The mess that Half-Way Tree Square is

HALF-WAY TREE Square has always been a confluence of people from all over Jamaica. It is a storied place where people gather for a multiplicity of reasons. It is said to have got its name from a big tree under which people would rest on their journeys between downtown Kingston and Upper St Andrew. It’s still a rest stop, and for some it is where life has become a full stop.

When the city parish of Kingston outgrew itself, Half-Way Tree naturally absorbed the extra traffic, businesses and all the challenges that urban expansion brings. In 1802, Kingston was amalgamated with St Andrew as the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (the Corporate Area) making downtown Kingston the hub for Kingston, and Half-Way Tree the main business and transportation hub of St Andrew.

And what a chaotic place Half-Way Tree Square has become. From the start, the physical layout is an urban architectural disaster; it was not made for ease of pedestrian movement. And whosoever decided to make it a bus stop over the years were not thoughtful either. Those who allow it to continue to be are just as clueless.

In this small space, only pedestrian should be traipsing, strolling, strutting, looking, walking and talking. But, for decades it has been the bane of their existence.

Nelson Mandela Park itself, named in honour of the late, great South African freedom-fighter/president, is not a jewel in Half-Way Tree’s crown, nothing to write home about or make a social media profile pic. It is sandwiched by two public transport laybys, one to the east and the other to the west. At the east, it is an everlasting helter-skelter as drivers compete aggressively for passengers, many blocking other vehicles, and obstructing those who want to exit.

At the west, those ‘Coaster’ buses, their drivers, conductors and ‘loadermen’, people try as hard as possible to avoid them. The jostling, the cussing, the banshee wails, the screaming, the pleading, and the bleating some people can stand, but the moment one of them jumps into a passerby’s path, shouting,“Town! Town! Town!” is as jolting as the sight of those red metal vendors’ booths that have been defacing the historic square for several years now.

Whose ideas was it to establish them there, and why do they still exist in the ‘miggle’ of Half-Way Tree? Research on the ground revealed that no great business abounds. Some of them “lock dung”, The Gleaner was told. From others sheets of plastic and ‘trapaulin’ blow in the wind, but where is the wind of change, to blow away all the ‘bangarangs’ at the back of them?

Half-Way Tree Square is unsightly and chaotic, and is the shame of Kingston and St Andrew, though not singular in its drab, dirtiness, decadence and din. But, it is glaring, and blaring, and revolting. And the clock tower is a timeless sentinel, not only because it has been there long before ‘Whappy kill Phillip’. It doesn’t work. The hands of time have stood still, and its four faces tell poignant narratives about a place sizzling, bustling and festering under the Jamaican sun.

Jamaica is perhaps the best-known small island state in the world, for many reasons, and island pride is up, up, up. But one thing we cannot be proud of is the mess that Half-Way Tree Square is. We cannot be the best, yet, embracing that mess. And, the rats, as big cats? They don’t mind at all. But, who does? The Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation?