Revisiting the village

Glenda Simms, Contributor

The proverb, 'It takes a village to raise a child', is rooted in the worldview of many cultural groups on the African continent. The Igbo and Yoruba peoples of Nigeria are reputed to have translated this belief in their communal approach to child rearing. In 1996, Hilary Clinton used this proverb to be the title of her book on the communal responsibility in the important pursuit of raising our children.

Those of us who are over 50 and who were raised in the rural villages of Jamaica can remember the scrutiny of all the neighbours as we traversed the paths and roadways to school, church or the neighbourhood shop. Everyone had the right and the responsibility to reprimand us and to report our bad behaviours to our parents, especially our mothers.

No self-respecting woman of my mother's generation wanted to hear bad news about their offspring. As children, we watched our 'Ps and Qs' and we learnt to respect the adults, and heeded their warning, "Behave yuhself!"

While the changes in the social, economic and cultural patterns of our island nation have affected the ways in which we see ourselves and our communities, we cannot afford to give up on all the values and attitudes that made us a fairly decent society.

Gut-wrenching event

The most stark and gut-wrenching event that signified the death of the village was reported in Arthur Hall's news story, which was carried in the May 5 edition of The Gleaner. Titled 'A short, sad life', Hall detailed the gruesome end of a bright-eyed, innocent and horribly abused five-year-old boy named Evan Sebastian Spencer.

This tragedy took place in the community of Frankfield in the parish of Clarendon.

It was only after little Evan was butchered that the good folk who knew about his precarious situation found the energy to realise that they could have done something to prevent his demise.

According to Hall, these "church-going" neighbours of the ill-fated child knew about 'the squalor' in which he lived with his father. They were able to show The Gleaner the "dark and mouldy cellar in a partially abandoned building no more than seven feet by seven feet".

Dd nothing to save

It was unsettling to read the remarks of the many Jamaican citizens who knew about the continuous abuse of the little boy. They had the energy to detail the atrocities of which they were aware, but they did nothing to save a baby from his unnatural and inhumane situation.

It is instructive to note how much these informants knew. They provided Hall with the most unbelievable details of human cruelty to a child, but they did not have the intestinal fortitude to phone the office of the Child Development Agency, the Children's Registry, or 119 (the police line).

It is not enough to use fear as an excuse in these situations. While it would be naive to think that the population in general, and women in particular, are not now afraid of their shadows, we cannot allow such fear to paralyse us or to rob us of the ability to report the evils that we are aware of. After all, we are not expected to identify ourselves when we report a crime.

The reality of our complicity in our silence around the atrocities to which the most vulnerable in the society are exposed must be understood against our predisposition to whisper and gossip and generally, spread bad news to our friends and acquaintances.

I can well imagine some of the holier-than-thou citizens of the community in which Evan lived making the following remarks:

"Bwoy! You want to see di dutty place that the man and him pickney live in!"

"A long time mi no si di little bwoy. A wonder if him dead fi hungry by now?"

I wonder how many of these 'concerned citizens' offered this child a meal, especially at the times when the daddy was not around.

How many of them have ever tried in any meaningful way to reach out to a desperate family in the most desperate of situations?

Our responsibility

If our ancestors were right, we should not forget that it takes "the village to raise a child" and each one of us has a responsibility to maintain the values, social integrity and the ideology of a healthy village environment.

In a real sense, the village is more than a geographical space, it is a way of life which puts more emphasis on communal response rather than on crass individualism. 'Every man and woman for himself or herself' seems to be the order of the day. But the time has come for us to stand back and find new ways of rebuilding the village.

We need to truly be our brother's and sister's keepers. We need to begin to care for each other in different ways.

Jamaica certainly needs a new awareness of the need to rebuild communities, not with bricks and mortar, but with love and compassion for everyone, especially the helpless children among us.

Dr Glenda Simms is a consultant on gender issues. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.