Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer

Feea, Daughter of Zion. - photo by Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer

Feea, Daughter of Zion, was a nurse living free of care in London when the spirits - through the first of many dreams in the night - disturbed her consciousness and her way of life.

"They laughed when I told them that I would leave my job to do a work for God," she said, relating the message she gave to her colleagues the next day.

She was not offended for, after all, she was notoriously ungodly.

"I wore the tightest pants," recalls the woman who today dresses in turbans, long clothes and is a vegetarian dedicated to the traditional, African way of life.

Feea, in the last 33 years, has trod the path of an artist and change maker.

Born in 1941, this woman has been specially blessed with artistic, spiritual, linguistic and creative skills which she uses to change the lives of others.

In 1976, she made a powerful entry into the art world with her free-hand drawings, astounding pieces showcased at the Jamaica Library Service, the Mutual Life Gallery, the National Gallery of Jamaica, Apex Museum and MoorHouse College in Atlanta.

Although her works, including ceramics and drawings, have never gone up for sale, the listing of world figures and leaders with cherished pieces of her limited collection resemble a Who's Who listing.

According to Roxanne Silent of the National Gallery, Feea is a "consummate and complete" artist, and has been one of the artists featured in the National Gallery's major exhibition on Intuitive Art.

Feea works in ink and says that she draws 'not of her own free will'. With the work turned 'upside down', the pen flashes across the page and faces emerge.

The Daughter of Zion is also a well-known adviser and has written songs for international artistes.

Feea is a spiritualist as well.

Now, don't be confused, she warns.

The minute people see 'spiritual' they think 'read up'. But Feea is no reader woman or a practitioner of obeah.

Instead, she is fountain of motherly wisdom that may come at you as softly as a baby's lullaby, or with the rage of the prophet.

Mysterious ways

At age 32, Feea began the mysterious ways that were to change not only her life and that of her family but many others around her.

Outlook was introduced to this woman in the space she calls the peace room in a hill- side home in St. Andrew. The area occupies an entire ground floor lobby and is filled with green plants over green fibreglass flooring. Fish move silently in an aquarium in one corner.

Born in Change Hill, St. Mary, Feea is the child of a single-parent mom who took her one day to look for her grandmother, promising to return. She never did. But, she had done the young girl a favour, as life with the older woman - a farmer and midwife - in this country district was the best preparation for the one she would choose to live starting at age 32.

Her grandmother had, in her home, many other children, related and unrelated. This woman would see a child on the street and tell the parent to send the child along with his/her clothes.

"It is only now I realise that some of the children who grew up with us were not related. We grew up not knowing who was cousin or brother," Feea recalls.

She remembers that her grandmother's home was a home of true love. The midwife somehow managed to feed her largely adopted brood and many of the neighbours as well.

Daily, dinner would be taken to those in the district who needed it before those in her grandmother's household were allowed to sit down and eat.

"One big yam dug on the farm served the entire community," Feea recalls.

Her childhood was also blessed by a good teacher - CJ Coleman at Carron Hall School in St. Mary, who taught his students Shakespeare and "did every subject that there was including science and speech."

Thus prepared for the world by her grandmother's kindness and a teacher's unique approach to learning, Feea was sent to live with her father in the United Kingdom shortly after turning 17.

Living in London, she studied nursing and also met her husband and had four children.

Then, in 1973, Feea started to see and hear things. She was working, at the time, in the X-ray department of a London hospital.

She recalls that one night she went home and dreamt that her grandmother, who was by then dead, came to her and gave her a song.

She went to work the next day and simply announced that she would be doing some work for God and so would not be returning to the job.

Ungodly

Her co-workers laughed, for the Feea they knew was 'ungodly' and wore the tightest trousers. Even Feea herself thought it was a joke, but at the same time began to tell people about themselves and what they had done without being told from any human source.

Feea resisted her calling for a while, until her human will was broken by a strange illness which 'crippled' and took away her speech until she wrote on a piece of paper, "I (former name) promise the Almighty to do what he wants me to do. I will not let money stand in my way." She then fell asleep and dreamt that she was the mother of Moses.

She woke up feeling better and said to her husband, "God wants me to do something. I am for the awakening of mankind."

Today, her speech is often punctuated by the melodic trill of African languages which, she says, are the tongues of the ancients which she learnt from the same spirits which have guided her actions.

The language and knowledge of the ages came to Feea without instruction.

After she received her new name, Feea, Daughter of Zion, began showing black youth in Brixton, Tulse Hill and elsewhere the ways of love and bringing to them knowledge of their true identity as blacks. She also related to them what it was like to grow up in Jamaica, taught them how to wrap the head, how to do cornrows in their hair and to wear clothes from Africa.

After one year, she was instructed to go back to the land of her birth, and she left, taking her four children back to St. Mary. Her husband would later follow.

Feea set up house in Cambridge Hill, St. Thomas, "with the goats on 25 acres of rented land" which she eventually bought.

It was here that children from nearby communities and a children's home came and were put into a club named Ayante which, she says, means Incredible Youth Action.

Space for the children

After this was up and running, she moved to Coopers Hill where the youth club created in this area was called the Love Club. In every house that Feea lived, there was always space for the children who were fed, taught poems and taught to prepare and cook food in traditional ways.

Feea then started travelling abroad to the Caribbean islands, Guyana and Africa, with her message of true identity and the need to follow the old ways of communal life.

Her music made her mission easier as her written poems and songs opened the doors to work with Third World, the reggae band with which she travelled to many countries.

She was the mother in the band, cooking, making costumes and filling every supportive role that she could. She also recorded some of her music.

Feea continues to write warm, compelling music which feature messages to the black race which she proudly states is the group of people "I belong to".

"My mission is to awaken people," she states. "Some who are the greatest are ignored. It is possible to succeed as a poor child."

For Feea, success begins with knowing one's true identity. Self-worth, she says, is tied up in "knowing who you are." Among her many poems are several written about Marcus Garvey, another champion of black self-knowledge.

Feea states, "We should be taught black history every day because we are black people. There should be a centre for Garvey in every parish. We need African centres. One of my dreams is of an African village with people working together, learning to plant food and to use herbs and spices, not being dependent on doctors, and pharmaceuticals and learning to speak the language of the ancestors."

Showing in every way that she believes it, she states, "We cannot see greatness in ourselves until we know who we are."