Daily Gleaner, September 26, 1992
'Bend Down' Gully By Norma Soas
Fern
Gully is being savaged. The irony is
that its demise is being perpetrated by
the very people
who seek to earn a living from the lure of this tourist attraction.
As
a child growing up in Kingston any trip
beyond Spanish Town was a treat. Fern Gully was
my favourite. Everything about it
was intriguing - the interplay of light
and shade the
transformation of the road
into a mosaic as sunlight filtered through
overhanging trees. Even
the cautious negotiating
of winding curves added a sense of
danger and heightened the
excitement of driving through this seemingly magical place.
I
have observed the steady decline of Fern
Gully over the year. It is like a
nobleman stripped of
all but his title,
vainly trying to maintain his dignity. The
cautious optimism with which I have
viewed the tourism product is constantly being eroded as the assault on our beautiful countryside accelerates.
On
a recent drive through Fern Gully, 'scandal'
bags of every hue, blown by the wind,
were
wrapped around the trunks of trees,
some woven into the foliage as though
someone was
decorating for a macabre party. Discarded 'box drinks' cartons lined both sides of the road.
From
a mini van ahead of me a circus
trail was created as skin, seeds and
pulp were hurled
through the window.
Usually,
in battle, to the victor go the spoils.
Fern Gully is losing the battle, but it
is also a
no-win situation for the
desecrators. The growth of vending stalls is
proliferating into mini
shopping plazas. In some sections vegetation has apparently been cleared to facilitate bamboo
poles on which to display items being sold.
Someone
in authority had better put a atop to
this rot before the wooden dwelling houses
now
being erected are replaced with concrete
structures. Eventually, even the kind of
tourists of
whom Miss [Dawn] Ritch disapproves will
turn up their noses at this appalling
example of
Jamaican 'ramshackle'.
If
there must be vending in Fern Gully it
should be confined to one specific area
with
attractively built booths. People should
not have the freedom to do what is
wrong. There should be no freedom to destroy the environment.
No one is denying anyone the right to
"earn
a bread”. But there is a
very good reason why in a home, the
toilet is not located in the middle
of the dining room.
As
Fern Gully is replaced by 'bend down'
gully the JTB will have to cease
touting it as a
tourist attraction for
nature lovers and botanists, and advertise
it instead as the three-mile
craft arcade.
Anyone care to join me in a requiem?
Her cri de coeur drew responses:
Daily Gleaner, October 3, 1992
Fern Gully as symbol
By Desmond Henry
TREASURE BEACH:
Norma
Soas' recent comments in your newspaper on
the ugly deterioration of the Fern Gully
into what she called a bend-down plaza
is but another symbol in the murky
drift of our daily
lives. All Jamaica, it seems, is being reduced to either a bend-down or a squat, as that appears
to be the preferred position from which we best discommode ourselves of our habits. We have
become
spoilers of the most abhorrent kind,
destroying any and everything which speaks
of
order, beauty and function. Who can
forget, for example, that odious comment
some years ago
by a leader in government about an automotive plant being "too clean" in which to train young men. and that it first should be dirtied up to make it more comfortable. Thus the Fern Gully principle in our lives is now telling us to soil everything, to disavow
beauty,
order, cleanliness and functional harmony. It
is a prescription for social ugliness of
the
worst kind.
In
1990, in a series of articles in your
paper outlining the concept and definition
of Community
Tourism, I advocated a set
of specific ideas for dealing with Fern
Gully as it applies to the
region of
Ocho Rios. They were predicated on the
certain official promise that a substitute
road
into and out of Ocho Rios was
a certainty, and that the gully would become a controlled public
park. This of course has not happened, but does not alter much the ideas I proposed then.
Replanting
(i) Do a wholescale replanting of the entire gully utilising mainly women labour from the surrounding areas. As a public works project it could employ hundreds of women for a gainful period.
(ii)
Light the entire gully with multi-coloured
lights, with the idea of transforming it
into an
attractive visitor entertainment and strolling strip at nights.
Take
this concept one step further and hold
a one-night-a-week entertainment promenade in
the
gully. Call it what you will, the Fern
Gully Frolic, perhaps. On the night of
the frolic, Ocho
Rios hotels, especially the all-incluslves. would be encouraged to forego their own inhouse
entertainment so as to allow their guests to get out and mix, meet, spend, and be entertained.
The range and scope of the entertainment should be professionally choreographed.
(iii)
Severely control and regulate the list of
users and activities in the gully, so
as to make it a
genuine, safe and attractive location for the exposition of local fare, colour and craft.
(iv) Prohibit the travel of heavy vehicles through the gully.
The disorder which Ms Soas so rightly recognises in Fern Gully is nothing more than the general disorder that afflicts the wider society.
We are all witnessing a catastrophe in progress.
Unless
someone, therefore, with a sense of what
matters, and a feel for order and
aesthetics
takes this and other aspects of
our qualitative lives in hand, sooner or
later all aspects of our
dally life
will, like the water in the Fern Gully,
flow gravitatingly to their common lowest
levels.
And as the levels get lower and lower, the flow inevitably gets faster and faster.
Daily Gleaner, October 22, 1992
Walking on the edge by Morris Cargill
All we need now is the continuing uncontrolled destruction of our environment of which Fern
Gully
is the symbol. Everyone from street vendors,
sound-system operators, slash-and-burn
artists and
even some large hoteliers and developers
seem to think that "earning a bread'
is the
final justification for doing any damn thing they please to the environment.
