From Jamaica's Broken Roads to Broken Moments: Neglect Is Never Silent. It Shows Up
It’s not very often I see sights that move me to tears. The treatment of people at the hands of ICE agents makes me sick to my stomach and disturbs my spirit deeply. Im telling you, if you truly want to see me break, show me, in real life, a human being being ill-treated or left without dignity. That is what reaches me at my core.
Today being Sunday, I thought it would be a good day for a drive. I left Kingston and made a decision that I would not be using the highway. Paying JMD 4,500 for a one-way trip to Ocho Rios is simply out of reach for most Jamaicans, and on that principle alone, it was off limits for me. I wanted to take the old roads, the roads people still depend on.
As I passed through Spanish Town, I found myself reflecting on its history as a former capital. It struck me that I had been bypassing it for years, like many others, choosing the convenience of the highway over the reality on the ground. But driving through it today forced me to confront something deeper. This was not just about bad roads. This was about what happens when systems are left behind.
At one point, I genuinely felt trapped, unsure if I would even find my way out. This could not be the Spanish Town I knew decades ago. The roads were so badly deteriorated that navigating them felt like mountain climbing in a car. Vehicles were twisted at awkward angles, each driver trying to negotiate potholes that had grown into craters, and ridges that rose like barriers in the middle of the road. It was not simply an inconvenience. It was structural neglect made visible.
And in that moment, it became clear that what I was experiencing was not just poor road conditions, but a failure of maintenance, planning, and sustained attention. Roads, like systems, do not collapse overnight. They deteriorate slowly, over time, when signals are ignored, when repairs are delayed, and when responsibility becomes diffused. What I saw in Spanish Town was not sudden damage. It was accumulated neglect.
Disappointed but relieved, I eventually found my way out toward Angels and continued on, still committed to avoiding the highway. I made my way through Bog Walk Gorge, a route I have always appreciated for its beauty, though lately it has been marked by tragedy. In recent months, I had seen reports of trucks plunging into the Rio Cobre near Flat Bridge. As I approached the bridge, traffic came to a stop at the red light, and I settled in, knowing we would have to wait our turn to cross.
It was in that stillness that something came into view.
At first, it was just a figure in the distance. A young man, lean, well-built, moving toward the line of waiting vehicles. From afar, I could not tell if he was clothed or not. I assumed, for a brief moment, that he had come out of the river and was heading home. But as he got closer, that assumption shattered. He was completely naked, as bare as the day he was born, running toward us.
As he approached, I could see he was young, perhaps around twenty-three, clean-cut, physically strong, but something was terribly wrong. His body moved with instability, as if it were failing him. Before I could fully process what I was seeing, he stumbled and fell, narrowly missing his head against a concrete wall at the roadside. He pulled himself up, and what struck me in that moment was that his face did not look tired, only his body. It was as if his mind and body were no longer in agreement.
When I looked into his eyes, they were glazed, wide open, fixed upward toward the sky, unblinking. There was no recognition, no connection, no awareness of the world around him. He ran past my vehicle, close enough for me to see clearly that his eyes had turned almost completely white, his head still tilted upward as if he were chasing something none of us could see.
Tears began to run down my face, and my heart felt as though it had split in two.
I started asking myself questions I could not answer. What did I just witness? Why did I witness it? Who is responsible for this young man? Why is he naked, alone, running on a public roadway, surrounded by traffic, yet completely unseen? Cars were moving in both directions, people watching, but no one stopped. And in truth, I understand why. There is fear, there is uncertainty, there are risks. Who do you call in that moment? What do you do? Where do you even begin?
But beyond those immediate questions is a deeper one that refuses to leave me.
Where is the system that should have reached him long before he reached that road?
Because that young man did not arrive there by accident. There had to be signs. There had to be moments when something shifted, when someone noticed, when intervention was possible. There had to be a family, a community, a point where help was needed but not received, or perhaps not even available.
And that is where everything connects.
Because earlier that same day, I drove through a system that had been allowed to deteriorate in plain sight. And later, I encountered a human being who may very well have been moving through his own form of deterioration, also in plain sight.
In both cases, the pattern is the same.
Signals are visible.
Intervention is delayed.
Responsibility becomes unclear.
And eventually, the system fails in a way that can no longer be ignored.
What I witnessed today was not just an isolated incident. It was a visible expression of something far more systemic, the quiet, often ignored reality of mental health in Jamaica. We do not talk about it enough, we do not invest in it enough, and too often, we do not respond until the situation has already escalated beyond control.
Mental health support in Jamaica remains limited, fragmented, and in many cases, inaccessible to those who need it most. There are too few facilities, too few trained professionals, and too little integration between healthcare, community support, and early intervention systems. Families are often left to manage on their own, without guidance, without resources, and without a clear pathway to help. By the time the system engages, it is often in crisis mode, when the individual has already reached a point of visible breakdown.
What I saw today was not just a young man in distress.
It was a system that did not reach him in time.
And that is the part that should trouble us the most.
Because until we begin to treat mental health as essential infrastructure, just like roads, hospitals, and schools, we will continue to encounter these moments, not as rare tragedies, but as predictable outcomes of systems that are not designed to respond.
And when those failures surface, whether in broken roads or broken moments in people’s lives, they do not appear suddenly.
They reveal what has been neglected all along.
