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Contradictions in paradise
MARK WIGNALL
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A minor (under 18 years old) can walk into any bar or nightclub in Jamaica, order a drink of overproof white rum, have it served to him with no questions asked, swallow it, pay his $60 and walk out feeling much "sweeter" than when he first entered.
MARK WIGNALL
A woman can talk all she wants on her cellphone while driving, do stupid things like crawl slowly out on a main road while other cars are about to crash into her, but in her blissful ignorance, she is unaware of the dangers she poses and so she continues another day with life in "Jay-ay".
A police squad car pulls up to a bar on the edge of a ghetto, the two "squaddies" in full uniform leave the car, order rum, play around with the available girls, then 15 minutes later they leave. Chances are, they had stopped at another bar before, and the day is still young.
A Cherry Gardens dweller gets a technician to "fix" his JPS meter. No problem. A ghetto dweller hoists a wire or two over JPS wires and steals electric power. No problem.
Young men spend their day idle on the various "corners", having nothing better to do than planning sexual assignations, smoking ganja and "running boats". They are unemployed, hopeless and very open to any money-making proposals which their criminal elders will place before them.
Beautiful young women who missed the education boat advertise themselves as "massage therapists". "Thank God for Digicel," said one to me last week. According to her, without cellphones, she would have had little choice but to attach herself to one of the many "massage parlours" which sprang up over the last 10 years. Now she can claim independence while operating in more mobile ways than one.
We are unaware that building a nation calls for more than taking a weekly trip to 'Passa Passa'.
Over many years of living close to the most powerful economy in the world, much of our lifestyle has been modelled after what we have seen of the Americans on TV, plus, every Jamaican family has a relative living in the USA. With under US$5,000 per capita income, we cannot begin to appreciate how far down the economic ladder we are when compared to even the median income of the US worker (before the "global") of just under US$50,000 per year.
With white-rum pockets and champagne appetites, woe to any government who would dare dictate that we can no longer afford to stock our supermarkets with American farm produce while our farmers scratch out a living on increasingly poor soils and cheap prices paid them by urban wholesalers.
Over the years successive administrations have continued to fuel this mirage of consumption by placing us in hock, year after year. This is what our people demand and yet we cannot afford the lifestyle. We want the big life because we are aware that others are living it. To hell with earning our way through. The government will always solve it.
We adopt all of the cross-cultural fashion and while we do so, we believe in nothing. We come together only when our modern-day warriors - our athletes in football and track - triumph. Daily we continue in this socio-economic "ketchy shubby" while we are unaware that building a nation calls for more than taking a weekly trip to "Passa Passa".
The irony is, the very thing which destroys us makes us attractive to outsiders. Which New York tourist visiting us does not like the idea of walking in sandals along a Negril street, a Red Stripe in his hand and beautiful drunkenness in his system? "You guys have a paradise here," one very attractive female visitor said to me last year. "I could fall in love and marry here and never go back," she said.
Well, she did go back because reality has a way of intruding on those imaginings, even when one is in paradise.
I know a Jamaican living in Brooklyn, a 35-year-old woman who operates a hair and nail salon there. When we spoke last week she said, "Even though they have begun to rehire some of those who had lost jobs, I can honestly say that the global downturn did not in any way affect me. When I was in Jamaica, I worked in my mother's shop and it was basically hand-to-mouth. Now, I am among the best in my field and people seek me out."
She has two sisters working for rich, old white folks in Long Island. "One of my older sisters worked for a man for 18 years. When she began working for the man, he wife had just died and he was one miserable old coot. It took her a while to get to him but they eventually settled into a routine. His grandchildren were always accusing her of trying to kill him. Can you believe that, even though the man was always saying he wanted to go 'home' to his wife."
Last year the man died and left her the house and US$1 million. "The surprise was, the grandchildren told her after he died, that the man had been diagnosed with terminal cancer 10 years ago.
They told her that they would not be mounting any legal challenges because she was the reason he lived so long."
The sad part is that that very woman has a nephew who migrated to the US seven years ago. He was 13 then. Now he is heavily involved in drugs, is always being harassed by the police, and she is certain it will be only a matter of time before he picks up either a bullet from his drug cronies or a long sentence in prison.
We have nothing to believe in this paradise called Jamaica. We have no snowy winters when the ground is too hard to dig. In our history, we have never been forced to fight for anything. It was white clergymen who brought about a "conscience call" on the British to free our forefathers. World War II had so weakened Britain that it was forced to grant us independence.
A nation whose people have never fought for anything or which has never treasured the history of those who gave up their lives in "rebellions" or skirmishes is a nation in limbo searching for itself.
The sadder part is that we think we need nothing more than a bellyful and someone to copulate with. The latest fashion is our only concern.
Take the matter of the new style for tying neckties for school children. This appears to be too simplistic to mention, but please take a look at the schools who do not allow the children to change from the old style. You will see that those schools (very few) are the ones who maintain strict disciplinary codes and high academic achievement.
Once a dress fashion comes about and it is held dear and adopted by innocent school children, are they not also prone to other "external" influences?
We need to believe in something deeper than only what we can touch, wear, eat and have sex with.
observemark@gmail.com
MARK WIGNALL
Thursday, May 14, 2009
A minor (under 18 years old) can walk into any bar or nightclub in Jamaica, order a drink of overproof white rum, have it served to him with no questions asked, swallow it, pay his $60 and walk out feeling much "sweeter" than when he first entered.
MARK WIGNALL A woman can talk all she wants on her cellphone while driving, do stupid things like crawl slowly out on a main road while other cars are about to crash into her, but in her blissful ignorance, she is unaware of the dangers she poses and so she continues another day with life in "Jay-ay".
A police squad car pulls up to a bar on the edge of a ghetto, the two "squaddies" in full uniform leave the car, order rum, play around with the available girls, then 15 minutes later they leave. Chances are, they had stopped at another bar before, and the day is still young.
A Cherry Gardens dweller gets a technician to "fix" his JPS meter. No problem. A ghetto dweller hoists a wire or two over JPS wires and steals electric power. No problem.
Young men spend their day idle on the various "corners", having nothing better to do than planning sexual assignations, smoking ganja and "running boats". They are unemployed, hopeless and very open to any money-making proposals which their criminal elders will place before them.
Beautiful young women who missed the education boat advertise themselves as "massage therapists". "Thank God for Digicel," said one to me last week. According to her, without cellphones, she would have had little choice but to attach herself to one of the many "massage parlours" which sprang up over the last 10 years. Now she can claim independence while operating in more mobile ways than one.
We are unaware that building a nation calls for more than taking a weekly trip to 'Passa Passa'. Over many years of living close to the most powerful economy in the world, much of our lifestyle has been modelled after what we have seen of the Americans on TV, plus, every Jamaican family has a relative living in the USA. With under US$5,000 per capita income, we cannot begin to appreciate how far down the economic ladder we are when compared to even the median income of the US worker (before the "global") of just under US$50,000 per year.
With white-rum pockets and champagne appetites, woe to any government who would dare dictate that we can no longer afford to stock our supermarkets with American farm produce while our farmers scratch out a living on increasingly poor soils and cheap prices paid them by urban wholesalers.
Over the years successive administrations have continued to fuel this mirage of consumption by placing us in hock, year after year. This is what our people demand and yet we cannot afford the lifestyle. We want the big life because we are aware that others are living it. To hell with earning our way through. The government will always solve it.
We adopt all of the cross-cultural fashion and while we do so, we believe in nothing. We come together only when our modern-day warriors - our athletes in football and track - triumph. Daily we continue in this socio-economic "ketchy shubby" while we are unaware that building a nation calls for more than taking a weekly trip to "Passa Passa".
The irony is, the very thing which destroys us makes us attractive to outsiders. Which New York tourist visiting us does not like the idea of walking in sandals along a Negril street, a Red Stripe in his hand and beautiful drunkenness in his system? "You guys have a paradise here," one very attractive female visitor said to me last year. "I could fall in love and marry here and never go back," she said.
Well, she did go back because reality has a way of intruding on those imaginings, even when one is in paradise.
I know a Jamaican living in Brooklyn, a 35-year-old woman who operates a hair and nail salon there. When we spoke last week she said, "Even though they have begun to rehire some of those who had lost jobs, I can honestly say that the global downturn did not in any way affect me. When I was in Jamaica, I worked in my mother's shop and it was basically hand-to-mouth. Now, I am among the best in my field and people seek me out."
She has two sisters working for rich, old white folks in Long Island. "One of my older sisters worked for a man for 18 years. When she began working for the man, he wife had just died and he was one miserable old coot. It took her a while to get to him but they eventually settled into a routine. His grandchildren were always accusing her of trying to kill him. Can you believe that, even though the man was always saying he wanted to go 'home' to his wife."
Last year the man died and left her the house and US$1 million. "The surprise was, the grandchildren told her after he died, that the man had been diagnosed with terminal cancer 10 years ago.
They told her that they would not be mounting any legal challenges because she was the reason he lived so long."
The sad part is that that very woman has a nephew who migrated to the US seven years ago. He was 13 then. Now he is heavily involved in drugs, is always being harassed by the police, and she is certain it will be only a matter of time before he picks up either a bullet from his drug cronies or a long sentence in prison.
We have nothing to believe in this paradise called Jamaica. We have no snowy winters when the ground is too hard to dig. In our history, we have never been forced to fight for anything. It was white clergymen who brought about a "conscience call" on the British to free our forefathers. World War II had so weakened Britain that it was forced to grant us independence.
A nation whose people have never fought for anything or which has never treasured the history of those who gave up their lives in "rebellions" or skirmishes is a nation in limbo searching for itself.
The sadder part is that we think we need nothing more than a bellyful and someone to copulate with. The latest fashion is our only concern.
Take the matter of the new style for tying neckties for school children. This appears to be too simplistic to mention, but please take a look at the schools who do not allow the children to change from the old style. You will see that those schools (very few) are the ones who maintain strict disciplinary codes and high academic achievement.
Once a dress fashion comes about and it is held dear and adopted by innocent school children, are they not also prone to other "external" influences?
We need to believe in something deeper than only what we can touch, wear, eat and have sex with.
observemark@gmail.com
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