Mark Wignall | Our athletic champions have lifted us high

Our lives have been twisting, turning and caught up in states of confusion in all of 2020. In 2021 in the midst of COVID-19 variants, we have been reminded that the confusion will knock on our door, push its way past us and start to spread its bed and lay up with us for the longest-ever overnight stay.

Some of us have lost our jobs and the savings have been depleted. COVID-19 has been and continues to be the culprit.

We have been locked down, locked up, given reason to break curfews and some of us have convinced ourselves that laws are best made when they are made up on the spot. We wear masks, maintain our distance, wash our hands, but many of us say to hell with all that.

How do we face the next day and not totally lose our minds? Easy, we just go to Tokyo. When we go there, we are forever lifted higher and higher by the awesome exploits of our ‘warriors’ on the track in Tokyo.

In the post-Usain Bolt period of athletics at the Olympics, we knew we could always repose our trust in our ladies. We saw them as they seemingly soared but in reality sizzled along the track and, as they did so, we grabbed a ride and made first claim on them as our own.

A man has one tin of mackerel for his dinner and Elaine Thompson-Herah chases the wind and blasts her path into a new glory. Him belly full!

Seeing Megan Tapper leap into the air as if she had just bounced from a trampoline was enough to make me feel that the plate of oxtail and beans was nothing more than an afterthought. That bronze medal in the sprint hurdles gave her wings. Shelly-Ann and Hansle Parchment told me that, COVID-19 or not, their glory and other exploits to come would sustain us all through 2021.

We have grown spoiled on the guaranteed exploits and victories of Usain Bolt. The 1-2-3 in the Women’s 100 metres dash was always ours because, if it did not happen, we would be forced to wake up from a most unpleasant dream.

After the Olympics are wrapped up, the tough realities of our lives will have to be faced. Yes, we will have to admit that we have more than a nodding acquaintance with two tins of mackerel, and we have not visited the oxtail district since COVID-19 blasted its way into our lives .

WITH COVID-19, MONEY TALKS

I have been ‘enjoying’ an enduring fantasy that, had Joe Biden been president in early 2020 when COVID-19 made its global introduction into our Iives, he would have immediately energised the efforts of all key international agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), in an effort to face down the pandemic.

It would not have given free rein to the many troubling pathologies besetting Donald Trump, especially the one which spoke to his delight at inflicting cruelty on those who could least afford to fight back.

In recent days, the WHO has issued what I consider to be a plea to the wealthier countries to ease up on booster shots, even a third one to protect their own populations, and instead “… give the world a chance to meet the director-general’s goal of vaccinating 10% of the population of every country by the end of September.” The call is for a two- month moratorium on this.

We are at the place where the rubber hits the road. Rich countries with huge pharmaceutical entities which have spent multiple millions of dollars in research and development of these vaccines have the right to expect that they will make a windfall during the time of a pandemic like COVID-19.

With all of the hopes I have for Biden to ‘do the right thing globally’, I have no idea as to the extent to which he is a captive to big Pharma. But, apart from that, although Jamaica has been seeing the vaccine stocks increase because of the generosity of some wealthier countries, plus getting stocks via our COVAX deal, supply doubts still linger.

But at some stage when the rubber hits the road again in this dangerous global third wave with various mutations known as variants, I fear that the wealthier countries will be more likely to tighten up on booster shots instead of increasing a generous hand to countries like Jamaica.

RASTA AND LONG LOCKS

If the allegations are sound that a 19-year-old woman who has worn her Rasta locks since childhood was forcibly trimmed by a policewoman at the Four Paths Police Station, the police officer should be fired and sued. So should the State and the Jamaica Constabulary Force be sued.

But, I have some misgivings or, as they would say, doubts. First, if Nzinga King was really abused in the way described by her mother, it would mean that, at the very least, there was another police person involved to ‘hold har dung.’ Probably two.

One senses that, although King did not display any signs of feistiness when her mother showed the video clip, I still could not see her sitting calmly like a sheep when it was being trimmed.

If it did in fact happen, how come there was not one single police person at the Four Paths Police Station who could look on and state stridently that a terrible wrong was being perpetrated against this Jamaican citizen? Am I naïve?

In 2002, journalist Karyl Walker (he wore locks for 21 years) was walking home from work when a police car drove up and a young policeman addressed him as “Hey Rasta boy, come yah.”

“There is no way that you could be speaking to me,” said the journalist. The matter was defused when an older policeman in the car recognised him.

“If it is really true, it was done to her to debase her and to send a message that she has no standing as human being,” said Ben Brodie, journalist when we spoke last week.’

Social media means that some people may still be poor but very few of us are voiceless.

- Mark Wignall is a political and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.