Guarded enclaves and unfulfilled dreams

THE EDITOR, Sir:

THE DAY before the shootings in Rema, my wife and I visited with a friend struggling against the desperation of the garrison communities. She runs a small remedial school as part of Operation Restoration. And there, despite the surrounding violence and death, children were trying to do something normal. Go to school, learn, share with their teachers and friends, find success and think of the future and plan a life.

Amid the insanity around them was this place of peace. One rarely seen by most Kingstonians and probably NEVER seen by tourists like ourselves. (This became all too apparent when I watched the faces of the Jamaicans we told of our visit) As we passed through the half a dozen roadblocks on our way to the school, I remembered thinking that I was leaving Jamaica and crossing a border into another country. A gated guarded walled enclave. It was still Jamaica, just a Jamaica that everyone preferred to forget about.

For part of our stay we too passed through a guarded gate into another Jamaica. This was the Jamaica of the glossy poster and slick ad campaign. The Jamaica of the tourist, the Jamaica of the $$, but dollars that will stay on their side of the gated, guarded, walled enclave. A Jamaica where everyone pretended to forget what might be on the other side of the wall.

And then there was the third Jamaica. The one in between the walls of the garrison and the resort. Its the Jamaica of the school teacher, the shopkeeper, the higgler. The everyday Jamaica where people just live their lives and try to provide for their families. The Jamaica of the personal walled and grilled enclave.

On the day we left I listened to a radio commentator railing that no one in the country was born as a PNP and no was born as a JLP and no one was born an NDM. Each was born a JAMAICAN. The walls and guarded enclaves of the mind are as strong and divisive as those of block and mortar. Until all the walls can be breached the phrase, "out of many, one people" is an unfulfilled dream.

I am etc.,

MIKE DARE-GENTILE

mikedaregentile@weirdness.com

Mays Landing,

New Jersey

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