Melville Cooke AS A boy coming into Kingston from St. Thomas on a semi-regular basis, two things struck me, one was that most cars I saw had in only one or two persons and the other was that in the neighbourhoods we visited (mostly the then Tucker Avenue residence of my Uncle Alister and the Mona home of my Uncle Kim) the doors to the houses were invariably closed.
Coming from a situation where a Morris Oxford taxi would carry up to 16 persons (look, you town-born people and new country folk who have the benefits of 'deportees' will say it is not true, but people from my generation and country situation will understand) and people with cars generally gave lifts to those who did not, one person in a car was amazing.
NO FREEDOM
Being accustomed to a country set-up where doors were left open all day and were closed only when the last person went to bed at nights, I found it incredible that in the middle of the hot day people would not only close their doors to whatever breeze there was, but also turn the key.
I used to wonder, where are the people? Nobody was walking on the streets in these uptown neighbourhoods. Cars came, went through gates and that was that.
Then I came to live in Kingston as a UWI student, and getting exposed to the other side of Kingston, the side of informal settlements and inner-city development, I saw busy streets, open doors, people playing dominoes under streetlights, packed cars (these were in the days before official route taxis). It took me years to put a label on what I saw, but I eventually concluded that it was a sense of community, which is sadly lacking 'uptown'.
In addition to that though, when I went to places like August Town or Standpipe in my scholarly pursuit of the Silverhawk sound system (a dancehall degree which I aced, under the tutelage of selectors Richie Poo and Ballsie, doing especially well in courses on 'sighting bokkle' and 'look out when shot a bus'), there is this sense of freedom.
Freedom just to be out in the open, just in the way people walked, spoke and gesticulated, their eyes flashing and emotions, especially joy and anger, exhibited without inhibition.
The curious thing is that the statistics will tell you that things should be different, that with the murder rate and general level of violence higher in the inner-city areas people should be cowering in their homes and people living in uptown areas should feel free to walk around their neighbourhoods at night. It is not so.
Cherry Gardens has been my point of reference for the sense of fear which pervades 'uptown'. The signs announcing the name of the community are almost obliterated by the names of the companies which provide security for the residents. KingAlarm, Brinks and Hawkeye totally overshadow the welcome sign, which means literally and figuratively that there is no welcome at all.
It is not only that community though, as the welcome signs to various areas are actually sponsored by security firms. That is like posting a sign saying "Don't get any ideas, now, there is a big bad sheriff in town and he will kill you." It is also a tacit acknowledgement that money does not set you free, even on the base physical level. I have mentally dubbed members of upscale communities 'prisoners of prosperity', while those who are in the inner-city communities often enjoy (not that they may think it is so) the 'freedom of poverty'; despite the level of violence.
I always find it curious that drive-by shootings of men playing dominoes on the roadside continue to happen, even when those attacked must have been aware of the danger. But, thinking about it, it must be very difficult to curtail your sense of freedom and the erase the rituals of community, even when 'war a gwaan'.
THE SOLUTION
And just as how the 'haves' in Jamaica feel the need to protect themselves in the precarious state of prosperity, so the United States of America, through its 'homeland security', and Israel, through their security wall now under construction, are desperately trying to seal themselves off from the 'have nots'.
The solution is not barriers and guns, of course, but a system of somewhat equitable distribution of wealth. That, however, is simply not an option for those who 'run tings'.
It is certainly interesting, though, that when an inner-city resident 'step up' they almost invariably carry their behaviour patterns with them, sitting outside way in the night. It is amusing to see solidly uptown folks who stop tracing their heritage at the point it slips beyond the upscale address trying to adjust to their new-found neighbours, who probably find the idea of a panic button sublimely ridiculous.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
