Strangers in 'paradise'

By Garth A. Rattray

Okay, so last year we received more than two million stopover visitors to our little 'island paradise'. But it's not paradise to everyone.

Many Jamaican children are born to teenage mothers, virtually children themselves. Their fathers are undereducated, unskilled and unemployed young men, barely into their early 20s, who spend most of their waking hours hanging out with the fellows perched on a vacant wall on a street corner. Their idle marijuana-saturated minds simply watch as people in their community go by, day by day. Visionless, hopeless, clueless, they couldn't care less.

The children are supported by grandmothers who complain as they struggle to make ends meet by selling whatever they can, wherever they can. Their mothers powder and parade them around in the evenings for others to see. Their fathers rarely contribute to or participate in their upbringing.

They grow up in yards filled with acrimony, strife, quarrels and violence. No one gives love. No one receives love. There is absolutely no love. Although their mothers conceived and brought them into this world, they often treat them like inconvenient burdens and the fathers often treat them like unwanted gifts being forced upon them.

These children become accustomed to people com-municating with angry tones and words, and violence. Unwanted, unloved, harassed by strangers, waifs in society, fearful of violence, fearful of hunger, fearful of a life with no discernible future. They learn to adapt to survive.

overlooked

They slide through the school system and are ejected, ill-equipped, into a hostile social system. Civil society is uncivil to them. Resented, reproached and rejected. They find kinship in friends with similarly miserable lives.

Their bad attitudes make people fear them. That's as close as they will ever get to garnering respect from anyone. Soon, the young men are recruited by gangs. They get guns, money, women, bling and the badness to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

To our visitors, Jamaica is an island paradise, but, to these children, the trees are not beautiful; they are just things with leaves. To them, the mountains are not majestic and verdant; they are just large hills covered with plants.

To them, the valleys are not lush and serene; they are just places where things grow and animals graze. To them, the skies are not the most gorgeous blue imaginable; they are just up there somewhere. To them, our beautiful beaches are not for fun, frolic and relaxation; they are just places to peddle illegal drugs.

They are strangers in 'paradise'. To them, there is no beauty, no happiness, no peace, no respect and no love. However, in their world, we are the strangers who alienated them, abandoned them, left them to their own devices, fear them and are virtually powerless to stop them from indirectly or directly involving themselves in criminal activities as their means of survival.

No links with society

They don't care if their criminal actions destroy our 'island paradise' because it means nothing to them. The demise of our society will only strengthen theirs. They will simply prey on the few remaining businesses and poverty-stricken citizens when our world comes crashing down.

Once grown up and in the prime of their life, the males 'father' children with teenager girls. And, although they boast that their women give them 'yutes', they will never raise their kids. Now, those children are being raised by their grandmothers. And so the cycle is perpetuated, and the two paradises are no closer to merging than they were years ago.

We talk incessantly about crime, murder, and our need to change, but we continue to do little to achieve it. Until Jamaica is an 'island paradise' for everyone, where visitors and all our citizens can fulfil their needs and be happy, we will never have peace and safety.

Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Email feedback to columnsgleanerjm.com and garthrattraygmail.com.