Gail Alexan­der

Those who live along­side Dibe Long Cir­cu­lar's wind­ing road (in St James) know all too well that they re­side be­tween a rocky hill­side and the hard place threat­ened by a riv­er. That fact is brought home to them main­ly when it rains ex­ces­sive­ly and na­ture blunt­ly re­minds them of its orig­i­nal own­er­ship of the slop­ing ter­ri­to­ry when de­vel­op­ment-weak­ened land slips to­wards the Mar­aval riv­er. Homes on the west­ern left side of up­per Dibe Road are an­chored on the hill­side. It is high­er ground, many parts of which are re­in­forced with re­tain­ing walls. Homes on the east­ern right side of the road near­er the riv­er, are perched on the edge of the hill­side.

As the hill de­scends, some of these homes are al­most be­neath road lev­el, cling­ing to the slope. They al­so re­quire re­tain­ing and sup­port against slip­page and are fre­quent­ly in dan­ger when the riv­er ris­es. There's no room for pave­ment along the nar­row but well paved Dibe road and it's of­ten a tight squeeze when two ve­hi­cles have to pass a pedes­tri­an. Oc­ca­sion­al nat­ur­al threat aside, how­ev­er, res­i­dents of the "hot spot" area these days have less to say about the state of emer­gency's ef­fects than the lack of jobs and in­fra­struc­ture for the area. And none are shy about the shad­owy part of Dibe fur­thest up at the end of the moun­tain road known as "the Creek" of which area MP Colm Im­bert says:

"It has its share of prob­lems, there are hard-work­ing hon­est peo­ple and there are al­so un­em­ployed young men who find them­selves on the wrong side of the law-a typ­i­cal poor area where peo­ple are not very well off." "I don't go up the road at all," was the more point­ed de­scrip­tion from sev­er­al fe­male oc­cu­pants along the low­er part of Dibe on Mon­day night. Some Creek res­i­dents, how­ev­er, have the same is­sues to re­late as their neigh­bours fur­ther down the road, even if they make the points more vo­cif­er­ous­ly and in more colour­ful ways. "Jobs..... is jobs we need," said Al­lan, 27, who lives fur­ther down Dibe Road. "I have a job my­self but oth­ers around my age are not get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ties and worse, they cut out CEPEP and URP in the area a long time now - the youths don't have any­thing to turn to but it have plen­ty things in the area need fix­ing," Al­lan added in a soft spo­ken tone.

"I'm 25 and I can't get a job years now...... the way it go­ing things will get dras­tic," added an­oth­er youth around the next cor­ner. Wear­ing a blue T-shirt he is work­ing on a lap­top com­put­er sit­ting at the side of the road. Ce­celia, who works at TGI Fri­day, al­so makes the same ap­peal for the area. Ce­celia doesn't feel the im­pact of the SOE as much now that the cur­few hours have been re­duced and her shift hours are back to nor­mal. While some res­i­dents like Ce­celia say they saw their MP in the area two Sun­days ago for a con­stituen­cy Fam­i­ly Day, fur­ther down the hill some oth­ers are not in­ter­est­ed in hear­ing Im­bert's name or coun­cil­lor Su­san Ro­driguez's. "Elec­tion come, elec­tion go-is the same thing for this part of Dibe," said a 30-ish woman sit­ting with a group of oth­ers at the foot of Bois Bande Hill (They were un­sure of the spelling of the name.).

About 50 hous­es sit atop the hill­side to the left of the road and the en­trance com­pris­es few con­crete steps and tight­ly wind­ing dirt track carved in­to the hill­side. "Is Gaza here....." agrees a youth in a vest, shorts and slip­pers. "When rain fall, the hill bank is come down and if you see wa­ter pour­ing down those four five steps. My step­fa­ther Sylvester Be­taudi­er fell straight off the bank (of the hill) two years ago and he still has a dent in his head from the fall," said Be­taudi­er's daugh­ter. "The MP don't both­er with up here so, he feel it have too much ban­dit. You know how long we try­ing to get that lit­tle piece of road­side pave or fix! The hill will keep com­ing down and then hous­es will start mov­ing too," adds a bare-back man about 39 years.

Some res­i­dents are proud of the fact that the area has no wa­ter prob­lems, but they al­so echo the cry for jobs and project work in the area to keep youths busy. "Hu­man be­hav­iour is some­thing you can't leg­is­late you know, but at least if they have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing every, day it might make a dif­fer­ence," said an old­er man in ex­er­cise wear walk­ing up the hill. Judy, who sells cig­a­rettes and canned goods from her home, said her son is in the Po­lice Youth Club. "Coun­selling is re­al­ly what some youths and par­ents in this area need. A lot of them don't un­der­stand what they do­ing or how it af­fect­ing their chil­dren or how to cope with things," Judy added. Judy's home is across the riv­er from a new fan­cy apart­ment de­vel­op­ment. Neigh­bours near­by point out the dan­gers of land slip­page.

"That riv­er is roar so hard when it high-it's fright­en­ing," said a 51 year old res­i­dent. "The MP had got­ten (re­tain­ing) walls put up in some parts, some was go­ing down, but he not in Gov­ern­ment any more, so no fund­ing for him to do any­thing. The coun­cil­lor come and promise thing and we nev­er see her again," she added. She added, "Jack Warn­er and all come up here last year and it was big thing, but noth­ing ever fix. That was just a pic­ture-per­fect thing. He just come to pose." "Right there," she point­ed a cou­ple hous­es up. "The old la­dy Gertrude Hen­ry was in the pa­per three weeks ago call­ing for a re­tain­ing wall for her prop­er­ty there-she just dead. She nev­er got the wall. They can't keep squeez­ing us for jobs and to fix things in the area just be­cause we is PNM," the woman added.