In 2000 I got homesick for the Caribbean. At that time most regional sites focused on tourism, news and music. My nostalgic desires demanded more, so in 2000 I decided to create Simiya, a site about the forgotten vibrance of its art. Search engines are much better now, so the site has become my personal photography portfolio.
Some of you have asked about the origin of this site’s title. “Simiya” is part of the Jamaican vocabulary meaning “Here I am”. It is actually a truncation of the phrase “See me here”. I thought this would be a fitting title for its original purpose.
Simiya is a universal word also meaning “seed” in Papiamentu, the language of the Dutch Caribbean. I also recently discovered that Simiya is an East African surname and surprisingly the name of a religious movement in Yemen.