Michael Goring Speaks on Hosay

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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: May 25, 2005
Posted: June 27, 2005

We have to be positive

Michael Goring

There isn't anybody to speak to the young people and there is nobody for them to watch and lift themselves up to. We are having plenty problems. I am having trouble understanding why we cannot communicate. I am not speaking about you and I. I am speaking about parents and so on. Anybody who is seeing when something is going wrong, why wait until it becomes out of control? Why don't you hold him by the scruff of the neck and tell him that is not the way? These are the reasons why I am out of the Hosay, because we try to explain to them; we try to tell them.

If I was to stand there and see them doing it and say nothing, I would be just as guilty as them. We like to see so many things, and the Hosay is one of the things that the people in St. James have. If you have ever been privileged to be around on the day of the big procession, you will see an integrated society. They start gathering from as early as two o'clock. The main road is packed as if it is a mini carnival and it is mostly with St. James people. They do not come back down here before about six o'clock, but they are on the road from ten in the morning. They go up the road and they go around by Flood Street, pass in front of the prayers on Q.R.C.'s ground and they reach back at the junction by Harvard's for four o'clock. They occupy the bridge for four o'clock, and the whole of the Western Main Road until about half past seven. Though you have a license for about six o'clock, the police do not really nag.

This is for a worthy cause and I trust what you all are doing now may help people to understand. If at any time you need to find out anything else and I can help, I will. I had some books here but I gave them away because I got very frustrated with the people. You are trying to teach them but they do not want the help. They will tell you "yes", but if you ask them the same question tomorrow they wouldn't understand. For example, if you have a group of about five or six people they will go along with almost anything you say. If you throw out something the first person who says yes or no, the other five will go along with that yes or no. If you take the intelligent one away from the crowd and throw the same questions to him, the same statements, when he gets a chance to think, everything that he said earlier he goes back on it because he realized the peer pressure made him say things that he would not have said. These are the problems that they are having in the schools.

Have you given any thought about the vagrants on the street? If a lot of these people who are out there on the streets had somebody to speak to them, to advise them, or somebody to extend a hand to them, do you think some of them would be there on the streets? I have spoken to quite a few vagrants and the other day I called one out here. When he first started to pass here he was very clean and within a five week period he had deteriorated so badly. I called him and said, "What is wrong with you? When you first came around here you were very clean; what happened?" He said he didn't know. I said to him, "Well whenever you get yourself back to you, come and talk to me." He did not come back. I know I threw him in a spot.

Around here we had two international dancers, one who is called 'Bobo', and one from the States who danced with Julia Edwards in China and all these places, and they are vagrants. This is from a lack of education and the easy life. We have to be able to turn around this place. You all are doing it in the way you are doing it. We need plenty support from quite a few more people. I just hope that we can do it. The papers have to sell, and many times you have bought the papers because of the headlines. And when you read the article it has nothing to do with the headline; it is misleading. If you went into Laventille and you found something that is very good, and you went the following day and you found something that was also good, they would not feature that. But they will feature the killing, the drug bust and so on and those in authority are encouraging it.

The average man in the streets will settle for a sweet drink and sweet bread. A breakfast in the morning will cost more than nineteen dollars because you want two scrambled eggs and so on. To earn that you know that you have to go out there and work.

The average young boy doesn't understand that. I would sit on the front here, but I would not let them come in the yard because I do not trust them. They talk and they talk. They are working eight days for eight hundred dollars, but they are buying a pair of sneakers for eleven hundred dollars. For the eight days they were eating while they were working. Who gets anything from them to put back something in the pot? They cannot give anything because they are only working for eight hundred dollars and are in debt of three hundred, because it is eleven hundred dollars for the sneakers. You and I will buy at least two good pairs of shoes, some underwear and some nice shirts for that kind of money, and we are not going to do it in a lump sum. We are going to save and sacrifice to do it. I can achieve anything I want. We have to be positive. Where there is hope and there is faith you can achieve anything.

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