Glenda Simms, Contributor
On August 26, 2006, I returned from a four-week stint of service to the thirty-sixth session of the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women[CEDAW] at the United Nations.
Like every other creature of habit, during this four-week absence from my beloved island home, I ensured that I arrived at the United Nations building by 9.30 every morning in order to have half an hour in which to read two Jamaican daily newspapers online.
While it is true that I selectively opened the varied news stories and front page headlines, I kept abreast of the social, political and economic issues that were highlighted daily.
Social contacts
Some of my social contacts, sometimes called friends, are always wondering why I keep reading about the happenings in Jamaica while I have the opportunity of blocking it all out while I am in the celebrated Big Apple. They would certainly divorce themselves from the daily drama of the Jamaican society and become more appreciative of the New York architectural wonders and the lemming-like flow of humanity in the subways and at every street corner.
My charitable response to these well meaning personal advisers was to remind them that I believe in keeping informed about all aspects of the society in which I live - the lies, the propaganda; the hype and all the idiotic events, along with the wonderful and positive happenings and people who never make the social columns, the dramatic headlines and the hilarious cartoons.
Do not believe everything
I also informed this band of pessimists that I was one of those persons who do not believe everything that is published in newspapers - foreign or local; in magazines such as Time, Newsweek and The Economist, to name but a few. I also believe very little of the content in social science textbooks at any level within the formal educational system, and much less of the opinions and diatribe that pass as knowledge on the Internet.
When I want to find out what is the real story behind the headlines, I make my weekly visit to the good folk at the one-stop-shop in that district in the Santa Cruz Mountains to which I am genetically linked by deep tap roots that search daily for moisture in the deepest cracks in the blood-red bauxite soil of St. Elizabeth.
In the mould of some cultural anthropologists, I have come to respect the insights of a few of the old-timers who meet daily on the veranda of the one-stop-shop. At any time of the month, each day between noon and 8:00 p.m., a core group of social commentators that knows everything about everybody is always prepared to comment on the root causes of the problems of the nation state.
On the occasion of my most recent visit to this space of common sense and 'rural gumption' I was impressed by the unique ideas of 70-year-old Mass George, whom I secretly and silently describe to myself as 'the toothless wonder of the district'.
Mass George had been listening to the radio and he had heard of a number of cases of the kidnapping and disappearances of some very young children. Some of these children were murdered, others were raped and sexually violated by the wicked men who took them away, and many others cannot be accounted for.
After pondering on these horrible events, Mass George informed all his listeners that when he was a boy it was duppies that took away children. In fact, his mother told him about a little boy and his sister who disappeared from the district and were later found in bushes with their mouths filled with rotted wood and dead blinkies [fireflies].
Contemporary situation
That was real duppy food.
At the end of this story, one young fellow questioned Mass George's understanding of the contemporary situation in which all the horrible crime against children are committed by living human beings and not by duppies.
True to form, Mass George informed his young friend that the real problem lies in the fact that these modern-day Jamaicans put their dead in freezers in funeral parlours and good duppies cannot survive in a freezer. That is why wicked people have taken over the place and carry out acts that long- time duppies would never be caught dead doing.
According to Mass George, when he was a boy there was a duppy at every cotton tree root, and all the young men made their way home in good time in order not to confront any of these mysterious apparitions.
At the end of this profound social commentary Miss Mattie, who is reputed to be over 100 years old, took her last swig of white rum on the rocks and swore to all her gods that as soon as she dies they are to bury her right away because she does not wish to go into any freezer. She wants to find her place under a cotton tree so that she can get even with 'all di bad man dem'.
Miss Mattie wants to lead a group of compassionate duppies who will help to make the district safe for the yearly bird shooters and all the little girls and boys. Mass George would like to join her but all his children are scattered all about in foreign lands, and it might take them about two weeks to put everything together to have his funeral. He just might have to accept that his duppy will not survive the freezing.
Dr. Glenda P. Simms is a gender expert and consultant.
