AS A young man, Jamaica is one of the most depressing places to live.
I woke up the other morning to the realisation that a lot of the guys who I've grown up with are either dead, on drugs or have migrated. I don't have many friends or associates left from my groovy trip through adolescence, and that sad fact catches up with me when I least expect it.
People just seem to be 'dropping out' from my life.
To be a young, black man in Jamaica is to know fear. It is my constant companion. It is the big carnivore lying in wait for me when I come home late at night, or if I see another youth my age with a bulge at his side. Strangely, it is the same fear I feel when I see a group of policemen pull me over for a routine spot check, or if heavily-armed cops approach me at night in my community, demanding a 'search'.
I have reason to be afraid. Very, very afraid.
There is anger in Jamaica.
A lot of it.
It pummels your brain through the language and music. It jumps out unexpectedly at you from the face of a beautiful woman in a Mark II shouting curse words at you because you didn't let her into the line of traffic. It smolders in the eyes of guys my age as they hang out on the corner blowing marijuana smoke at the sky. And sometimes, you no matter how rational you think yourself to be feel this irrational anger pounding at your temples whispering malevolent thoughts.
As a young man you know you are a target. Older people distrust you; young men your age resent and dislike you, the friction is almost palpable. And it doesn't take much to spark
confrontation.
Yessirree. There is a lot of anger floating around in the society, but if you plumb the depths of this emotion, you'll find a gnawing emptiness...a crushing sadness beneath it all that squeezes my heart.
The hustle. The fear. The anger. The pain. Poverty. Desperation. Emptiness. The spent shell casings in the zinc and dirt lanes. The cruel lies we tell ourselves that the end always justifies the means. The corrosive culture of partisan politics. The persistent whiff of scandal.
I just call it the absence of hope. People have made up their minds nothing is going to change. I have interviewed too many women who have lost their sons and husbands to violence. I have attended too many funerals. And I have seen so many dead bodies in the killing fields of the ghetto that it is almost obscene.
The guys almost always look the same. Bare-chested. Underpants-clad. Thin young men, barely old enough to start shaving, broken by bullets and paths wrongly chosen. One youth. A thousand different faces. It's a sad circus, isn't it? In this circus, the rides are four years long, and you keep trying to convince yourself that 'hey, things are going fine', even after you have upchucked your guts in your lap a half-dozen times. We need to jump off this carousel. But the ministers still strut around like overweight penguins in parliament, while the people grow increasingly poor and predatory.
But I have no doubt there will be a final reckoning for us all. And it will be dark.
And unpleasant.
- Claude Mills
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
