JODY-ANNE MAXWELL... In 1998 when she won the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee Competition and taught American children what Jamaican good manners are, I came close to shedding a tear. If we are capable of such good, why are we so far from it?

Nine years after the Kingston Metropolitan Area, Spanish Town and a few other urban towns erupted in an intense warfare between street forces allied to the PNP and JLP, my brothers and I are in the urban conundrum and decaying former capital Spanish Town.

It is a cool October night in 1989 and we are by a small park, the Marcus Garvey Park. Like all else in Spanish Town, the chain-link fencing around the park is holed in places and some of the metal uprights are just there, connected to nothing. We have a few friends with us and some female company and we are halfway into our main indulgence for that Saturday night - roast fish from our vendor friend, Bald Head, called so for very obvious reasons.

A few policemen are gathered nearby, in support of a colleague who operates a bar across the road, close to where we are. A young girl is going about her business and a policeman calls her in the manner that a man on a Saturday night prowl for female company would utilise.

The girl glimpses in his direction then continues on her way. Some of those in the dense body of people hanging around see the crude interaction and laugh at the plainclothes policeman. The policeman suddenly marches off towards the girl, reaches her, says something to her then proceeds to grab her hand and haul her back to where he originally was. The girl is protesting, crying out as he shouts at her. "Go inna di jeep!"

The frail teenager hangs on to a metal rail on the nearby jeep and the much larger policeman is having some difficulty prying her fingers apart. The crowd presses closer to the two, seemingly in a need to add some extra free entertainment to their miserable lives.

Immediately something clicks in my mind. Years before, in the 1970s, a woman had sought refuge in the Denham Town Police Station because it was late at night and the political borders made it difficult for her to make that final leg home. She was raped by seven policemen who were eventually charged, arrested and convicted.

With styrofoam plate in hand holding my juicy roast fish, I push my way through the crowd and come face to face with the cop. It was four years before I began writing newspaper columns and so I introduced myself as "Joe Citizen". Suddenly, an older woman, probably the girl's mother, questions the policeman's reason for accosting the girl. The policeman places a firm hand in her chest and with a great heave pushes her away and flat on her back.
The crowd laughs. I am incensed, raging inside, all 39 years of me.

I say to the policeman, "Officer, I am just a citizen. I have sisters. Could you just tell me what the girl has done why you have pushed down that woman?" He eyes me, does a quick calculation and says in a gruff voice, "Sir, leave this alone. Don't stand in the way of justice!"

I am about to say something to him when, unseen to me, another plainclothes policeman approaches, grabs me from behind and all in one motion swings me in an arc and slams my head into one of the metal uprights holding pieces of the chain-link fencing.

It is appropriate that the place is the Marcus Garvey Park because I am in the mood to protest and state my piece clearly and loudly. I have fallen part-way into an open sewer and in climbing out I am preparing to give the policeman all the worst bits of my mind. On looking up though, two other policemen have M-16s pointed at me and I hear no words coming from my mouth.

The policemen enjoy a good laugh as the crowd thickens. My spectacles are broken and I am bleeding from two spots on my face. One of the girls render a crude first-aid even as she and all the others in our party urge me to "Come on, let's leave, please!"

I am going nowhere and I remain rooted to a spot, staring at the policeman. A man who was not present before comes up to the offending policeman and makes inquiries. They both stare at me - the policeman, only briefly. Then the man, a citizen, a human being who would like to be protected, defended like any other citizen, says words to the policeman that would shatter my view of my own country forever.
"Den officer," he said looking over at me, "yu fraid fi shoot di coolie bwoy."

In October 1989, the PNP had just displaced a JLP that had grown stale notwithstanding Seaga's performance of significant growth in the economy between 1985 to 1989 and his masterful management of the country in the aftermath of Hurricane Gilbert which had devastated the entire country in September 1988.

Both the PNP and the JLP had survived the early days of independence in 1962. Then, our leaders saw what they believed we were destined to become. Proud citizens, educated citizens working towards building a new country where everyone had the right to attain all that one's energy and ambition was capable of.

In the many years following 1989, that lofty goal was dropped in incremental bits year after year, as the politics itself and the shady games it played became the only game in town. We accepted boiled dumplings from our political leaders and in the process, scrapped any real human development.

Less than 10 years ago, one of our leading business leaders made a speech whose theme found common ground with my own view. He opined that both the PNP and the JLP governments had, over the years, watered down education for the specific purpose of keeping the people dumb - and gullible.

As we move away from the goals authored at independence, the nation itself has fallen into a pit of filth and we are all in it. A few weeks ago when I was in Washington DC, I discovered a restaurant-cum-bar which had staff who were Ethiopians, an Egyptian, one from Mali, two were African Americans and three were white Americans. The manager was a Jamaican.

I know we are capable of much good. In 1998 when a little Jamaican girl Jody-Anne Maxwell won the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee Competition in the US and in the process taught the American children in the competition what Jamaican good manners are, I came close to shedding a tear. If we are capable of such good, why are we so far from it?

Please tell me, if you know the answers.

observemark@gmail.com

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS