Vuraldo Barnett, Contributor
HOW WOULD you like to be born in a neighbourhood where an average of say one funeral per week occurs; where up to 30 of your neighbours have been murdered over a 36-month period?
How would you like to grow up in a place where people are literally living to die; and where a life of hustling and crime is more accessible than an education or a job?
A place where society's rejects are piled on the street corner like solid waste waiting for the rubbish truck of life to remove it to the dump heap of the prison or the cemetery?
In the past the rubbish truck came in the colours of ideologically motivated civil war. Yesterday, it came as inter-gang territorial warfare.
Today, it is a confluence of narco-political violence, hunger and sexually transmitted infections combined with moral depravity, illiteracy and unemployment.
SHOTS PUNCTUATE NIGHT SKY
But, tell me, how would you like to reside in this community where the street is a living room, dancehall and battlefield; where the terrifying sounds of gunshots punctuate the night sky while you lie on the floor of your room?
Well, perhaps you would prefer a place where a person with little between his ears can be deemed your 'Elder' or 'Dad'. This 'Father' of yours is sometimes elevated to that status out of fear by members of the community and is often legitimised by the 'Honourables' of the society. Thanks to the glitters of the media, 'Dads' will be revered in life and immortalised in death.
But, better yet, how would you like to be lumped in a group that politicians, entertainers, businessmen and pastors. among others, refer to as the amorphous 'People'?
Indeed, maybe you would like one of these articulate masters to think, speak and act on your behalf.
Please, do not complain when they misrepresent your reality, for they may retort, "What are a few broken skulls?" and discarded lives in the building of a nation or their career.
They may even rationalise that the Production Train was already set in motion a long time ago and so you are merely another model off the assembly line.
Perhaps, fortunately for me, I am a 'Defective Model'. I simply do not fit the prototype of the manufacturer's plan as something went wrong in the manufacturing plant.
Yes, somewhere between conceptualisation and actualisation a mishap occurred.
CLASSIFIED 'DIFFERENT'
That is why I am classified 'Different' from the other models around here. How else do you explain the fact that so far I have been able to escape the tentacles of the gangs. prison, unemployment or illiteracy?
Frankly speaking, I am a misfit for if I were manufactured at the 'Prestigious Plant' I would probably be branded a creative prodigy. But, around here, I am just the 'Yute' who has been lucky enough, so far, to have slipped through the cracks in the system.
The bredren whom it is felt is destined to be drafted to the big leagues; a beneficiary of the concept of social mobility.
However, it does appear that one's 'luck' is bound to run out, especially when one is surrounded by the ever increasing latest models coming off the production line.
In fact, I remember in 1995 when one of those well-developed models pointed a chrome magnum to my face and demanded to know who the hell I was?
An interesting question, considering that we were both stamped with the same label 'Made in the Slum'!
FUNERAL PROCESSION
In split micro-seconds, I saw a funeral procession with me in the casket flash across the interior of my mind's eye. Well, luckily, I was able to provide him with the right answer.
Now, my friend, if given the chance, would you choose to be manufactured in my plant? Would you choose to reside in my neighbourhood?
Now remember, you choose to run from the horrors of my neighbourhood but you cannot always hide from those 'developed models' lurking in the dark.
So, given an option, would you prefer to destroy these models or would you opt to destroy the creators of these models? Maybe you would choose to do both?
Vuraldo Barnett (background), executive director of RAGE, together with children from the community at the Jones Town Cultural Centre in St. Andrew.
