The blood and tears that flooded Spanish Town since the start of the year gushed mainly from behind rusty zinc fences and the gaps in flimsy board houses.

Behind one of the many zinc fences, inside a small family yard on Chambers Lane, a crumpled yellow wash rag, a blue toothbrush, a soap box and a bloody bar of white soap littered the dirt pavement. The blood-soaked earth around them a stark reminder of how one young woman narrowly escaped with her life.

Gunmen shot Sherice Campbell, a 28-year-old mother of two, from behind as she entered her yard last Monday night. She was returning from the lane where she had gone to take a shower at a community standpipe.

Since the violence escalated in the old capital a fortnight ago, most residents, particularly the women and children, avoid venturing out at night. Campbell and her two children, aged 10 and 11, were no different. But Campbell had no choice. She had to leave the confines of her house and yard to take a shower at the nearby standpipe that serves scores of families in the cramped lane.

Perhaps she showered at night to get away from prying eyes as the standpipe was most likely crowded during the day.

“Mi aunty and mi little nephew (not her son) always go bathe at night,” a member of the Campbell family explained. Campbell, family members said, took the youngster along for “company”.

“But mi little nephew told her that he did not feel to go with her Monday night. suppose a she and him did go bathe. dem woulda kill she and him – a dem ting dey mi a look pon,” the young man remarked.

Campbell, who received bullet wounds to the neck, stomach and back, underwent surgery last week.

Leonardi Sterling, a six-year-old student who attends the church-operated basic school next door to Campbell’s yard, thought she had died.

Apparently, the youngster had overhead whispered discussions about the shooting in the neighbourhod.

As Sterling settled down to his lessons inside the Mont Joy Tree of Life Apostolic Faith Church, he informed the Sunday Observer that he would like to become a policeman.

At the same time, he shyly admitted that he was afraid of gunshots. “Dem mek mi feel ‘fraid,” he said.

Monica Weir, a teacher at the school, said attendance had not been seriously affected by the recent outbreak in violence, as eight of the 10 students on roll turned up for classes the day after the shooting that occurred next door. In fact, she added, students only missed classes “for financial reasons”.

As this reporter turned to leave, Sterling blurted out: “Sherice (Campbell) dead! Dem shot har…”

“Mi aunty nuh do people nothing,” Campbell’s nephew continued, noting that he was happy that – contrary to Sterling’s outburst – she had survived the attack.

“Everybody that live inside here is family, and we nuh do people things. We nuh eena the politics thing,” he said, adding that “when it come on to politics we come last”.

The Campbell family, like many of their neighbours, migrated to Spanish Town from volatile communities in the Corporate Area.

“A people mek wi deh ya so,” Campbell’s nephew explained. “A town we originate from – Payne Avenue, Two Miles. the whole a dem place deh. Is the same treatment with politician and thing why we have to leave from there come here so come build wi tent, and at the end of the day, a the same thing,” he lamented.

His reference to a ‘tent’ is not far off the mark, as some of the houses in the more troubled areas of the old capital appeared to have been hastily constructed from flimsy wood. While some of the structures showed that a little thought went into designing them, others appeared to have been hastily erected, and the occupants simply never got around to making the necessary adjustments. Their now weather-beaten frames, complemented by leaning, rusty zinc fences, pointed to the poor social condition and decay slowly eating away at Spanish Town.

But despite the generally poor conditions that exist in many of the depressed areas, inside the houses were immaculate. The floors and the furniture gleamed in the midday sun.

The 2001 census puts the population of Spanish Town at 131,056, an increase of 9,855 over the 111,201 persons reported in 1991.

The overall population of St Catherine, in which Spanish Town falls, was 480,657 in 2001, against 381,972 in 1991.

The number of dwellings in the old capital, some of them new housing developments, grew from 25,784 in 1991 to 34,793 ten years later.

The report, published by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, said the average number of persons per dwelling in 2001 was 3.8 compared to 4.8 in 1991.

“We need better housing, we need to get rid of the old zinc fences and old board houses,” a woman commented to the newspaper.

The more troubled communities in Spanish Town, like Ellerslie Pen and Chambers Lane, appear cramped. Several of the houses are constructed from flawed wood, and over the last two weeks it was mainly from behind the rough finish of these houses that the blood and tears flowed.

Indeed, frequent violent outbreaks, the poor road conditions, the lack of proper housing, water and light in communities such as these, all contribute to the old capital’s overall depressed state.

Stagnant water flowed in some gutters, even though it had not rained in days. In the Homestead area, small fishes frolicked in a gutter that spilled slightly onto the roadway.

“Spanish Town is filthy,” says Felecia Wright, 77, who lives in the Manchester Lane area.

Look at the condition of the roads,” she complained. “My husband is blind, and I cannot even get a car to come inside the lane to take him to the doctor because of the bad condition of the road.”

Residents in that community complained that about three weeks ago the National Water Commission dug up the road to install new underground pipes, and they have had no running water since that time.

“They don’t fix the pipes properly. It bust and wetting up the whole of the road and they did not fix it back in the first place,” one resident said.

“We have no water inside the house, and yet they are still sending us bills,” Irena Finn protested to the Sunday Observer.

“There is also no street lights in the lane, and you have to be careful when you go out at night or you might fall down in the dug-up road,” another resident said.

Meanwhile, the entrance leading to a number of communities in Spanish Town remained blocked all of last week because of fear of the violence. Residents said they were trying to “prevent drive-bys”.

A number of the roads are narrow and congested, giving the illusion that the town is choking. Choking on garbage. Choking on decay. Choking on fear, sweat, blood and tears.

Terrence Prince has been choking on his tears since last Tuesday when his son, Kenroy, 28, was gunned down near his home on Jones Avenue. He had gone to purchase cigarettes at a neighbourhood shop.

His father, a Rastafarian who repairs shoes for a living, saw it coming.

“His hard ears cause him death still,” the weeping father told the Sunday Observer. “I warned him to stay inside the yard. but him never listen.”

Residents reported seeing a group of gunmen “looking over” the zinc fence that secured the younger Prince’s yard just minutes before he was killed.

He was inside the house at the time, but later left for the shop when he felt it was safe to do so.

But his father felt that he would have been safe had he remained behind the wooden confines of their home like he had urged him to.

“Mi beg him fi say inside. Mi lose a son before to violence, but me never feel it so because him did bad. But not this one. Him nuh give nuh trouble,” the elderly man said.

“Mi feel like a mi birth him, because him mother leave him pon mi from him six years old. Me feel like mi belly bottom empty.how mi a go do without mi son?” he wailed, the tears streamng down his cheeks.

Three days earlier, in Jones Heights, three men and a woman were shot dead at a street-side birthday party. The latest outbreak in violence, the police said, is gang related.

Ten people died over the last two weeks, bringing to 17 the number murdered since the start of the year.

Apart from the violence, there is also the problem of unemployment, which is particularly high in the old capital. Some residents, especially the youth, are unemployable.

Seventeen year-old Nickeisha Russell has no skills. She had to drop out of Innswood High in the ninth grade after she became pregnant. She had lost both parents by the time she turned 11 years old. “They got sick and died” within a year of each other, she explained.

She has a year-old son to support and gets no support from the child’s father. Russell said her aunt helps her out, but she would like to return to school. She likes “Science and Maths”, but never got the chance to realise her true potential as her education was cut short.

But even those residents with skills say there are “no jobs” for them.

“The youth need jobs. Most of the people around here are unemployed,” one young man explained. Nearby, people sat around playing cards and dominoes in the middle of day. They had no jobs to go to, they said.

Mayor Raymoth Notice said the problem with Spanish Town is that there are too many guns and not enough jobs and educational opportunities.

It was for this reason that last year he launched a gun initiative, proposing to swap guns for education. Under this initiative, the mayor urged those in possession of illegal guns to turn them over, in exchange for a chance to learn new skills and further their education.

Notice’s initiative did not get far as he failed to pull in the required support from the national security ministry and the police.

“The social condition of those most affected by crime and violence in Spanish Town – the poor, the unemployed, the uneducated – must be addressed urgently,” said Notice.

“There has been talk of a lot of funding coming from the World Bank for poverty alleviation measures. Has any of that fund been directed to Spanish Town or St Catherine?” he asked.

He said the St Catherine Parish Council was also attempting to source funding from other non-governmental agencies to “to aid in the development” of Spanish Town.

The council, Notice said, would be moving to contact various international agencies, with a view to Spanish Town twinned with other cities overseas. This, he said, “can lead not only to revitalising our depressed communities, but aid in the development of the tourism industry, as Spanish Town has tremendous potential that has not been realised to its fullest extent”.

For 26 year-old Carlos Cato, the choice is as plain as it is simple. Young people need to make the most of their opportunities, he said. Cato, who operates an upholstery shop in the Homestead area, is a firm believer in apprenticeship, after all this was how he learned that trade.

He got to know people in business and went by every day after school to learn from them. Today, he and his business partner are giving other young people in the area a chance at employment.

Ava McCalla, the acting principal at Homestead Primary, said education is definitely the answer to Spanish Town’s problems. “The young people need skills,” she emphasised.

Basic school teacher Weir agreed. “Education is the only way out of the present crisis,” she said.