He dared to want to be somebody - Kavorn Shue

[MdmeX]

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...ebody_11669435

[MdmeX]

Don1 - this guy who Babylon murdered was a JC man

Sad....

[Sir X]

He dared to want to be somebody

Heart to Heart
Betty Ann Blaine

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Dear Reader,

The memories of my Sunday morning visit years ago to the family of six-year-old Shaneika Anderson who had been brutally raped and murdered came flooding back to me as I sat on the domino stool outside the modest, wooden house that was the place of abode for 25 year-old Kavorn Shue who was killed by the police last week in the Long Mountain community of Mountain View, Kingston.



SHUE ... wanted to be different

1/1

Both visits were on a Sunday, and both involved families who live in poor, inner-city communities. The picture of poverty was almost the same and the environment virtually identical - large numbers of children and youth; young men unemployed and unemployable - eyes without sparkle and voices without hope.
Kavorn's father, Errington Shue, a carpenter, sat close to me on the concrete steps leading into the house, with his older son, Shane, standing behind his father as long as I was there, speaking only when spoken to, and wearing a listless, dazed look on his face.
"Mi a di father and mother fi Kavorn and him two brothers all dem life," the elder Shue explained. "Mi cyaan believe mi son dead."
I would soon find out that Kavorn's mother migrated to the United States when the infant was less than a year old. Kavorn's father, with the help of his grandmother and grandfather, raised the three boys and struggled to send them to school. I would hear stories of Kavorn's grandfather walking every night the distance from Jarrett Lane to his workplace uptown, a job he held for over 20 years.
"Kavorn was always a bright child," his father continued. "I remember when him getting ready to tek GSAT, and when a say to him, 'Kavorn, you nah study?', him would say, 'No worry, daddy, mi pass it long time.' After the exam, his teacher sent a message to me to say, 'Tell your father that you passed for your first choice, Jamaica College - that was on the day him sit the exam - long before any result come out."
Kavorn did in fact pass for Jamaica College from which he graduated in 2003. After leaving JC he kept on trying and trying to improve himself, "making use of every opportunity that was available," a neighbourhood friend shared with me. Kavorn's life coach and organiser for the PSOJ's Yute Programme recalled the type of young man, he was. "Kavorn kept himself occupied and not one person had anything bad to say about him. He didn't smoke, and before you saw him, you would see his teeth. He was always smiling."
Kavorn was a very ambitious young man from all reports. His father shared with me that Kavorn would always say, "Daddy, I going to buy a house for you. Don't worry, things going get better soon."
Kavorn was a young man whom everybody respected - young, old, and especially his peers. He was the peacemaker for the community. Whenever there was a dispute to be settled it was Kavorn who would be called upon to settle it, those present recalled.
"It was that part of him that made him join the police youth club. He wanted to be a role model for the rest of the youth and he wanted to do the right thing.
"Kavorn dared to be different. It is not easy trying to be different from your environment - not even the animals can do that. Kavorn did not want his environment to define him, and it came at a great price, especially after he joined the police youth club. The risk of being called 'informer', and the 'informer fi dead' culture is not easy to deal with. But even so Kavorn gained the respect of everybody, including the police in the area", a family friend visiting from Atlanta said as I sat listening.
The gentleman from Atlanta asked, "How you fi kill somebody when dem sleeping in dem bed? You tell di youth dem fi come off the street, so dem go to bed - and you still kill them." The hurt and concern was palpable.
Before I left, I was shown the bed in which Kavorn was the morning of his death. They told me that he was killed sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. His father had already gone to work, having left at 4.30 am. A round, blood-stained area marked the mattress. "That is how him sleep, with his head at the foot of the bed. Him got shot in his sleep," Mr Shue said.
The Mountain View community is one of those in which I have worked over the years. One of the organisations I founded, Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU), now 21 years old and ably headed by Executive Director Georgia Scott, who has been working in the community since 2003 under the Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP).
The work is never easy, but we have seen very positive results, and many young lives have been transformed. Kavorn Shue was not a part of our programme, but his dreams and aspirations mirror those of so many of the young men in the community. They hunger and thirst for a different kind of life - for wanting to be loved and respected - for simply wanting a job. The family friend from Atlanta put it best. "Kavorn Shue", he said, "dared to want to be somebody".
With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com



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