Pensive Moods: Reaping what we sow

This has been a very gay week in the local news. The street boys have been featured in all of the media outlets with "stunning" revelations coming from the Chairman of Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) revealing that as far as JASL and JFLAG are concerned the onus for the care and protection of the "lost boys" (as I like to call them) lies with the government and not with the organizations that ought to specifically cater for this niche.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this position as I was around when the first programme for the the street boys was conceived. It was well-intentioned though admittedly clumsy in its execution. It was a knee-jerk reaction to a growing problem that was ignored by the board of JASL because they were ill-equipped and ignorant of the issues and were frightened by the anti-social behaviour of the first group of boys and men. As a result the programme was brought to an abrupt halt, forcing the boys back on to the street, causing an Executive Director to resign, and sterilizing a compound of rowdy elements and their sympathizers.

This news story has forced the issues into the public domain after festering for two years and I'm positive that it has brought great discomfort to those involved, though embarrassment is an emotion I am not sure is applicable given that it is usually born of regret.

I was moved by the words of one of the boys though stained by resentment, albeit understandably so:

"There is no way you can take on 20 to 30 gay persons from different backgrounds, different homes, with different personalities and expect them to behave perfect. It can't go so...You are going to have fights, you are going to have fuss, you are going to have quarrels, 'cause even in a normal family that happens. You understand? There is no way everything will go smoothly," he said.

This brings out the crucial point that many of us have been belaboring all along: For a programme to be successful it must be well designed.

It is good that these issues are being ventilated. Now it is time for roles and responsibilities to be honestly determined and capacities to be critically and truthfully assessed.

This issue of homeless MSM is truly a quagmire but not one that cannot be navigated to reach terra firma..

Let us see what develops and what role we can play in that regard.