Glenford Bennett has been spinning trash into treasure for more than three decades and would love to pass on his craft-making skills to the next generation, but try as he might, he cannot beat the lure of a gun, which has been more successful in grabbing the interest of the youth around him.
The Trench Town-based craftsman is disappointed with what he observes as the youth abandoning their creative talents for a life of crime.
Speaking with The Gleaner from his 23 Third Street shop in the Kingston community on Monday, Bennett said finding a protégé or an apprentice was no easy feat. He worried that with the knowledge not passed on to the next generation, the craft could become extinct.
Derrick Smith, a resident of Third Street in Trench Town, St Andrew, yesterday revelled at the reality that he now has a bed that he likened to a Jacuzzi.
Until recently, Smith, who is known to his friends and neighbours as Jookie Jam or Mr Colours , was living in deplorable conditions. However, thanks to the efforts of Trench Town-based charity Kino Life in Jamaica (The Dream Team), his situation has been vastly improved. My house was refurbished about a month now. You should have seen the roof. It was very disgraceful. Di piece a bed mi did have in here, whenever time I lay on it, I was just so tormented. Mi twist, mi turn and mi twist, but from I get this Jacuzzi bed here, as I lay on it, I go straight to sleep. Even when my friend in Miami calls to talk to me, they have to be beating down my door, shouting Colours, Colours! , because I can t wake man, he shared.