Ronald Thwaites | Hope amid confusion

Without appointment, Jacky insisted upon my seeing her on Friday. A young woman of many ‘experiences’ – teenage mother, street fighter, curse-word linguist, mix-up gyal innna gang business: that’s Jacky. This time, so different. She wanted me to see her in the janitor’s uniform she proudly sports in her first fortnight-long job.

To hell with COVID-19 for a moment, we had to hug. “$30,000 a month, Daddy! When last mi see dat breed a money? Mussi when mi did teef out a big man pocket after him use mi.”

This is probably Jacky’s first real job. I hope to God that she manages to keep it. “ Mi will clean out dem stinkin’ toilet if a dat dem tell mi fi do, enou.”

It’s early days yet, but if she manages to stay employed, Jacky will start to control her fertility, feed her mirasmic little son better, throw partner regularly and maybe, not now but one day soon, even stop bridge light. She will have a reason other than hungry belly to get up every morning, feel genuinely tired at night, and stop look man to feel her up in exchange for a dinner money.

Any or all of that would mark huge national progress and a life-changing experience for Jacky and her kind. Who knows, in a year or two, her employer might give her a good enough recommendation so she could get a visa to ‘go up’. We must hope, mustn’t we?

Since COVID-19, from out of our tax money, not theirs, the Government has given out a ten grand here and there and, recently, a three grand ‘care’ package for lockdown, which most likely only reach to some party stalwarts. Tell mi is lie.

GETTING PEOPLE TO WORK

It’s getting people to work that will play a major part in bringing down the cruel levels of interpersonal violence. It is jobs, even at the derisory minimum wage, that will rob the gang leaders of the ever-growing army of hungry, unattached, education-starved foot soldiers which no dastardly scheme of preventive detention or police torture can manage.

Follow Nigel, Dr Henry, Ed Bartlett, Keith Duncan and the stock market index and you could be persuaded that the economy is booming again. Just look at the high-rise construction. Trouble is that a rising tide does not lift all boats in our system. Check the vendor at the school gate, the night-time jerk-man in Montego Bay; the fish vendor in Rae Town, the flooded-out farmers in upper Clarendon. We soon get to you. Hol’ yu hunger till then. Tek dis parcel or half-bag a fertiliser. See how politician love yu. “Prassperty time”!

A jobs programme is urgently needed and eminently affordable. I remember how even the temporary Lift Up Jamaica project brought palpable peace to inner-city communities some years ago. And the garbage was cleaned, gullies bushed and some sidewalks repaired. I remember how even the quasi-slave labour of the 807 garment workers brought uplift to their children. It wasn’t enough, but it was a start.

Spending money putting people to work, reinforcing dignity and pointing to real opportunities for advancement, is the way to spend much of the national security money we are misusing elsewhere.

It is distressing beyond measure that Project Hope has recently lost its original leader and is still lacking that mere $1-billion investment which could help staunch the bloodletting and human degradation. Why?

Let us hope for more Jackys.

WHERE IS THE CONCERTED EFFORT?

Then, too, last week there was an important but little-noticed story of how the court administrator and related personnel in Hanover were managing to keep court in session safely, even as other vital public services, including other parish courts, were slowing down or stopping.

I am convinced that with zealous leadership and discipline, government offices, and especially schools, can resume efficient functioning. Where is the concerted effort? This is the time when the cynicism about the political directorate hurts most. Who to believe about the Dream Weekend and oxygen issues?

COVID-19 is deadly serious, but, also, it is being used as a pretext to justify paranoia, laziness and inefficiency. Give each school board and principal a mandate to reopen safely as quickly as possible; provide the relatively cheap resources needed; and rescue Jamaica’s future from the continuing error of fooling ourselves that virtual education will produce anything better than the dismal academic and social deficits of the past 18 months.

In this regard, every educator ought to meditate on the CAPRI report on COVID-19’s impact on education. It is a properly researched confirmation of the predicament most of us have already observed. My complaint is that the recommendations fall shy of their own analysis. Even CAPRI, along with the Government, churches, teachers and stressed-out parents, stopped short of admitting that, for most students, a year and a half of high-quality teaching and learning has been lost and that a repeat of unlearnt, part-learnt or forgotten material is the only remedy to prevent future chaos.

In a lightly paraphrased, CAPRI’s own analysis. “Children (will) not meet grade-relevant learning targets ... (the long absence from school) exacerbates previous inequities in the system ... attendance, class engagement and assessment are all affected with ongoing cumulative effect on self-actualisation, labour market participation, continuing education and becoming contributing members of society.”

There it is. Ignoring the pandemic of miseducation is worse than COVID-19, because there is no herd immunity, and we don’t have to wait for any imported vaccine to tackle this one; normalising it ‘a no nuttin’ style, or pointing the finger of blame or responsibility at everyone else, Shaggy-style, amounts to confused treachery.

Education, not entertainment, is the area of Jamaican life where the balance between lives and livelihoods is most urgent and acute.

The examples of Jacky and the Hanover court people show the rest of us the right spirit. There is hope amid confusion.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.