Whatever else it may be Jamaica is seldom boring. In few places is human nature’s eternal battle between reason and instinct thrown so regularly into stark focus. We may be one of the world’s most stable liberal democracies, but our behaviour regularly echoes the most ancient law of existence – might is right.

While in Toronto Canada last week I went to a live free performance by Jamaica’s international star Shaggy. The massive crowd, composed mostly of young females of all races, enjoyed itself immensely. At one point Shaggy brought a young girl of about 12 on stage and serenaded her while the crowd cheered. When he did his signature piece “It Wasn’t Me” the place went wild. (Why are women of all ages invariably the biggest fans of “old dog” songs?) Afterwards Shaggy gave a studio interview shown on big screens around the venue where he came across as bright, articulate and humble. Having tasted stardom once before and then been almost forgotten, he realized fame was fickle - “Another guy might soon come along to take my place, so I’ve just got to enjoy it while I can”. Shaggy made me feel proud as a Jamaican – “What a nice guy” everyone kept saying. The crowd left feeling happy and in high spirits, which after all is what entertainment is supposed to be about. All in all it was first rate stuff. The man deserves to have sold 10 million records.

Last year the human genome “Book of Life” project confirmed what every intelligent person already knew, that there is no scientific basis for the concept of race. Only a fraction of the three billion letters in the human genetic code differ among individuals, so biologically we are all 99.99% the same. Persons from different ethnic groups can be more genetically similar than individuals within the same group, and there is more genetic variability within Africa than outside it. Meaning that from a biological perspective all of us are Africans, either residing in Africa or in recent exile.

Witness slain at home - “… before day break yesterday, gunmen kicked down her door and pumped several bullets in the body of 50 year old Icylin Vaughn and her common-law husband, 48 year-old Milton Grey… several weeks ago a group of men destroyed sections of Miss Vaughn’s house with stones… She reported the matter to the police and has subsequently been branded “informer”… Yesterday the matter was supposed to be mentioned in the Half-Way-Tree Court.” The Gleaner, September 1, 2001

The other day an irate customer confronted me about an out of order credit card machine in my store. She said in these unsafe times she didn’t carry much cash. And on three occasions in the past week she had to leave her goods at the cashier because her keycard could not be processed. I apologetically told her that every time we called the bank promised to fix it  ‘tomorrow’. “Mr. Chang” the lady said sternly “how long you living in this country? Don’t you know that to get anything done here you have to go on bad? Get ignorant with the bank and you’ll see how fast they fix it!”

In 1999 BBC website readers voted for the millennium’s greatest figures. They picked Gutenberg as inventor, Shakespeare as writer, Leonardo Da Vinci as artist, Paul McCartney as Composer, Mahatma Gandhi as world leader and Karl Marx as thinker. The ten greatest men were Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Nelson Mandela, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx.

For those of us who grew up on the game, it is painful to even contemplate the thought. But any honest observer of the West Indies’ abysmal capitulation to New Zealand must ask the question. Is cricket in Jamaica and the West Indies dying?

The world once regarded Robert Mugabe as a hero. Blacks in Rhodesia had to fight a bitter guerilla war against an oppressive white minority regime to gain equal rights, and many predicted revenge and racial massacre after independence. But when Mugabe took the helm of the renamed Zimbabwe in 1980, he talked only of democracy, peace, and reconciliation.

According to Professor Anthony Harriott one of the main causes of the nation’s high murder rate is the inability of many Jamaicans to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. He says the sharp drop in homicides in some inner city communities over the past two years was partly due to conflict resolution programs established there. He reckons that if such programs were put in place island-wide, our murder rate could drop by 40%.

In March I phoned Food For The Poor to ask founder Ferdinand Mahfood about their plan to build 2,000 houses in Jamaica. His well spoken assistant told me Mr. Mahfood was out of the country. He sounded young so out of curiosity I asked him about himself. His name was Romeo Effs and he was 29. I found the idea of a young guy doing charity work unusual. How had he ended up there? It’s a long story he laughed. Sounds interesting I said, tell me more. Sure he answered. But he was busy, so check back next day.