Hartley Neita, Contributor
RECENTLY, Las May's cartoon in this newspaper had a frightened group - a man, woman and boy - reading headlines on a news stand which said: "Wire-tap scandal", "Crime!" "Police drug connection" and "Economic gloom".
The man was saying: "Jeez, a bare bad news", the woman had her hands on her head, "There's no hope", she was crying, and the little boy said, "No future fi me."
Beside these three was a young man with a newspaper with the headline, "Veronica Campbell wins double gold medal at World Junior Champs". On his face was a quizzical look as if wondering why the three could not see the glory and the hope which still lives in Jamaica.
It is true that in recent months, in particular, there has not been much to jump for joy. Our West Indies cricket team was humbled in England. According to the soothsayers of doom, Jamaica is tottering at the edge of an economic precipice, a fear they have shouted loud for the past 10 years or more. Insurance companies, which were our pride and joy for years, have collapsed. Jamaica is not producing or exporting enough. Criminals kill for no obvious rhyme or reason. And on and on and on.
Every day, now, there are demonstrations in far rural areas of Jamaica and somehow or the other the angry men and women are seen the same night on television. Which leads to the wonder if there is an unseen orchestra leader. Good deeds, however, take place continuously, but they are not being told. And they are many.
For about two years, for example, I have visited a fairly large number of projects being carried out by non-Govern-mental voluntary organisations in the lanes and behind the zinc fences of downtown Kingston. We glamourise it with the nice name of "inner-city".
These organisations include churches, companies, St. Andrew citizens of goodwill, service clubs, professionals and others. The projects include literacy teaching, drama, sports, skills training, health clinics and group production enterprises.
I have met doctors and dentists who devote one afternoon and late into the night treating patients and paying for the prescriptions they prescribe. I have met two university graduates who grew up in the inner city and who have decided they will spend the first two or three years of their working lives doing voluntary work in their communities.
I have met accountants sitting beside children of primary and secondary schools in the late afternoons, helping them in their homework. I have met nurses who go to the voluntary health clinics after working all day, to talk to mothers about child care and helping the doctors who are there too, treating the sick and the old.
There are families from uptown who foster children in these depressed communities. Some do so through impersonal financial contributions, but there are others who link themselves personally with these children. They go along with their mothers to meetings of their Parent-Teachers Associations. They take these foster children to spend the weekends with their own children at their homes on weekends. One also fund their foster child's birthday party at his own home downtown.
They do not moan and groan and complain and abuse. Their agenda is to build, not destroy.
Many of these volunteers could spend their after-work hours dining and playing bridge with friends, watching movies on television, and enjoying the rewards of their success in their lives. They do that, too, but in their involvement in the social life of the inner-city communities to which they have become committed, they are helping in their little ways to lift up Jamaica.
