ADRA Trustee Recalls Meeting The Queen Twice
In 2002, Her Majesty the Queen visited Jamaica as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations. After she had visited downtown Kingston to visit a very troubled area of the capital, Her Majesty paid a visit to the British High Commission, where I was working as the Development Attaché. She was introduced to the various teams but when I mentioned that the project she had just visited was one funded by the British government, Her Majesty smiled broadly and spoke for some time of her delight at how the project was progressing, of the people she had met and of the efforts to create harmony in an area known as 'no man's land'. She had such a broad smile as she recalled her visit.
In July 2017, my wife and I had the chance to attend a garden party at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. As we waited by the area that one of the Royal family would be walking, the Lord Lieutenant of Berwick came to my wife and I and asked us for background on who we are. We spoke of my Polynesian wife's connection to Queen Victoria through her ancestor, who had handed over the official documents ceding the Pacific Island Rotuma to Britain and who had adopted the family name of Albert in honour of that occasion. We were asked to stand inside the lines of visitors and to meet Her Majesty. Once we had relayed this ancestral connection about which she seemed very intrigued, Her Majesty asked what I did. I said that I worked for the Department for International Development on the programme for Yemen. She commented: "They do seem to be having a lot of trouble there." We briefly spoke of the key challenges before she moved on.
