Seaview Gardens

The stoplight on Spanish Town Road and Seaview Gardens intersection is a scary place for any motorists or pedestrian. You never know if the drivers who drive by will be breaking lights or breaking bodies.

My Experience

One of the scariest times of year is the Christmas season. During this time, I approach the intersection, with the fear of God in my heart and a prayer on my lips. December 2014, was especially memorable, because every time I was at that stoplight, at least six cars on both sides of the road ran the light, including Trucks.

Earlier this year, the stoplight changed to allow us to come across the intersection, but I heard the horn of a large truck speeding from the six miles side, having no intention to stop, even though the lights changed at least 4 seconds before. My car was half way…

ghetto life

Violence, is a common reaction for people bred in a volatile community. I am not used to it, nor am I trying to assimilate to such a culture. It is hard enough trying to consistently curb my own inclinations to such.

The dictionary defines violence as “behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”

I moved to Seaview Gardens in 2010, with preconceived notions of the place I was about to live. In those early years, it was not as bad as I expected, but somethings did hold true. Like the incidents of violence that I witnessed. Going in, TV scenes of the Tivoli Incursion was repeated on loop in my mind’s eye and I prayed to God that such would only be real in my overactive imagination.

My neighbours did not make this belief easy; they were the constant thorn in my side and…

transformers in sam witwicky’s yard

Zinnn, whum!

“What da hell!” I exclaimed, flying out of my sofa as all appliances and electronics gave up di ghost.

I moved quickly to my living-room window and door to see what had happened outside. It sounded like Transformers and Optimus Prime had landed in my front yaad or di military had finally decided to launch the nuke on Seaview Gardens and wipe us off the map.

As I looked outside, curtains were being drawn and doors, windows and every entrance of my neighbours’ homes were being opened as everyone wanted to know “what da hell was dat?”

Within a few seconds word came from the next pathway over, that a man had thrown a wire on the high tension line.

“Yuh seh wah”

“Di high tension line”

“Him a idiot”

“Den nuh mus, yuh caan trow wire pan high tension line?”

“Him dead?”

It breaks my heart every time I see him; this young boy, abandoned by his mother in every way, though he still lives with her. She is the true depiction of what we call in the ghetto, a ‘wukliss mumma’. One of those who open their legs to men for favours, have the babies and abandon them as soon as they can walk. Spitting out three children and now they crawl through the pathways of Seaview Gardens, constantly and at all hours of the night. I itch to write his story, to declare the truth and injustice which he suffers. It is a crime and no one truly helps.

*****

Ghetto boy

Dean walks about the community every day, to and fro and back again. He goes from his aunt’s house or combs the pathways for his mother. No more than 11 years old, he tugs his little…

Not too many people know about this little known fact; well except for those who drive vehicles and live in Seaview Gardens. Contrary to what you are led to believe, rubbish is burnt almost every night at the Riverton City dump. To the extent that when I wake up in the mornings, the evidence is quite visible on my car.

In 2015, just before the Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Catherine areas were overwhelmed with smoke and smug from the Riverton City dump; we who live in Seaview Gardens, those who traverse the Spanish Town Road and the surrounding communities, are cocooned by smoke in the night, as we sleep. I thank God that I have no serious respiratory ailments, unlike thousands of other Jamaicans; but my one Achilles heel, in that regard, is smoke. It is an ever-present hazard that roams freely through the ghettos of West Kingston.

Nonetheless…