By Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
Norman Grindley/Staff Photographer
IT IS arguably the vilest 110 metre-long stretch of dirty pavement and seedy characters that you will ever come across in Jamaica 'The Gulf'.
Located in the heart of New Kingston, it is a tributary road that leads off Dumphries Road. It is also the meeting place and home of Kingston's growing legion of drug addicts. It is here that they meet, socialise, have transactional sex, and congregate after purchasing their drug of choice to get high.
GRIME AND DIRT
With the assistance of the Richmond Fellowship Organisation, The Sunday Gleaner was able to locate the 'Gulf' which is a stone's throw from the top of Dumphries Road. While it is the essence of grime and dirt, it is nonetheless surrounded by successful businesses, pristine buildings and car parks sporting expensive SUVs.
However, before the reporter even gets to the 'Gulf', he meets a man who prefers to go by the charming moniker of the 'Cocaine Cowboy' (CC). The CC is a waifish 40-something-year-old who appears to be a rastafarian, well sort of, as his hair is matted in dirty locks.
After raving about a television interview he did with RE TV, Cocaine Cowboy settles down and talks about his crack addiction, and the runnings of the 'Gulf'.
He spins a tale of how he got addicted to crack through a 'seasoned spliff' at a dance, and how his world was shattered.
"Mi caan stop, no medication no de de fi stop yu from tek it, jail ah medication in a way, but when yu come out, yu two times worse," he said.
CC survives by doing odd gardening jobs, and by picking and selling mangoes. He uses his earnings to support his crack addiction, and to buy white rum. He recognises that the Gulf is a dangerous place because whenever anyone misses possessions, the first place that they look is the Gulf.
"We get blamed for almost everything. As soon as somebody seh dem miss something, the first ting dem seh is 'check downa Gulf', and we have to be careful more time... the odda day dem find a man who hang himself not far from here. Things happen all the time," he said.
FATAL CONFRONTATIONS
There have been a number of violent fatal confrontations in and around the Gulf over the last couple of months.
To the reporter's right, there is a woman in a blue denim jeans dress who is sleeping on a rectangle-shaped piece of cardboard.
A wooden shack of sorts is not far from where her 'bed' lies. According to reports, during the nights, this shack doubles as a 'sex-shop' for crack whores. On the left a bunch of men sit around a table playing cards and cursing.
The reporter steps past the men. A female makes a sexually suggestive overture. A gust of wind charges the nose with the smell of garbage and excrement. As you descend further into the Gulf, you see shards of broken glass twinkling in the late afternoon sun. There is a used condom hanging like a small snake, from the thatch of bushes to the right.
In the middle of the bushes, a tall man in clothes that looked like they had been last washed around 1973, is crouched over a sputtering wood-fire, on which there is a tar-black paint tin. He is stirring what could be a stew of some kind.
There is only one other character left on the stretch of road, a female who is quietly smoking a 'spliff' while standing at the gate that links the alley to the Cinema II venue. As the reporter approaches, she turns around and regards him with a species of quiet amusement. She blows a jet of white smoke from her nostrils. Behind her, there is a makeshift clothes line with mats and clothes hanging from it.
Her name is Latoya, she is the 30-year-old daughter of the late Louise Frazer-Bennett of the Sound System Association of Jamaica. The last 20 metres of the alley represents her house.
The groceries are stored in a small pink wastebasket. Her water is stored in a yellow container. A triangular shard of glass 14 feet away is her dresser.
As she speaks to the reporter, she spreads her bed. She moves two legless wooden stalls, which when placed together, represent her poster bed. Then she spreads a blue tarpaulin over it.
A black metal cup, a charred spoon and a half-used candle are not far from the blackened soot of a coal fire. When she smiles, you can see the ghost of the good-looking girl she used to be. Latoya explains that she has been on the street since she was seven years old when her mother descended into madness and couldn't take care of her children.
SUICIDE
"Mi love mama, but she never right in the head. She light a gas stove, and try commit suicide and burn up her self ova one man who she love who is Karen Ford (older sister who died) father. So when mi see dem tings de, me coulden stay, so mi go pon the road, and a white man tek me up, school me, and mi went to foreign to live, and work."
"When mi de a foreign, mi neva see no sign seh 'say no to drugs', so me tek coke as recreation, and as fun, and ah so me get trapped in it. Coke ah destruction, mi waan stop tek it, mi want to go rehab, the family not helping me, but me really blame myself," she explained.
She is the mother of four children, the youngest of whom lives with her family. She still has the nurturing instinct as she has adopted 'Nasha', a one-year-old puppy.
As she talks, Latoya begins to undress herself. Her breasts sag. She is very thin.
Asked how she supported herself on the street, she explained that she had 'friends', and she was in a relationship with the 'man who run New Kingston'.
She has a sneering corrosive laugh which shows that even though she has been laid low by her addiction, she is still a proud woman, and she projects the impression that she is not afraid of anybody.
"I might look like a chicken, but I am not much of a chicken, people doan play with me," she said.
