JUNGLEVUE

CHAPTER 1 Jungle in the Ghetto? In the jungle trees abound; Many creatures may be found; Rules aren’t clear and it would seem Survivors have to be so mean That if they start they will arrive, And once they win they must survive. In the jungle life is rough; Everything just seems so tough; To alter anything at all Is a task that is not small, And may require so much skill, That in the end takes all your will. The ghetto is a jungle true And there is little you can do; In the ghetto right is wrong; The one who breaks the law is strong; To get ahead you can’t be kind Or you’ll be taken from behind. Jason had just come in through the gate and was about to enter the house when he heard, “Run, run, run!” A man ran from the street through the partially opened gate and paused momentarily a few meters from Jason. He stared at Jason with what appeared to be terrified, but kind eyes then repeating his command to run, he dashed towards the back of the house, jumped over an adjoining fence and disappeared from Jason’s view. Frightened, Jason wondered why the man had told him to run, yet had not given him any reason to do so. Suddenly conscious of another sound he had vaguely heard, Jason wondered if the sound could have been gunfire. If so it was quite some distance down the road. If the man had been running from the location of the sound how could he have reached this far so quickly? As if in answer to his concerns he heard the sounds made by several vehicles moving together. One after another they came to a screeching halt near his gate and several police officers ran towards him while others ran into adjoining yards shouting “Which way did he go?” He did not stop to speculate on whether they knew the man had come into his yard. Instead Jason pointed towards the rear of the house and noticed that his finger was trembling. ******* In many of these tenement yards various social problems developed among residents. Conflicts became the order of the day and in many cases the original owners tried to relocate to areas that were less populated, such as upper St. Andrew, and later into parts of St. Catherine. The result was a rapid deterioration in the property values of many of these formerly upscale communities, which eventually became so run down and crime infested that they earned the name ghettoes. Gradually the people developed cultural practices that were completely at variance from the normal society creating suspicion, discomfort and fear within the mainstream society and inability and probably unwillingness to understand and address the associated problems. The changing fortunes of many home owners resulted in even further problems, thus over the space of several decades the face of Kingston changed drastically from a simple developing city to a complex metropolis with differing behavior patterns from one location to another. This was the scene that greeted Jason’s mother when she arrived in Kingston in the early 1960’s to get away from the rural poverty that she had experienced throughout her young life. She stayed with a family friend for two weeks while she tried to get a job as a live-in domestic helper, but after two weeks of unsuccessful search the friend asked her to leave. The friend told her that it was better to return to the country where fruit trees abounded and it was always possible to find something to eat. “In this yard,” she said, “not even grass is to be found.” In desperation Jason’s mother gave in to the first opportunity to get off the streets. The result was Jason, but the shock came when she realized that the boyfriend had nowhere to accommodate her and she was still on the street with nowhere to go. A lady saw her on the street one day and offered her a job as a domestic helper, washing and cleaning, but only for three days per week, thus it did not include living accommodation. Desperate and now several months pregnant with Jason, she gladly accepted. Her job included washing on Mondays, ironing on Wednesdays and cleaning on Fridays. At the end of the day she pretended to leave the premises, but instead hid and slept in the laundry area, which was in a separate block about twenty to thirty feet from the main house.