Starting to Figure Out the Truth

This post is a bit more topical than what I usually write about. I felt the need to discuss this so I decided to do it here.

Two months ago I began this journey, otherwise known as a Masters Research Paper, and along the way I noticed that there are a number of things which were happening in the quest to uncover the truth (sounds like a film epic) that I thought I should put out there.

I am studying informal settlements (aka squatting) and how it is that the persons cope with the various challenges they face as a result of squatting. Now I am aware that I could get more fundamental than that, and look at why it is these persons decided that living on the lower banks or even in the bed of a river was an acceptable risk, but for now I want to just know how it is they cope. Somehow intuition has led me to take a reverse approach to this.

On visiting the community I was studying, let's call it One Bridge, the first thing that hit me was this house that had slid into the river bed. An almost complete structure, someone's home. Gone. And don't be fooled, until a few years ago I assumed that informal settlements were only zinc and board structures. But people actually use more permanent building materials such as concrete, blocks and steel. That visit was in the final year of my undergraduate programme but it has stuck with me ever since.

These people who live here are just as much a part of normal life as the next person. Persons got to work, they send their children to school, they go to the market but still imagine what it must be like to sleep at night and wake up to the sound of torrential rain above your head. For some only the concern of a small leak might be the next thought, but for One Bridge residents the sneaking suspicion that you are about to be engulfed in dirty water and the debris it carries with it is all that consumes your mind.

This problem is not new to Jamaica. Squatting has been taking place for years. It has also been ignored for years. Hence, I was slightly amused at the hypocritical shock and amazement that ensued at the Minister of Housing's announcement that almost 1/3 of our population are informal settlers. That hypocritical shock is however the typical reaction to announcements regarding a lot of our problems. Why? Because, very often, too often in fact, we ignore, sit and wait and attack symptoms of problems and not the more fundamental issues behind them.

So here I am, studying this issue and in trying to organize my thoughts I have decided that I should put what is in my head all out there. I mean at the end of the day, each step in what started as just a research paper is now a much more than that.........I'm just trying to figure out the truth.

Keep thinking.
-Nakeeta