Lord, save me from decent people
By Andaiye
I read the following letter in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper of November 4, 1999: Letter of the Day Lord, save me from decent people The Editor, Madam: There is much fear of gunmen and deportees, but I have never met any. My constant prayer is "Lord, preserve me from decent people." Decent professionals and tradesmen who play their electronic music by day and night to obliterate conversation or TV viewing in my house. Lord save me from decent people who set up businesses in their residential houses, and use up the verges to park their trucks and their customers' vehicles. Lord, save me from the decent rich who can afford fabulous equipment in their cars to play the loudest rhythms, passing by and drowning out the salient lines of all prime time TV programmes. Lord, save me from "nice brown skin" decent youths who harvest all my fruit dressed in their "traditional" high school uniforms. Lord save me from stress when I use the roads with the decent. Help me to give all the decent, the right of way; to allow them to move on red while I wait on green. Save me from hard working civil servants who need years to process my documents. Lord, save me from the decent.
I am etc., That's the Jamaica version, and I thought I would write one about the decent people all around me in Georgetown. Lord, save me from decent people: Georgetown version The Editors, all papers, Sirs/madams, whoever, I do not want in any way to downplay the suffering caused to people who have been attacked by local gunmen. But I think it is true that more of us suffer daily from the behaviour of decent people than from the behaviour of what we call real criminals. Some of the decent people in Georgetown are the same as the decent people in Jamaica (sea the above letter) but ours are worse, because the rest of us are more docile than Jamaicans would ever be. Our decent people who set up their businesses next to your house park their container vehicles on your bridge; forget the verge, that is already full. Our decent youth of all colours, dressed in their nice uniforms, drop their pieces of sucked-dry cane stalk and their cups and whatever else on your bridge too, next to the businessman's container truck, in between cursing with fluency and relish. Our decent drivers don't move on red while the few law-keepers stop on green, because our traffic lights are not working. And so on. So now let me go to a few of the other things that decent people do in Georgetown that I want to be saved from; it's a kind of miscellaneous collection of things big and terrible and things small but spirit-wearying. Lord, save me from the decent policemen who use people's disgust with crime as a cover for extra-judicial killing. Save me from the decent lawyers ensuring that their indecent clients are freed by the courts to continue destroying other people, usually poor people and children. (My father used to try to explain to me about the right of all people to be treated by a doctor and defended by a lawyer, but I didn't get it). Save me from the decent magistrates who give Rasta with one spliff a bigger jail term than big drug dealers. Save me from the leading law enforcement officials who hit their wives in public and (they hope) private. Save me from the big, big (decent) businessmen who don't pay their taxes but shout "Thief "Thief!" at smaller, more visible robbers. Lord, save me from the decent doctors who ask for high sums to write letters for sick people to go to the US Embassy and beg for a visa since their own country can't treat them. Save me from the decent people in the private hospital (hospitals?) where, regardless of how sick you are, they come to let you know that the money you deposited is used up and you have to pay up or else. Save me from the other decent doctors presiding over labs which are accurate only in relation to their bills, because who can you report them to? Their friends? Save me from the decent tradesmen charging exorbitant prices for careless work, because they don't have to give a guarantee and there is no one to report them to, not even their friends. Lord, save me from all the decent Guyanese who do bad work here, don't know how to be punctual here, but re-learn good work habits and manners as soon as they reach Kennedy airport. (They also learn how to go to work through the snow there, after years of sheltering from the drizzle here). Lord, save me from the decent and righteous people in the church who play and sing music through a microphone several times a week till late at night, and then on Sundays, making far more noise than even the mini-buses, the travelling music vendors and all the other unrighteous. Save me from the decent, well-dressed people in their big fancy cars who don't stop at pedestrian crossings, not even to let small children cross the road. Save me from the same decent, well-dressed people in their expensive cars who lean on their horns impatiently when you stop to let the children cross the road, or worse, speed past you so that the children have to scatter. Lord, save me from the (private) taxi-driver who explained to me that the reason he didn't stop at the one traffic light in Georgetown that is working, was because only he would stop and that would confuse the traffic. Save me from the decent people who would make death threats against a beauty contestant. Lord, I still want to be saved from the decent people in the Mayor and City Council who feel free to walk (or drive) with their heads high through the chaos and filth of Georgetown. Some people would hide. Above all, save me from the decent people who grumble and criticise in private, genuflect to all authority in public, and call me to say "I agree with what you said in the column".
Signed: Also in need of a Saviour,
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