Melville Cooke
A few weeks ago, after writing about the extensive church and media treatment given to Vilma Mais when she was murdered, and noting the difference between a name and a number in Jamaica, then driving on the relatively newly built road to Portmore, I got to thinking about standards.
Or, more specifically, how low we have set them.
In many areas of national life the standard is so rock bottom that what should be normal is seen as special, as extraordinary, creating more artificial distinctions in a country which could well do with fewer mental fences separating its citizens.
The furore created over the murder is how the matter of somebody, anybody, being killed should be treated; the nonchalance with which most murders are treated is reprehensible. We, therefore, end up in a situation where it becomes accepted to kill those who are numbers, because they are not made to be names (unless it is four or more).
CONDITION OF ROADS
The road heading to Portmore from Three Miles, across the causeway, is a great surface. So is the one between Negril and Montego Bay, ditto for the toll road from Mandela highway to Clarendon. But they should not be so strikingly good, so outstanding, because all the main roads at least in Jamaica (and this includes the road networks which run through the cities and major towns) should look like them. That is how a road is supposed to look, actually, smooth, without undulations that make a waterbed look as stable as a well-laid carpet.
The same also applies to the cars that drive on the roads. Apart from the most expensive models there is nothing really outstanding about a large pick-up or SUV in societies which actually export something and where the second largest mainstay of the official economy is not the money that people who migrate to seek better work send back home. Alas, in Jamaica, a large pick-up that is used as a work truck (which it actually is) elsewhere becomes a status symbol and there is a higher concentration of SUVs on the roads than in many countries which can actually afford the fuel bill, and the people do not have to starve themselves to make the monthly payments.
WHAT BASIC HOUSING SHOULD BE
The quads that were built in Portmore were absolute cruelty, four boxes put together that people had to renovate so they could actually use the shower. Of course, with housing as short as it is, people snapped them up. Within a decade, along come Angel Estates, then Magil Palms and the Vineyards, among others, then now Caribbean Estates, which is also in Portmore. The last is a bit more upscale, but this is what basic housing should be, not the matchboxes that were slapped down in Portmore. But because the standard was set so low, by the Portmore quads, and to a much lesser extent by some of the matchboxes that the NHT built (there were some classic examples outside Duncans in Trelawny), these housing developments sometimes look spectacular.
They are not; they are what houses designed for a decent standard of living, which includes enough space for privacy of the privates while enjoying the community of family, should be like.
'BIG FOOD'
And it goes on. Somebody who speaks standard English with some degree of ease sticks out because in our schools the language continues to confound so many students; there is a preoccupation with 'big food' and what people eat as many cannot afford basic, decent nutrition, which is then elevated to the hallowed status of said 'big food'; the executive bus service (when it is properly run) is what a bus system should be like, much more so under the hog and goat days of Millwood and co.
So we end up living in a society where normal is suddenly exceptional and people get all crazy, speeding on the slightest stretch of 'good' road, with disastrous results, ogling ordinary cars and houses and creating elitism out of the unremarkable. And when somebody (like me) points out the ordinariness of it all, it sounds crazier.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
