Bridge

Diary, Wednesday, 17th September 1997:

Everyday people die at the hand of a violence that is essentially existential. People are at the mercy of a decision to violate, based on a decision to exclude. There were eight killings reported yesterday. In three separate incidents. Some of the killings were performed like tricks from the Anansi stories in Afro-Caribbean mythology. A group from Trench Town enticed people across the bridge for “peace talks” and then opening fire on them for no better reason than that they are “from across the bridge” in Rema Town, which borders, and is in fact part of, Trench town. A new dark age has dawned, an age ruled by the aesthetics of clear and pointless boundaries and the rich possibilities of otherness festering and breeding in small knowledge and large ignorance. Knowledge distinguishes, wisdom repairs the whole. And the bridge is no ornamental bridge, no celebration of arrival or departure, it is hardly a connection at all; no more than a little concrete slab across an insignificant gully. A Rubicon of life and death, it marks separation, it emphasises separation.