also known. He ran “treats” or street parties, handed out school supplies and groceries and raised money for residents’ medical care. “I’m a good person, and I have done a lot of good deeds for persons in my community”, he said while pleading for leniency at his sentencing hearing, and wrote in one letter home, “To God be the glory for all that he was doing through me”. Until the Jamaican state can begin offering these services as effectively as the gangs do, any mobsters it manages to arrest or kill will be swiftly and effectively replaced.

Source :http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2012/06/organised-crime-jamaica

THE MOTHER of the man who died in police custody over the weekend made an emotional plea yesterday for the police to “tell her the truth” about his sudden death.

#Joann McKenzie said the nightmare started when neighbourhood boys told her on Thursday that her only son, 22-year-old Tyronne ‘TJ’ Saunders, had been arrested by police.

#“They told me they picked TJ up and took him to the police station. I would be the first to say I know my son is no angel. He is not perfect. He has been up and down with the law, but he was never convicted of a crime. So when I was told he was arrested I just went to the Grove Police Station to find out what he was arrested for. When I got there Thursday night, the officers told me they could not give out that information and I would have to go down to the Central Detective Unit because that is where he was being held,” she said.

#“I waited until the next day and went to CDU on Friday. The officers there told me they had TJ in custody in connection with a murder. I asked if I could see him, but I was told no because they said he was being interviewed. This was about 10 o’clock that night.”

#Ms McKenzie on being denied a second time decided to go home and return to CDU the next day. However, moments after getting home police officers arrived to tell her she had to return to CDU with them.

#“They said they were looking for me, but I had TJ’s two-year-old son with me and had to wait for my boyfriend to get there before I could leave. When I got there the first person I saw was (Coroner) Linda Virgill and I knew something was wrong. They took me upstairs into a room full of officers and they began to tell me why my son was arrested but they were telling me things I already knew. All I wanted to know was why I couldn’t see my son,” she said.

#“Then they told me they found TJ unconscious in a cell. Miss, they called me all the way there to tell me my son was dead. They knew all that time he was dead and didn’t say anything. They told me he was unconscious before they were able to question him, but when I was there earlier an officer told me I couldn’t see him because he was being questioned, something is not right here. They killed him, they beat my child to death in that cell. I know it.”

#Ms McKenzie said her son was a healthy boy with no medical problems, except the occasional asthma attack. She said some days she wished that the police would arrest TJ because he would be safer in custody than on the streets, but now she says “that’s obviously not the case.”

#She said: “Some boys came looking for TJ a few nights ago like they wanted to kill him, I prayed the police get him so he would be safe, but they killed him and now they want to sweep it under the rug. He may not have been perfect, but he came from me and I will not rest until I find out what happened to him. They wouldn’t even let me see his body or give me his property. If he did something wrong, charge him before the courts. Let them deal with it.”

#Ms McKenzie said she was told she can view her son’s body today. She also said she is seeking legal advice on what to do next.

#In a statement police say they have launched an investigation into the death of a man after finding him unresponsive in a cell at CDU on Friday.

#“Her Majesty’s Coroner Linda P Virgill visited CDU where she observed the body. The body was taken to the hospital and a meeting was held with the mother,” the statement read.

#It continued: “All contacts relative to this matter are to be relayed to Her Majesty’s Coroner Mrs Linda Virgil at the Coroner’s Office, Victoria Gardens, Nassau.”