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Monday, October 26, 2009
He wore a tightly fitted jacket; sported an unusually high Afro and donned a stylish pair of sunglasses. His accent was unmistakably American and he responded to the moniker "Merikee". Everyone who met him was convinced of his American bona fides; even the venerable Aunt Doris and her husband Papi accepted and took him into their confidence, sufficient to "trust" him their freshly baked potato pudding. "Merikee buy it out!" Papi shouted, in response to the message I conveyed from my cousin requesting to buy a half of the pudding.
Everybody who lived in this area of Frazerwood, St Mary, where I grew up, knew of Aunt Doris's reputation as the best potato-pudding baker in town. She baked her puddings the old-fashioned way: "hell a' top, hell a' bottom and alleluia in the middle". Her potato puddings were so good that a sinner repented just to get a slice. Hence, it should be easy to imagine the hurt her loyal customers, including my shell-shocked cousin Judith, felt after "Merikee" cunningly commandeered the entire pan of pudding. It's anyone's guess how he succeeded in convincing the ever-sceptical Aunt Doris to credit him the pudding, but even more frighteningly was how she foolishly acquiesced to his request based purely on his American lilt. Astonishingly, he was everything else but American. He was one big "ole ginnal" from Montego Bay, and although Aunt Doris has since died, Merikee still hasn't paid his debt.
Then years later, residents of Highgate experienced the making of a perfect tragicomedy; they call it "cotton flight". I was very young at the time, but I remember the saga as if it took place just yesterday. <span style="font-weight: bold">The mission was clear: in exchange for hefty fees and sex, two "mail" buses would pick up clients in the town square then take them to an aerodrome in Tremolesworth where they would meet Daddy on board for the non-stop flight to an undisclosed location in the United States, where they would work as cotton pickers</span>.
As you can imagine, Highgate was abuzz with commercial activities; people bought suitcases, bags, sweaters and all sorts of things, including new false teeth. They sold from "pin to anchor", hardly anything was exempt; cows, pigs, goats, furniture, and down to common fowls were placed on the auction block. Some even resigned their jobs; chided bad-minded neighbours, while others gave away old clothes; all this, as they bade tearful good-byes to family and friends.
Unknown to them, Daddy, the conman, concocted and sold the virtues of cotton flight "lock, stock and barrel" after sizing up their gullibility and eagerness to reach America. Unfortunately, their fanaticism caused them to stoop to levels unimaginable. Daddy was "high-chested".<span style="font-weight: bold"> He ate the best steak, drank the finest whisky, and as repugnant as it was, he ordered beautiful young virgins to have sex with him. And in wild subservience, fathers supplied coconut water and white rum, while mothers cooked "big food" and gave their daughters to the amputee, who no one knew owned and used a prosthetic leg.</span>
So, on arrival at the Norman Manley International Airport, where he was supposedly scheduled to board the plane back to Tremolesworth to pick up his loyal subjects, Daddy refitted his prosthetic leg, put on his false moustache, and walked straight past the man who had followed him to the airport, leaving him standing with a broken heart. The man had no idea that the person he hailed goodbye just moments prior was Daddy, the same man he was waiting for to board a flight back to Tremolesworth.
Nevertheless, Jamaica is not the only place in the world where swindlers and get-rich schemes abound. Way before the billion-dollar debacle of Bernard Madoff, the mighty fall of Olint and the collapse of Cash Plus, which now equals "cash minus", Charles Ponzi had already earned the reputation as one of America's greatest swindlers. Now, entire nations have gained notoriety for producing an abundance of "bunko" men. Nigeria, for instance, is known for its huge population of internet fraudsters and is said to have more crooks per capita than any other country on the African continent.
Fellow columnist John Maxwell said it best in one of his recent columns: "If all my emails could be taken seriously, I should by now be able to pay off a significant portion of Jamaica's public debt." I usually get at least a dozen of these emails daily, rewarding me money for winning contests I never entered, but on condition that I provide my bank and other personal information. I usually press the delete button faster than anyone can "seh feh". But long before the internet, conmen were doing their "thing" and dangerously so. Many victims never lived to tell the tale. They lost their lives in pursuit of empty promises.
Things have gone from bad to worse, and given today's tough economy, fraudsters are busier than ever. They are lawyers, preachers, politicians, bankers and bush doctors. They offer proposals so convoluted they'd peel the skin off Mass Joe's cow as fast as it would take the cow to say "moo". They know how to "tek milk out a coffee", and if allowed, they will brazenly promise to show you "how wata walk guh a punkin belly". They sell jobs that do not exist and large parcels of land that do not belong to them. In fact, I heard of a man in Clarendon who sold a plot of land some 25 times before he was caught. And, forget the occasional co-worker, who borrows an odd amount of money, say, $73.41, and promises to repay "week after next Wednesday at 4:17 pm", but chalks up faint excuses when time comes to pay.
However, no matter the disappointment, <span style="font-weight: bold">some people never learn and are always willing to buy into grandiosity. Some go as far as to offer morbid justifications such as, "It nuh sound too right yuh know, but nutten tried nutten done," in committing their resources in exchange for silliness. Still, many continue to go astray and behave like sheep before a shearer: too dumb to open their mouths, especially when the deals sound too good to be true.</span>
Sometimes it is hard to spot a "ginnal", particularly when gut feelings convince you to go ahead with what's being presented. However, always ask relevant questions, make eye contact; ask for testimonials, and if there is a better business bureau, get information on the company and its principals. Never divulge personal information, do not give out telephone numbers or addresses to strangers, period. If the deal sounds too good to be true, perhaps it is. Always delay making life-changing financial decisions until you are sufficiently satisfied that all the "I's" are dotted and "T's" crossed.
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