ALAN Campbell remembers going to the Carib cinema as a teenager and watching a movie based on the life of German philosopher, physician and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer. So impressed was Campbell with Schweitzer’s work in French Equatorial Africa that he made a pledge to himself as he left the Carib.

“From then I said I would be a doctor… I had to help people,” said Campbell, 59.

Born and raised in Greenwich Town, Campbell never realised his boyhood dream of a career in medicine. But for most of his life, he has emulated Schweitzer’s humanitarian efforts by helping the impoverished in his politically-battered community. His latest act of philanthropy — construction on a basic school on his family’s land just a stone’s throw from the Newport West wharves — is a project dear to his heart.

Campbell, a frail Rastafarian known in Greenwich Town as “Jah Wise”, says he first got the idea to build the school 20 years ago while he was an independent record producer and community leader. “It was in one of my propositions, to open a school inna the area,” says the bare-chested Campbell during a break from construction duties. “There was a necessity for it and there still is.”

According to Campbell, work on the building began in February and has cost $2 million of his own money. Initially, he says he employed 12 labourers but because funds have dried up, work has stalled and he has had to cut his ‘staff’ down to five.

The September opening date Campbell had in mind is no longer realistic, but he is determined to see the project through and insists he will not seek assistance from Portia Simpson Miller, the member of parliament for South St Andrew, the constituency in which Greenwich Town is located.

“Rasta nah deal wid politics… wi neva deal wid it all the while and mi nah go deal wid it now,” he states.

Campbell plans to approach companies in the area to donate the $2-million he reckons it will take to complete his educational facility, which he plans to name the Garvey/Schweitzer/Selassie Academy.

“I wouldn’t think of any corporation outside the area. I looking at Kingston Wharves, Petrojam, the Shipping Association… all a the people dem whe we work and build dem place fi monkey money,” screams the animated Campbell. “One pound and six-pance a day. Dat is wha’ wi build the wharf for.”

Campbell knows a thing or two about negotiating. He studied industrial relations at the University of the West Indies’ Mona campus in the mid-1960s and for over 10 years, was a union representative with the Trades Union Congress, which was very active in management/worker relations on the wharves during the 1970s.

He says he became disillusioned with the union movement by 1975 (“the union start work fi the union”, he charges) and tried his hand at record producing which was becoming a thriving business in Greenwich Town at the time. Campbell worked as a producer with grassroots artistes like Earl Zero and Phillip Fraser and was, at one time, part of Bunny Wailer’s management team.

Growing up the last of seven children in Greenwich Town, Campbell laments the lack of social progress in his community over the past 40 years and blames inadequate education for the political division that was rampant in the area during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.

At present, there are only two schools (the Western United Basic and the Holy Name Catholic) in Greenwich Town that provide early education. The Greenwich Farm All-Age School is located further down at Spanish Town Road.

Campbell believes another school will enhance education among the young and ease the burden for parents who have to shell out bus fares daily to send their children to schools outside Greenwich Town.

“The other day a woman ask mi fi $100 fi send har youth a school in Cumberland. Then when yuh have inner-city problem dem cyaan leave the area fi go school,” he explains.

Even as he prepares to draft proposals of assistance to present to businesses in the area, Campbell, ever the independent, is organising a live show to help raise funds. “Wi nuh know how the money a go come yuh nuh mi bredda, but it haffi come,” he says.