Leonardo Blair, Enterprise Reporter
Teachers from Charlie Smith and Trench Town high schools walk through sections of Trench Town and Jones Town in Kingston as part of their protest action last week to rid the area of violence. - NORMAN GRINDLEY/DEPUTY CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Today, The Gleaner presents you with Part II in a series of articles looking at the heavy price paid by inner-city students trying to learn in schools located in the heart of war-torn South St. Andrew. The series which began yesterday, follows Enterprise Reporter, Leonardo Blair, as he relives the nightmares and success stories as told by students, teachers and administrators at Trench Town and Charlie Smith high schools.
SHE DOESN'T know how to be angry. She doesn't know how to be really mad but she knows that whenever she thinks about it. "All I feel is low."
Alicia* is one of them.
A Trench Town High netballer who was dragged into a house by thugs when she was thirteen. Snuffed unconscious with a rag soaked in chloroform, ravaged and left to carry the spawn from one of her abductors who was later murdered. Alicia is 16 now. Still trying hard to be a teenager. Like nothing happened. But something did.
"This is one of them," says Camille Wallace, coach and teacher at Trench Town High.
"What?"
NEATLY DRESSED
She is barely five feet tall. Heavy bookbag strapped protectively to her shoulders. She moves quietly along the walls of the foyer, neatly dressed with a bang of hair pasted tightly to her forehead. She stares at me with a wary, questioning air which asks "friend or foe?" Her teacher is here. "Must be safe then,'' the look finally warms and timidly allows.
But as soon as she tries to speak her emotions fall apart like Leggo and she is in tears. The memories remove the linchpin from her tough facade. Breathe. She is hyperventilating. Breathe. Ms. Wallace consoles her. Breathe.
When Alicia first heard about the assault on her teammate two Thursdays ago she cried for two hours and could not stop. She was 13 too. Every day she sees her one-year-old child, so, try as she might, she can't forget.
A child she has grown to love, her child, but whose presence reminds her of why she is sometimes 'low' and why every time she tells herself she has gotten over it, she is not sure whether it's truth or denial.
She survives on the providence of her older brother. He is 25 years old. He helps her take care of the child. She does not really think about what she wants to be. Getting over may take a lifetime.
Last week, teachers from the Charlie Smith and Trench Town high schools in Arnett Gardens, Kingston, boycotted the classroom for two days in protest against the shooting and rape of two of their students just under two weeks ago. Both female students were 13-year-olds.
* Name has been changed to protect the identity of the student interviewed for this story.
