Tweet
By Barbara Gloudon
Story Created: Aug 29, 2010 at 7:55 PM ECT
Story Updated: Aug 29, 2010 at 7:59 PM ECT
When it comes to education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness and political environment, which Caribbean country would you expect to be declared the best? Barbados, which boasts of being already on the way to fulfilling the designation of a First World nation? St Lucia with its special, eclectic sophistication? Trinidad and Tobago with its oil riches?
Newsweek magazine recently conducted a survey of 100 countries around the world—Caribbean included, seeking response to the question “If you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live on a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous and upwardly mobile life?”
We are told that Newsweek was assisted by experts including Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz. Well, the results are in. Of the 100 countries surveyed, Jamaica ranks 47th, the highest in the Caribbean. Good news, right? You’d be surprised how many of us respond with our accustomed cynicism, “Yeah, right.” So if the rest of the world sees us in such a positive light, why don’t we see it? It is the same kind of reaction we had to that other survey which proclaimed us to be among the happiest people on earth. “Yeah, right. Big joke.” But you know what they say: What is joke to you is death to me.
Not having access to the details of the Newsweek survey, I am not aware who were the respondents. Did they spend time here and if so, how long? Who did they speak to? Where did they visit? An evening in Norbrook, St Andrew, is guaranteed to produce a different “best country” outcome from an outing into Norwood, St James. What did they say about our politics and politicians? What were their views on all the other topics?
We’ve grown accustomed to external analysis of who we are as Jamaican/Caribbean people, with results often heavily influenced by tourism stereotypes—the happy smiling faces, the poor living in tin-roofed shacks and all that. One would think poverty and smiles didn’t exist in the Big World. I hope we’ve moved past that and that the justification for the Best Country findings go beyond the same-old, same-old “happy natives” stuff.
As to where we ended up in the placements, 47 out of 100 is not at the top of the class, but at least we are not at the bottom. Our ranking over our Caribbean neighbours is particularly interesting to me. All too often Jamaica is seen only as the violent neighbour, the one which is always in some kind of “commess”, as they say — or “bangarang” as we know it.
The reports of our all-too-frequent descent into the madness of violence tends to brand us as the crazy cousins. Reports of our economic difficulties, which seem to have been going on far too long, have provided another reason for some to sneer... but not as much as before. We’re not the only ones in that position these days, when hard times know no borderline, but we still carry the label of “flawed goods”. Now that somebody outside of the region says Jamaica is not the worst, this is definitely one of our better days.
Of course, there are a significant number of us here who are always willing to believe that we don’t amount to much. Held hostage as we are by the curse of daily violence, the ingrained acceptance of corruption in high and low places, among other ills, we easily accept the worst definition of ourselves.
We seem willing to accept the label that our children are uneducated; stupid, even. We agree that our public systems are “pop dung”. We accept every label of failure. So how could anyone want to live here? How could anyone rank us among the best countries in the world? Somebody must be crazy! Well, the Newsweek survey says we are not those things, so why not run with it?
One Media Source is convinced that “the survey will be useful to tourism which has taken a beating after the Dudus extradition and the State of Emergency”. If that is the only reason, however, why we would regard the survey of being of any value, we need to check ourselves again. We have to get past the belief that if travel agents think well of us, then we must be all right. What we really need is a dose of hometown affirmation to strengthen our self-esteem. That includes confidence from the diaspora family, as well, whose conversation about Home leans heavily on how wicked we’ve become. Give us a break sometimes. There’s more to us than the daily suss. Bad fi bad, not everything here has been or is “rack and ruin”.
We get a lot of criticism, for instance, about the education of our children, but who knows or cares about the outstanding performance of the most recent batch who sat the Caribbean Certificate of Education, or the younger ones who shone in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT)? Of course, we have to be concerned about the ones who didn’t do well, but encouragement can go a far way, with the example of those who excelled inspiring the next lot and getting them ready to keep on moving up... Run with us, nuh!
—Barbara Gloudon writes for the Jamaica Observer gloudonb@yahoo.com