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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>A guarantee of an early death</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, January 11, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Thirty-two-year-old domestic helper Betty Green eased her slightly overweight body off the small bed she shared with her two children, Tasha, seven and Brett, five. At 5:15 am it was still dark outside, but to keep body and soul in place this had been her regular daily routine for the last eight years.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Half an hour later as she prepared to leave the two-room shack for work, she gently shook the older child, "Tash, di porridge pon di stove. Nuh mek it get cold. An mek sure yu bathe Brett but put likkle hot water inna him basin. Mi gone yu hear baby." Before leaving she kissed both children and stepped out into the pleasant morning air to catch her bus to work.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Five years before that, she had arranged for papers to be doctored so that her 12-year-old son could become the child of a sister she had living in Brooklyn. She had had Jeff when she was 15, and when I met the boy when he was 10, he was bright, street-smart, a natural leader and illiterate. In shuffling him between a similarly illiterate grandmother in St Thomas, a father who seemed to have a live docking port in every parish and who never really liked his son, the schooling the boy received was never enough to counter the confusion in his head and make words come alive to him.<P class=StoryText align=justify>When Jeff reached 15, the sister in Brooklyn had had enough of him. After the break-up of her awful marriage to a man from Ghana, she found God, became "saved" and insisted that Jeff attend church with her. Young, impatient, bored and searching for something that had eluded him all his life, the boy spurned his aunt's unreasonable Christian rigidity, told her to go to hell and decided to hit the mean streets of Brooklyn in his effort to find a salvation that had immediate meaning to him.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I maintained telephone contact with him because I saw something in him which told me that great things were in store for him, providing the necessary guidance was there for him. It was also my belief that the foreign move was an error of judgement, but who was I to dictate to his mother, her sister and their mother? They were the ones steeped in poverty and as far as they were all concerned, Jamaica had nothing to offer the boy.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The sigh of relief they breathed when he had finally arrived in America was slowly turning into heart-rending stress. At 16 Jeff moved out of his aunt's home and was on his own. I didn't need any special powers to know that the boy was involved in the street trade in illicit drugs. Handsome and self-confident, he was wary of those who wanted to preach to him, so I would end most of our telephone conversations with, "If you can live with whatever it is you are doing and not be bothered in your thoughts at night, then go for it, just as long as you do not cause harm to others." He would laugh then say, "Mr Wignall, nuff respeck, nuff respeck."<P class=StoryText align=justify>A few months ago word reached me that he had been shot. Surface wound in a drug war. Attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful. Knowing him, he would be ashamed to speak to me. His aunt was losing her mind and she dug in deeper in the church as she realised that the boy was on a destructive path of no return.<P class=StoryText align=justify>One day she threatened to report him to the authorities. In respon
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Mark Wignall
Thursday, January 11, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=86 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Mark Wignall</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Thirty-two-year-old domestic helper Betty Green eased her slightly overweight body off the small bed she shared with her two children, Tasha, seven and Brett, five. At 5:15 am it was still dark outside, but to keep body and soul in place this had been her regular daily routine for the last eight years.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Half an hour later as she prepared to leave the two-room shack for work, she gently shook the older child, "Tash, di porridge pon di stove. Nuh mek it get cold. An mek sure yu bathe Brett but put likkle hot water inna him basin. Mi gone yu hear baby." Before leaving she kissed both children and stepped out into the pleasant morning air to catch her bus to work.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Five years before that, she had arranged for papers to be doctored so that her 12-year-old son could become the child of a sister she had living in Brooklyn. She had had Jeff when she was 15, and when I met the boy when he was 10, he was bright, street-smart, a natural leader and illiterate. In shuffling him between a similarly illiterate grandmother in St Thomas, a father who seemed to have a live docking port in every parish and who never really liked his son, the schooling the boy received was never enough to counter the confusion in his head and make words come alive to him.<P class=StoryText align=justify>When Jeff reached 15, the sister in Brooklyn had had enough of him. After the break-up of her awful marriage to a man from Ghana, she found God, became "saved" and insisted that Jeff attend church with her. Young, impatient, bored and searching for something that had eluded him all his life, the boy spurned his aunt's unreasonable Christian rigidity, told her to go to hell and decided to hit the mean streets of Brooklyn in his effort to find a salvation that had immediate meaning to him.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I maintained telephone contact with him because I saw something in him which told me that great things were in store for him, providing the necessary guidance was there for him. It was also my belief that the foreign move was an error of judgement, but who was I to dictate to his mother, her sister and their mother? They were the ones steeped in poverty and as far as they were all concerned, Jamaica had nothing to offer the boy.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The sigh of relief they breathed when he had finally arrived in America was slowly turning into heart-rending stress. At 16 Jeff moved out of his aunt's home and was on his own. I didn't need any special powers to know that the boy was involved in the street trade in illicit drugs. Handsome and self-confident, he was wary of those who wanted to preach to him, so I would end most of our telephone conversations with, "If you can live with whatever it is you are doing and not be bothered in your thoughts at night, then go for it, just as long as you do not cause harm to others." He would laugh then say, "Mr Wignall, nuff respeck, nuff respeck."<P class=StoryText align=justify>A few months ago word reached me that he had been shot. Surface wound in a drug war. Attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful. Knowing him, he would be ashamed to speak to me. His aunt was losing her mind and she dug in deeper in the church as she realised that the boy was on a destructive path of no return.<P class=StoryText align=justify>One day she threatened to report him to the authorities. In respon
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