THE EDITOR, Sir:

"Ancestors cross the auction block, across the years your eyes met mine, compelling me to look."

ON THE day marking the pre-Independence of independent Jamaica as I sat in a taxi heading to church, I could not help but overhear a bit of the excerpt being played on the radio of punishment meted out upon our former ancestors such as whippings, execution or jail time. The finality with which the broadcasters read each verdict drummed in my ears with such definitiveness that I was nearly brought to tears.

Bittersweet memories

So continued the mode of the day as, the sermon preached brought me back in time to a Jamaica that had passed through many struggles but had overcome. The reminder of our ancestors' struggles so that I could sit in a pew with persons fair enough to be 'backra', brought bittersweet memories, and I listened with a hungry heart to a sermon old enough to be my grandparents', but yet so very new.

Every individual was challenged to bring back a Jamaica when integrity was king and morals and values were the guiding light that governed. The speaker endorsed what we Jamaicans already knew, that as far as she had travelled, there was no other country with such a vast array of talent.

That realisation and the way my beautiful country had decayed over the decades have propelled me to write this message for consideration in the morning's paper. At 45 years old, we're no more little youth (if at 22 we were - Roy's Festival song) and as such, we should hold each person as well as ourselves accountable for the atrocities that are being committed upon our beautiful island home.

Blind eye

Fellow Jamaicans, this message is not for the politicians, the clergy, the police, or even the criminals only, it is for you and me who sit around and watch the decay, accepting it as the new way forward. It's for you and me who continue to turn a blind eye on the immoralities in our homes, our communities, our schools, our churches, our organisations inter alia without voicing our concerns.

It is for each of us who sits idle and allows the dreams of our ancestors to die another death and the verdicts of those sold to another human being, then flogged and humiliated because they dared to seek a better way. Let us use today 'our independence' and bring back Jamaica to its former glory, if not for our ancestors, then, for the generation coming up and for those yet unborn.

We're 45 and counting, but let the count be one that each of us will be proud of, not just those in the minority. After all, we're all celebrating aren't we?

And as fi mi Aunty Roachie sey: "Walk good and good duppy walk with yuh." Tenk yuh Jamaica for 45 years.

I am, etc.,

C.A.C.