“Ah so it guh”

On accepting one’s fate

I think it was in a film with Robert Di Niro that he uttered the immortal words: “It is what it is.” I am not sure if he or the scriptwriter coined the phrase, or perhaps someone else, but it has become quite popular. Someone whom I miss dearly in Jamaica repeated it to herself in the context of our departure for the UK, before we left. It was going to happen, regardless.

The Jamaican patois equivalent is “Ah so it guh.” It is spoken with an air of resignation, perhaps with a shrug of the shoulder. Despite one’s hopes and wishes perhaps, it is an inevitability. Oddly enough, my husband was wearing a T shirt with that exact same message on the evening when I smashed my knee on the sidewalk. Ugh!

And my kneecap “is what it is.”

The phrase also reminds me of a certain dancehall deejay, who is currently serving a life sentence (he could get out after 25 years) for a murder in 2009. Tall and gaunt, Ninjaman was very popular in the 1990s, when dancehall was cultivating a kind of worship of the gun. Ninjaman was one of the foremost proponents of “gun lyrics” - which horrified much of Jamaican society at the time. But his lyrics were sharp, delivered in a stuttering style. In interviews he was unapologetic, even a little cynical, with a twist of that dark Jamaican humor that I often find disturbing.

After eight years of delays, Ninjaman was finally convicted in 2017. He is now sixty years old.

So, what were Ninjaman’a words as he was taken away to prison? Reportedly, he said:

“Ah so it guh.”