Melville Cooke
IN JAMAICA, you are either a name or a number. Vilma Mais is a name in death as she was in life, as The Observer told us in no uncertain, very bold, very large headline manner last Thursday after she was stabbed on the grounds of the Stella Maris Church and died at the University Hospital of the West Indies last Wednesday.
Durraine Giddeon, who was killed on the grounds of the Full Truth Gospel Faith Ministries on Church Street (where else?) in Bog Walk, St. Catherine, on Sunday is a number.
The difference between a name and number is that those who, by dint of colour, class or cash, can make the appropriate noise which leads to action, do so when something happens to the former; the latter is simply an addition to the statistics.
GIDDEON'S MURDER
Which is why I am livid at the outrage of the church over Vilma Mais' murder, a church that was remarkably quiet about someone else dying in almost exactly the same circumstances (substitute gunshot for stab) three days earlier. Of course, Giddeon was squeezed into the outrage expressed by the church (whatever that is) over Mais' murder. However, since the men of the cloth had all of two days to be cross, angry and miserable about Giddeon's murder and were not vociferously so, then it is obviously the Stella Maris murder that has prompted the righteous outrage.
Obviously, then, all Christians are not equal, as the Archbishop of Kingston Lawrence Burke let us know in a statement:
"The church has been accused of being silent about the escalation of crime in our land. However, I must speak out today because we cannot allow the life of such a loving woman to be snuffed out without a word."
VAUNTED CHURCH
And what about the others about which the vaunted church, or at least those in it who count, has been silent about? Were they not even 'liking', much less loving?
Then there is the prompt response of the police to the Mais murder, where two days after the police (an Assistant Commissioner, no less) was able to say that the police had begun interviewing men from "the nearby Grants Pen community". (I am a country boy, but forgive me for thinking that Aylsham and Shortwood and even the lower parts of Cherry Gardens are closer to being 'nearby' the Stella Maris Church than Grant's Pen. But then, we never expect criminals of any sort to come from a 'good' area, do we)?
There is a reflex reaction by the society's functionaries to the distress of those among us who have been elevated to names, as opposed to numbers. It is the springing to action of the house slave when the Great House is burning, it is the heightened alertness of the bank teller when dealing with somebody who has a really hefty account. It is also the prompt investigation of a murder case, members of the Caribbean Search Centre combing the scene and all, by the police.
While I am livid at the reaction to Vilma Mais' killing, I do not wish that her death go nearly unnoticed and unremarked upon, as do most of the killings that take place in this country. I wish, instead, that the murders of the Giddeons among us, which comprise the overwhelming majority, arouse the outrage of those few among us who can make bold headlines happen and the police act promptly enough to make that one phone call which makes all the difference in the world.
Unfortunately, the 'names' among us are concerned only when one of their number becomes an addition to the numbers of the victims. So does this mean that for there to be prompt investigations and sufficient moral outrage to effect a change in the crime situation, more people will have to find out that a knife's edge or a bullet do not know the difference between a name and a number?
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
