MOST of the domestic murders that occur in our country ricochet from the toxic social barrel of needs and wants.
The photographs revealed in the newspapers of the location of these tragedies outline domiciles that shout of survival struggles, where traditional incomes are found wanting before the devastating onslaught of a modern world.
You would have to be over 50 to debate what may have facilitated contentment forty years ago as against the demand quest for the ‘things’ that are the symbols of progress of today. Technology was restricted to the radio and the newspapers; who couldn’t read didn’t even buy the newspapers. The radio had selective listening: ‘Dr Paul’, ‘Portia Faces Life’, or music programmes, so the flow of life remained rudimentary and provincial to a great extent.
Though pre-Independent Georgetown had a busy social life, where social lines were drawn in respect to ‘who’ got the better jobs, how, who went to the celebrated schools were to be entitled and perceived. Housing was always a problem.
A third of Georgetown’s population lived in the ‘Nigger Yards’ of Martin Carter’s immortal poem. So, ambitions were self censored, and dreams curtailed to comparable limitations; frustrations expressed itself through street fighters and dominance in the yard culture.

CULTURE OF POVERTY
Though physical poverty has its woes, the wretched wings of the Culture of Poverty lay at levels far deeper than the stereotype concept of the haves and the have-nots.
The television is no longer an exotic item in the homes of our time; its programmes are viewed with a subconscious devotion to the First World that is obvious in the mimicked names of local businesses, and even copied expressions of entertainment.
Whether viewing “sit-com” or movie props or advertising layouts of interior designs and real estate, these are consumed by devotees before the idol of his favourite manmade God, and we manifest them here; we construct temperate-zone designed homes in our tropical paradise.
Recently, the Minister of State was urging home builders to use our kiln-dried woods for building, other than the cement pill-boxes compounded with walls of glass that the Minister of Education was some time ago warning was heat attractive.
The sum of the matter is that the “Harpy” of poverty exerts a mental state that does not morph when the status changes, thus the local term, ‘neva-see-come-fuh-see’.
A classic example is the recent debacle that enveloped the former Attorney-General Anil Nandalall over the ‘Law Books’. When at the court facing a larceny charge, he sought to negate the importance of the charge to the media, not by debating to the media the inculpate matter; instead, he opted to compare the value of his ‘wrist watch’ and ‘cell-phone’ as of having more worth than the Law Books. The logical atmosphere of the incident was transformed to the incriminating embarrassment of the creolese ‘Neva-see-come-fuh-see.’

DEEP-SEATED
The wings of poverty is deep-seated, depriving those tainted by its phosphorous touch of the ability to separate character from the elusive importance of having ‘things’. This stereotype is confronted by the child from the underprivileged area that passes the exams, and so defies expectations. But whose expectations, when it is the atmosphere created of a small family library, with discourses that develop values and a realistic philosophy of self- confidence and the constant example of the parental pursuit to earn and spend finances sensibly, without subjecting the family to the deprivations of all luxuries.
Every family had its genesis of humble beginnings that was transformed by its pathfinders. Whether its descendants were grounded in their evolution, or were tainted by the wings of poverty to become pretentious substance-less caricatures or well-grounded personalities does not depend entirely on what was taught, but also on genes.
As I’ve indicated in a past article, and as we often say, “De child ent tek after he or she mother or father; he or she just like he or she great uncle/aunt, duh scamp.” Except in cases from the Old World, where deprivations were imposed through dominance cultures, where after a hundred generations those dominated developed cultures based on impulses of survival dishonesty; where children are deformed at birth to live as beggars, and prey upon the sympathies of strangers, especially from other cultures.
The culture of poverty cannot be exclusively regulated into districts of obvious economic limitations, but can be defined by the religious person that fails to realise that religion transcends just going to church and singing the loudest while conspiring with everyone around them; or the businessman who loses sleep because his competitor has bought a sizable piece of real estate across the road, while both of them are making reasonable profits while underpaying their staff, depriving them of their NIS benefits. Life at times summons the primordial hunter gatherer. At times we break rules to survive, but never convert breaking rules to the philosophy we live by, or the Harpy of the Culture of Poverty will certainly be our Dream Maker. And nature has a way of making good on the overall vibrations we attract, as against the character-building life challenges we encounter along the way.