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Saving Miss Shantoy Lawrence
Friday, November 06, 2009
Miss Shanica Stewart, class prefect of Miss Shantoy Lawrence, the 14-year-old Cambridge High School student in need of critical heart surgery to save her life, makes a compelling point in yesterday's edition of our sister title, the Observer West.
"If everybody in Jamaica gives one dollar, just one Jamaican dollar, Shantoy can get that surgery and be saved," she says.
Her simple, yet powerfully true words imply an oft-overlooked point, namely that the solutions to the largest of problems are almost always to be found in the tiny co-operative steps that we often neglect to take.
And we're not just talking about Miss Lawrence's unfortunate situation.
We're talking about the slackness - executive and otherwise - the crime, the unemployment, the poverty, the politics of inequity and corruption and all the other social evils which are undermining our potential for progress.
If we all decided to start prioritising in terms of who and what we sponsor with a view to enhancing life for our fellowmen, people like Mr Charles Douglas, who has so brazenly vowed to continue the sleazy depiction of school uniforms in his 'Rip the Runway' fashion show, would really have to do better. We make special mention of Mr Douglas, whose reasons for defying the wisdom of our local educators are also to be found in yesterday's edition of the Observer West, because he is a symbol of much of what is wrong with Jamaica today.
Here is a man who, like most of us, must be well aware of the seeming insatiable lust that exists in this country for teenaged flesh. We see evidence of it in the statistics relating to the instances of carnal abuse, incest and other sexual crimes that are clogging the court system.
Indeed, as a man in the street, he arguably would have an even more intimate acquaintance of the 'runnings' that are commonplace among schoolgirls and the so-called 'big' men in this society.
It is within this context that we wonder at the message he hopes to send with this particular brand of perversion which has attracted no mean amount of corporate support.
According to him, the local educators are overreacting.
More frightening, there are those who agree with him.
Of course, we realise that we can't tell people what to think or how to spend their money. After all, we live in a democratic society that extends that much freedom of choice to people.
That's why we were so heartened by the many, many individuals and organisations - way too numerous to mention here - who responded to young Ms Lawrence's plight, with so much more than a single Jamaican dollar.
One lady who requested anonymity has committed to stand the cost - US$1,250 - for the Open Heart Kit, and a well-known doctor immediately made time to see and facilitate Miss Lawrence with a view to accessing the necessary resources to conduct the operation.
It is these and other like expressions of kindness that will save Shantoy in this particular case, and the rest of us in the long run.
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