A LITTLE HISTORY AND THE JAMAICAN MAN T'ING - VERONICA CARNEGIE

A number of us have remained calm during the teacup-storm over  the macho behaviour of  Chris Gayle who is a 36 year old product of the Jamaican environment where men like him become over-night movie stars, usually followed by half-naked, half-starved local girls craving attention.  

During the once sacred 'TEA TIME',I have watched cricket players, apparently fresh from the hairdresser and the manicurist, dancing on the 'mound', vigorously rubbing their groins and gyrating frantically as they do when they sometimes score on the overseas pitch.  Hero Gayle can play one-day cricket and was allowed, until now, to flirt as he wished and 'run jokes' with media maidens and nobody troubled him. Nobody pulled him aside and told him that some women don't want to go to bed with him and are communicating with him only because they thought he was a sportsman.  But  all of this is a part of the man thing.which I first heard about from a neighbour's teen-aged daughter who asked her fussy mother to ignore the father who'd refused to help with the household chores'

'Leave him alone, Mummy. Is a man thing.'

My first encounter with this phenomenon was in 1972 when my husband died leaving me with three small boys, the youngest; two years ten months, who could talk and tell people he would be 'swee in zune'. I taught at a prominent city school and the principal and Board wrote the Ministry of Education on my behalf. The chairman's letter asked for the twenty-four thousand dollars given to teachers like me but the reply from the Ministry apologized for the death of my civil-servant husband and with  deep regret, advised that  the paltry sum was to be given to male teachers only.  Female friends helped me to find jobs outside the classroom but the man thing was everywhere.

I worked as Co-ordinator and Projects Manager with statutory bodies and my energy and enthusiasm and movement to an invisible bell got me in big trouble because I didn't know how to pass through  the ten channels before doing anything, my boss unleashed me and my team and we got the job done.The new organization was called JNIP, Jamaica National Investment Promotion and we were to bring in investors and help them to set up businesses in Jamaica. We went to town and talked to Chamber of Commerce in major American cities and got immediate results from Orlando, Tampa.Atlanta. Within months we were hosting investors  who did set up lasting businesses here, displaying our products in malls in these cities and more than all contacting Mayors like Andrew Young who twinned with Montego Bay and brought M&M to Jamaica. We were proud of our achievement and our boss was pleased but the men in the 'old' boys system was vexed for a person like me had bypassed the tourist board and the export organization through which everything going through America should be passed. The CEO and Chairman of the Export Organization was furious after the twinning of the cities and the arrival of new businesses. and the successful exchange and exhibition in Tampa and he never called me by my name after that.  He very loudly greeted me, in the board room, conference quarters, or luncheons as Miss Tampax, linking me with the female sanitary napkin. That man knew my name  and who I was because he attended the same prominent, Hope Road Boys' School as my second husband.but I never answered when he called me Miss Tampax because he was jealous of my achieving boss and there was no one like Dr. Glenda Simms to point to his man thing as harassment especially at the workplace.

When we chartered an Air Jamaica plane to take a team of business men to go to Orlando for meetings and exhibitions, only two of the business men paid their fares.A ring leader planned with the others not to pay 'for the boss was too tight with the money'. I was shocked at the behaviour of the near forty men who got away without paying their fares. I was pegged for gross mismanagement.

I cannot go without telling you about my 62 year old god-daughter just found out that her 64 year old husband has given their helper her 8th child.. This university lecturer knew that the helper had 7 children for 7 different men. My god-daughter asked him how could he stoop so low and how would he like it if she had a child for the gardener. He accused her of prejudice and point her to the fact that both the helper and the gardener are people's children too. The husband has moved out and now lives with a 24 year old woman who has demanded and got a new car and payment on a house. My wounded god-daughter knows her husband is getting sick and says she will help to nurse him when he's down for that's the Christian thing to do.  Is that another man thing?

The man thing  is as old as the hills but the older ones of us have to help men to deal with change. It.s the fear of change that frightens some men and they bawl out that they're being marginalized. We also have to teach our young men to respect the customs, rules and regulations of other countries..