By Marjorie Stair, Bureau ChiefWELL, BOTH Maas Joe and Jabez have managed to 'step up inna life' by investing $20 in Lucky Five and getting returns of half a million dollars. Rural Jamaica and a farmer, Maas Joe, are now featuring in the troubling and persistent messages in both the electronic and print media that, somehow, wealth can be created without work.
This paradigm defies all rational concepts of development and is contrary to the Law of the Farm. Here in Jamaica, we have come to believe that age old principles and the irrevocable law of cause and effect do not apply to us and we can somehow achieve development while preaching messages that do not encourage enterprise, hard work and thrift and promoting those who have acquired their wealth by highly questionable means. I guess if you cannot win the Lucky Five or any of the other gambling games, or win houses and cars, and 'live free for life' by purchasing furniture on hire purchase at prices which far exceed the cash price, then you can either become a Member of Parliament or become closely aligned to one as they seem to 'step up inna life' and they do not have to worry about salary increases regardless of what is happening in both the private and public sectors.
I am curious. To which private sector salaries have those of the senior managers of the public sector been pegged? Government statutory bodies?
Of course, Maas Joe was wise enough to remember that there are mud holes on rural roads, even in the beautiful parish of St Mary and I suspect that if the true story was told, we would have heard that it was the savings from years of hard work, prudent investment and sweat, assisted by his donkey, that allowed him to purchase the tractor and the Lucky Five winnings only made it a bit easier.
I do not know about you but for me, the Year 2002 was a watershed year for lawlessness and disorder in Jamaica despite all the talk of crime initiatives and such the like. The bizarre Sting main event at which Ninja Man, wanted by the police, was allowed to humiliate Reneto Adams by saying, 'Police, come Ya!' followed by the dreaded Reneto performing was an appropriate end to the year of senseless killings, of further decay in downtown Kingston and the city of Montego Bay, of corrupt road contractors, of entertainers and others making a mockery of the law, of drugs being traded openly and young men walking brazenly with their guns displayed in some areas that are apparently now outside of the law. I must admit that the Sting fiasco and the interviews that followed have certainly reduced my respect for Reneto Adams and the security forces.
As if 2002 was not enough, the first day of school in January 2003 was marred by a demonstration, led by politicians too weak to even admit that they were the organisers. This was preceded last year by the demonstration at a town meeting in St Ann. Why? The organisers had dissed their representative Shahine Robinson. Since no one has said it, let me. JLP Members of Parliament, you are no longer on the streets with no voice. You are now in Parliament and in the Senate. Can we stop the cowardly road blocks that cost the country so much in lost man hours, damaged infrastructure that has to be replaced, disruption and frustration and, now the loss of a life. It is time to find more effective and civilised methods of addressing the real concerns of the people of which there are many.
The materialism gripping the country was never more clearly seen in the comments before and after the demonstrations, supposedly by taxi drivers who, among other things, wanted the freedom to continue breaking the law. Every single commentary that I heard was about the effect of the demonstration on the tourism sector. What about us who have to live ya so? We no nobady pickney to? Wi no contribute to the development a de country to?
No one even remembered that it was the first day of school and that frightened little children, and even older children would be affected adversely by the demonstrations and the nature of the demonstrations. No, only the mighty tourist dollar was of importance to both business and political leaders of the resource demanding tourism industry. If we cannot even stop to consider the well being of our children, then how can we ever have an effective tourism industry? For how long are we going to offer discounts, ganja and sex as substitutes for a strong tourism product of good quality?
The most dramatic transformation that has taken place in Jamaica in recent years, however, is the transformation of agricultural lands into housing developments. Fly over or drive around Jamaica and you will see areas that once were cultivated in bananas, citrus, sugarcane, vegetables, pastures for livestock, are now covered with houses. Many built by Operation PRIDE. The Prime Minister, who has said this will be his last term in office, never told anyone of us that he wanted to be remembered for modernising the agricultural sector. He said that he wanted to be remembered as the Prime Minister that distributed the most land to poor people. So people now live where they once earned their living by farming or by selling their labour to farmers. Where Operation PRIDE has not built, squatters have built, or, farmers, unable to make a profit from farming have gone into real estate converting farms into housing developments or industrial estates.
In rural Jamaica, the thousands of jobs lost in the agricultural sector have not been provided by any other sector, so another part of the transformation of rural areas are the ubiquitous Lucky Five signs and the Go-Go clubs, as rural people, apparently abandoning the timeless principles development, attempt to take a short cut to 'stepping up inna life'. Many have become slaves of the well to do narcotics drug dealers who have 'stepped up inna life' by offering cocaine to our children and the children of people in other countries, crippling their lives and stymieing their development.
The Law of the farm is very simple. We reap what we sow and where we have not sown, we will not reap even if we fool ourselves by stealing other people's produce. How many farmers have stopped farming because of praedial larceny and how many of the thieves benefited from their previous farming efforts directly or indirectly? A thief steals only from himself, Emerson tells us. We sow and we know we must wait for the harvest, having done what we have to do. As Rainer Maria Rilke puts it in The Sonnets to Orpheus,
"In spite of all the farmer's work and worry, he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly
transmitted into summer. The earth bestows."
Mark 4: 28-29 says it a bit
differently,
"The earth bears fruit by itself, first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the earth is ripe, the man goes in with his sickle, because it is harvest time."
If we reap before the time we get immature fruit of poor quality, that is unpleasant to taste, has a short shelf life and is likely to wither and die before it can be of much use. Is this a description of the dependent, 'step up inna life with Lucky 5' Jamaica that we have created?
