Alexia Benz, Contributor
JUST PRIOR to Hurricane Dennis' short and not-so-menacing visit this summer was our long overdue family trip to the island! We were doing our "back-to-your-roots-yeah!" holiday. In tow was my new husband. I was anxious to show him the island of my parents' birth and the haven of my childhood. We hired a small car for our two weeks and took off on our nostalgic ride.
The last time I took a road journey through Jamaica was 16 years ago. It was the hot summer of 1989. My sister and I were vacationing from the gray, familiar streets of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Back then we took a detour to our childhood home on Ricketts Avenue, Kingston 13. It was a true drive down memory lane, past Rousseau Primary School that holds five years years of my schooling in open-plan classrooms, then on to a little cosy-looking house sitting comfortably behind silver gates with a giant mango tree in the front yard. This house once belonged to my grand aunt and uncle and was our home - my younger brother, sister and I - many years ago.
OUTER-SPACE-CRUISER
This summer, our family's little detour down Ricketts Avenue seemed less of a reverie but more like a ride in an outer-space-cruiser, falling in and out of craters, the size of swimming pools on the surface of the moon! The street was littered with potholes, stones and gravel. Peeling and crumbling paintwork was the state of the walls at the school's entrance. A broken down car with one of its tyres missing was parked in front of our old house that sat sadly behind those silver gates.
Kingston is our capital city. It ought to be the flagship city of the whole island, yet, in all honesty, it looks beaten up and beaten down. With or without the help of Dennis and Emily, the state of many of the roads in Kingston and the neighbouring buildings and housing are appalling and need immediate attention. One wonders where the general housing and road tax funds are allocated? Who benefits from the road tax paid by many car owners in the land? Roads like Ricketts Avenue, brimming with memories and hopeful lives of today's Jamaicans, are definitely not seeing any type of fund or aid. Streets like this ought to be first in line!
HIGHWAY 2000
Perhaps government authorities gave priority to the highways. Highway 2000 is an outer-space-cruiser and made our family car ride from May Pen to Kingston an absolute breeze! Examples of overseas funding in projects such as this are important and necessary for our development. The highway from one end of the country to the other - Negril to Port Antonio - is currently under construction and although well past its completion date, is a welcome facility for Jamaicans. We do need to have fast and efficient highways to adequately go about our everyday lives.
Plans for various projects such as the Chinese coming in to build and revamp the railway lines would be a great asset. Having a fully up-and-running railway system allows for the essential transportation of large containers of goods and supplies throughout the island as well as transporting passengers.
Indeed, from our family's two-week shuffle throughout the whole island, we found numerous examples of roads in bad shape. The island seems to be riddled with uneven surfaces. The car mechanics and car-parts shops must be the only ones benefiting from these conditions.
Alexia Benz-Gardner, jazz vocalist, is a Jamaican national from Birmingham, England, currently resident in Shanghai, China.
