JUST before the last Christmas holidays I had promised “Hothead” some work. Just anything to do around the yard.

He was 20 years old, had been inside and out of reform school and had done time in prison for robbery with aggravation. Against the better judgement of all in the community who told me, “Don’t mek da bwoy deh come near yuh yaad. Him a tief and nuh wan’ work,” I still insisted that he had to be given a chance or else he would eventually go big time in criminality. Some even told me that he was involved with a group of rapists.

He didn’t show up as arranged and one day as I was driving I saw him by the side of the road in conversation with some youngsters. In the car were Chupski and our 14-year-old daughter. I pulled over and beckoned to him and he came over smiling as usual, pushed his head in the car and while I chided him for not showing up, his eyes rested on the females in the car in a most troubling way. “Yow,” I said to him. “Yuh a listen to mi? If yuh don’t want di work, tell me. Mi nuh have no time fi waste.”

I could see that my lady was quite uneasy with his head inside the car as she had to be leaning over to me. He said he would show up the next day; then just before I drove off he did one last openly lecherous survey of the female occupants and said, “By the way, I like yuh ladies.” I saw red.

I drove home and against the protest of my lady, drove back out alone to where he was. The things I said to him cannot be printed in the pages of this newspaper, but in essence I told him that I had been prepared to assist him even though people were accusing him of all sorts of wrongdoings in the neighbourhood, including rape.

A month later he had an argument with a man, brandished a knife and killed him. He was cornered by citizens and was lucky to get away with his life. The police came for him, arrested him and he did jail time before being granted bail. After bail he didn’t return to the community and instead ran away to the country. Based on his past misdeeds I am amazed that he was granted bail.

Trainer was 52, had a driver’s licence which he told me he had bought many years ago. Most days he just hung around the bars in the community until his son gave him an infamy that, were he introspective enough, he would have expected. Trainer’s son was the route taxi driver who had committed one of the most heinous crimes that I had ever heard of in my 60 years on this planet.

Like himself his son was uneducated and as poorly socialised as Trainer himself. The son had picked up a 12-year-old schoolgirl whom he knew from the district in which he operated. The plan was to take her home. Instead he veered off path, brutally raped the child, bashed in her head, and believing she was dead, buried her in a shallow grave. Miraculously the brave child recovered, dug her way out and eventually the brute was arrested.

I had spoken to Trainer afterwards and suggested a talk with him as I wanted to get inside the head of the man who produced such a monster. Time did not allow me to get that interview as last Friday night as Trainer slept, the guns came. Three shots later and he was another statistic.

I had chided Keith more than 10 years ago for having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl. Then he had told me how proud he was of having sex with her. Keith was uneducated and so was his totally unintelligent mother who had been cast in the role of parental guide for him. As a result Keith was no stranger to the inside of detention centres and jail houses.

A few months ago Keith ran a knife through a man and killed him. As a result, his mother and all of the occupants of the two houses which they occupied had to flee the rural St Andrew district of Padmore, leaving the houses empty. Ironically, one of the houses had been built by a decent man who was married to one of Keith’s wayward sisters years before. When the marriage came to its natural end, Keith and his brothers forced the man out and “captured” the house. Now the house is empty. Poetic justice?

The prime minister’s excellent budget presentation captured some of the macroeconomic realities troubling this nation, and it may also have attempted to address in a meaningful way some of the recurring social ills affecting those most at risk in the population. The fact is there are close to 900,000 Jamaicans of working age who either cannot find jobs, are unemployable or just can’t be bothered to look for work which doesn’t exist.

I see them in the communities every day. Men of 50, 60 years old, some informally trained in the artisan trades such as plumbing, carpentry and masonry who cannot get work. The young men are similarly uneducated but are more interested in fast-tracking their way to success. With no marketable skills and absolutely no idea what work ethic means, they just hang around and the prevailing guide is, “Don’t employ any young person,” because too many of them are too close to criminality.

More than 75 per cent of Jamaicans 15 years and over have never passed a single exam in their lives. Close to one million of them have to be relying on the little over a million who are working. That is about one employed to every unemployed person, close to a real rate of unemployment of 50 per cent!

And of course all of that manifests itself in the close to 500 that we have murdered since the beginning of the year while we are still in the fourth month.

I have not been watching the budget speeches on television, preferring instead to read the online copies sent. There is just something about politicians banging on desks that galls me. Sure I know it is required action, but in my mind I have to be placing the banging, the guffaws and the crosstalk of “pleased-puss” politicians alongside the realities that I see playing out in real life across this troubled nation.

It is quite foolish for the prime minister to place the blame for the illicit importation of guns on America. Jamaicans involved in this infernal venture are quite smart people who know their way around the US authorities. Shouldn’t the PM be lobbying the US for significantly more assistance in allowing us to beef up Customs and policing our coastline instead of seeming to be adding salt to the open wound that now exists between Jamaica and the USA because of the stalled Dudus extradition request?

The prime minister knows that Jamaican youngsters are locked into a gun culture. Many young men in Jamaica who eased their way through the schooling system without being affected by it get their first real burst of self-esteem when they possess a gun. They are among the close to 900,000 who have to be living on the kindness of others. At some stage generosity will run out and the poor, uneducated but proud young man with a gun is going to come, not begging; but with it sticking in your face, he will be prepared to send you to a place that you are never prepared to go.

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