Where has our sense of community gone?

The man sat on his gate column, enjoying the cool evening breeze and looking down into the crammed parking lot of his Kingston 6 residence. Born and raised as he was in St Catherine, he marvelled at how people had grown up, worked and retired inside these modest-size town houses, seemingly unperturbed by the absence of space.

For him, there's nothing like being able to walk around your own house, tending to plants or lazing in your backyard, thinking about all the things that people who're being lazy think about.

He's amazed at how people who are so close to each other inside these town houses, close enough as to hear clearly when a neighbour turns on a faulty tap, flushes the toilet, argues with a family member or engages in coitus on a rickety bed, can have no real relationship with each other.

On some mornings, in the wee hours when he's up reading, he can hear his neighbour eructing from the rear through walls that really ought to be thicker for the price of these houses. The man chuckles to himself, recognising the irony of his existence and how he's spent eight years living beside people whom he doesn't know at all, people who are his neighbours by proximity rather than by relationship.

The man's reverie is broken by the approach of a woman. The woman walks towards him and is seemingly headed to one of his neighbours a few gates down. The walkway is narrow and the woman will pass with only about five yards separating her projected path from where he's sitting atop his gate column. The area is well lit, so she should see him clearly on her approach.

The man takes out his good smile, conscious not to show any teeth, as he doesn't want to come across as creepy. He holds his head up so he's sure to catch her eye when he responds to her greeting with his own, "Good evening". But his shame tree takes a mighty chop to its roots when the woman, head ramrod straight, walks by him without a word or even as much as a glance.

Manners extradited?

Perplexed, the man wonders to himself, how could an adult pass another adult at such close quarters and not even utter a "Dawg, how-de-do?" He wonders when it was that manners was extradited from Jamaica and contemplates whether the Government had sent it to the USA or somewhere he's likely to come across it in the future.

The man begins to fret. What kind of life has he and hundreds of thousands of town house or apartment dwellers been living when they make no time to know the people who've been living beside and among them for several years? What if something bad happens and he 'drops down' inside his house? Who would assist him if he's home alone?

How could you have heard a man, or woman, fart from one wall away, yet never take the time to hear what that same person's first or last name is? How can you go out of your way to avoid your neighbours, just so you can brag that you are a person who keeps to himself?

How do you live in such close quarters with other people yet make no effort to participate in Labour Day projects or other activities at Christmas time? Where is the sense of community? How can you be satisfied with only catching a glimpse of those living under your armpits when you run across them in the parking lot?

The man begins to feel pity for the woman. For how can an adult lack basic manners and yet expect to live in a decent, ordered society? He smiles ruefully at the myriad things which people say are wrong with Jamaica, as he has just pinpointed another.

People don't take time to know their neighbour anymore, hence they're in no position to act as a community against criminality and societal decay.

Weak communities create weak nations. Yes, the politicians have done their bit, but the unravelling of Jamaican society has been precipitated by men and women who've become cold and uncaring to each other. We must do better.

Selah.

George Davis is a journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and george.s.davis@hotmail.com.