In 2016, I first took a picture of it simply because I saw art and earthly beauty in it. But the pictures captured something else. Some of the limbs at the top, maybe 25 feet up, were dried-up and stuck out in areas where shoppers, vendors and passers-by walked.
In 2018, I took another picture of it after sections of the huge root group caught fire. But one particular dried limb, about 15 inches in diameter and an stuck out estimated 20feet, was the obvious and immediate problem.
But, what am I talking about? It’s that tree that exists at the corner of Chancery Street and Havendale Drive, in a part of uptown St Andrew.
The tree exists almost exactly where the residential community of Meadowbrook and the small commercial community intersect with each other, close to a southern corner. The 20-foot, dried-up limb which hovered over most of the intersection and the vendors was always a horror story waiting to play out.
What if such a limb broke off and killed someone? Well, that nearly happened.
But let’s back up a little. The shade from the tree extends to an estimated 900 square feet. The trunk of the magnificent tree is about eight feet across were it perfectly round.
In 2017, I placed the picture I took of it on Facebook, in the hope that the ‘authorities’ would take care of it. In 2018, I received a call from a source at Chancery Street. The source said the tree was on fire. None among the vendors would admit that the fire could have started by their own recklessness. But then again, this country is riddled with social and political puzzles.
In March 2020, a woman about 35 years old was walking by the shade of the tree. Others were there, too. One vendor told me that he heard the ‘crack’ before the dried-up limb broke off and fell to the ground. But not before falling on the lady’s back.
I have made two attempts to link with the lady. I have been unsuccessful so far.
The information I have received tells me that she somehow survived any spinal injury and is walking upright.
This is not a new matter. My conscience does not sit right with me. I ought to have used more of my powers of persuasion to compel the authorities, including the fire brigade and JPS, to rid the area of that dangerous, dry overhang.
I am a part of it. You are a part of it, and most of us are a part of it.
Of Jamaica, the island that keeps earning travel advisories even as tourists flick them off and flood our shores. The general info says we are a violent place and one’s safety cannot be guaranteed.
The tourists know the real picture and they inundate our beaches with their need to half-bake themselves in the sun.
You have probably never fired a gun. Never been in the same space where one is fired. All of that makes you normal and sane, and in mostly a peaceful place.
Let me ask you this question. What is it that someone would need to do to you that would move you to want to kill that person?
Steal your savings? Steal your wife? Conspire with others to send you to prison?
Most of us eventually make our way through the trauma of life without cracking up or murdering someone.
So how is it that the vast majority of us are so boringly peaceful, while a sliver of us, barely two per cent, are so horrible and murderous?
Why can’t the majority of us lean on that horribly rottien two per cent and screw their heads back on the right way?
One sister of a ‘don’ told me two years ago, ‘Me nuh want fi stay inna fi him area. When mi move, him want track mi phone. Mi jus’ bad him up and leave him fi good.’
A few nights ago I was given an awful duty of carrying someone to the airport at a time close to midnight. By force of habit, I stopped at a place on the way back just to have a Guinness.
While I was enjoying the music I saw three young women enter the little, four-stool joint.
One headed straight to me. “Hello, yu can buy mi a special?”
I wanted to laugh, especially because I have seen this interaction so many times before.
I decided to cut to the chase. I told her who I was and she opened up quite readily as I questioned her. “Police a harass wi, and some tek wi money and want sex. If it legal dem can’t trouble wi.”
There are many things that Jamaica is not socially and culturally ready for.
Making prostitution legal is one such thing. Making abortion legal is another. Ending the buggery law is another social impossibility.
I am an expert at being a man, but I have no special understanding at exactly what it is that make us so stupid in sexual matters.
As the young lady left after charming me into buying drinks for her friends, she gave me a card. I was amazed. Never saw that before. It gave her name and phone number, her social media handles, and her profession – entertainer.
Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com [2] and mawigsr@gmail.com [3].