“He had the stuff that great men are made of; it’s the stuff you can miss un­less you look be­low the sur­face.”–Mys­tic Prowler 1998 Ca­lyp­so Monarch

Of­ten we do not un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the ob­vi­ous when it’s placed in front of our eyes for in­ter­pre­ta­tion; that is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in our sec­u­lar ex­is­tence in which ma­te­r­i­al is all that is im­por­tant.

Hav­ing re­viewed a small sam­pling of the work of the man I re­ferred to as the “quin­tes­sen­tial Caribbean jour­nal­ist, Jones P Madeira,” I ex­plore an as­pect of his be­ing that I on­ly came to some­thing of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of dur­ing the last months of his life and post his pass­ing. That some­thing be­ing the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the man, a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty de­fined in a man­ner not gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be “spir­i­tu­al”.

At the evening mass at his home a cou­ple of days be­fore Jones’ fu­ner­al ser­vice, Fr Mau­rice White re­vealed that it was Jones who rec­om­mend­ed him to the sem­i­nary. That set me think­ing, not so much about Jones us­ing his good name to as­sist a young man to get in­to train­ing for such a vo­ca­tion, but the priest­hood?

On think­ing a sec­ond time, there were in­stances dur­ing the pe­ri­ods when I worked with Jones when his ac­tions puz­zled me. For in­stance, agree­ing with a po­lice com­mis­sion­er to with­hold the sto­ry of a young woman’s kid­nap­ping on the ba­sis that to re­lease the in­for­ma­tion se­cured by the news­room would en­dan­ger the life of the cap­tive young la­dy. Or his re­fusal to re­spond in kind to some politi­cian seek­ing to tram­ple on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the sta­tion, news­pa­per, or ra­dio sta­tion.

Or when he stepped in to mod­er­ate an Is­sues Live, which I re­fused to do as the reg­u­lar mod­er­a­tor of the pro­gramme, as I con­sid­ered it an at­tempt to con­trol the sta­tion’s out­put. My present un­der­stand­ing of what Jones did was to save the sta­tion from the wrath of the Gov­ern­ment of the day. Such ac­tion goes be­yond the norm and re­quires a spir­i­tu­al strength of char­ac­ter out­side the or­di­nary.

Jones P told the sto­ry of get­ting a call from an un­known per­son in Grena­da who claimed that the Bernard Coard fac­tion of the New Jew­el Move­ment in Grena­da had ab­duct­ed Mau­rice Bish­op, the leader of the par­ty and gov­ern­ment.

But not know­ing the in­di­vid­ual who gave him the in­for­ma­tion and be­cause of his own in­abil­i­ty to con­firm the sto­ry, Jones did not car­ry it. In do­ing so, Jones was not on­ly op­er­at­ing on the ba­sis of a jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ple but there was some­thing else cos­mic, some­thing spir­i­tu­al in its broad­est de­f­i­n­i­tion pos­si­ble to re­sist a scoop.

As re­lat­ed in last week’s col­umn, Jones’ re­ac­tion un­der the gun of the Mus­limeen and the pos­si­ble threat of a con­fla­gra­tion, Jones asked me to con­tact the heads of the RC and AC church­es to ask them to pray for the na­tion. But as in­struct­ed in the Bible by James, while he asked for prayers, he brought the army leader and Abu Bakr to the ma­te­r­i­al ground to avoid blood­shed.

Jones arranged for me to go on as­sign­ment to Zim­bab­we, then with a HIV in­fec­tion rates run­ning at 25 per cent of the sex­u­al­ly ac­tive pop­u­la­tion with tens of thou­sands hav­ing AIDS.

It was for the pur­pose of writ­ing ma­te­r­i­al that he used to reach Caribbean au­di­ences on the many ways and means that cer­tain groups of peo­ple in the coun­try­side were shar­ing what lit­tle they had to sus­tain life amongst their broth­ers and sis­ters.

I now in­ter­pret what Jones was seek­ing to do was to con­vey a mes­sage of care and hu­man­i­ty in the cir­cum­stances in which over 500,000 peo­ple in the Caribbean had con­tract­ed the virus and dis­ease, which could eas­i­ly threat­en the ex­is­tence of the sev­en to eight mil­lion peo­ple in a re­gion where in­ter-is­land trav­el is al­most as com­mon as go­ing from Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do; think of the con­se­quences of such in­ter­ac­tion; yet again, prac­ti­cal spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

One of the sto­ries I un­cov­ered in Zim­bab­we was that of a Catholic priest hav­ing found him­self in an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple were get­ting se­ri­ous­ly ill and dy­ing; he prayed for a way out, then hand­ed out con­doms to young peo­ple, a form of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty con­veyed.

I re­mem­ber at the fu­ner­al ser­vice of my broth­er-in-law held at the San­ta Rosa RC Church, see­ing Jones emerge from an en­trance be­hind the pul­pit where on­ly the cho­sen few gath­er. I won­dered for a mo­ment: Jones must have a se­ri­ous con­nec­tion with the church to walk in such sa­cred spaces, but I nev­er asked him.

What I am say­ing is that Jones had a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that led him to in­ter­vene in many ways when he brought an­oth­er force to his work as a jour­nal­ist, which, when we don’t, leads us to be ir­rev­er­ent and un­car­ing of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the hu­man con­di­tion, the hu­man feel­ings of our broth­er man thrown aside for a scoop.

My con­tention is that there was a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, not nor­mal­ly con­sid­ered to be that, in the work of Jones P Madeira, which we did not look suf­fi­cient­ly be­neath the sur­face to dis­cov­er. Rest well, my friend.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er—free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine—In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.