“Guilty mom did it for kids ”  - The Star, May 8 2002

“Cassandra Morrison, 31, … [was] yesterday charged with possession of dealing in and taking steps to export cocaine… Morrison told the court she had eight children for six different men, ages two months, two years, five years, eight years, 10 years, 11 years, 13 years and 15 years old… she would have received 3000 pounds on her arrival in London… she was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.”

A story like this evokes mixed emotions. I feel a tinge of sympathy – the lady must have been desperate to risk her body and jail for not a huge sum of money. But can anyone in the drug trade, no matter what the circumstances, deserve any sympathy or mercy? How can you feel sorry for someone who is helping to ruin other people’s lives?

I also feel angry at this woman’s stupidity. How the hell did she allow herself to get in this kind of situation? A mistake or two is one thing, but six? To be sure having a child every two years since she was 16 obviously hasn’t left her much time for education, but she does have control over her body. And who is going to become of the poor children, especially that two month old who will learn to walk and talk without its mother being around. Are they not likely to end up in a similar situation? But then maybe she herself grew up in sad circumstances. So just who is responsible for this tragedy? Society? Government? Her parents? Cassandra Morrison?

Now you can’t walk anywhere in this country without being accosted by beggars. And while I believe those who have more should help those who have less when they can, giving money to everyone who asked would soon render me penniless. So I tend to give only to those have a disability and can’t earn a regular living. However I’m often confronted by women with a baby and a couple children trailing along who demand money to feed their hungry offspring. Usually I feel sorry for the youngsters and give something. But I always walk away upset that people can have children despite not having the least idea how they are going to care for them.

A friend who I’ll call June recently related a dilemma she was facing. When her sister had her second child for a man who couldn’t and wouldn’t support her, June told her to have her tubes tied. She refused and now not only had four children by four men who contributed almost nothing to their upbringing, but constantly pestered June for money. My friend was at her wit’s end. She loved her nieces and nephews and couldn’t stand the thought of them going hungry. But giving their mother money seemed to be like encouraging her to continue to have children with men who were unwilling or unable to take care of them.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, “There but for the grace of God go I” and “Judge not lest you be judged” are three fundamental precepts of Christianity which most of us in our frail mortal way try to follow them as best we can. Yet taking responsibility for one’s own actions is the ultimate basis of all morality and civilization. And while we all feel a natural sympathy for those who have suffered misfortune through no fault of their own, it’s hard to feel sorry for people whose tribulations were caused primarily by their own carelessness, laziness, or selfishness.

Now a lot of Jamaicans really have done their best and yet have it hard – the growing army of university graduates who can’t get jobs comes readily to mind. But many others not only get themselves and often others into trouble, but bleat mournfully about their “bad luck”. You hear it from those boastful “me breed six woman” baby fathers who then moan how “nuttin na gwan fe me an de pickney dem hungry”. Or from those boys who drop out because “school a woman sumting” and then complain that “nobody naw gimme a chance”. Or those idiots who pass blind around corners and kill innocent people yet plead to the police that “dem bad drive me” – look at that Toyota pickup driver who caused four deaths in Toll Gate last Wednesday. And sadly this “I did it, but it’s not my fault it’s theirs” syndrome often replicates itself on a national level.

Our annual flood rains are perhaps the most obvious example. Now while it’s rained exceptionally long and hard this year, this is hardly the first time we’ve had extended downpours in May and June. And though you have to feel for individuals who lost everything to rising water, there is little doubt that the majority of the flood damage was not an act of God but the result of carelessness and indifference. In a very real sense the floods were caused by those who heedlessly fling garbage into gullies and thoughtlessly cut down trees on hillsides. Of course badly planned and ill-conceived developments and road building contributed mightily. But then democratic governments are only one element in the totality of choices a people make. And a public that continues to elect incompetent officials must expect to suffer the consequences.

After last October’s “disastrous” rains I predicted to a friend that we would see many of the same “flood havoc” headlines and “inland sea” television pictures next May. And it’s odds on that similar scenarios will again occur this coming October. I really wouldn’t take any pleasure in being right, since we all feel the effects in one way or another. But when people keep making the same mistakes over and over again, it’s hard not to feel that they deserve what they get. The Jamaican nation remains stone deaf to all those who plead for it to take even minimal precautions to avert highly predictable bi-annual “disasters”. And as old time people say, who can’t hear must feel.

There are in general two extreme types of people and countries in this world. One takes every possible precaution to prevent the disturbance of life’s normal routine, while the other lives entirely for the moment and pays no attention whatsoever to possible future mishaps - think of Japan compared to Jamaica for instance. Now the “eat, drink and be merry” crowd tend to enjoy day to day life a lot more than the “look before and after” brigade. But naturally these “seize the day” carpe diems tend to taken unaware by the out of the ordinary, and are thus more apt to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – a reality portrayed 2,000 years ago in Aesop’s fable of the ant and grasshopper.

Yet even if life is a choice between less fun or more misery, nations and individuals are entirely free to decide their own path. Whatever our approach though, we all have to live with the decisions we make. As the ancient proverb goes, you lie in the bed you make. changkob@hotmail.com