Denham Town haunted by ghosts of gun violence

Murals outside the home of Lorna Green’s son and younger brother are poignant reminders of the corrosive power of gang violence in Denham Town, a community where she was born and raised and which she believes now requires divine intervention.

“Police, soldier, dem can’t stop wah go on. Nobody can’t stop it but God,” was the sombre refrain by the 60-year-old, who has seen enough bloodshed and heartache in the west Kingston community. Despite perennial appeals for feuding gangs to lay down arms, she has become weary with, and wary of, attempts to impose lasting peace.

“Nine years now mi lose mi son. Dem call peace. Him go peace party, and on his way coming home, dem kill him,” Green told The Gleaner during a visit to Denham Town last week.

In 2020, Green’s younger brother, too, was gunned down at his gate, leaving her to parent his son.

Forced to quit her hustle at the nearby downtown Kingston market district for fear of being targeted in a gang feud, Green now operates a stall in her community and is actively engaged in several social development programmes under the zone of special operations (ZOSO) implemented by the Government in 2017 in response to a crippling spell of gang violence.

The three-phase strategy of the ZOSO, dubbed ‘clear, hold, and build’, seeks to restore social capital in communities stained by gang warfare.

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), primary social-development partner driving the last and longest phase of the ZOSO, has been working to build social agency by engaging residents and survivors like Green who have been personally impacted by violence.

In partnership with the police, curfew wardens are deployed to get children off the streets at night. Sessions have also been organised to improve caregiving capacity to parents.

As the sole guardian of her grandson, Green admitted that the workshops have helped her to better guide the teenager who recently started high school.

“The parenting programme help me a lot with him because him a grow up now, and I want do my best with him. ... Mi glad him nuh deh pon di road because shot can start fire any time,” said Green.

In similar vein, 56-year-old Erica Swaby, who also lost her son to gun violence, has accessed support through JSIF’s social-intervention programmes for family members coping with grief and trauma.

Having witnessed her son’s shooting death in 2012, just metres from their home, Swaby said she has struggled to erase the image of her son’s body lying in the street. He was 18 years old.

“He was my first son, and because mi see it happen, every time mi hear a shot, mi just start tremble. I was like a thread to how mi traumatise.

“Mi did so traumatise that if mi hear one shot, mi just find myself stand up and wet up myself,” the mother of four admitted in an interview with The Gleaner last Thursday.

Swaby has sought succour in counselling sessions provided through the Ministry of National Security. Other social engagement, such as skill training provided through JSIF, has helped Swaby in the long journey to overcome her debilitating grief.

“The ZOSO mek a big difference. I never come up this side yet, and I live in Denham Town,” said Swaby, referring to Racecourse Lane, once a no-go zone in the community, where she now attends workshops.

There, she participates in training in entrepreneurship and has received assistance in procuring a food handler’s permit – standard documentation that helps to impose formality and structure to everyday life and business.

Managing director of the JSIF, Omar Sweeney, is confident that the development programmes will, over time, bear fruit in building social capital in Denham Town as the ZOSO continues in its build phase.

“We certainly have put on the ground a number of social initiatives that have engaged the community. But there is always room for improvement and continual support.

“While we are doing that, the residents begin to experience a new reality. They begin to experience an environment that is consistently free of solid-waste pile-up, that is free of flooding when it rains, because that is integrated into the whole social dynamic of a community,” said Sweeney in an interview on Friday.

To date, a total of 1,062 residents have benefited from the JSIF’s social-intervention programmes in the Denham Town ZOSO. These include 48 enterprise grants, 137 livelihood participants in skill training, 75 environmental workers trained and employed, and 300 students benefiting from summer camp activities.

sharlene.hendricks@gleanerjm.com