Melville Cooke If life was a ting
Money coulda buy
De rich woulda live
An de poor woulda die
-Jamaican saying
AND SO, what is the life of a person worth? Or, to be more specific, what is the life of those invisible people who pop up only when it is very bad news worth?
The Supreme Court thought that Agana Barrett's life was worth $829,560, the Court of Appeal thought he was worth $170,000 more. The Government thinks he is worth a house with a swimming pool in Portmore Villas.
Agana Barrett is, of course, the then 21 year-old man who, along with Ian Forbes and Vassell Brown, suffocated in a cell at the Constant Spring Police Station after being detained from October 22 to October 24, 1992. With 16 or 17 other men in the cell with a metal door, there simply was not enough air to go around.
Eleven years after, the same People's National Party Government, under whose watch the insanity happened, has presented his mother, Doris Fuller, with a two bedroom house in an Operation PRIDE development.
There are simply too many ironies here to overlook. Like the exchange of a single cell with 20 men for a two bedroom house for one woman. Like the house having a swimming pool, while there were some in the lock-up with the dead three who drank their own urine in order to survive.
Like Minister of Water and Housing Donald Buchanan saying, as reported in THE STAR on Saturday, January 3, 2004, that "We are fully aware that nothing can replace a child, but the presentation of a house was necessary, as young Agana had promised his mother a house to remove her from the gully bank". Yes, but he had not promised his life in return, had he?
It is obscene that the courts should award the paltry sums they did in the first place, and it is a further obscenity that the Government should attempt to purge its conscience by tossing in a house to sweeten the pot. A house is not, as we would like the poor especially to think in Jamaica, a gift from heaven. It is a basic amenity which all should be able to expect to acquire through hard work.
I looked at the picture accompanying the article, which showed Buchanan and Minister of Justice and Attorney-General A.J. Nicholson applauding as Ms. Fuller received the keys to her new home and, for the first time, I really saw institutionalised injustice.
It is based on the premise that the lives of some persons are simply worth nothing, or at best, far less that those who are considered 'smaddy'. Agana Barrett and others like him are simply not considered 'smaddy', so those who 'run tings' can feel magnanimous in adding a 'brawta' to the silly sum the courts felt justified with awarding her in the first place.
The most amazing thing is that the self-worth of the poor has been trampled so low that they accept it. When the 'incident' happened in Flankers last year, with taxi carrying elderly persons shot up, I was struck by the people's reaction when the police and political bigwigs came. They were so happy that someone of note came to speak to them.
Just to speak to them. That is all. To acknowledge them as human beings. I wonder if, 11 years from now, houses with swimming pools will be distributed in the same way?
I read that story of Ms. Fuller being given a house with a swimming pool and I thought of a final irony. Did anybody ask the lady if she can swim?
Can a woman's tender care
Cease toward the child she bear?
-The Bible
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
