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Surviving To Live — Chapter II
Violence is a way of life in the ghetto; it’s like water, and we in the ghetto need it to survive!



Twenty Years Earlier
“Which school do you want to go to?” I asked Jackie and Debbie, sitting on the sidewalk in front of my yard on Hanover Street, watching the cars as they raced by. Hanover Street was a shortcut for most people who lived uptown and
worked downtown. It was a scorching hot but electrified Thursday evening, the third week of June 21, 1995, and the eve of the annual Common Entrance Examination results.
Jamaicans believe this determines the future of five and sixth-grade children attending primary schools. This year, twenty-five thousand children sat the Common Entrance Examination; only thirteen thousand spaces were available in high schools, according to an article in the Daily Gleaner.
Jason, my youngest brother, who taught me how to read, read the Gleaner and the Star every day, and he demanded that I do the same after Mr. Linny, our neighbor, finished reading it and discarded it.