Fri | Mar 29, 2024

Mark Wignall | Little love, much distrust and thievery

Published:Sunday | January 29, 2023 | 12:30 AM
Everald Warmington
Everald Warmington

Fomer Public Defender Earl Witter, whose interim report into atrocities committed during the Tivoli Gardens in 2010 suggested stooping down to the operational level of a child, embracing the youngster, talking soft, encouraging words of comfort to...

Fomer Public Defender Earl Witter, whose interim report into atrocities committed during the Tivoli Gardens in 2010 suggested stooping down to the operational level of a child, embracing the youngster, talking soft, encouraging words of comfort to the child, a better human would likely show up. In other words, try love.

The thing that forces its way into our mental makeup is the fact that love in this time earns little when lodged and pulls on only the barest of interest when loaned out.

So when politicians like Everald Warmington get blown up in the bad side of the dust floating over from our Africanness and resorts to the sort of crudity that seems to meld his explosive days into a constancy of torturous nights, it is our duty to show them love.

Of course we know that sensible people would only be immersing themselves in the sourness of the crud that lies at the bottom of the barrel in any attempt by professionals to analyse such people.

According to Mr Warmington, former PM Bruce Golding is “… a guy (Golding) who has lost his relevance and is trying to be relevant, but by attacking your own party... that nuh make yuh relevant.”

“... And I want to say, Bruce (Golding) needs to stop it, and stop it now! Back off!” thundered Warmington during a tour in North East St Elizabeth last Wednesday.

The easiest way to analyse this is the simplistic way. In other words, the walking, talking crudity that is the MP for South West St Catherine just could not help himself.

The other approach is the hard-nosed political approach.

In the last week or so, the rumour mills have been dangerously active in ascribing blame to certain politicians in the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) for the embarrassing thievery of Usain Bolt’s money placed in Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL). Bolt’s initial investment from 2012 had grown to close to US$13 million.

And of course, with Bruce Golding suggesting that the present JLP administration had to shoulder some blame for the regulatory-body failure (the FSC) and SSL, the JLP had simply unleashed the known fury that is Warmington.

There is, of course, another side. And that is that Warmington has, over the last two decades, cultivated that crude persona on his own to create a middle-ground political stalker for the JLP.

SURVIVING THE HARD LIFE

She was seated in a black wheelchair. I was about five feet from her in a section of Accident and Emergency (A and E) at a public hospital about two months ago.

A glance in her direction indicated significant physical deformities. They seemed to be a condition she was born with. She was club-footed and her hands were withered. She sat in the chair with her neck bent over into her lap as if she was taking a nap. At other times she would flex her neck backwards, her eyes shut and her mouth gaping open. I sensed that she had to he experiencing significant pain even as she was deep in a moment of sleep.

The woman seated beside her was obviously her mother. And she, the girl in the chair, could be anywhere between 15 and 21. Her condition made it difficult to make an age judgment.

Of the approximately three dozen people in the A and E, none was prepared for what came next. From my vantage point as one trying to gauge the options in one of the main public hospitals, I was somewhat shocked.

The girl in the wheelchair seemingly shot up out of the chair and craned her neck towards the ceiling. And then she shouted and gurgled some terrible animal-like sounds.

Her mother fiddled with her smartphone. Others barely gave her a second glance.

For about two seconds, my eyes met with the eyes of the mother. They said to me, “This is my pain, mine to bear. It is my life, my sad destiny. Don’t ever pretend to say you understand it. Only by living it can you understand.”

The shouting died down after about three minutes. The mother used a towel to sop up the drool that was on the girl’s clothes.

I looked down at my smartphone.

Women have the secret that cannot be shared

“Can men love their children like women do?” I asked the 33-year-old bartender.

“Let me answer that, Mark. If I may.”

She was about in her late 50s and every Sunday morning before her Church-going routine she would stop to “take a sip” and smoke a cigarette.

“We feel the child. We provided the garden to give the child its first chance to form its human roots.”

The barmaid said to a friend seated on a barstool in a cramped corner: “When mi did five months’ pregnant and mi feel di pickney a kick up right pon top a mi belly, mi call mi fren and mek shi use har han an feel it.”

I have heard versions of that explanation for love and nurture for the last 50 years.

It is plainly true that while the male of the human species is just as capable of loving his child as a ghetto woman, the man is likely to live his entire life without ever knowing what it is to be truly connected with his children.

He is a psychologist. He has a PhD in the subject. He has produced many important papers. He went to school with me in the mid-1960s.

“Women own their children. They teach us to love the children from across the fence.”

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.