Jamaica
News - Real Estate - General (June 21, 2004)
Bridging a deep
divide
THERE IS more than a sliver of hope in
at least two recent instances of private sector action that helps to bridge what
some say is the great divide between the two Jamaicas.
The twin-nation tag has other labels such
as uptown vs downtown; inner city vs. the city at large; or perhaps, the lawless
and the law-abiding. There are no sharp dividing borders but there is a gulf in
the sense of civic pride in ownership, for example, of shacks as against
mansions in the hills of St. Andrew.
Uptowners hardly ever see the ramshackle of the
ghetto; and the reverse is mostly true. Two touching exceptions were described
in two Letters from a teenager and his teacher. Both from inner-city communities
were guests of the 'Butch' Stewart Sandals property of Beaches Boscobel on the
north coast and enjoyed for the first time the delights of resort tourism.
The two were part of a group of students from
volatile communities selected at the instance of the principal of the
Restoration Christian School of Trench Town in partnership with Sandals to spend
a day at the resort. As the teacher said in her letter, all she had ever been
exposed to is "poverty, crime and violence, teenage pregnancy, abuse,
illiteracy, and sexual immorality". Thus the group was exposed for the
first time to another side of Jamaica.
The impact on the teenager was even more
profound. He had been rescued from his earlier years of 'preaching badness' and
was enrolled in a 'Youth off the Streets' programme at the Trench Town school.
In his reverie inspired by the resort experience he came to realise that
"the book is better than the gun".
The teacher and her student saw the fun side
of the serious business of tourism; but the stark contrast with their ordinary
lives forms the gulf which political action has failed in several areas.
This Sandals act of grace is of a piece with the
more sustained involvement by that other private sector giant the Grace
conglomerate in their involvement in the inner-city communities of South Side
and Tel-Aviv in central Kingston which we acknowledged editorially last week.
And as we said then such private sector
actions are worth emulating. They can help bridge the gulf of social division in
which crime and lawlessness will otherwise thrive.
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