Jamaica is an island shaped like a low cloud. It appears
suspended in the Caribbean Sea from the other, larger islands in the vicinity
such as Cuba to the North and Hispaniola to the North East. The island is
occasionally ravaged by hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes.
The main cultural preoccupations at the moment are political
tribalism: Green versus Orange, violence, rape the figure is thought to be that
1 in 4 women are raped during their lifetime, inner city slums, gun control,
poverty, drug abuse, drug trafficking, police corruption, government
corruption, a culture of politcal patronage, inflation, environmental
pollution, sewage disposal, tourist hassling, male indolence, the marginalisation
of the male, ignorance, the problems of
single parent families. In short a country like any other, but in some respects
more so.
It is also a country with a breath-taking landscape, an
extraordinary rich and fecund soil, bottomless resources, enormous talent and a
huge and eternal potential.
Jamaica with its rock hard violence, its soft and pliant fear, strengthened by bars. Humanity, naturally selfish and generous, thrown back to an intense gravity of selfishness. A solip[sism with a strong gravitational pull towards a centre where the self is offered up to selfsihness. A country with so many rules, which are not enforced because the people who do not need rules to become wealthy do not need them, and there are many trying to become rich without rules, many are poor. And the great majority who want rules are too kind to demand them, believing.