Martin Henry "MI SOON come" is deeply embedded in the Jamaican way of life, and it is not 'no problem'. It is a huge problem. The way we handle time accounts a great deal for why we are not better off.
Benjamin Franklin is said to have said, "Time is the stuff of life; do not squander it." We kill time in a major way. From Parliament to church, from work to class, hardly anything starts on time. And "ah nuh nutten".
As Doc. D wrestles with the macro-economic issues in our poor, no-growth economy, I am increasingly fascinated with the soft issues which determine the social and economic well-being of society. Certainly the relationship to time and the management of time is one of these cultural issues at foundation level. There are many others.
Time is a basic ingredient of productivity. Productivity is simply rate of output the number of units of goods and services produced in a unit of time. While it measures other things as well, productivity is a measure of the efficient use of time. And we haven't been doing too well in the productivity department. If time wasted from "mi soon come" could be wrung out of the system, we would be surprised at the gains made.
Linked to the "mi soon come" cultural malaise are two other maladies at opposite ends: waste motion from self-important but pointless busyness, and siddung.
As soon as one steps into a high-performance developed society, the difference is clear. Time matters. Things run on schedule. Deadlines are kept. Drift and kotch and chat are at a minimum. The surprising thing is that Jamaicans readily fall into the rhythm and routine of these societies and do quite well generally. But not a yard. Why?
To keep them waiting is a mark of authority, a display of the power to hold up things. Leadership sets little example of punctuality and productive use of this scarce commodity and are often the worst offenders because there is nobody to drive them to task. From my experience, Governor-General Sir Howard Cooke and Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, as the representative heads of State and Government respectively, tend to be punctual leaders who are generally on the ball. They must face endless frustrations like the rest of the few of us for whom being on time seriously matters.
LANGUAGE OF VICTIMISATION
A few days ago I heard a young adult in tertiary education accusing his pen of losing itself. "A whey mi pen gaan?" We say de plate drap an' mash. De car crash. Mi nuh get maths. And youthful exuberance explains away the failure of a Government Minister to follow proper procedure. The attitude of non-responsibility is deeply ingrained in the Jamaican psyche and reflected in the language. It is one of the critical soft factors of our under-development.
A few months ago, the British Minister of Education resigned. Why? It was no big scandal. The Department of Education had failed to meet improvement targets set for a two-year period; public questions were raised, and the lady stepped down. Here we find a Prime Minister pushing a one-man review of the findings of a commission into irregularities which led to the forced resignation of a Minister.
The big brother of failing to take responsibility at all levels is the manufacture of excuses. I often tell youngsters, including my children, that excuses are the number one national product and their growing capacity to produce them not only qualifies them as bona fide Jamaicans but qualifies them to work in the excuse factory. We are all extremely good at it. Someone should compile the amazing excuses received by supervisors and HR people in Jamaican workplaces as to why things have not been done and cannot be done. A great deal of creative energy goes into crafting these excuses, energy not available for producing anything else. Government leads the way in the manufacture and distribution of the most outlandish excuses as to why it wasn't done.
We confuse motion with progress. A former US Ambassador, Gary Cooper, got into hot water for telling us this truth about ourselves. The applause begins with the announcement. And good intentions are good enough. It would be hard to find two or three genuinely new national plans. The people who are rummaging through the historical archives of text and memory are finding that, almost to the letter, the big plan of today is a recycle of the big plan of yesterday which came to nothing then and is equally likely to come to nothing now, even as we applaud.
WELL BELOW POTENTIAL
All the way from the personal level through institutions to Government, there is a big shortage of 'stick-to-itiveness', of designing plans sensibly and seeing them through and of accounting for actions taken and results obtained.
To an extraordinary degree we are a disorderly, beat-the-system people. We live and move and have our being in an atmosphere of near chaos. Foreigners, to use one small but potent example, often think we are on the verge of coming to blows when listening to and viewing our boisterous conversations. It is hard for the systems and regulations which govern a disciplined and productive society to operate here. As we defy systems and order and obstruct others we block off ourselves as individuals from advancing and we don't even know it. And a whole nation fails to rise to its potential.
As a people we are remarkably careless and reckless with human sexuality. We are ------ ourselves into backwardness and poverty. (Readers can fill in the blanks at their own discretion). Without some greater measure of sexual restraint and greater stability in home and family, nothing great is going to emerge out of our (pro)creative chaos.
At rock bottom economy and society rest on pillars of culture and history, of attitudes and values. We can't get the macro-economic specs right without factoring in these fundamentals.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
