George Savage is one man who can tell, with drama, many stories about his boyhood growing up in troubled west Kingston and its environs.

Now a senior medical practitioner, specialising in the area of obstetrics and gynaecology in California, United States, Dr Savage still remembers, quite vividly, chapter and verse of gunmen firing at each other, like western movies starred by legendary actors John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, and others.

Dr Savage left Jamaica three days ago, having been part of a medical delegation that volunteered to do surgeries and train staff at St Mary-based Annotto Bay Hospital, working as members of the Jamaica Awareness Association of California, Inc; to improve the quality of life for locals.

Just finished washing his hands after his medical team wrapped up a procedure to remove a patient’s gall bladder by way of laparoscopy last Tuesday, Dr Savage, with broad smiles when his roots were revisited, poured out the anecdotes, hardly missing a comma here or a full stop over there even after such things occurred well over 40 years ago.

“I was born in Greenwich Farm [Town], lived in Rema [Wilton Gardens] at 2a Sixth Street, which is the borderline between Rema and Jungle [Arnett Gardens], then moved to Denham Town. I could look out my back window and see Ambassador Theatre,” he reminisced.

“I used to look through my window too and see people shooting after one another. People fighting for property they did not own,” said Dr Savage, who ended up in Portmore, St Catherine, before he landed in South Bronx, New York, following primary school at St Alban’s, and Camperdown High for secondary studies at a time when the east Kingston school dominated schoolboy football, what with Errol “Mr Blake” Blake, Peter Cargill, Barrington Gaynor, Nyron Prawl and others at the top of their game, under the leadership of Principal Geoff Brown.

“When you are a child, everything was dangerous to you, so when you see someone with a gun it’s really frightening, although that person is not going after you at all. So you would see a man with a gun running to shoot at another man and you are afraid because they are coming towards you with the guns. But they are not bothering you because you are a little youth. I found out years later that the fear I had as a boy was not a real one,” he stated to the Jamaica Observer.

But how serious a danger did living in the west during the 1970s and early 1980s pose to his life?

“There was always an element of danger. My father lived down the street and I had a lot of brothers, so I never really, as a kid, other than the fear of getting a stray shot, didn’t feel that I was in serious danger because I just knew where to go.

“But it was scary when the shots were flying and you don’t know where they are coming from, even if you are not in the direction where they were shooting. So it was a regular thing to look through the window and see people shooting at one another.

“That time they had .38 Special guns because there were no machine guns in those days. You could just see men dancing and shooting at each other. Like five guys from Jungle shooting after five other guys from Rema, it wasn’t pleasant to watch it but you just watch it. It wasn’t a comedy show but we eventually moved from the borderline house when the war got bad, down to Denham Town, about eight blocks away.

“But then you had another set of gunmen coming down that time when I lived in Denham Town. There were guys like Starkey and Daney who would come down to Denham Town every Sunday, kill somebody and drive back up. My father knew them. My father would be standing at the corner of Elgin Street and Greenwich Road with his lady, and Daney would drive by, say hello to him, he says hi to them, they drive down, kill a guy, drive back up, say hi to my dad on the way back and go back up to where they were coming from.

“They knew who they were killing. Every Sunday morning someone was going to die and as a little kid I was wondering, if you know that you were on this list, why would you not leave?”

Both gangsters mentioned by Dr Savage were killed eventually, one in Jamaica, the other in the United States.

“I remember the two of them to this day driving a Honda 50 motor bike across Rema, Denham Town, Jungle, and another section, so when one set of firing is coming from one side, another is going on at the other side; and then Denham Town in problems with Tivoli Gardens.”

Having got over the constant warring in the west, and settled in Portmore before hopping off to the USA, it was not a difficult decision for him to determine what he wanted to pursue as a profession.

“I just thought that the best profession to be in was medicine and becoming a doctor. What were my obstacles? … I’m black, I’m poor, I’m short, I’m ugly, so what could I become? What could prevent me from becoming what I wanted to be? That’s what I said to myself. And I said I could become a doctor, so I removed those obstacles and became a doctor. I just did it. I didn’t have very many choices. I could be a bum, or a drug dealer, or I could just go to school and see how it pans out, but I chose medicine.”

He maintained contact with friends and relatives in Jamaica for a while, but over time, some died, while others emigrated, so the contact numbers dwindled.

“I had this one friend from primary school and I used to send money to him every month for 25 years,” Dr Savage revealed. “I stopped recently, about five months ago, because he became very abusive. I used to send him US$100 every month. He is not a criminal or drug dealer, but he managed to stay out of harm’s way, living at the same house that I know him when we were 10, with family members.

“At one time he was telling me about the crime situation and that he couldn’t walk one block from his house down the road. The blocks are really so small, and because there was a war between Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town, he couldn’t walk one block in a certain direction for 15 years because someone would say he is an informer and come kill him.”

Now living in California, Dr Savage works in a FQHC — a Federal-funded programme where the federal government gives money to take care of people who are uninsured. Nearly 90 per cent of his patients are Spanish-speaking. “They are really nice people, great patients, you just treat them and they go. They are very thankful.”

“What’s interesting about them is I saw a lady once and she was about 40 years old and had an ankle bracelet on. I said what kind of crap is this? So I asked her if she was on parole and she said no, it’s an immigration bracelet, because she is seeking asylum. So she has the bracelet on her ankle and if she isn’t granted asylum, then they know where to find her and deport her. I did not know they had that system until the lady told me that,” stated Dr Savage.

Although he is far away in California, about an hour’s drive from Sacramento, Dr Savage keeps in touch with the St Alban’s school, located on Auburn Street in Kingston, by providing scholarships to needy students.

The scholarships go to those who are transitioning from grade six to first year in high school.

“For several years now, I pay for tuition and books. There are like probably 25 students each year, and I give one girl a five-year scholarship through high school, including books, just to make a difference.”

Added up, the project costs him around US$10,000 annually (around $1.5 million). Depending on the numbers leaving St Alban’s, whatever is left rolls over to students of Denham Town Primary, with usually 10 scholarships

Whatever is left over if the numbers at St Alban’s are lower, he pays for 10 students (first-year tuition) at nearby Denham Town Primary in the movement to high school.

Before now, nobody knew that he provided the scholarships, apart from the principal, and he has never met the recipients.

“I am not looking for notoriety,” Dr Savage quickly pointed out. “What we used to emulate as kids were the drug dealers and the guys with the guns as they get all the girls and appear to have all the money but that only happened for a couple years before they end up dead.”

And as for his association with the JAAC, this year marks three years of membership, following the earlier urgings by his mother to become a part of the charity.

“My mother has been with JAAC for a number of years and she kept telling me, ‘hey, you should join JAAC.’ I had been very busy, so finally I got tired of her nagging me. I am not sure who filled out the application, but here I am,” stated Dr Savage, who now sits on the board of the charity that has donated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment and service to Jamaican institutions over the last three decades.