Mark Wignall | Dangerous professions in Jamaica

Thirty-four-year-old Bridgette is bright and is good at what she does. Teaching. After years of living hand-to-mouth, literally battling students in the Kingston 13 school where she was employed, she called it a day, secured her American visa and went to work alongside her sister in Brooklyn.

A few months ago she returned for a brief spell, and we spoke. “Imagine me looking after elderly people in a foreign country, cleaning them when they mess up themselves and forcing to make a smile on my face. Two things drove me from teaching.

“If I saved until I reached 50 I still would not be able to afford a house. Two, if I remained in the system I probably would end up murdering a student,” she said as we sat in a bar sometime in 2021, and she related to me the physical interactions she had with male and female students.

Last week, I listened to a radio interview with Winston Smith, head of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association. Smith was taking no prisoners as he supported more than the idea that when teachers were faced with violence by students they had to defend themselves. It wasn’t an ideal that purists in the society wanted to hear, but what other option was available?

It occurred to me that in the societal decline that upset the talking points of politicians, there are jobs or means of employment in Jamaica that only the brave and the foolhardy would tackle. So here is my list of some of the most dangerous jobs in Jamaica.

Fisherfolk. Sometimes it is a woman, but most times it is a man living somewhere on the south coast. He and partners leave out at 4 a.m. in a one- foot boat powered by a single screw engine. If all goes well, they will return after retrieving their pots five miles out of port. Sometimes there is a diver with a speargun hunting for the high-priced fish. Each time they return, the household breaks out in prayer.

Police on night patrol in hot inner-city pockets. A police van, narrow roads with zinc fence outlets. The sound of sporadic gunfire in the unknown distance. Sometimes a shot or two of white rum makes it easier. But most times the gunmen have the upper hand as the late night ‘rats’ track them with cell phones and alert their cronies.

Taxi drivers working on graveyard shift. “Every time mi pick up a man and him tell mi sey him a go somewhere below Cross Roads mi just sey maybe is a robbery a go dung or worse. Two time it reach me, but mi skin get tougher as mi only have one young pickney lef fi go through school, “ one taxi driver said.

And, of course, the teaching profession must join that infamous list.

RE-EXAMINE RULE BY THE DON

The most infamous don that has ever existed in Jamaica was Christopher Michael Coke, also known as Dudus, or Presi, or simply the President.

I was introduced to him sometime in 1999 while I was at a party kept at the community centre in Tivoli Gardens. At that time when a friend led me over to him and said, ‘Meet the president,’ I shook his hand and grinned. I had no idea of that title for him even though a building in the centre had Presidential Click painted on it.

I left the party after midnight with about five individuals. We stopped a bar in Kencot for a nightcap. ‘So who is this president fellow?’ I asked.

The man who had introduced me to him was surprised. “Then Mark, yu neva know sey a Dudus dat!”

It was said that Dudus ruled downtown with an iron fist. “He looked after old people in the community, and inside Tivoli, no one had any need to shut their doors at night,” said a man who had strong Tivoli connections. That man lived in the posh Kingston 6 region.

The present crime situation in Jamaica has moved some people at street level to conclude that government by normal and legally constituted means has failed the society. “Look how downtown bruk out and is pure dog a eat dog now. Dudus did bring order in di system,’ said one man to me a few weeks ago.

“So are you saying that rule by the iron fist is appropriate and that we should turn over the country to dons?” I asked.

“But Mark, what is taking place downtown now is chaka-chaka criminality. Normal government can’t run that.” I tried to point out to him that not because this country has not yet found that magic spot of good governance does it mean that we must revert to governance by criminal means.

“Dudus used to mek sure dat pickney go school. Now, pickney jus a do dem own ting. Whey di government dey? America tek di man and gi wi what left. Yu si all da video a schoolboi a rough up teacher? Dudus would a gi him a good beating and set him right fi life.”

TRUMPISM MUST BE DESTROYED

Last Wednesday, on the eve of the public testimony of the House Select Committee on the January 6, 2021, attack on American democracy, the dangerous Donald Trump was praising the violence and parsing it as a great happening. Surely this man deserves to be in prison.

But as I have already stated, the people in the US are so divided on this issue brought on by the constant lies he has promoted that it is likely that the needle will not move much on convincing a majority of voting-age Americans that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and should never again be given the chance to run again for president.

And if the Democrats insist that they cannot play dirty like the Republicans then America will face a threat that runs the risk of derailing its democracy and introducing an age of anarchy for at least the next decade.

Troubling times are ahead.

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