From daggering to daggered

Daniel Thwaites

OF COURSE, one tries to avoid speaking evil of the dead, and even more so, of those not merely dead, but killed. The murder of Dwayne Jones, the cross-dresser sliced to pieces and dumped in St James, was cruel savagery. Still I hope it's not too indelicate to question why he was flirting with disaster by publicly hitching with a man who didn't know what was going on. In all fairness, that man had set his hook for a female, but caught something different. That might be disconcerting.

Jones (I am unsure whether to say 'Mr' or 'Ms') must have known that his dance partner might himself feel violated and embarrassed to discover he had been daggering with a 'shemale'. Activists are now rightly protesting what happened. But I'm wondering if they don't see that Jones was also engaging in a profound piece of false advertisement. There's something to be said for predictability, and dancing with a girl cannot be like buying and selling currency where you have to check the underlying rate carefully everytime or else you might get jook. True or false? Thrrrooughhhhhh!

I haven't ever been in an exactly similar situation, thank God, but I did once order a snapper at Hellshire and was given a parrot instead. I was hopping mad. Mind you, it didn't even occur to me that I should want to finish off the 'fry-cook'. But that was many years ago, and I imagine life has hardened me up a little since.

Ordinarily activists encourage community action for transparency. I'm afraid that's exactly what happened here, causing this tragedy. But something that at worst ought to cause embarrassment instead occasioned murder.

What I'm pointing to is the inappropriate emotional response to Jones' subterfuge. Why are so many of us permanently ill-tempered and angry? The sad fact is that statistically the attackers of the unfortunate boy or girl have little to worry about from the police or the director of public prosecutions, even if the incident was caught on video.

One could succumb to despair except, as I will explain, for faith and hope that chicken and rice and peas can effectuate a national programme of anger management and resocialisation.

Chicken & Rice & Peas

I think the whole values and attitudes campaign of the Government is a pretty good idea, but it goes right over most people's heads. We should probably just focus on having Sunday dinner. And when I see hundreds of millions being spent for Independence celebrations, while I know there must be adequate carnival, bread and circus, and maybe even a few Christians fed to the lions, I wonder if it mightn't be better to have a national day of chicken and rice and peas rather than all the hoopla.

This is why I'm with the Church and the Reverends on banning horserace betting on Sunday. Not so long ago Sunday horse racing was completely disallowed, but then it was sold to the public that horse racing is family entertainment. Now the racket has extended to accepting bets and gambling on Sundays.

The Reverend Rennard White has told The Sunday Gleaner that he intends to "fight the good fight against this latest push to promote gambling to the detriment of family life", and is annoyed "the Government is prepared to step … into our cultural and traditional areas that we have long held sacred".

The Reverend is right. Sunday racing is likely to get in the way of church. Plus some families only get to see Daddy if the betting shop is locked. In any case, some souls who maybe don't want to go to church get a day off to be lazy, or perhaps worship nature or some other New Age Being. Yet others - sceptics, rationalists, the worshippers of mammon - get some free time to feel superior to Christians, or do whatever else it is they do while others try to touch the ineffable.

But mostly, my hatred of this Sunday racing business is because it is likely to interfere with Sunday dinner, and that, as far as I'm concerned, is a sacred national institution. I'm of the view that Sunday dinner - chicken and rice and peas (CRP) - has done more for the collective Jamaican soul and livity than almost anything else you can name or imagine.

Think about it. Jamaican culture - at least, most of the parts of it worth keeping - is handed down over Sunday dinner. The family gathers and makes conversation. We socialise at meals. We catch up with one another. We gossip. Hopefully, we learn that everyone has their burden, and that some families have children like Jones. These are occasions for learning manners, taste, conversation, hospitality, tolerance for others. At least we used to do these things before everyone was eating 'bax food', even on Sundays, and always looking at their phones.

LESSONS FROM CRP

As we know, animals feed, while man eats and sometimes dines. Our relationship to food has meanings for us. We labour to get the food, we prepare it with ritual, and we consume it in society and with ceremony. Whenever a young member of the clan is taught to offer someone else food before sharing for himself, they have become creators - not merely consumers - of family, society, and civility. All of this from CRP!

I'm not saying it has to be CRP. There are some other strong contenders and close runners-up. There is the working-class cartwheel flour dumplings and dutty gyal, but that is more a workman's fuel, so suffers the stigma. Then there's the upper-class curried goat and white rice, but that tends to be reserved for festive occasions, and suffers for its exclusivity. But CRP is right in the sweet spot, classy enough but accessible to the many. It's solidly middle-class. There is not a single Jamaican who doesn't like CRP, and it's one of the surest tests in foreign to separate the wheat and the chaff, the Jamaican and the 'Ja-fake-an'.

Anyway, Sunday gambling is a bad idea. My granny used to say:

Gi' dem ah inch, dem tek an ell

Gi' dem ah horse, dem ride it to hell!

It turns out that 'ell' is an archaic unit of measurement, the distance from the armpit to fingertips. It's not the most useful information, but I got to understand what granny was saying over CRP. By the way, now we know why the horse was riding to hell! Because first it's horse racing on Sundays, then it's gambling, then next the very Pope will be saying 'boogermanism' is OK. Wait deh? Anyway … you get my point.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D'Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.