You don't have to live in 'Back To' or Dunkirk or Mountain View to know that our people are hurting. Communities are enveloped in grief and families are struggling with pain and loss because of tragedies in this bristling, bustling, sometimes beautiful, sometimes bitter capital city of Jamaica - the place Peter Tosh famously called 'Kill Some City'.

What a gwaan, Jamaican? Wha really a gallang? Really and truly, people, answer is a river and we trekking through a desert. I would love some sage or priest or prophet or sociologist or psychologist or some other kind of 'ist' or analyst to answer one simple question fi me. Yeah man, that same question: What really gwaan inna Jamdung?

Is like di reality nuh real. It's like we're walking in a nightmare and living in a dream, where everything is extra, excessive and extreme. Jah know, mi nuh know a who a write dis yah movie, but mi nah tell nuh lie, it shocking, gruesome and scary!

Me nuh know, is like there's something about our peeps whereby anything we do wi do, wi nuh just do, we haffi overdo. And it mani-fest itself in numerous ways in a variety of areas. Like, check certain trends that trying to infiltrate dancehall, where, according to certain videos I have seen and reports I have read, it look like skin out and bruck out and dagger one another cyaan cut it anymore fi some people. So couples are actually engaging in sex as entertainment in public dance spaces. And pon toppa dat, an aspiring DJ produces a music video showing explicit scenes of him having raw, rough and ugly sex with a willing young woman.

blood pressure buck

A so we stay, man. We nuh satisfy to have things tun up, we haffi mek tings tun over. We turn over rules, turn over values, turn over morals. Nuff people me talk to, though, dem say it only tun dem stomach or mek di volume pon dem blood pressure buck.

We too extra and extreme, man. We so extreme that we nuh just take things to another level; we bruck dung all level an tek it to di devil! Talk bout devil, even our demons and duppies move exceptionally extra. Yeah, man, our ghosts are bolder and more brash and brazen than most. Dem nuh screechy a night time like foreign duppy and scare people inna darkness. No, man, dem duppy we have terrorize some tough teenage pickney at school and haunt some fearsome, armed policeman inna dem owna station inna broad daylight.

But seriously, though, friends and family, I have ask again. What's happening in Jamaica, especially with young men? What kind of spirit could be inhabiting their souls to enable them to commit the dastardly deeds that we read about daily?

Men are murdering babies. A man beheads the mother of his children. Where does this kind of extreme violence and savagery come from? We're probably running out of negative superlatives to describe the thoughts and actions of the beasts that walk among us in the flesh of men. In fact, I think we run out long time.

But Father God know, I hope we don't run out of answers, though. So where's the answer? Some people say the answer resides in divine intervention. But we have nuff a dat. We have the most church per square mile with sanctimonious saints praying steadfastly almost seven days a week. So maybe we need fi tun up, buck and tek dat to a higher level.

Frankly, I think the answer lies in individual action. Yeah, man. The answer is in the small acts of intervention that can lead to violence prevention. But check this. How wi supposed to act when we're oblivious to the hopes, fears and feelings of our fellow humans? How can we act when we miss indications or ignore signs? And how can we see signs when we can't even see each other?

You think is joke? More time wi all so busy texting, tweeting and surfing, even when we're among company, that we not really seeing each other. We physically close but we nah reach one another. And yu si, if each one can reach one, then each one can teach one. Yeah, man, it may sound simple, but that's how wi start transformation.

What you think?

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