Living on the edge
I have spent the better part of three decades living in the Papine area of Kingston. My association with that community goes back to the late 1950s when Papine was a little village square with wooden shops and the surrounding communities mere rural villages.
Standing in Papine, one could look across at the scouts’ camping ground for which Kintyre was famous, and the surrounding residents in this rural community who were then, as it were, gracious hosts and protectors to the youngsters who would come to the camping ground and would sleep out in the open in their tents without any fear or anxiety.
This was a time also when countless groups of students and young people would be seen, usually on a Friday night, gathering in Papine to begin an overnight trek to Newcastle and onward to Hardwar Gap, or to the Blue Mountain Peak. Parents willingly gave permission for their boys and girls to be so involved because their safety was assured from Papine and through the neighbouring rural villages.
My nostalgic moment was rudely disturbed a few days ago as I drove through a section of Papine and came face to face with the reality which that community and its environs have become. From the Gordon Town Road I looked across at Kintyre and saw the cavernous reality which the Hope River bed has become and the dwelling houses in a state of partial destruction perched precariously on the banks ready to be swept away by the next flood rains.
The very sight of these homes is enough to give one the chills. One can only imagine what anxieties those homeowners and settlers must experience from living on the edge.
This situation raises a number of concerns which tend to get clouded by extraneous considerations. It is clear that some of these people bought their land from the Government and are legitimate landowners. It is also clear that when they bought these lots there was no foreseeable threat from the river. Additionally, the destruction of the watershed area in the hills had not yet taken place to the extent it has today, creating the runoff of water that is conducive to flooding of the magnitude we have seen in these areas.
The construction or purchase of a home is perhaps the largest investment any individual will make in a lifetime; therefore, for these people to see their investment and their own lives and the lives of their families hanging on by a thread must be most disconcerting and depressing. One can only hope that some kind of relocation will be possible for them so that they can get on with their lives.
At the same time, there are some settlers who have moved on to lands which were on the banks of the Hope River, all the way into August Town, and have constructed their homes on land that was not suitable for residential purposes. These persons now find themselves in a situation in which their largest investment in life, however undertaken, has been swept away or in danger of being swept away like the people of Sandy Park. They, too, live on the edge and experience heightened anxiety each time a cloud gathers overhead.
The question is, how has this come about, here and in other places?
The answer is that our municipal authorities have been ineffective in dealing with urban planning and the development of settlements. Most cities and towns in this country have no clear mapping of the community with designated residential and commercial zones and the accompanying effective and transparent mechanism to ensure that these are implemented.
What seems to take place is priority focus on a system for monitoring individual projects and ensuring that they pay the necessary fees and taxes in a very bureaucratic structure. This frustrates potential builders, while individuals carry out all kinds of construction and conversion projects in contravention of covenants and building codes, and in locations that are subject to destruction by natural disasters.
As I drive through the country I watch farmlands being subdivided and converted to residential facilities and I wonder who is in control. More relevant to the issue at hand is the unauthorised and haphazard construction of buildings leading to the emergence of our countless “informal communities”.
On a heavily traversed road like Red Hills Road, we watched dwellings being erected on the banks of the Sandy Gully in the most blatant manner but, alas, the municipal authorities never saw a thing. We, the citizens, have always had a suspicion that politicians have a hand in the development of these communities. Indeed, various denominations and public institutions have had their lands captured by invaders and found that all appeals for assistance from members of parliament and ministers of government with portfolio responsibility for such areas of concern usually went unheeded.
Even infirmaries have had their land captured and their daily operations disrupted by such forces and have received no response to their pleas for help from the authorities.
Mayor Desmond McKenzie has, in recent days, demonstrated a measure of honesty in coming forward and admitting in a public forum that the political parties have been complicit in promoting the emergence and growth of informal communities, including those that are now victims of flooding from natural disasters, as happened in the Sandy Park area and is now evident in Kintyre.
These people represent large blocks of votes which no political party is prepared to ignore or alienate. In the final analysis people’s lives and their life’s acquisitions are placed on the line in the interest of political ambition and power. Nevertheless, we as citizens must also be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have connived with these strategies of the political parties by our silence and our willingness to overlook these things because of what it could mean for the success or failure of our political party in national elections.
Having satisfied the politicians’ ambition for power, these communities — once established — are left in a state of neglect, to fend for themselves, and to be the seedbed of all kinds of social problems. It should be no surprise then that the highest concentration of criminal activity and murder is found in some of these informal communities, even after some of them have been “regularised”.
Living on the edge then becomes not just a description of the physical condition under which some people now live, but the emotional state under which residents in neighbouring communities exist.
In the 1980s when I moved back to live in the Papine area, I got the first taste of what it is to live on the edge when informal communities begin to blossom. There were many instances of intruders breaking into homes and motor vehicles. Later it became brazen hold-ups during the daytime and at nights. Every institution in the Papine area now felt the impact of this new security nightmare unleashed on this previously quiet village.
The days of quiet hikes and peaceful Boys’ Scout camps have long disappeared, and the physical degradation is only matched by the social degradation which the informal communities have brought to these previously quiet areas. While they are not on the edge like the people of Kintyre, one only has to look at the Mona Commons community (opposite the University Hospital of the West Indies) to see the legacy of social disorder encouraged by our political parties.
At the time of writing, the bulletins concerning Tropical Storm Tomas indicated that it was strengthening and that the island was likely to feel the effects of its passage. I couldn’t help thinking of the people in Kintyre on the banks of the Hope River and the various settlements on the gully banks of the city of Kingston and the stress and anxiety that they must have been under, praying that Tomas would not come our way, even as they contemplated what awaited the remnants of their homes if it did.
At the same time, I cannot help thinking that living on the edge is no respecter of persons and status. Therefore, whether landowner or squatter, the threat to life and property is the same, and whether they purchased from government or were encouraged to stake out a claim by politicians, it is now to the same political figures that they must look for a solution to their precarious existence of living on the edge.
As we think of the people on the gully banks of Kingston, legitimate landowners or squatters, and with predictions that the movement of Tomas will have the greatest impact on the eastern end of the island, we cannot lose sight of the people of Portland and St Thomas for whom the neglect of their social infrastructure is an ongoing reality.
They continue to be vulnerable to landslides and being marooned in the hills. The spotlight having shifted from the nine-day wonder of their last disaster, they too must have been in a state of anxiety as to what awaited them with the passage of Tomas.
Living on the edge is not only the reality of what it means to live on the slopes of the Blue Mountain, but what it also means to know that one’s community is at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to government expenditure.
As we face a common threat from our different social situations, it is both the hope and the prayer that private citizens, civic bodies, and governmental agencies will pull together to offer whatever relief may be necessary for those of our number who are now living on the edge.
Howard Gregory is the Suffragan Bishop of Montego Bay