Cabbie from Whitfield Town and St Mary

Martin Henry, Contributor

He was born in 1950, which makes him 64 this year and one of a dwindling number of Jamaicans who know 'before Independence'. In fact, Cabbie says young people laugh when he tells them that 'im know likkle 'bout slavery.

He was born and spent his childhood in the Dean's Pen-Highgate area of St Mary and at the time there were three big estates in sugar, banana and coconut covering the entire area. People worked on the estates for little and nothing, and some lived in cramped barracks on the properties. As far as Cabbie was concerned, the only difference between them and slaves was that dem get a likkle pay.

As we sped along, Cabbie described how workers packed bananas in banana trash, putting the fruit in drays drawn by donkeys to the railway station where the bunches were transferred to the train that took them to the wharf at Port Antonio for shipment. His grandfather had three drays, which he felt were the equivalent of owning trucks today. Both the banana export trade and the railway have disappeared. And sugar and coconut are a shadow of their former selves.

Cabbie had to wake up from early-early to carry water from river to drum in the yard and tie out goat before walking to school for more than a mile. No electricity. The expansion of piped water and rural electrification have been a couple of the positive developments over his 64 years.

Migrating to Kingston

Out of primary school, Cabbie migrated to Kingston and landed in Whitfield Town, a participant in the rural-urban drift seeking to escape rural poverty. He tried to learn the welding trade, but instead of being paid as an apprentice, he had to sell the cow which his grandmother had given him to pay the welder as teacher.

Cabbie had a mouthful for the wicked bosses who extract slave work out of 'prentices and teach them very little. Up to today, three-quarters of the labour force has no formal skills training or certification. The HEART Trust/National Training Agency was established 32 years ago with exactly this mandate but hasn't managed to make a big enough impact training and certification, which modern economies demand. The older formal Apprenticeship Programme, with an act of Parliament dating back to 1954 behind it, has been allowed to fall dormant and is only now being resuscitated by the Government.

Cabbie had me to know that he did constituency duties and ran errands for Portia Simpson, who came to the constituency of South West St Andrew in which Whitfield Town falls for the 1976 general election and has been winning ever since. She now celebrates 40 years in politics. But Cabbie is bitterly critical of the poor state of the constituency, which was his home base when he came to town and of the general condition of the country under the two political parties. Like many other Jamaicans, 'im done wid politics.

Working as a Farmer

Here is a man who tried every likkle thing to survive and to raise his five children - a responsible father. He was farmer, bus driver and now one-fare taxi owner/operator.

Farming didn't pay. Cabbie worked family land in St Mary, but when he pencilled it out, farming couldn't send his children to school and feed them. Despite the orations of a stream of agriculture ministers, small farming is a ticket to hand-to-mouth existence, which ambitious young people will continue to flee, as Cabbie did.

Modern scientific agriculture of sufficient scale is necessary to make a reasonable dollar. What to do with nearly a quarter-million small farmers scratching around, mostly older people among whom Cabbie would have been numbered had he not fled the scene, is the billion-dollar question which no government has had the courage or vision to answer?

From being a bus driver for years and a man on the road, Cabbie had tales of police corruption. His bus, he said, would be seized or threatened to be seized to be redeemed by a let-off. He said he could name police officers who had grown rich off the pickings, as he could name politicians who he was sure had given out guns.

Like him, most Jamaicans believe that the country is rife with corruption and people who play by the rules only get shafted. He, like most Jamaicans, believes that politics and the politicians have not served us well, and, in fact, are a big part of our problem.

Cabbie's children, and all of the modern generation, have an easier life and better opportunities, he says. Dem have water right inna di house. Light, and the opportunity to go to secondary school. But even with some subjects, most of Cabbie's children can't get employment and have joined the honest hustling class. But, thank God, the bwoy dem nuh tek up di gun.

Youth employment further grew last year to some 37 per cent, and general unemployment hovers around 14 per cent; not counting the permanent dropouts from the labour market, the underemployed, and the many who work but do not have what the ILO calls 'decent work'.

But Cabbie is self-employed. He owns and operates his own licensed one-fare taxicab. The children are raised, but things not pretty. The state of the car tells the story that income does not allow proper maintenance plus eating. And eating comes first.

My talkative cab driver from 20 minutes of conversation emerges a metaphor of Jamaican history over the last 60 years. The pride and resilience of the people. The hope and aspirations on Independence. The blighted prospects. The changes for worse and for better. And the things which remain stubbornly the same.

• DORRITT BENT

I note with precious memories the passing of Dorritt Bent on February 6, at age 90, which has been published in the obituary columns of one newspaper and as a full-blown editorial eulogy in another. I have never met her in person, but I know her quite well.

Miss Bent was one of the earliest and most ardent fans of this column who would regularly write and mail response letters long before email. And I wrote back in an intellectually and socially engaging dialogue by mail.

Martin Henry is a university administrator and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.