Fishing beach provides alternative to crime in Manchioneal
AT SIX o’clock each morning, Manchioneal resident Charles Bell starts his day by ‘rigging’ fishing boats to venture out into the sea.
It is a strenuous, day-long task involving riding miles with buckets of petrol, but Bell says it not only puts food on his table, but keeps many youths like himself out of trouble and out of jail.
“It’s a work thing, you zeet? Dem (fishermen) work and we work, and it is an everyday thing because if the boats don’t go to sea, we don’t have no work,” said Bell, who is convinced that fishing is the main activity keeping youths from Manchioneal, like many other impoverished communities in Portland, from turning to a life crime.
“We deal with fishing because we don’t have the access to hold the guns and we don’t want to go into them things there. We just want to do our fishing thing and know that our place a run cool. The gun thing not going to pay wi here so,” said Bell, as another ‘rigger’, Randy Gray, nodded in approval at the Manchioneal Fishing Beach on Tuesday.
DAILY DUTIES
The fishermen are tasked with hauling their catch, while riggers, usually two per boat, do the heavy lifting: fetching gas and ice for fisherfolk who are going out to sea.
When the more than 80 boats return to the beach, riggers are tasked with unloading the catch and equipment as the seadrenched fishermen rest. Riggers, usually young unattached youths, earn up to $4,000 daily, plus they are also given fish to sell for themselves.
Keffian Bentley, a resident, said poverty is not an excuse for Manchioneal youngsters to turn to a life of crime, even though she agrees that the parish of Portland is heavily underdeveloped.
“Nobody can’t go hungry here. When we go fishing, nobody not refusing to give somebody else some fish. That’s how we live. Who beg fish get fish, who yuh fi sell, yuh sell,” said Bentley.
“Nobody can’t hungry so till them go tief; is must somebody from outside do that, and up here we love chat. We not seeing anything and hold it, and we work with the police dem, too,” added Bentley.
“What we want, though, is some more jobs,” interjected Cheryl Hall, another resident.
“Portland needs some more development. We need some more jobs and opportunity for the youths dem. Yes, them have fishing, but still too much of them on the road a daytime [a] idle,” said Hall.