Is death really the ultimate?

Some years ago I stopped speak to a pair of young men who were soliciting funds on Trafalgar Road in Kingston. 

The younger one had no hands, arms, feet, or legs and he was in a wheelchair being pushed by the other. 

My heart went out to the wheelchair bound gentleman. I tried to imagine how one survives when you find yourself in a situation like that. 

That's really when I started to appreciate the little things we take for granted,  like feet and fingers!

When I inquired how he had received such severe injury, he told me he was in a car accident.

 The car he was in, went over a gully.

I guess that's one reason why when I hear the Road Safety Council always harping only on the death rate from road accidents, I find it so annoying!

For in all their ads that I have heard, they never seem to take serious injuries (which I suspect are far more prevalent than death in car accidents,) into consideration when warning about the need to drive carefully!

Can you believe too that while there is a horde of statistics on road accidents and the death rate, they have no facts or figures on serious injuries! (At least I couldn't find any!)

 It is because I just heard another radio ad advising drivers how to avoid death on the roads, why I am back on this topic. 

For death has always been their mantra over the decades I have been hearing their ads.

Could it be because I am one of the weird people in the world who doesn't think death is worse than serious incapacitating injury, why no ad warning me of possible death could influence me one bit to take my foot off the accelerator? 

Really how many of you would rather be totally incapacitated than dead? (This is my idea of an informal poll on the issue!)

In my book, if the Road Safety Council wants to encourage safer driving, they should be widening the scope of their ads instead of forever harping only about death.

 Or is it that they don't know death is inevitable? 

 Why don't they encourage motorists to think seriously about the possibility of having to spend the rest of their long lives totally dependent on others to do the most basic things?

Worse yet, if one is not born a millionaire, how well or long can you survive without being able to support oneself if one is seriously injured in an accident?

Interestingly, I wrote the above on the 10^th June. When I took up my Sunday Observer, (16/6) I noticed an article entitled “I’ve never been the same, Survivors share long-lasting impacts of road crashes” written by Kelsey Thomas.

Big up Kelsey as I have also often wondered why no working journalist has ever investigated and highlighted the terrible situation in which the injured are left.

For this particular article, Thomas interviewed only two persons, but I think if more drivers and road users in general read it, it would give them an idea of the physical and mental repercussions that remain when one is the injured for life.

I hope someone who coordinates advertising programs for the Road Safety Council reads it and gets the point that while death is final and inevitable for all, a life of suffering isn’t!

It’s time the Road Safety Council starts thinking outside of the box!

 

 

 

Lusaka

 We left Livingstone today on Airlink and were in Lusaka just over an hour later. My only regret is we never got last look at the amazing Victoria Falls from the air as we did coming in. But we could see the mist in the distance.

Wendy is the greatest.

She hasn’t changed a bit, looks like the same beautiful young lady I knew when she and my daughter Michele became close friends at UWI.

She picked us up at airport, then surprise of surprises, transported to a brand new apartment. 

This apartment is in a newly built complex called Agora Village. It’s composed of shops on the ground floor, office space upstairs and apartment blocks as well.

I was surprised as I had thought for months that we would be staying with her! 

As she is working from home, she wanted us to have our space, she said. 

A creative way to build a bench. Just a slab held up by stones packed in a wire cage!

And our apartment was  stacked with food and even wine!

I tried to protest that she had gone to too much expense but was put in my place by “ Just sharing the blessing. God don't hold back. I am blessed. So I am sharing”. Now how do I argue with that?😊

Next, we went to her home, picked up her son at school and went back home.

She has a lovely home close to her children’s school.

We spent the afternoon catching up on old times then had the most delicious lunch.

While the curry smelled and tasted like the types we are accustomed to, it had a red color. 

It came from South Africa I was told. My lesson for today😊

Her backyard and the bigger dog

Lusaka definitely reminds me of Kingston in so many ways, except: crime is minimal if not totally non existent, People drive a lot more sanely than we do but many roads have no sidewalks and there are no mountains in sight. (Wendy says the only mountains (hills really) are at the border with the D.R).

It must be at least 100 time larger than Kingston though as from the air it appears to spread out forever!

And I find the people here extremely polite, friendly and helpful. 

Reminds me of how Jamaicans were in the olden days.

Looking forward to a wonderful stay ‘at home’ in Lusaka 😊

Big Dunn, Portland, Jamaica

What's the difference between riding and driving? As far as I am concerned, when you drive you rarely notice hills but when you ride the road appears to be nothing but a permanent uphill struggle. On Saturday 12th June, I was assuring someone that a ride from Agualta Vale in St. Mary to Bybrook in Portland was easy as it was relatively flat except for the hill going up to Bybrook. Well I am here to tell you that the road from Agualta Vale to Buff Bay in Portland, is full of hills, although it is part of the new northcoast highway. Problem is, when you drive, the roads are so smooth and wide you never ever notice the hills and even if you do, they never appear to be very challenging. This is a fact that I to my peril, keep ignoring as we head out to the country for our rides.

That's life anyway...full of challenges but lots of fun.

Yesterday we did have a lot of fun. We the less fit in the group, drove almost as far as Agualta Vale, while the super heroes, Alrick, Michael 1, Maurice, Barry, Howie and Damit rode from Kingston. While we passed the others on the road fairly close to Agualta Vale, Barry the racer was nowhere in sight until we got to the gas station where he was waiting patiently.

We rode out in the pouring rain and that was nice and cool, but by the time we got to Annotto Bay it was dry and the sun had started to make its presence felt. All in all it was a fairly decent ride to Buff Bay although all the once invisible hills came out of the woodwork. There we had breakfast, Charles having used his police contacts to arrange it.

What would a ride in the country be without a spectacular spill? Well we were not disappointed as a young man from the area saw us riding and jumped on his bicycle to show off. . Just by the descent beside the Buff Bay cemetery, he was in his element going down the hill without hands when suddenly I saw the spill, or as we say, "im kin puppa lick" over his handle bars and landed in the middle of the road. When I got to him and asked if he was ok he said yes but I suspect he was hurting, but pride made him jump back on the bicycle and take off. He was lucky though for not much traffic was around but a car approached just as he was retrieving his bicycle and slippers out of the middle of the road. All is well that ends well but I suspect he wont be showing off on his bicycle for a while and certainly not near the cemetary for maybe is duppy pull him off! (lol).

Although I had hiked to Bybrook twice before, I had really forgotten how long and challenging the hill was and I had to get off my bicycle twice and push up the uphill. Not unexpectedly too, I ran out of water and when I got to the district and found a shop to buy some, I immediately parked my bicycle on Barry's bicycle rack and gave up riding for the rest of the day.

It was quite a challenge to find the waterfall which was our real destination. Both Howie and I who had been there before, ended up passing it. In fact, when you leave Bybrook and head towards the Blue and Jonkro Mountain range, the next village is Berwick Spring, but it is now inaccessible to cars as like so many areas in the range, the roads suffer from frequent breakaways. I was driving and passed our waterfall and actually reached the breakaway before reaslising we were lost. Anyway Maurice ( Jamaica's greatest guitarist since Ernie Ranglin!)was riding and heard the water gushing out of the hills and found it. We had to cross over the Mabess river to get to the area where there are three sections where the cool water from the Blue Mountains gush over humongous rocks and cascade into nice swimming holes below. Two of the swimming areas are so deep that they appear from the surface to be bottomless like Blue Hole which is also in Portland.

Maurice did not disappoint as he performed the spectacular feat of falling from pool number two over some serious rocks straight down to pool number one. Luckily he did not hurt himself too badly.

Then we headed to another waterfall that some local young men had shown Charles and Micheal Chuck. This fall is part of the Spanish River and is close to a district called Chepstowe which the local people call Stowe and the lovely area we went to is called Big Dunn. Lower down the river there is another nice swimming area called Little Dunn and we were told the property belongs to the Marley estate.

We had to walk quite a distance to get to the falls but it was a resonably easy walk and the path is strewn with apples which are really going to waste down there while we have to pay and arm and a leg for such fuits in Kingston. No wonder people say if you live in Portland you can't starve, for it is really a lush, beautiful and fruitful parish which remains our own relatively undiscovered Garden of Eden.

On a sad note, Winston Chin You, one of our members who always came along on the rides as a support driver, died on Monday 7th June. Walk good Chin You.

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