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“No arts; no letters; no society: and which is worse of all, continual fear, and the danger of violent death, are the life of men, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Hobbes, 1651.
As I approached Christmas this year, I felt the world had become darker. I was thinking about Martin Daly’s May 2023 warning about our possible fate being that of Haiti.
Port-au-Prince is one of the most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere at present.
(Copyright New York Times)
He quoted Louis-Henri Mars, director of Lakou Lap (Kwyòl for Courtyard of Peace): “… in my work in disadvantaged communities over 15 years, I have seen that every time a gang member dies or rejects gang life, he is immediately replaced–the next day.
“This system, in which gangs bolster politics, is strong and durable because the Haitian state and society have done so little for so many neglected neighbourhoods, and many young people are desperate.”
Instinctively, I knew this could become our reality.
The Jamaica Gleaner’s editorial made an incisive and supporting comment worthy of our consideration:
“Moreover, as bits of the analysis go, building security and constitutional order in Haiti cannot be divorced, or addressed separately, from the country’s economic and social development.
“Indeed, some of those who would now be party to efforts to bring order and security to Haiti were, by their previous actions, architects of the impoverishment that is at the root of its instability.”
Security cannot be divorced from the country’s economic and social development. Impoverishment contributes to gang life and societal instability.
I contemplated how easily two persons from Trou Macaque could lose their lives at a mega-store not far from their home. The gunman was allegedly a policeman. How can we process this?
Photo: TTPS
I worried about persons with limited incomes. How are they faring with the food prices that keep skyrocketing?
Then, the madness of the unprecedented massacre of children in the Israel-Hamas war. Herod killed children trying to eliminate the Christ Child. Now, some are attempting to justify the killings of 21,000, primarily children and women, along with 68 journalists.
Then came the final blow, days before Christmas. The loss of the 22-year-old UWI student, Khadeeja Taylor, was disturbing.
Copyright: Mahmud Hams / AFP via Getty Images
Her sister described her: “She wanted to pursue law, and she was always studying. She never went to parties, and she was the kindest person you will ever meet.”
Poof! A family’s dream of a way out of their circumstances was gone.
It is easy to criticise the mother’s actions. But have we ever been desperate?
The definition of that word concerning a person is: “without care for safety, extremely rash, driven to recklessness by despair”. They are without hope.
Desperation can lead to impulsive behaviour as one seeks anything to get relief. The child was taken to the “Mount”, a Hindu pundit and a spiritual healer. Khadeeja died while lying next to her mother. The mother had done what she thought best.
But questions remain.
Why did she feel she could not go to churches in San Fernando with an established exorcism or counselling ministry? Have these places turned to other avenues and left low-income people with real, pressing needs on their own?
Did the family’s friends in the community weigh in?
We do not know the answers to these questions.
The autopsy was done. That was that. Case closed. But more questions arose.
Were no toxicology tests warranted to check whether the “upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage bleeding” was substance-induced? A sudden onset of “psychotic” behaviour, yet we stopped looking for a possible cause. A 22-year-old woman who never partied! Was there anything unusual to warrant further investigation?
I guess the official position was that she was dead already. The mother said: “…is somebody worked Obeah”. This may have provided a decent reason to cite “a clinical psychiatric disorder” even though Ms Taylor “had not previously been diagnosed with the condition”.
This conclusion was said to have used a diagnosis of exclusion, which means “simply the diagnosis that remains after all other possibilities have been excluded”.
But were all the possibilities explored?
Did we do our best? Was this examination of the unexpected death of Ms Taylor thorough?
This incident brought to mind the work of Dr Shaheeba Barrow, who spoke up in 2005 and acted on her meticulous work. She was the pathologist who realised that there was a compromising situation with a senior doctor. She bravely called him out.
Now, our institutions are collapsing or uncaring. Take your pick. How do we want the man in the street to trust our institutions? You cannot put the genie back in the bottle when this loss of trust happens.
Was the challenge of Ms Taylor’s mother to science addressed? Do we blame her for believing her child was affected by Obeah when conspiracy theories about vaccination flourish?
How do we plan to support this family faced by this tragic death?
All these cascading incidents lead us to ask: How can we maintain hope in this environment? How can we look forward to a positive future?
I ask these questions as I struggle with the country’s descent into pain and sorrow. How do we, or I, make a difference to our country? Are we all consigned to live in fear and medieval thinking?
When life gets extreme (the world is often a disappointing place), we are often tempted to forget how desirable life is. Instead, we must believe that there is beauty in life. We must hope.
To build hope, we must react differently to our stressors. We should see trouble not as creating hopelessness and fear but as encouraging us to grow our sense of grit. To achieve this posture, we must develop a worldview infused with gratitude.
We should record what God has done for us and what we are grateful for.
Hope does not guarantee a great future. There are risks that our expectations for the future will not materialise. But with hope, we can find new pathways and reset our goals into better, achievable ones.
Hope is not the same as optimism since it uses one’s efforts to drive towards a goal. Hope is, therefore, a mechanism to get to desired outcomes. We must avoid thinking about the worst that can happen.
We should get the best possible professional advice.
Living as a member of a community (family, friends and church) helps. We all will make mistakes, so we must learn to care for and value each other. We get joy and hope from our relationships even when things are dark. Hope is there to help us when the most vile of evil things happen to us.
Sleep is vital.
We should not fear. The good news is that great joy is available for everyone (Luke 2:10). The essence of Christmas reminds us of Emmanuel—God with us—and we, therefore, are not alone in our struggles.
Perfection is not required. God takes us with our messy lives and broken dreams. He will show up.
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