Melville Cooke
WHEN I was 18 or 19, my Uncle Alister Cooke taught me an invaluable, lasting lesson about the country of my birth. We were walking across Slipe Road, on the same side as, but somewhere below Courts, to a furniture-making shop. I asked or said something about Jamaica going down the drain and he replied:
"Jamaica has been crashing for the past 25 years."
It is something that I have never forgotten and which comes back to me when we have gas riots, massacres in West Kingston, Zekes riots, the murder of three police officers in 24 hours, murmurs of failed states and other such peculiarities that have become normal.
Wayne Brown wrote a column about our self-braking system some years ago in The Observer, entitled 'The Fire Next Time', in which he noted the same phenomenon. Just when it seems that we are on the brink of really imploding, we stop, recoup, bury our dead and the weekly round of parties starts again.
It is an amazing thing and one of the best reasons to not migrate.
Based on our poverty indicators, the number of persons killed by the police and the generic CCN release about "fire was returned, area was searched, etc., etc., etc." issued, the terribly unequal distribution of wealth, the wreck of a justice system in which a man gets 30 days for stealing two bottles of stout, the apparently huge amount of illegal guns in the country and other such now standard Jamaican features, we should be a cauldron of discontent.
FIRES OF DISCONTENT
There should have already been some sort of mass uprising in the land where Bogle marched from Stony Gut to Spanish Town and back, where Garvey was born, where the Maroons fought the British to a standstill, the fires of discontent crackled in the canefields before and after slavery and where 1938 stands for 'riot year'.
So why do we sit comfortably on this knife's edge social balance of Queensborough and Ackee Walk being so near but yet so far, of 26 people lying dead on the streets, but businesses shutting down for the murder of one man, without rarely getting cut?
One factor is education, or the lack thereof. Jamaica's true history, a history of social repression from the brutality of Eyre in St. Thomas in 1865 to the Coral Gardens-based slaughter of Rastafari, is not taught in schools. There is a lack of continuity, of seeing the brutality of Braeton or the handling of the Janice Allen killing as part and parcel of one system that needs to be changed. So we flare up (sometimes) over an incident and then are calm again.
Another education-related component is the conditioning of the majority into acceptance of their circumstances. From the biblical 'blessed are the poor' to a teaching of current affairs that puts up various business and political scoundrels as good folks, we teach the poor majority their place in society.
Marcus Garvey will never be studied properly in schools at the primary level.
DIVISIONS
The divisions in our society also keep us from coalescing into the critical mass that will send us over the edge, and ironically so, since these divisions are the cause of many of the crises in the first place. When something happens to Tivoli Gardens, it is a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) matter and the areas of the country that are not so affiliated will keep cool. When policemen are murdered, it is a 'police' matter, so the wake at Elletson Road is not filled with civilians. When Richard Azan gets killed it is a 'society' affair, so Emancipation Park is filled with a hue unlike the statues at the main entrance.
ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE
The same irony applies to the illegal drug trade, which pumps huge amounts of money into the economy, from construction to entertainment to the legal system, making sure that many people 'eat a food' that they would otherwise not have. Remittances, the second highest legal contributor to the economy, I believe, also play that restraining role, as people who would not have a chance at making a decent living in Jamaica go abroad, work hard and are able to send 'money oh!' back home to ease the strain.
And let us not forget that from Toussaint L'Overture to Bogle, from Castro to Chavez, every attempt at true revolution is led by the educated. The educated in Jamaica are as interested in changing the repressive Jamaican system as Peter Thatchell of Outrage! is interested in a front- of-stage view at the annual Dancehall Queen competition.
So Jamaica remains cotched on the razor sharp edge of the social blade that slices between a BMW X5 SUV and a deportee illegal route taxi, filled with people, at the same stop light at Devon House, waiting for red to turn to green.
Oh! Let us not forget that we have the blow-off valve of music, with big speakers piled up to the sky, voicing the emotions of and bringing relief to many.
So it is not just the fire next time. It is the fire after the next after the next time. In 2038, maybe?
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
