THE south coast road continues apace with demolition on all fronts. My little community around the Wicky Wacky, Cable Hut and Brooks Pen beaches has taken a hit, and land has been seized in the name of progress. With the demolition of so many memories and the total absence of consultations with the community, all I can say is: It’s a good thing that I have pictures and have not yet got old enough to forget the good times in Bull Bay.

I remember the pinball machine at Walsh’s bar, beside Cable Hut beach, before Mr Walsh was murdered in the early days of the Jamaican war on itself. I remember “TC” who was also murdered one night after closing his bar beside Brooks Pen Beach, years later. I remember our little group lining TC’s bar one Friday night with red stripe bottles as they were consumed because we could. We were working and had just graduated from the then College of Arts Science and Technology now University of Technology, Jamaica.

I remember when Copacabana was a place where people from Kingston came to spend weekends in their homes on the beach, until a homeowner, who had left the island, returned to find his entire house stripped of plumbing and electrical fixtures and fittings. I don’t know what happened to him ut Copacabana was never the same after that.

Then there was Paradise Cove, the place to have a beach party and swim in the pool when the sea was too rough. We worked on the pool ladders to earn some extra money one summer and I can tell many stories about sneaking out to parties down there, even having my own production with a sound system called Black Terror. And, if you went to Paradise Cove and didn’t know Jacko next door you weren’t looking – that famous place with the rooms draped in red velvet and perfumed by stale beer. The memories are a sentinel, watching over times long gone. Even the police station has been displaced.

My memories of Bull Bay are the story of my childhood – Cane River Falls, the Bobo dread, and the broom man. I remember when the road from Bull Bay to Papine was actually a road and people could drive to Papine if the road at Jamaica Flour Mills was rendered impassible. All I have to show now are memories, and I have probably forgotten a lot more. I also remember Romeo, who was rumoured to have been killed because he took food out of a pot. We all used to play on the beach between Cable Hut and Brooks Pen, while Billy Wilmot tuned up his guitar and mastered the waves on the Copacabana shoreline – all that, now gone.

Now we have a brand new four-lane highway, which we must cross to get from the rest of the world to the beach. High concrete walls now block the view of the sea; I guess it would distract the passing motorists, because who could possibly want to stop in Bull Bay? The Government has also provided the traditional three-foot-wide sidewalk with light poles to provide light for the community.

The quarry at the bridge, 7 ½ miles out of town, has removed several million yards of limestone, cutting down the hilltop overlooking the river. I understand that the operators are carrying out the extraction based on the guidelines of their lease agreement. They will probabaly continue until there is a clear view from the mouth of the river, whose name I can no longer recall, to Papine.

So, as time goes by in Jamaica the past is being replaced by concrete, and our young people are creating their own history. The history of their parents and ancestors will be lost to the weeds, and pirate politicians will take credit for things and ideas they had no hand in creating or achieving.

The Chinese, who are responsible for the construction of the highway, have no memory of Bull Bay when it was a community of everybody and most people knew each other. They are there to build a road and that is what they are doing.

Anyway, most of the people I grew up with in my little corner of Bull Bay have either migrated or left the area to more pleasant surroundings — overseas or uptown. None of them have plans to return; they, perhaps, wouldn’t recognise it anyway.

Jamaica today is all about foreign direct investment and tourists. The leaders plan to build million-room hotels because all Jamaicans are going to be available to be servers, busboys, and housekeepers. Whoever is not working at one of the million-room hotels can always get a pass from a Member of Parliament to go abroad to do farm work. That is all the Government has to offer us.

Our young men and women have become excellent scammers and hustlers. Our criminals are running rings around the politicians who can only dream up more states of emergency and new cities for the Chinese to build, because we cannot build anything for ourselves. Our leaders, throughout the years since Independence, have continued to bombard us with low-skill, low-wage jobs. But we can do better and we must. But first, we must elect leaders who serve the people and put the country above the party and their personal legacy.

Of our leaders I ask: Now that you have destroyed the fragile community of Bull Bay, what is the plan for the community, its business places, playing fields, and homes which have been displaced by your highway? You did not provide the space or support for any of the businesses that serviced the community yet you have come in to cut and carve the space, to suit what purpose? Where are the open spaces for mothers and fathers to take their children for walks in the evenings, talk to their neighbours, or just relax after a hot day of working in one of the your million-room hotels for very low wages? How about offerring some financial assistance to the owners of properties on the beaches at Eight Miles?

I grieve for my little town of Bull Bay and the fact that strangers are removing our history and replacing it with nothing we know or want. They never even asked us what we wanted or needed, and I can only imagine what the people in White Horses, Grants Pen, and Albion have on their minds. The hurtful part, after this massive roadway displaces the community, is that the leaders will not be seen until the next election, promising what they cannot achieve based on their past performance, promising that we are going to get more work in one of the million-room hotels, and promising a ticket to one of the new business process outsourcing (BPO) plantations in the cities.

Jamaica needs good roads, not super highways with tolls that our economy cannot sustain. The roads that require rehabilitation are the ones in farming communities throughout theisland.

All told, Jamaica not only needs a national spatial plan, but also a Marshall plan. We need people with a vision for the country and not only a vision for political parties headquartered on Belmont and Old Hope roads.

Hugh M Dunbar is an architect. Send comments to hmdenergy@gmail.com