Mark Wignall | Anxiety and fool’s gold

It was about 6 p.m. when I pulled over to my usual parking spot and shut off the engine. As I exited my car and made my way to a vegetable stall set up just outside of a bar, three men rushed over to me.

I turned and said, “Yes, what is it?”

I knew them so I figured I had earned the right to be a little bit pushy with them. They gazed over to the other side of the street to a man standing against a wall. His arms were tightly folded and his eyes were locked on me as he strode over.

One of the men I knew suggested we make our way to the spacious back section of the small bar.

“Is a bredrin of ours,” they said as the man extracted the gold nugget from his pocket. Only, I immediately knew it was iron pyrites, known as fool’s gold.

They were all convinced that the nugget about the size of two nutmegs was gold.

“Is only you wi trust. Yu can mek a value pon dis and show wi who fi sell it to?”

“A don’t want yu waste yu time. Dis is not gold. Take it to someone else. The man with the unsmiling face said, to no one in particular, “Is whey dis r… man telling mi.”

One man said, “Mr Mark, just tek it and find out how much it worth.”

The owner chimed in with, “If me mek a money, you mek a money.” I sensed that I was on the edge of something quite dangerous and that I could fall off any minute.

In about a week, my friend who worked in the active back section of a jewellery shop had declared it to what I initially suspected it was” Fool’s gold. A few days after, a Friday evening, with the smoke from jerk pork and roast chicken bringing sweet joy to the small town square, I drove up.

In less that two minutes we were again at the back of the joint. But two domino tables and a card game were in operation.

“As I had said, my chemist friend tested it. It is iron pyrites. It is known as fool’s gold.” Then, a new and dangerous idiocy entered the picture.

“Dis nuh look like the original piece mi gi yu.”

This newspaper would never allow me to relate to you what I told that man and the words I used. It was the original friends who turned on him in my defence.

The very thought of a gold find in any community of people immersed in generational poverty is similar enough to what some may see as demons on a weekday spree.

Anything that has the probability of taking a man from dire poverty to living in that penthouse in the sky for ever and ever will make a man mad if that dream crumbles.

For that reason. I would advise the people who believe that there is economic magic in the ground beneath them in clumps of yellow metal look for yam and coco. That’s a softer and safer bet.

BITTER BET ON THE SWEET TONGUE

In the early 1980s when Jamaica was seen as America’s project in the Caribbean, for a short while, our small country was drowning in US assistance.

But it came with a few encumbrances. Too many second-raters on American soil were parading in Jamaica as first-class experts in many key areas.

It has long been a painful fact that our people tend to favour outsiders more than our own people.

Jamaica ‘s Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) could in no way be seen as operating outside of that understanding especially as it was closely interwoven with Embracing Orphans, the US entity that was funding The Father’s House, a transitional facility for wards of the State in St James.

It is quite normal that entities with names that indicate goodness and kindness be seen as good and kind. And please remember that Rev Jim Jones’ entity was called the People’s Temple.

In November 1978, over 900 people died in a mass suicide/murder at the outpost of the People’s Temple in Guyana. I am not for one minute conflating that 1978 horror with Embracing Orphans.

That is not my objective. But it cannot be that with the head of the US-based charity Embracing Orphans, Carl Robanske, rated as tainted (inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor) by US authorities he was allowed free rein in Jamaica when the head of the CPFSA, a woman, must have known that it was her duty to be aware of that viral taint.

It is painfully ‘normal’ that tainted people tend to be attracted to areas of work that place them close to those locked into areas of control by the state.

Significant numbers of prison warders need constant testing to gauge their levels of taint. Those in charge of wards of the State need monthly testing. There are many good and decent people working to ease the plight of the old and indigent in government-run homes. But it is a fact that too many warped individuals are in the system. And in the private-run homes too. More on that in another column.

REALITIES OF THE DIGITAL WORLD

Most of us are fully aware of the YouTube clips that purport to know all and are in the business of reporting all.

It is the digital reality even though the vast majority of what is being reported is plainly based on 99 per cent fable and one per cent truth.

Much of the main stream media tune in to these fly-by-night reality clips to use the one per cent as leads to bigger stories even as many high officials are being lied about but with just a tincture of truth that will ensure that no lawsuits are launched.

“It is just a matter of time before the full development of laws to fight back in cyberspace is scripted and empowered,”, said a corporate lawyer to me recently.

“Don’t believe that those at the top of society are sleeping. They will be fighting back. And soon, too.”

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