We spent a relaxing evening at Jolly’s, which is a fish restaurant on the “Back Road” in Portmore. Back Road is a strip of hotels, motels, restaurants and shops. It is also where women sell their bodies. They stand outside the hotels, where the rooms rent for about $5 per hour, some of them in only bras and underwear. They holler at the cars driving by.

But back to Jolly’s. It serves fish literally right from the ocean. We chose some parrot fish from a large, blue barrel and within minutes, it was served to us as we ate by the shore. We could see Kingston in the distance, as well as the airport landing strip. The pelicans hovered in the strong wind and of course, loud music was playing, this time some oldies from the fifties. It is always so striking how just a short ride can take you away from the craziness that is Kingston.

The Re:Imagine Brand Jamaica Symposium yesterday. I will be presenting today!

A stream under the cool canopy at Mystic Mountain in Ochi.

There have been more than 600 murders in 2015, which puts the country on track to increase its annual murder rate to about 1,200. Last year, it was at the lowest level in several years, at 1,005. Authorities attribute the increase in the murder rate to the lottery scam and identify the parish of St. James as the source of most of the problem.

However, in a desperate spinning attempt, the Minister of National Security says that other crime rates such as rape, “accusatory crimes” and others have decreased. How do you feel good about any of this? Why even attempt to spin it?

In Parliament yesterday, the Minister outlined a new strategy for combatting crime, which includes more vehicles on the road, (60 motor bikes, 45 patrol cars, 27 pickup trucks, four trucks and three buses) an audit of all firearms, upgrade of the fingerprint system and more social interventions. More wheels on the road, knowing how many guns police have, better tracking systems for criminals and increased presence in vulnerable communities. It just seems authorities are always running to catch up to criminals.

Here are Minister Bunting’s words from Parliament:

“For almost five years since 2011, Jamaica has averaged about 1,100 murders per year well below the all time peak of 1,692 in 2009. While the average has been around 1,100 the actual figures have been within a band of 1,000 to 1,200. Last year was the lowest in a very long time recording 1,005 murders.\

If we continue at the same rate as the first half of the year, the 2015 figures will end at approximately the 2013 figure of 1,200.
We are all very concerned about reversing the gains we made last year, but those of us who have been studying this problem over many years understand that progress will not always be on a straight line basis. There will be setbacks.

Paradoxically, the figures for other categories of serious and violent crimes are all down. Shootings are down by 8%, Rape down by 25%, and Aggravated Assault down by 14%. Acquisitory crimes or robberies are also down by 16%.

So what we are experiencing this year is not a general surge in crime but rather a spike in murders.”

The main beach in Ochi. Despite the fact that Carnival Cruise Lines moved their main docking port to Falmouth, there were still a couple of ships in the harbour. Apparently Ochi now only gets three ships per month. The area seemed busy, however, for the off-season.

Merchants were late last year dreading this summer season:

“Next summer will be worst in 20 years,” bemoans local businessman Joey Issa.

“Ocho Rios, 15 to 20 years ago, boasted more than 800,000 cruise ship passengers annually. Those numbers have dropped to 400,000,” said Issa.

I wonder how they are faring now. I also wonder if the problem of harassment has improved. We experienced a couple of aggressive vendors, but nothing we couldn’t handle.

The vendors are apparently trying to work out the situation among themselves in terms of who sells what and where, and how. Perhaps it is working? In any case, the beach is beautiful, although I suspect the cruise ships and other large yachts have been dumping waste, because there were few signs of life in the water.

The United Nations this week released its Millennium Development Goals Report and it seems to be a mix of progress and setbacks. The MDGs were established around 2000, and consist of eight targets that nations around the world committed to meeting. They are to: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability and global partnership development.

It is now 2015, the year to account for these goals. Some good news first specific to the Latin American and Caribbean region: the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day fell from 13 per cent in 1990 to four per cent in 2015.

In terms of “gender parity,” for being represented in Parliament, at 27 per cent, this is the highest proportion in the developing world and higher than some developed regions.

The child mortality rate was reduced (and the target met) to 17 per 100,000 deaths in 2015 from 54 per 100,000 in 1990. And HIV infections dropped 56 per cent from 2010 to 2015.

Now, the more disturbing news: one in five people in the Caribbean are “undernourished,” while the rate for Latin America has decreased to five per cent. Enrollment rates at primary schools: only 82 per cent of children are enrolled compared to 95 per cent in Latin America. The report also says the overall region has made “slow progress” in reducing adolescent births; I wonder what that means.

It would be interesting to see how Jamaica compares to the rest of the Caribbean. I would also be interested to know the breakdown for Latin American countries, especially for those that are essentially in civil war situations right now, such as Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala.

As always, the true picture is on the ground, not in a colorful, thick report compiled to meet a deadline.

The country-side is brown and arid. Water restrictions are in place across the island. This time last year, I remember monitoring the lowering Mona dam during my weekly run around it. I have not been up there in quite awhile, but I expect it looks he same as last year.

When I first moved here a few years ago, I was alarmed at the first instances of water shortages, but now I realize it is an annual event. The drought. The water restrictions. The panic and the storing of water. We have been out in the country where the rivers have either dried up or are down to a trickle, but we have not yet felt the negative impact of water restrictions.

The situation is now affecting the health facilities, which is surely a potential public health emergency. In any case, it is perplexing, when you see the number of leaking hydrants, the water parties, the waste that goes on, as well as the potential to harvest rainwater. On an island of abundance, how does this happen?

Even a sudden, unpredicted rainstorm on Monday night, complete with booming thunder, did little to help the supply. I suppose people will make do, authorities will do their rationing, and the summer will go on as usual until the rainy season comes again. 

This picture was taken a couple of years ago, at the Mona Dam, not during a drought, and is courtesy of fellow volunteer Wendy.

For many occupations, there are tangible “measurables” and “deliverables” by which one’s performance can be judged. A salesperson, for example, or a professional athlete. Or even a journalist- you must achieve a daily word count, for example. Other professions, such as an artist or a psychologist, are more subjective when trying to gauge success. I give these examples to make the point that some professions are not easily measured when trying to determine success.

You might think, though, that being the person in charge of security and safety for a nation, a police chief, would have some pretty stringent targets and benchmarks to meet to judge success. Is the murder rate down? Have property crimes fallen? Have domestic violence rates declined? If yes, you might think the top cop is on the right track. If no, well, there is still work to be done.

Not the case with police commissioner Dr. Carl Williams, who gave himself a score of 10 out of 10 when asked at a press conference to rate his performance. He has been on the job for 10 months. This past weekend, more than 600 people have been murdered in Jamaica so far in 2015. This is a roughly 20 per cent increase over the same period last year. The increase has been attributed to a spike in crime in the parish of St. James, where the lottery scams are concentrated.

We don’t know the question he was asked to respond this way, but Dr. Williams explained his self-assessment this way:

“The truth is that there is a whole lot of things that are happening that you are not going to see the results right away,” he asserted.

He cited a confidential exchange program through which people can turn in weapons, as well as targeted effort to fight the guns-for-drugs trade between Haiti and Jamaica. According to statistics, 80 per cent of the murders were committed with guns, with half of those crimes being gang-related.

So by the logic and assumption that because the programs and policies are put in place to tackle specific criminal activity, we should see a drastic reduction in crime soon? As always, the media did not press Dr. Williams as they should have, or the editor did not give the reporter enough space to flesh out the story, or Dr. Williams is an expert in evading questions. Although he has clearly had no media training, or at least did not pay attention, because someone should have advised him not to respond to such a question, or at least display some humility.

In any case, we are left, as usual, with a sensational headline, more questions than answers, no substance, and a sense that the authorities are living in a parallel universe. Dr. Williams is clearly not clueless, however, because he “lamented” that too many elderly people, women and children are becoming part of the statistics. How does he then rationalize his perfect self-assessment with the acknowledgment that too many innocent people are dying? We would love to know, but the story does not shed any additional light.

We ordered fresh pineapple (Jamaicans shorten it to pine), we got it. It is so delicious and sweet.