By fr.JLucas, 9 Dec 2025

Today felt different. It was one of those days when the scripted routine of the school compound breaks down, and you’re faced with the raw, unplanned reality of life hitting your students.

I encountered one of my Grade 8 students on the school compound. I know him to be quite talkative, like any other teen of his age and background, cooperative, and one from the bright class of grade 8. However, he was walking with his shoulders slumped and his head down. Concerned, I asked him what was wrong, noticing that his usual demeanour was absent. “What’s happening? Why do you look like that? Are you sick? That’s not you, come talk to me.”

Sadly, he turned to me and confessed that he was mourning his cousin, who had been shot dead. I immediately put my hand on his shoulder, and we sat down on a stone bench next to the Grade 8 block. I encouraged him to open up, and surprisingly, he did.

The Unburdening

What followed was the hardest one-on-one, heart-to-heart conversation I’ve not had all semester. His words tumbled out, painting a picture of senseless tragedy that had unfolded just the night before.

”My cousin was shot last night. A girl called him from the house; my cousin had been inside during a party hosted by his father in the community. He had liked this girl for a long time. When he came out, two men hiding behind a block opened fire. As he tried to run, he was shot in the leg, and then they turned him since he fell on his face, stood over him, and shot him two more times in the chest and once in the head. His eyes and mouth were wide open.

Sir, I saw him—it was just the other night we were sharing our hopes for the future. He and I were going to migrate, and I join him in England. Can you imagine, sir? He was only here on holiday and was supposed to return to England, but they’ve killed him. He’s not dead, is he? He can’t die and leave me. My cousin is not dead. I just don’t want to believe it.

Listening to the horrific detail, the disbelief, and the shattered hope of migration and a shared future felt like absorbing a physical blow. The violence was stark, the trauma immediate. He finished, quiet and empty. When I asked about his well-being, he simply said he hadn’t eaten, didn’t feel hungry, and just wanted to sit and have “meds” (a Jamaican slang for ‘to meditate’ or ‘to reflect’—to just exist in the moment).

The Inevitable Tomorrow

Tomorrow, our school starts exams. The academic pressure feels utterly trivial now. How can a student, reeling from witnessing such brutal, sudden violence against someone he loved, be expected to sit an exam? His mind is not on quadratic equations; it is locked on wide-open eyes and shattered dreams.

I went home contemplating not just him, but the countless young people in our communities who are navigating unimaginable trauma. This pervasive culture of retaliatory violence, often summed up in the chilling proverb, “If yuh cyaan ketch Quako, yuh ketch him shut” (meaning, if you can’t catch the main target, you catch his associates or property), is stealing our children’s futures and sanity.

Amid this overwhelming sadness for this young student, the pain became deeply personal. I wept, not just for his cousin, but for my very own brothers, Bigga and Taj, who were taken from us two years ago, 16/12/2023. The cycle of grief and trauma is not abstract; it lives here, in the classroom, on the compound, and in my own history.

Today was a stark reminder that being an educator means being much more than a teacher of subjects; it means being a witness, a listener, and sometimes, the only safe space for a child carrying the heaviest of burdens. We have to do better for them. We just have to.