RANT ALERT: I have lived on the same short residential street for fourteen years. It has never been blessed with a smooth surface, but over the past several years, our road has deteriorated significantly. Personally, I am fond of the potholes as they slow down the reckless taxi drivers who use our road as a short cut, but after the 2017 rainy season, the potholes were craters. So about a week ago, I was happy to hear the noise of road construction outside. There was a road crew, I assume from the National Works Agency (NWA), although I don’t remember branding on the equipment or any Men At Work signs, and they cut the irregular craters into shapes approaching squares and rectangles. They dumped the waste asphalt on the verges and plantings. I spoke to one crew member and he assured me the waste asphalt would be removed. The pothole shaping took roughly two days. Then the men filled the holes with marl and tamped them down. And you already know what happened next – the work crew evaporated. And then it rained. Now, the regularized holes, to coin a term, are back to being craters and will have to be filled with marl again, IF, and it’s a big if, the crew returns before natural forces complete their efforts at transforming road into river bed. And I’m fairly sure the waste asphalt will remain on the verges for all time, colonized eventually by the defiant weeds of the tropics.
 
It was a small job, but I’d guess it’s going to cost twice what it’s worth and take three times as long as it should, if indeed it is done at all. And we see this all over the island – waste, failure to plan, poor workmanship, incompetence, hopelessly inefficient logistics. This is why the recurring ‘lack of resources’ argument as an explanation for the spreading ramshackle around us rings so hollow.
 
Nor is the failure to deliver confined to the state. Over the past four years, I’ve been involved in moving and renovation – first the Jamaica Environment Trust’s office, then my home, then my sister’s home. I’ve dealt with every possible type of general contractor – large companies and small ones – and a host of individual skilled and semi skilled workers, such as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters, masons and labourers. I’ve dealt with designers, makers of curtains, cushions and slipcovers, air conditioning and refrigerator technicians, furniture and appliance companies, grill and window contractors, washing machine installers and roofers. NO ONE was able to deliver the agreed job on time and on budget. While reasonable work, sometimes even excellent work, was delivered in the end, it was achieved only after endless, frustrating and occasionally hostile follow up.
 
Sometimes the problem was the weather – if you’re working outside, a torrential rainstorm is indeed a hurdle. But the weather was a problem even when the work was inside. And virtually no work crew could start on time – say, 8.30 A.M. – which would have yielded at least a few hours of work before the afternoon rain began.
      
The worst problem was when task A depended on task B being completed first, or even more problematically, tasks A and B being done at the same time. Assembling three different contractors at the same time to complete a job was about on par with getting a result of any kind from the American Congress.
 
What does all this mean for our development aspirations? We easily embrace a narrative of Jamaican exceptionalism – our country is the most beautiful, our people the most creative, our athletes unbeatable, our musicians the very stars in the firmament. The truth, however, is that whatever our innate and abundant talents, we squander them in lack of seriousness; in failing to understand the value of what Norman Washington Manley called “fixity of purpose and commitment to the task.”  
 
(I think it was NWM – could not find the quote on the internet. Relying on shaky memory. If he didn’t say it, he should have!)
 
Make a plan. Cost it properly. Anticipate predictable hurdles like bad weather. Show up on time. Speak to customers when there’s a delay of whatever kind. Apologize for failures. Don’t cut corners. Deliver. It doesn’t sound so hard.
 
Here are the consequences of our lack of fixity of purpose: There’s work undone at my house, which means jobs and income for some, but I’m too frustrated to bother with it.  
                

I’m a person of the long game. When I was a teenager, I made a list in a tiny orange notebook of all the things I wanted to do in my life. My list included ridiculous aspirations such as “learn to play a musical instrument” (I’m tone deaf), physical challenges - “climb Mt Kilimanjaro”, travel plans “go around the world with a backpack and write about it”, the canons of literature I wanted to read, the books I wanted to write and the works of art I wanted to see. It wasn’t entirely selfish – “educate a child not my own” was in there, but it was mostly selfish. And I’ve recently realized the main reason why I find this time of life difficult – it’s time to let go of the long game.
 
I found the orange notebook when I was clearing out my desk at JET. And I threw the list away.
 
Now, I thought, it is the time of the present.
 
All my life I’ve saved money, even in periods when I’ve been very short of it. And I had categories of savings – Savings To Be Touched (for travel or big ticket items, for example) and Savings Not To Be Touched (for those events which blindside, like illness). How difficult it is to decide now I can spend all of my income, whatever it is.
 
All my life I've learned how to defer gratification – study for the better job, get up groggy in the dark to write novels, build an institution, slowly, slowly. Sacrifice now for later. How difficult it is to decide that now I’m not going to wait. Now is the time to do whatever I want to do, whatever I’m capable of doing. Climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, I regret, will not be possible. Nor, perhaps, the world trip with the backpack.
 
All my life I’ve made lists. I make lists of tasks I have already done, just to see them crossed off. When I left JET, I threw away ten years of “to do” lists. I did look back at them, I confess, and I did enjoy that simple evaluation of a life – I set out to do this, and I did it. Or I sort of did it. That one, I never got to. It is true there were more ticks than crosses. Now is the time to abandon list making.
 
There will be a time ahead for the past, when the present is fuzzy and dull and confusing and lonely and likely painful in multiple ways, and my mind will turn to the long past. I’ll bore relatives and friends with accounts of childhood and young adulthood, you know, what Jamaica was like when. I know I have those muscles because I’m already using them. I can tell in the slight eye-rolling from young listeners; the under-the-breath response – yes Diana, you already told us that.
 
Much has been written about the benefits of a commitment to the present; most of which has elicited my own eye-roiling at the pop psychology that has attended that philosophy.
 
But in her book, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Rebecca Solnit quotes Virginia Woolf: “The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think.” Solnit: “Dark, she seems to be saying, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future’s unknowability into something certain, the fulfillment of all our dread, the place beyond which there is no way forward. But again and again, far stranger things happen than the end of the world.”
 
Giving up the long game does not mean abandoning the future or relinquishing hope. It is about letting the future come to you, find us, find me here, in this moment, happily in the present, a moment which, in my case, on this morning, includes the sun on my neighbour’s bearing ackee tree. I know some of the opened ackees may fall on our side of the fence or they may not and we may or may not eat them. That is ahead. This morning all they are, everything they are, is beauty and bounty against the bluest of skies.     

“Taxi and bus drivers lead rush on last day of ticket amnesty”, ran the Gleaner headline on January 14.

jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20180114/taxi-and-bus-drivers-lead-rush-last-day-tax-amnesty

But it was the accompanying photograph that caught my attention. The caption read, “Donovan Sterling displays ‘a trailer load a traffic tickets’ that he had picked up and was trying to pay before the end of the traffic amnesty yesterday.” Mr. Sterling was smiling with his tickets; evidently happy to have his photograph taken. His tickets were said to stretch for 30 feet when laid in a row. The Gleaner story also described a certain boastfulness displayed by some of the public transport operators regarding the number of unpaid tickets they had amassed. I could imagine the conversation: “Ten ticket yu get? You nah sey nuttn, man! Is 35 mi get!”   
 
When I took my driving test at 19 and after a five-minute road test, the instructor took me into an office alone and gave me a rambling speech about this driving test thing being a really simple matter. I was too naive to understand what he was getting at, so after many minutes of him specifying and me staring blankly at him, he told me I had failed the test. Older relatives later explained what was really going on. Then, during my years in insurance, I frequently dealt with claimants who could give no account of their driving test - they did not know what they had driven, which depot they had gone to, and they could answer not a single question of the written test. The solution back then was said to be privatization of the Island Traffic Authority, which, naturally, was never implemented. Now, I see the Minister of Transport and Works, the Hon. Mike Henry, suggesting that a merger of the ITA and the Transport Authority will fix the problem.
 
James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
 
We need to face what the recklessness on Jamaican roads really means and causes. It means we have no respect for one another, not even for our own safety. This is not a quirky aspect of our culture, not evidence of Jamaican manhood, not mere exuberance, not a charming display of our famous laid-backness. It means driving in Jamaica is outright dangerous, whether you are driver or passenger, in a private car, taxi or bus. It means we are angry or fearful or both whenever we use the roads, which can lead to confrontations and even violence on and off the roads. Pedestrians face particular risks – there are few places where they can get across roads safely. Drivers of public passenger vehicles display utter disregard for the rules of the road. Nice, straight roads encourage speeding – I’m not sure we’re ready for highways, really. Traffic tickets mean nothing – you don’t have to pay them on time, the points do not accumulate, licenses are not withdrawn no matter how egregious the offenses, avoiding a ticket entirely is easy once the right paperwork (wink, wink) is handed over, and if all else fails, just wait for the next amnesty. Car accidents happen everywhere in the world, but more people are killed and injured when other commonsense rules are not obeyed – like not overcrowding buses, not overtaking around corners, not leaving unlit vehicles on a dark road at right, keeping vehicles in proper repair. And while the deaths tend to be reported in the media, often using the same kind of grisly countdown that attends the murder rate, traffic accidents not only kill – they compromise livelihoods, disable people, ruin their lives, and burden the public health system.
 
The recklessness on our roads is a failure of law enforcement. This is what needs to be faced. While it is certainly true that too many Jamaicans drive badly, this behavior has not happened overnight – it has happened over many decades, because there have been no consequences. This must be the last traffic ticket amnesty ever offered and the problems with the enforcement system, including the associated corruption, must be fixed once and for all.             

On January 5th, 2018, two unlicensed “robot” taxis collided, killing four and injuring five. Reckless speeding and overtaking were cited as the cause of the accident. Between the two drivers, they had incurred a total of 62 unpaid traffic tickets.
www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Drivers_in_deadly_robot_taxi_crash_have_62_outstanding_tickets_combined_?profile=1228
 
Following is part of a column I wrote for the Gleaner on June 14th, 1998. 1998, people. Twenty years ago.   
 
“There a clipping in my file of things-to-write-about from The Gleaner of January 31, 1998. The caption reads, “Bus Driver Admits to 39 Breaches of Traffic Laws.”  According to the Gleaner, the 28-year-old bus driver, Philip Raymond, had committed ’every possible breach’ of the Road Traffic Act. Raymond’s breaches included disobeying red lights, failure to stop at a school crossing patrol, not stopping at bus stops, ignoring unbroken white lines, careless driving and dangerous driving. Mr. Raymond was in court for his traffic transgressions because he had finally killed a man.
 
“On October 29th, 1996, Paul Mattocks, a graduate student of the University of the West Indies, drove his car down Red Hills Road and was about to cross over onto Constant Spring Road. Mr. Raymond, driving a public passenger bus, presumably filled with people, although The Gleaner story did not say so, began overtaking traffic at 50 miles per hour and slammed into Mr. Mattocks’ vehicle, pinning it against the wall at Brooklyn Supermarket. Mr. Mattocks died as a result of his injuries, and Mr. Raymond was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving. His drivers’ license was also suspended for 15 years.
 
“Not that the latter point is of any importance. To quote Justice Pitter, bus driver Raymond, clearly ’has a total disregard for law and order.’ Given Jamaica’s present climate of anarchy and lawlessness, once Mr. Raymond emerges from prison, he will no doubt continue to drive with or without a licence. And just as the police allowed him to amass 39 traffic breaches without taking any action, Mr. Raymond will in all likelihood continue to threaten the lives of other road users. Mr. Mattocks died a victim of the ineffectiveness of our law enforcement system.
 
“Indeed, the police have just admitted they are unable to serve the however many warrants for arrest issued for those who have not surrendered their drivers’ licences, having accumulated the necessary number of points under the much-lauded ticketing system. I used to be a member of the National Road Safety Council and when the ticketing system was introduced, I remember asking how it was going to be monitored. I was told some version of don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head. I remember when the number of suspended licences reached the dizzy heights of ten, and still the arrest warrants had not been served, asking again how this was going to be addressed. More fluff. When I went on to express the view that the ticketing system was a waste of time and money, because the penalties for accumulation of points would never be applied, I was accused of undue cynicism.”
 
May 2012: A Portmore bus driver involved in an accident that killed a school boy had 85 outstanding traffic violations. 
jamaica-gleaner.com/power/37499
 
July 2012: The Jamaican government offered an amnesty for “hundreds of thousands” of unpaid traffic tickets. The records were found to be inaccurate as many fines had in fact been paid. 
jis.gov.jm/over-60-of-almost-340-million-from-traffic-ticket-amnesty-collected-on-final-day/ 

September 2017: Another traffic ticket amnesty was offered, expiring January 13, 2018. 
 jis.gov.jm/get-the-facts/traffic-ticket-amnesty-2017/

The only reasonable conclusion is that the Jamaican government regards the issuing of traffic tickets as a revenue generating exercise and they have no intention of enforcing the traffic laws. And those who are killed or injured by reckless drivers in breach of those laws are considered collateral damage.    
 
 

I got my first job at eighteen, having dropped out of an A-level college in the UK. (Long story. Youth is wasted on the young, and all that.) On my first night home, my father said: what are your plans? Because you can’t stay here rent-free. I negotiated a three-month rent-free period with him, while I did a secretarial course, and then started work. Apart from two other periods of study and about six months as a stay-at-home mother after my son was born, I’ve worked all my life. Now, retirement. Days without the discipline of study or work outside the home. Nights without the churn of work-related angst.   
 
It’s early days yet – Day 7 of what I call Real Retirement, since I was on half-time at the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) since September 1. But at the end of 2017, I really retired. I’m no longer the Chief Executive Officer of JET. And I’m not sure who I am without work.
 
The pluses:

• Breakfast at 10am. I’ve always written early in the morning, but my writing time has been constrained by the need to leave for work, regardless of how the writing was going. Some days I was overjoyed to leave my substandard efforts on the page, other days my words wanted to hold onto me. But now I can stay with what I’m writing as long as I want, whether I have written ten words or a thousand, until hunger or backache makes me get up.
• No driving during peak traffic periods. No superlative quite covers the relief of not having to navigate heavy Kingston traffic. (But might I become a hermit? Might I soon refuse to go anywhere??)
• Rest. Even if I sleep poorly, there is the couch, now available for a nap anytime during the day. I do love my couch.
• Reading. Oh the joy of being able to read, anytime, all day if I want to. It’s interesting that I haven’t bought any new books, but I’m re reading the books I’ve loved most in my life. They’re old friends I haven’t seen in a while.  

 
The minuses:

• The lack of a regular paycheque. Needs no amplification. Now, I’m preoccupied with the vulnerability of older people in a country with few social services. I notice old people on the street more. I’ve worked for 46 years, made what investments were possible on a salary, won some, lost some, saved what I could, but no amount of diligent saving can finance decades of life post retirement, particularly if one is in poor health. Of course, I might not have decades but few of us get to die at exactly the right time.  
• Interacting with other people. However much we might think our work colleagues are annoying, however much we might complain about them, work is a social space. I miss the Jetters. Especially when I am trying to do something on a computer!
• The lack of a purpose, something bigger than myself, the feeling of being part of a movement. My brain needs something to delve into, and there is no shortage of possibilities, but my personality also needs a course of action. Work gave me a platform from which to act.

 
The surprises:

• Being at home is not particularly quiet or peaceful! I thought it would be, but every day brings noise of some kind – lawnmowers, water pumps (including ours), weed whackers, generators, garbage trucks, cesspool emptiers, motorcycles, sirens, dogs barking, the hammering, drilling and pounding of home improvement projects. You live in a city, I remind myself. But being in an air-conditioned office was much quieter. And I’m sure I’m going to yearn for an air-conditioned office in the heat of summer. (Yes, yes, I’ve heard of global warming and the need to reduce emissions from power plants…)       

 
The fears:

• For how long will there be new things to look forward to? Is “old” really a pejorative? What about words like “crone”? And the losses to come – how will I cope with those? (I can hear my son’s voice clearly – you’re not 80, Mom! Too soon to think about these things.) But I’m a person of the long game, I’m a look ahead, make-a-plan person. When my sisters decide we’ll go on a trip next year, I’m the one calling on January 3rd to make a plan. They’re the ones rolling their eyes.

 
Oh look. It’s lunchtime. Time to investigate the fridge. Is making my own lunch a plus or a minus? Stay tuned…       
 

I was taken to Palisadoes strip as a toddler by my grandmother and great aunt to watch the sunset and it was there my love for Jamaica-the-place was born. It was also where my environmental journey had its genesis – an adult visit there with a house guest, revealing that the shining beach I held dear in memory had become a garbage dump.

For any non-Jamaicans reading this, the Palisadoes strip (more correctly called a tombolo) is a narrow strip of sand holding Kingston Harbour in loose embrace, its origins unknown. According to a 2005 paper by Prof. Edward Robinson and Deborah Ann Rowe of the Marine Geology Unit at UWI, the spit is probably about 4,000 years old. Port Royal was once an island among a group of small, sandy cays until early coastal engineers added wooden palisades to the cays to trap the sand of the longshore drift, building up the spit eventually called the Palisadoes. Always part land and part sea, Palisadoes came and went over millennia, nourished by sediment from the Hope and Cane rivers, torn away by storms, rent by earthquakes, ever in motion. In 1772 a hurricane with a five-metre storm surge made Port Royal an island again and breached the spit in five places. During the 1860s, a foolish attempt to plant 20,000 coconut trees resulted in the clearing of all the native vegetation – not a single coconut tree survived. In the 1950s, following Hurricane Charlie, the so-called groyne field was built to defend the narrowest part of the spit by an engineer called Makepeace Wood, who ended up in a mental institution after he wrote to the Queen suggesting he knew how to stop the erosion of the White Cliffs of Dover. His permeable  groynes became known as Jamaica groynes and were built all over the world – you can see them on many beaches here, often in ruin.

For nearly sixty years, the groynes protected the thin part of the Palisadoes, men fished from them, the Palisadoes road was built, widened, the airport was constructed, and the road led through sand dunes and cacti and wetlands to the by then quiet fishing town of Port Royal. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, vendors sold jelly coconuts, wiry men raced along the road on bicycles, lovers went to see the sunsets and people walked along the beach, sometimes hand in hand with their children.    

Palisadoes ought not to be romanticized, however. This is a piece of land which has seen rape, pillage and plunder, the wreck of ships, the hanging of pirates and the crimes of modern day gunmen, including murder, shark attacks, robberies, car accidents and every one of the upheavals of nature.  It has never conformed to our image of tropical paradise – it is not green, it is not lush, it is not jewel-toned, the waves are rough and the sand is coarse and burning hot in the heat of the day.  Still, I loved Palisadoes, I loved the entrance to Kingston, Big Sea on one side, the harbour on the other, and the soaring Blue Mountains above it all, bestowing on us a set of simple, superlative pleasures freely available to everyone. In 1998, the Palisadoes/Port Royal Protected Area from Harbour View to Port Royal was declared under Jamaica’s Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) Act.     

In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan damaged the groyne field, eroded the sand dunes and deposited quantities of sand and rocks on the Palisadoes road – blocking access to the airport. There then was a half-hearted engineering attempt to protect the road with large rocks but in 2005, Hurricanes Emily and Dean worsened the situation and in 2007, Hurricane Gustav left the Palisadoes beaten down and torn up, the steep piles of sand which were removed from the road never regraded to help vegetation colonize the dunes, the masses of driftwood the storms threw on the beach burned. And there was still that very narrow point, where the open sea was right there, and you could see it would not take much to breach the road and maroon the airport, as Port Royal had been marooned more than once in its history.   

A plan was hatched to defend the most vulnerable section of the road (in the vicinity of the old groynes), including a 300 metre stone revetment, covered in sand dredged from the sea nearby – called by the technical folks with their masterful euphemisms the “Borrow Zone” – and then revegetated and crowned with a boardwalk for recreation. The revetment was built, but there was no dune and no revegetation and no boardwalk.  

As time went on and there seemed to be no more dredging and the revetment just sat there, I hoped the Palisadoes would do what is has always done – survive, wax and wane, and perhaps even send the tendrils of beach roses over the sharp-edged stones standing guard against the sea.     

But, no. In 2010, there was an announcement from then Minister of Transport, the Hon. Mike Henry – we were going to have a four-lane highway along the Palisadoes. jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100504/cleisure/cleisure1.html

There were murmurs of protest. Folks asked for the rationale, since no one could remember a traffic problem along the strip. There were concerns about adding to our already crippling level of debt. We were fed a pie-in-the-sky list – new cruise ship pier, much greater traffic at the airport, the road needed to be expanded before it was needed. The Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), the small non profit I then led, insisted there should be an updated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and a new public meeting, but we were ignored and road construction began. The road was widened, raised, a sea wall built on the harbour side, along with four kilometres of stone revetment on the sea side. Virtually every living thing on the strip was destroyed.

                                                                                                   ***
 
On the first day of 2018, patrons attending a party called Sandz blocked the only road to the airport for some six hours. The Hon. Mike Henry, once more the Minister of Transport and Works, reminded us with the tone of an injured visionary, that he had wanted a four-lane highway on the Palisadoes.  www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/henry-wants-to-take-palisadoes_121822?profile=1373

Minister Henry’s memory is selective. In 2010, JET filed a Judicial Review case in the Supreme Court to review the permits and public process for the Palisadoes four-lane road works. The new scope of works had a beach license and a permit for wetland modification but no environmental permit. Under the NRCA Act, an environmental permit would have been needed for a four-lane highway. By the time the case was heard, the work was well underway. Despite various statements in the media referring to a four-lane highway, the Judge accepted the evidence of the National Environment and Planning Agency’s CEO, Mr. Peter Knight, that these announcements were “erroneous” and the new road would have only two lanes. And so that is what was built. The court judgment can be read here:                    www.jamentrust.org/publications/law-advocacy-publications/?&SingleProduct=165 
             
Despite its protected area designation, the appropriate use and management of the Palisadoes strip, Port Royal and the Port Royal cays remains contested. Mitigation measures for the new road were either not done, done late, or done but paid for by taxpayers and now struggling. No successful dune rehabilitation or revegetation was ever done. The few endangered cacti removed to the Port Royal Marine Lab died. The work site for the road works on the Palisadoes backshore was never rehabilitated. A reasonable attempt was made to replant mangroves on the harbour side by the University of the West Indies, but maintenance has not been adequately funded and mortality rates are high, due mostly to the garbage that washes into the harbor from the gullies. The NRCA/NEPA has given permission for a large entertainment venue at Seventh Harbour, adjacent to Gun Boat Beach, without, apparently sufficient attention paid to the likelihood of traffic obstruction on the airport road, as happened so egregiously on New Year’s Day. An Entertainment Zone was declared at Fort Rocky, near to Port Royal, in a part of the strip were the marine resources are in reasonable shape and where turtles nest. I predict a lot of garbage in the sea if parties are held there. Lime Cay remains in some limbo state – supposedly “closed” due to public health concerns, but folks still visit. And we have been talking about cruise ships and a Disney-type project at Port Royal for more than 20 years, also in the news in early 2018. jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20180107/wasting-wealth-wickedest-city-investors-blame-state-agencies-stalled
           
Our decision-making processes are crippled. We are unable to decide and unable to act. We are unwilling to say no: not there, not like that. We want everything to go anywhere and everywhere – we want houses in flood plains, hotels on eroding beaches, cruise ship channels through coral reefs, markets on sidewalks and in the middle of roads, and party venues in protected areas.

We have already lost much. But even if the sacrifice seems worthwhile, you know, jobs vs access to the airport, this approach is simply never going to deliver the standard of living that we admire and aspire to in other places where everything cannot go everywhere!    

i've only coloured my hair a few times in my life. Streaks, in my 20s, a diabolical process involving a thing like a swim cap and a crochet hook. Then, different kinds of streaks in my 40s, using tinfoil, which looked a bit more natural and hid the emerging grey. In my early 50s, the 'Just for Men' type product, semi-permanent, my hair dresser called it, which toned down the grey for some weeks, but it came back slowly, like a developing photograph. I decided to embrace my grey hair. I'd earned it. And I was sick of the quest for youthfulness, the adherence to someone else's entirely unrealistic idea of beauty.  I didn't want the harsh, harmful chemicals either, didn't want to spend hours in a salon. 

I was, however, unprepared for the commentary, nearly all from men. Good grief, is that really you? said one man, who I hadn't seen for a while. How did you get so grey?? Did worrying about the environment do that to you?

No, I said. I just stopped dyeing my hair.

Well, you'd lose ten years if you went back to dyeing it, he advised.  

I remembered a trip to a nightclub while in my 20s, when a much older man hitched up beside me on the bar and opined, you know, your face not bad, but your body could use some work. He was at least 30 pounds overweight himself.

I noticed TV anchors, the men with their short greying hair, looking mature and distinguished, their years garnering respect, while the female anchors dyed their hair, had plastic surgery and looked starved and desperate. Does nothing ever change, I wondered? My grey hair became a minor form of defiance. 

And now I love it. It's real. It asks nothing of me and costs neither time nor money. It says something about who I am, a many layered, flawed, elder woman who has too much to do and too much to think about to give hair colour the time of day. When I tried to express some of this to another, critical male acquaintance, he said, are you going to stop bathing too?

But I'm not asking all women to stop dyeing their hair. Their hair, their choice. My only request is whether a woman chooses black, blonde, green, grey or shaved hair, all she should attract is silence or admiration.      

When there is a problem in Jamaica – a good example being the Sandz party which all but closed the Norman Manley International Airport on New Year’s Day for several hours – there are certain predictable responses. There will be calls for an inquiry. For accountability. Blame will be shifted and avoided. Promises and commitments will be made. Then - rinse and repeat.
 
There is one step, however, that we rarely take – and that is problem analysis. Questioning the “WHY?”. Why did the Police give a permit for an event at Seventh Harbour for a second year, despite problems last year and according to one source, a decision taken by the Police High Command not to grant such permits? Was this poor communication? Poor record keeping? Short memories? A decision taken at a high level to overrule this sensible decision? Because a policeman was reportedly one of the promoters? Answering the “why” takes us to targeted fixes.
 
Why did people simply park on the side of the road rather than go to a designated parking area serviced by shuttle buses, which was located past the venue? Was it a lack of signs? Unwillingness to take shuttle buses because patrons want to leave whenever convenient? Too few buses? Would it have worked if the parking area was before you got to the venue? Was it because one person parked illegally and by the time removal occurred, too many others had followed suit? Were there enough wreckers? Or were wreckers ineffective because once the traffic backed up, the wreckers could not return to the site?  
 
Why was the assigned constabulary force overwhelmed? Were there too few officers? Were they at the party instead of on the road? Was it simply impossible for any limited number of policemen to control the numbers, who were in the majority determined to park on the road? If most patrons at any event are not prepared to abide by parking rules, is there ANY amount of policemen that will be effective?
 
To describe another common problem: Why are there so often garbage bags placed beside skips, instead of in them? Answer: Because it is young children who are tasked with taking out the garbage and they cannot reach. Fix: Steps, which are high enough, perhaps. Why are there so many broken garbage bags beside skips? Answer: Motorists, including taxis, coming from communities without garbage collection throw their bags at the skip and miss. Fix: Possibly relocation of the skip. Speed bumps to slow traffic so aim improves. Large basketball hoops placed over skips?  Can’t you see it – the ridicule a taxi driver or passenger would receive if their throw missed the hoop? You SALT, man!
 
Without problem analysis, we will come up with the wrong solution, time and time again. Police Commissioner Quallo has promised signage for the Palisadoes. But lack of signs did not cause the problem on New Year’s Day, and the evidence of our unwillingness to obey signs is all too apparent. 

If we want to solve our problems, we have to delve into the WHY of things.

​(Still struggling with the EMBED thing. I swear, I'm looking for a job translating computerese into English.. See Damien King's tweet and photo regarding the usefulness of signs in Jamaica.)

PS. Dear Weebly: FAILING GRADE! 

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​I once heard a Permanent Secretary say from the podium: We seem to have no stomach for enforcement. The subject was Jamaica’s environmental laws, but it could have been anything – traffic, building codes, vending, parties, taxes, signs, pollution, noise, litter, setbacks from the encroaching ocean, informal settlements, permit breaches, annual financial statements required of government agencies, procurement procedures. There are many iconic features of Jamaican life, but two of the least desirable are indiscipline and lack of enforcement. And the lack of enforcement does not only apply to the state – you can see it at work in an express supermarket line, where the cashier stares off into the middle distance over the head of the person joining the line with a full trolley. Sometimes I think the only rules we’re serious about are the ones governing the bare arms of women.
 
Yesterday, as I drove around Kingston, I made a point of observing the many acts of indiscipline and disregard for others that attend daily life in Jamaica. The taxi driving past a line of traffic to get to the front and stopping more or less in the intersection to await the light change. The drivers not bothering to wait for light changes. The minibus making a third lane on Constant Spring Road on the wrong side of the unbroken white line. The gullies filled with garbage. The vendors set up beside “no vending” signs. The windscreen washers. The piles of marl or gravel left on the road from some construction project, in place so long that plants were beginning to take root. The dozens of trash and bush fires. The numerous signs and billboards, erected without concern for aesthetics, many no doubt without permits. The mini garbage dumps everywhere. The cars double-parked on Knutsford Boulevard with hazard lights flashing, causing dangerous lane changes and traffic to pile up. The bicycle men riding on the wrong side of the road. The motorcyclists without helmets.  The pedestrians crossing the street three feet away from a pedestrian crossing. The motorists ignoring the pedestrians using crossings. The people living in harm’s way on river banks.  If I had driven downtown, I could have got out at the Barnes Gully and smelled the untreated sewage from a broken sewer pipe, flowing for over a month. I could have stopped at any manhole cover in the city, removed it, and chances are I would have seen the drains filled with plastic bottles and other types of trash – which are getting into the sewer system and causing pipes to break.
 
I went to Sovereign North and parked. When I came out a delivery truck was blocking me and three other cars. When I found the driver, he was reluctant to move his truck. He always parked there, he said with scorn, and people got out FINE. You can’t drive, was the implication. Then he would move it if I would wait until he was finished his business. The restaurant owner convinced him to move immediately. As we walked to the parking lot, he told me I was hard and he could be harder. Why didn’t you park in the overflow lot? I asked him.
 
Is a lot of chicken in the van, he said.
 
Then I wondered if Sovereign North has a delivery entrance and if not, why was a commercial plaza permitted without delivery facilities? If it has one, why wasn’t it being used?
 
Indiscipline flourishes where there is poor enforcement. We’re so used to it in daily life we only notice the most outrageous acts – like when an international airport is effectively shut down for hours because of a party. We can never decide who is responsible either – state agencies blame other state agencies, lack of enforcement is named as a cause but no agent is identified. There are always resource constraints. There is the perverse incentive of regulatory bodies with tight budgets getting fees for the permits they do issue. There is the “give me a bly” culture. And we must always avoid “the blame game”. A probe is to be conducted, of course, and a report made to the Minister. it’s a rigidly choreographed dance we never seem to tire of.
 
It’s all too easy to observe and describe Jamaica’s culture of indiscipline. Solutions are harder to come by, because they require a seriousness and determination that’s lacking at every level of the society. Mutty Perkins, of blessed memory, used to say: “We trivialize our politics.” I think we trivialize everything. A nuh nuttn. Man haffi eat a food. Move the airport, one person responded on Twitter to the party roadblock crisis.  Build a bridge over Kingston Harbour, tweeted another.    
 
What else flourishes in an atmosphere of anarchy?  Anger, frustration, disaffection – and crime.   

The INROADS investigative team (me, assisted by a friend) tracked down the promoters for the Sandz beach party last night. I spoke to a member of The Supreme Team, the promoters, who asked me not to use his name. He was respectful, forthcoming, sounded very young – I have not met him, so don’t know if this latter impression is correct – and was obviously chastened by the events of last night. This is what he told me:
 
The 2018 #Sandz event was the second time they had used the Seventh Harbour venue. He conceded problems the year before, but nothing like what happened last night. He felt the venue was suitable and they had done all that was required – got the permits, including a parking permit from the Norman Manley International Airport, police on site, wreckers to remove those who parked on the shoulder etc. Parking was to take place at a different site “one minute away” and there were shuttle buses. The problem was – no one wanted to use the designated parking area and the buses. Patrons parked where they chose along the soft shoulder. The wreckers removed a few cars, but then could not get back to the scene because of the traffic gridlock. A JUTC bus broke down as well. At 5.30 pm, the promoters turned off the music to encourage people to leave, but they became disgruntled. The music was turned back on, but low. He was inside the venue so not on the road to witness what was happening, but they were getting reports. At about 7.20 pm, they turned off the music for the night. I told him that people reported problems well after that time, but he was not able to say why the road had not cleared more quickly.
 
He asked me if I was going to be negative in what I wrote. “Certainly,” I said. “The airport road was blocked for hours and people missed their flights. But I am calling you to get your side of the story.”
 
He agreed what happened was bad. He did not want to get into “the blame game” but ascribed the problem to the unruly behaviour of his patrons.
 
And I had some sympathy with him because I could so easily visualize how quickly our capacity for indiscipline and disregard for any kind of order could overwhelm attempts at traffic control.
 
“Maybe we’re not ready for parties?” I ventured. “Or any kind of large event?”
 
He didn’t respond to that, of course, but he asked me if I thought the venue was suitable. I told him of my experiences running beach cleanup further down the strip, and as a result, that the Palisadoes Road is NOT a suitable venue for large entertainment events. “I wish I had known you before to ask your advice,” he said.
 
The thing is – he should not have had to ask my (or anyone’s) advice. The regulatory bodies concerned should have anticipated these problems and not given permission, particularly as there were problems last year. It’s a given that far too many Jamaicans will not obey parking rules and this has most serious consequences when the location is the only road to an international airport.    
 
Will we learn anything from #Sandz 2018? To be seen. Would also love to hear from patrons who attended, what their experience was like. Why did they park on the road? Do they take any responsibility for what happened?

My Twitter timeline blew up overnight with outrage over the #Sandz party at Seventh Harbour on the Palisadoes Road, which seems to have effectively shut down the Norman Manley International Airport for some hours last evening, New Year’s Day 2018. People going to the airport to collect travellers on incoming flights were unable to get there, leaving friends and family stranded for hours. Flight crews and therefore flights were delayed. People missed their flights completely. Others had to walk or use bike men to transport them to the airport with their luggage. And apparently this happened last year as well. THIS is why rules for large gatherings are necessary.

See:
jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20180101/palisadoes-gridlock-unruly-motorists-reign-airport-road-passengers-miss
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I can only shake my head at the comments suggesting that a bridge should be built across Kingston Harbour and/or the road further widened to accommodate the holding of parties on the Palisadoes Strip.  
 
(I also take a moment to remember that one of the justifications for the completed widening of the Palisadoes Road was to deal with increased traffic…)
 
So here’s a situation where the #NightEconomy caused immense economic damage – I hope someone works out what it cost, and I hope that bill is presented to the promoters, whoever they are. I also hope an enterprising journalist finds out who was involved, not only in holding the event, but in giving it a permit and in failing so spectacularly to manage the traffic. 
 
I know the search is on to find suitable places for parties, which are remote from residential areas and with adequate parking. I gather Seventh Harbour has more than adequate parking – the problem was caused by the usual reckless and thoughtless conduct by motorists and inadequate traffic management. Finding venues for the #NightEconomy is only part of the solution – if there is no adherence to relevant laws, including the Noise Abatement Act, what happened last night will happen again, perhaps with even more serious consequences.
 
#Sandz 2018 shows the vast gap between what we say we do and what we actually do.    

1/1/2018
Over the holidays, I found myself in many conversations about what we euphemistically call night noise in Jamaica. I’ll get it out of the way immediately – yes, the discussants were uptowners. Often perennials. They located themselves in proximity to the source of the noise (to them)/the music (to promoters and patrons). Hope Gardens. Barbican Square. Red Hiils Road. 100. Ranny Williams Centre. Mas Camp. Devon House. Barbican Beach. Bob Marley Museum. Cru. Unknown sources. Churches. House parties. They compared the egregiousness of their experiences – ours STARTS at 2am. Ours goes on until sunrise. Ours is an all day thing, even on Sundays. Often I was pulled into these occasions for venting by strangers in a public place – the supermarket, the farmers’ market, the pharmacy, a craft fair.

I stand on the side of peace and quiet, because we live close to several of those places. We left our previous home because of noise.   
And here’s the problem: No matter how reasonable the party promoters. how infrequent their events, how slavishly the law about lock off times is adhered to (which it is NOT), how polite their notice to neighbours – there is a cumulative impact of noise at night in Kingston that is unacceptable. Today might be Ranny Williams, tomorrow Barbican Square. The next day Devon House. Hope Gardens the day after that. Where we now live, we can often go to sleep with the noise sufficiently muffled by distance but close to 4am, perhaps when the breeze changes, or perhaps just when a DJ gets hold of the mic, the music blasts us awake. Should we call the police? We have on occasion – and we know the result. IF the station has a vehicle, IF we can say with certainty the source of the noise, IF the event does not have a permit, the police will visit and the volume will be reduced for about half an hour but no more. If we don’t know the source, then what? Do we dress and drive around looking for it?

The Mayor of Kingston, His Worship, Mayor Delroy Williams (you can follow him @MayorWilliamsJA on Twitter) has brought much needed energy to his job, and on December 28th he tweeted: “Kingston earned in excess of 28M from Entertainment Permits alone in 2016. We have surpassed the figure earned in Dec 2016 by 12% so far this December.” We must support #Entertainment #NightEconomy #NightLife

https://twitter.com/MayorWilliamsJA/status/946531811949203457

“Not if it disturbs residents,” responded Yamfoot.

“Noise disturbs residents,” said the Mayor. “Not entertainment.”

This, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter. For some, perhaps for most, the music from formal and informal venues is entertainment, not noise. Economic activity. Part of a vibrant culture. Kingston has been declared a Creative City of Music by UNESCO – you people who want to sleep need to get on board. This is who we are. Night people. And we want our music LOUD.   

But adequate rest is vital for the human body and lack of sleep causes accidents on the road and at work, affects the ability of children to learn and increases the risks of a range of health problems including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, depression, forgetfulness and weight gain. And this one: Diminished sex drive – surely that should be of concern? In short, lack of sleep is a public health issue.

It’s a problem of fairness too. Of respect. Of understanding that my right to music should not affect my neighbour’s right to sleep. It’s a lack of sensible city planning – when permission is given for bars and clubs with outdoor spaces to operate in the middle of residential areas. “Another Resident Without Sleep” pointed out in a letter to the Jamaica Observer that noise from Devon House affects the sick and dying at Andrews Memorial Hospital across the road.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/devon-house-noise-affects-the-sick-and-dying_121002?profile=0
 
There’s a solution, of course: indoor venues. But who will fund? What will that do to community type events and the price of tickets? Should there be restrictions on the number of party promoters, like taxi operators in big cities, because there’s a recognition that any geographical area can take only so many loud events?    

I reckon I was kept awake by entertainment for 15 nights in December and no single venue was the source. That’s too much to ask anyone to accept as being merely #NightLife.