RASTA GRACIE AND JAMAICA’S HEALERS
Rasta Gracie dreams of owning her own store to help her support her daughters. The film offers an insight into the everyday life of a feisty Rasta woman and her friends, the healers.
Gracie and her Rasta friends, Quaco and Robert, live in eastern Jamaica, at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Gracie is a larger-than-life Rasta woman who loves to rap. She lives in a village with just 400 inhabitants with her ten-year-old daughter Anna. Her elder daughter lives with her mother-in-law in Kingston. Gracie doesn't have enough money to support both children. She's a street trader. Every week, she travels in an overcrowded truck to the market in Kingston, laden with bananas and coconuts and whatever else is in season. She buys her goods on credit from local farmers. The profit she makes pays for the bare essentials. But Gracie follows her grandmother's motto: "Help yourself and help will come to you". Gracie's friends Quaco and Robert also call themselves "grandma's sons". As kids, they used to scour the "rainforest pharmacy" for medicinal plants with their grandmothers. Rasta Quaco is one of the "top two" healers, says Robert. When he's not travelling with Quaco, Robert drives a taxi and also helps Gracie, who is looking for cheap building materials. Gracie's big dream is to build a small store next to her house. She hopes it will earn her enough money to bring home her older daughter Selassia.