YeKengalé

Tonight makes three weeks exactly since Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica after huffing and puffing and blowing herself up offshore to be the most powerful and devastating storm ever to have hit the island in remembered history. In the aftermath of the absolutely catastrophic, and in some cases, fatally tragic disaster, we the Jamaican people, in spite of our characteristic negative self-talk and overly zealous self-criticism, have demonstrated yet again before the watching eyes of the world, our rare and unique, divinely endowed ability, not only to survive life’s most lethal blows, but also to thrive in the midst of life’s grimmest adversities.

Even with all the stark revelations of deep fissures in the operations of both church and state, which should serve as indicators, once the battle is over, as to what belts need to be tightened in Local Government and in the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches, among other faith-based agencies, before we face the next challenge, which surely is coming; the absolutely humongous internal and international mobilization of relief, summoned by and in support of the indomitable Jamaican spirit, in the words of Richard Fowler, writing for Forbes Magazine ‘shows the world what resilience looks like’.

Even if our systems and structures lead the world, (and there really is much that many are rightly to be highly commended for) yet for all our inefficiencies, there can be no comparison whatsoever with the atrocities against people committed during Katrina and  many other disasters worldwide that have revealed not just the ineptitudes but the prejudices and poisons at the core of the political and social systems of some societies right across the scale from developing to developed. Nevertheless, we owe it to every Jamaican citizen to increase our capacity, coordination and communication. I am already assured that our state agencies and church leadership have already begun those necessary conversations.

The cracks in Local Government, its interface with ODPEM, and Parliament, as well as the gaps in inter-church cooperation and their coordination with faith-based agencies such as Food For The Poor and ADRA, and the international humanitarian agencies; highlighted by the nightly reports of communities on the fringe, totally marooned and inaccessible several days after the disaster, and in danger of death not from flood or wind, but perhaps more tragically, from abandonment and neglect, not owing to malevolence or prejudice (not that it would matter) but due to relief systems overload – all these matters we leave to the various agencies for contemplation and reflection as soon as the luxury of evaluation can be afforded.

But even with all resources strained to the hilt in meeting the present challenge and with the added burden of post-crisis evaluation and requisite response and reform waiting in the wings, we must remain future-focused and so, since by now, the immediate survival challenges of water, food and whatever semblance of temporary shelter has been met, and the long, complex and probably even more challenging task of the restoration of commerce, business and rebuilding of homes and infrastructure has at least begun to start, the equally problematic plight that we must now be razor focused on is our future. Children are our future.  Considering the fate of those children affected by the storm, particularly students, and particularly those on the brink of, or close to the life determining exercises of primary and secondary exit examinations, we must now also summon the strength to adequately focus on their situations.

Every teacher remembers the return to the classroom after two years of COVID. Classrooms were a jungle. The listlessness. The chaos. The despair. In typical Jamaican fashion, the countless ‘Woe is me’s’, the finger-pointing, the apocalyptic declarations that our educational skies had fallen and Jamaica’s future had been thrown to the dogs, abounded.

And these criticisms had weight. Jamaicans may be overzealous in self-criticism but we are not generally given to toxic self-deprecation. The reality was that for some of our students, two good years had been almost entirely wasted, and then to add to that, to have to halt again, just as some semblance of settlement started to set in, for months, to recuperate from Beryl was a cross no child should bear. Now with Melissa,  there is an entire age cohort of striving deep rural students that may feel that God himself has somehow conspired against their aspirations, who have probably spent more schooldays out the classroom than in. They are in desperate need now of much more than water, food, shelter and money in their bid to become. They need now to be surrounded by a truly caring society and catered to by truly responsible and responsive systems that take account of their predicament.

For their sake, we all absolutely need now to think outside of the box. Time waits on no man, unfortunately including children. Here is where we must get it together and get it together quick. The challenge to the state and in particular the Ministry of Education, is to immediately find ways to absorb these students at schools relatively unaffected by the storm, which will require innovative approaches to maximize both staff and plant at these locations. This may be even more herculean a task than ODPEM’s. Our education system is a complex creature of time and process. It is not designed to respond to emergency. Yet nothing is impossible with God, and evidently also with Jamaicans. The fact is, we simply cannot afford to fail these students (take that every which way it sounds). Our future depends on them.

Equally daunting is the challenge to the church of encouraging and mobilizing every eligible Jamaican family that can, from every parish, but especially from the corporate area, which was spared the wind’s fury for just this purpose: to adopt, embrace and succor, for the necessary year or two at least one of Jamaica’s sons or daughters whose future is now imperiled by this tragic series of consecutive crises seemingly designed to break their dreams, but for the love of God, and the redeeming love of Christ and his people. Every pulpit and platform across the island needs to become a rallying center for this cause.

Melissa’s threat to Jamaica is not over until these our children make it safely to the other side of their educational shore. Right now, all their circumstances are saying:

“Nobody cannot cross it.”

We must recognize and respond,

“Is only we around to help them cross it.”