Hartley Neita, ContributorTHE FIRST time I went into a slum was sometime between 1958 and 1961.
I was then a member of the staff of the Government Public Relations Office (GPRO), the predecessor of the Jamaica Information Service. I was also assigned by the head of the agency as Norman Manley's press officer.
The duties then were less in scope than what is required of today's press secretary to a head of government.
MEMORISED HIS SPEECH
As press officer, my main function was to write news releases (then called press releases) about his activities. I also collated background information and prepared briefs for him, from time to time. I also drafted messages and statements.
Norman Manley prepared his own speeches. He dictated what he wished to say to his secretary, then took the typed copy to the ante-room of his office where he rehearsed it in front of a mirror.
He wrote symbols in the margin which guided him where to pause for dramatic effect, where to lift his voice or lower the decibel. He also timed it, and finally memorised it.
I discovered this latter ability when he gave me the script of a speech and told me that paragraphs two, three and four on one of the pages was the most important section of the speech.
And, in following him as he spoke subsequently, I heard him repeating word for word what was in the script.
TO VISIT 'BACK O'WALL'
One day, I received a telephone call from the head of the GPRO who was in London with Manley at a conference.
Manley wanted me, he said, to go to 'Back O'Wall' in western Kingston. There, I should ask for Sam Brown, a Rastafarian, who I had already met, to seek his help in guiding me through the settlement, meet residents and photographing them and their families and their homes.
I had eight days to write a description of the community and the conditions under which the people lived, and publish a booklet, suitably illustrated with photographs and drawings.
He wanted it to give support to an application being prepared by the Central Planning Unit for fund assistance from the British and the United States governments to replace the slum conditions with decent housing.
Amador Packer was the photographer I selected. He had an eye for the dramatic and a way of putting people, and children in particular, at ease.
I also asked a freelance writer, Hugh "Speedy" Burns, who also had flair for the dramatic in his writing, to accompany us.
SMELL OF THE SLUM
The sights and the smells of that slum have remained with me ever since. We walked from early morning until mid-afternoon through some four acres of squalor.
We saw shacks, the walls of which were made of pieces of rotten wood and cardboard and crocus bags, and covered with rusty sheets of zinc. The families slept on pieces of board covered with scraps of cloth.
There were no roads, just beaten tracks winding their way around each hut. Sometimes we stepped into swards of mud and the faeces of pigs and goats.
There was no grass or trees for shade or fruit. Every now and then we came upon a shrivelled gungo peas plant.
There was no piped water. They had tapped the water main along Spanish Town Road and carried water far inside the community where they had constructed a make-shift shower.
One man had built a latrine and he charged residents one penny to use it. The alternative was at the edge of community on sandy soil where men and women scraped a shallow hole and squatted over it to drop their night food.
The smell from the combination of the rotting wood, mud, sour, water, jeyes, faeces and scraps of cooked food waste, was a nauseous, stomach-turning smell.
United Printers published the document which was called Portrait of a Slum. Only 100 copies were printed.
I loaned my copy to a politician-friend some years ago, and have never got it back.
SLUM IN ADDIS ABABA
Year later, I went to Ethiopia. While there, the liaison officer offered to take me to a craftsman from whom I purchased two bedside black and white monkey-skin rugs.
The city of Addis Ababa was beautiful. The roads are well-paved and the streets well-lit. The parks were maintained and attractive.
At the edge of the city, the road disappeared and became a bridle track. Suddenly, there was no electricity. We went into a house, dark and dismal.
It was in a better condition than the huts at 'Back O'Wall'. But the smell was the smell of my western Kingston community.
'Back O'Wall' is no more. It is a new community. I hope the Addis slum no longer smells.
