“Daddy, me a fi yu?”. Those were the heartbreaking words of a 15-year-old boy who is still trying to process his new reality, having just found out that the man who he had known all his life as his father wasn’t his biological dad.
Popular Jamaican radio disc jockey, Dexter ‘DJ Linkage’ Blake, shared the excruciating details of the soul-crushing conversation with his son. “The mother of my daughter discussed it with her, but my son’s mother hadn’t told him. Then his aunt informed him, that’s why he called me to ask, ‘daddy me ah fi yu’. When he called me, I finally told him and both of us bawled on the phone,” he explained.
Five years ago, DJ Linkage discovered the duplicity of his two baby mothers when DNA tests proved that his son and his daughter weren’t his biological progeny. The disc jockey had done mandatory DNA tests which were required by the US Embassy as part of its immigration visa process.
Despite the terrible news, he continued to support both children emotionally and financially, Blake said he told his son that he had allowed his mother the role of informing him of the truth and that would have allowed him to bond with his real father.
“The mother never told him anything,” Blake lamented. “My son was crushed, he said, ‘you are my real father, mi no waan no know nobody else’. He said that ‘yu know the truth five years ago and you could have gone, but you’re still here…ah yu a mi daddy’. When him say that, mi just start bawl again, five years ago mi find out, and the trauma still continues to this day,” he added.
Blake has been trying to handle the trauma of the discovery so much so that he has recorded a song called “Jacket Love,” which he released under the nom de guerre, Dexta Linkage, on his own Linkage Production label on Friday.
On the song, Linkage relates the betrayal but still preaches love, as he croons on the AI-assisted track: ‘mi did think say mi a de father…mi world mash up, mi mind get tight/two jacket, mi heart/ nah sleep a night/mi fold the tears pon mi chest/but mi still say love, mi caan second guess/jacket love…”.
“I have been getting a lot of support from radio stations all over the world. I feel good at the comments cause mi still ah try process the reality of everything, but mi nah give up on my kids dem, Jacket Love is real,” DJ Linkage aka Dextra Linkage said.
A ‘jacket’ is a colloquial Jamaican term which defines a child which is given to a man who is not its biological father. It is reportedly a wide-scale occurrence in Jamaica, with women knowingly assigning the paternity of their children to the wrong man, often for financial gain or advantage.
The disc jockey owns and operates a station called Linkage Radio in New York, USA. He migrated to that country to live several years ago and had been filing for his kids under the immigration process.
“I am the father of six kids, two of them are not biologically mine, but that doesn’t matter, none of those two want any other father but me. My daughter calls me 15 times a day, on my birthday, she calls me at midnight before everybody else. Me and mi son talk about girls and everything. Ah wickedness these women do to real men out there, these DNA tests left me with a ugly truth mi still ah try deal with,” he said.
DNA tests are required by the US Embassy in Kingston as a vital part of its immigrant visa process. The number of ‘jackets’ that were indicated in a diplomatic cable captioned ‘Fraud summary’ and covering the period March 2009 to August 2009 was noticeable.
A section of the cable in October 2009, read: “Approximately 10 per cent of all cases where DNA is done result in no biological relationship. This percentage does not include those applicants that choose to abandon their case rather than undergo DNA testing.”