O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
A One-Act Play
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Fibre optic cable is in reference to the confusion between the Government and Antigua Public Utilities Authority about the laying of the fibre optic cable. Dr. Errol Cort is the Minister of Finance. Boggy Peak is the highest point (a hill) in Antigua. ‘Trading Places’ in the annual exercise in which ministers of government exchange places with workers in the tourist industry.
Scene: The reception area of a small hotel.
Jonathan: Mizpah, I was going to throw it in the bin but I am really concerned about this strange email that came in yesterday. See? It’s not clear where it’s coming from; just a set of numbers and musical symbols. At first I thought it was from a prankster or a Spanish tourist. We have had Spanish guests with that name. But last night I had this strange dream that the email was from God and that his son, Jesus was really coming to our hotel.
Mizpah: Jesus Christ? Coming to our hotel? Nah. He would choose an all inclusive.
Jonathan: No he would not. He was born in a manger. He is accustomed to small hotels. Plus, he would want to walk all over the island and sample the local dishes.
Mizpah: Yes. And turn water into wine; walk on seawater (with or without fibre optic cable?); and go fishing with Peter and John and the posse. Why don’t you reply to the email? Say that we are fully booked.
Jonathan: But he will know I am lying.
Mizpah: My point exactly. If the email is from God, he must know whether or not we have any vacancy. And copy your reply to Satan. Wherever one goes the other follows.
Jonathan: What’s Satan’s email address?
Mizpah: www.gotohell.com
Jonathan: Remember he said he would come back like a thief in the night.
Mizpah: Well email Him back and tell Him that plenty thieves down here already. That when we complain to the police about suspicious men loitering, they ask if, “Man can’t lime?” And since He will be coming in the night, it’s time for you to go on night duty. Reply to the email and use the Bcc for Satan.
Jonathan: Why Bcc?
Mizpah: It means “blind carbon copy”. Jesus will not know that the email is going to Satan as well; unless he is not really Jesus. It can also mean “before Christopher Columbus”. He was the first tourist here. Maybe you should invite him too. Do you know that some people in the southern Pacific call tourists, aisalsaliri? It means, “floating ones”. Tourist: the personification of vulgarity, ill-breeding, offensiveness and loathsomeness. As far back as 1870, a clergyman called them that. Have you ever wondered what here was like in 1491? An award winning author, Charles C. Mann did the research and wrote that before Columbus started the cruise tourism business, there were more people living here in the Americas than in Europe. The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, had running water, majestic botanical gardens and immaculately clean streets; better than any capital in stinking Europe. Tourist! The idea.
Jonathan: Mizpah, if you dislike them so much, maybe you should get a better job. And how come we end up so bad in history if this place was so great.
Mizpah: We end up so for the same reason the tourist gal have you so basodee. But you are damn right about this job. Then again, maybe my job here is to teach people like you about tourism. You love your job so much, you dreaming about it. How can you serve a tourist in a postcolonial society before you understand your own history? People like you are a contradiction, a native tourist on a long, all inclusive vacation. You have to come to terms with slavery, mentally disentangle colonial society and rebuild a society that includes the good ways the colonials behaved to their own. All good societies, starting in ancient Africa, have the same things. Now, black people have to become mentally naked before we can put on clothes. How can we smile, really smile at a tourist before we curse colonialism, rebuild our African culture and add to it (because, Lord, there is so much evil back there) and smile, really smile at each other first?
Jonathan: But isn’t all that the same thing like being born again? That is probably why God sent the email. Maybe everybody should work in tourism as a rite of passage. And not just for a one day, symbolic, play-play foolishness like “Trading Places”. It’s really every body’s business. Otherwise, we are simply moving from what you call political colonialism to economic colonialism and cultural imperialism.
Mizpah: You understand. Tourism is the third largest global industry after oil and drugs, which means that when tourists bring in their drugs, big business going on right here in this little country. Talking about business, you realize that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his parents were running away from paying taxes in Nazareth?
Jonathan: Well, according to you, nobody will escape Dr. Errol Cort; not even if they hide up Boggy Peak for 40 days and 40 nights. But truthfully, Joseph and Mary had to move from Nazareth, where they were living, and go to Bethlehem because Joseph was from the house of David and he had to move to Bethlehem to meet the empire-wide census and tax decree by Caesar. Jesus was a traveling, tourist baby.
Mizpah: Tourist. Tim Hector said that sugar brought us together in large estates; tourism brings us together in hotels without the same social bonding. From bad to worse. When tourists wanted to buy the Pitons in St. Lucia, Derek Walcott had to ask how anyone can sell a metaphor.
Jonathan: Maybe that is why Jesus is coming again; to change all that. But here is another email from the same….person….. It is requesting reservation for Muhammad, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Zoroaster, Haile Selassie and a whole host of people. I wonder what kind of credit card all these prophets use. Must be Master card. All these prophets in our little hotel? Priceless.
Mizpah: Like you said Jonathan, tourism is really everybody’s business; the quintessential, postcolonial rites of passage from servitude to service. Service to self. Service to others, near and far. Service to God. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
My People
THE ARROGANCE OF THE GARROT
Dr. Lester CN Simon
A dear friend of mine, truly sorrowed by my long suffering attempts at solving crossword puzzles, suggested I tackled them in the afternoon instead of in the morning. He explained that by afternoon time many attempts would have been made by others, and their successes and failures would be floating in the ether for easy absorption, like a national, ethereal photocopying machine. Another dear friend said that a similar, cultural, photocopying process called race memory, can explain our current behaviour and attitude.
What kind of society do we expect when slaves unlock themselves and become free men and women? One disappointing result is that our culture displays a historic and peculiar national badness every single day in Antigua and Barbuda. It is our fierce and profound lack of respect for authority in all walks of life. It is twinned to a familiarity that says we all came out of the same slavish chains. And that same familiarity breeds contempt even when and especially when some of us attain positions of privilege and power.
The explanation for this national, wanton familiarity and rabid disrespect lies not solely in the small size of our population. We have to reexamine colonial history and race memories to look for clues to solve this mystery. The colonial masters justified their behaviour by seeing slaves as less than human and ill worthy of any respect. Whilst some slaves regarded their colonial masters as the best thing since Columbus, most others regarded them and their authority status as worthy of death and destruction.
The dismantling of colonial authority and all its trappings became the affirmation of the humanity of enslaved West Indians. Anticolonial resistance became a moral duty to be carried out by any and all, by any and all means necessary. To Frantz Fanon, native violence was not a call for new violence. Native violence was a justifiable end to colonial violence. Similarly, native crass disregard for authority was aimed at applying a final solution to the arrogance of the colonial masters and birthing a bright hope for a new beginning; a new, native humanism. But utopia, without due and proper care and attention, can so easily become dystopia.
Yes, there are some of us in positions of authority who have no clue whatsoever about leadership and management. However, in most cases, the combination of small-island familiarity, the absence of any teaching about civics and history and the embedded, historical revulsion of respect for authority, makes for the gross disregard for supervisors, managers, leaders and all forms of authority. This vulgar disregard and utter disrespect even extend to companions who simply ask one another to be responsible.
But there is something peculiar and intrinsic, indeed native as in being constitutive, about the typical arrogance of the garrot. At the stroke of midnight on Thursday, 31 July, 1834 about three-quarters of a million men, women and children were emancipated from slavery in the British West Indies. The Act of Emancipation was passed by the British Government with a proviso. The ex-slaves were made apprentices to their former masters. An apprentice was only able to earn wages or choose an occupation after giving 40 hours of unpaid labour each week.
In Antigua, there was no apprenticeship system. Immediate freedom was granted to the slaves. Because of the lack of alternative employment due to the lack of free land, two-thirds of the ex-slaves returned to the sugar plantation as free labourers, within 2 months of their emancipation. Predictably, sugar production increased despite the reduction in the number of workers. Are there lessons here for this government’s voluntary separation package? In Antigua, we had a head start on freedom and possibly a head start on the social engineering that made ex-slaves jostle for position of responsibility and power. Earlier than others, we took on the guise and disguise of the colonials in form and function, with the attendant despise and blatant disrespect by fellow natives for each other.
Ironically, many of us who curse and despise authority actually crave the same authority. It cannot be that the only way to ensure succession and settle differences is to openly tear down others and in so doing, add to the long line of negative, cultural photocopying and perpetual contemptuousness. We should take a tip from one of our national heroes, the Coromantee, King Court, and the English. If we have to, we must plan and execute our strategies more carefully, cunningly and covertly (like Brer Anancy) whilst going about with apparent public charm and grace.
The enjoyment of private pleasures such as family, property, drive and ambition, requires the existence of a stable society. A stable society is predicated on adherence to laws, rules and regulations and participation in institutions. More important, it demands that its citizens be of good character and mores. But some private pleasures, thoughts, desires and actions may be publicly unacceptable. It follows that the coexistence of some private pleasures and a good society presupposes that living together incorporates an obligatory contradiction and essential hypocrisy. Nowhere on earth is it more difficult to understand and display this fundamental construct, in a civilized manner, than in a post colonial, developing country like Antigua and Barbuda where native freedom and vulgar disrespect came early.
By the bye, I no longer do crossword puzzles (Sudoku is better) because the times for tackling them receded more and more into infinity. But I still honour my dear friend’s advice in other ways. And so, I humbly suggest, with no hint whatsoever of the arrogance that is typically, historically and constitutively Antiguan, that you read or reread this article in the afternoon or evening.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
A dear friend of mine, truly sorrowed by my long suffering attempts at solving crossword puzzles, suggested I tackled them in the afternoon instead of in the morning. He explained that by afternoon time many attempts would have been made by others, and their successes and failures would be floating in the ether for easy absorption, like a national, ethereal photocopying machine. Another dear friend said that a similar, cultural, photocopying process called race memory, can explain our current behaviour and attitude.
What kind of society do we expect when slaves unlock themselves and become free men and women? One disappointing result is that our culture displays a historic and peculiar national badness every single day in Antigua and Barbuda. It is our fierce and profound lack of respect for authority in all walks of life. It is twinned to a familiarity that says we all came out of the same slavish chains. And that same familiarity breeds contempt even when and especially when some of us attain positions of privilege and power.
The explanation for this national, wanton familiarity and rabid disrespect lies not solely in the small size of our population. We have to reexamine colonial history and race memories to look for clues to solve this mystery. The colonial masters justified their behaviour by seeing slaves as less than human and ill worthy of any respect. Whilst some slaves regarded their colonial masters as the best thing since Columbus, most others regarded them and their authority status as worthy of death and destruction.
The dismantling of colonial authority and all its trappings became the affirmation of the humanity of enslaved West Indians. Anticolonial resistance became a moral duty to be carried out by any and all, by any and all means necessary. To Frantz Fanon, native violence was not a call for new violence. Native violence was a justifiable end to colonial violence. Similarly, native crass disregard for authority was aimed at applying a final solution to the arrogance of the colonial masters and birthing a bright hope for a new beginning; a new, native humanism. But utopia, without due and proper care and attention, can so easily become dystopia.
Yes, there are some of us in positions of authority who have no clue whatsoever about leadership and management. However, in most cases, the combination of small-island familiarity, the absence of any teaching about civics and history and the embedded, historical revulsion of respect for authority, makes for the gross disregard for supervisors, managers, leaders and all forms of authority. This vulgar disregard and utter disrespect even extend to companions who simply ask one another to be responsible.
But there is something peculiar and intrinsic, indeed native as in being constitutive, about the typical arrogance of the garrot. At the stroke of midnight on Thursday, 31 July, 1834 about three-quarters of a million men, women and children were emancipated from slavery in the British West Indies. The Act of Emancipation was passed by the British Government with a proviso. The ex-slaves were made apprentices to their former masters. An apprentice was only able to earn wages or choose an occupation after giving 40 hours of unpaid labour each week.
In Antigua, there was no apprenticeship system. Immediate freedom was granted to the slaves. Because of the lack of alternative employment due to the lack of free land, two-thirds of the ex-slaves returned to the sugar plantation as free labourers, within 2 months of their emancipation. Predictably, sugar production increased despite the reduction in the number of workers. Are there lessons here for this government’s voluntary separation package? In Antigua, we had a head start on freedom and possibly a head start on the social engineering that made ex-slaves jostle for position of responsibility and power. Earlier than others, we took on the guise and disguise of the colonials in form and function, with the attendant despise and blatant disrespect by fellow natives for each other.
Ironically, many of us who curse and despise authority actually crave the same authority. It cannot be that the only way to ensure succession and settle differences is to openly tear down others and in so doing, add to the long line of negative, cultural photocopying and perpetual contemptuousness. We should take a tip from one of our national heroes, the Coromantee, King Court, and the English. If we have to, we must plan and execute our strategies more carefully, cunningly and covertly (like Brer Anancy) whilst going about with apparent public charm and grace.
The enjoyment of private pleasures such as family, property, drive and ambition, requires the existence of a stable society. A stable society is predicated on adherence to laws, rules and regulations and participation in institutions. More important, it demands that its citizens be of good character and mores. But some private pleasures, thoughts, desires and actions may be publicly unacceptable. It follows that the coexistence of some private pleasures and a good society presupposes that living together incorporates an obligatory contradiction and essential hypocrisy. Nowhere on earth is it more difficult to understand and display this fundamental construct, in a civilized manner, than in a post colonial, developing country like Antigua and Barbuda where native freedom and vulgar disrespect came early.
By the bye, I no longer do crossword puzzles (Sudoku is better) because the times for tackling them receded more and more into infinity. But I still honour my dear friend’s advice in other ways. And so, I humbly suggest, with no hint whatsoever of the arrogance that is typically, historically and constitutively Antiguan, that you read or reread this article in the afternoon or evening.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Forgiveness
THE MERCHANTS OF MENACE
Dr. Lester CN Simon
And it came to pass in the land where the sea rolls gently onto 365 inlets, a din rose up upon the utterance of St. Michael. For in Parliament he spoke as bespoke a man seeing within and seeing without. Lo, there can be no greater speech than when an orator espies himself in the words and syntax he hurls at others. For is it not written by the famed author, P.D. James, in paraphrase, that St. Michael was incapable of passing a mirror without that moment of narcissistic stillness?
Verily, the callers to the wireless Observer, the Voice of the People, were rent asunder. And yet, divided, they rejoiced in measure for measure in their own division. In one camp they hoisted the message and ignored the messenger. In the other camp they observed the obverse. Woe be onto a people who cannot see two sides (let alone all) of one subject or object with their two eyes.
Behold, the days of rejoicing and reckoning cometh after we the people wondered in our own wilderness for 28 years. For it is written that there shall be no rejoicing without due reckoning. But alas; some of my dear good people are short of sight and shorter yet of memory. For in the new dispensation they have not yet come to understand how the victory over the 28 years of wilderness was won. It is as if many of them have become but vegans and know not the meaning of a pound of flesh. And yet, some do say, quietly and in camera, that they do know that a pound of flesh must be taken but, “for crying out loud”, without the drawing of such a large moiety of national blood.
How silly and simple are those who know not that the enemy is best defeated by its own ways and means. So now they rant and rave and misbehave because they truly believe that all the glamour and all the glitter for all the campaign came out of the barren sky and not from the golden coffers of men like unto the one whose place was (and some say, still is) on the road to the first, old town of Parham.
And the children of schools gaily said that St. Michael laced heavily into the Honourable Member of Rural East with darts of vigour and shards of pepper and vinegar that would make Susie proud. Nay, he was neither courteous nor curt in the court of Parliament. And he pushed and pulled and tugged and swayed him all over, even to the far off land of Italy. For he said the people wanted to know the role of the good, merchant Senator in the Italian debt forgiveness, and if more pounds of national flesh would be forfeited as in the softness in the hard rocks at Bendals.
And even though the loan and forgiveness bond with Italy had been spoken to many times before, as many times as the travels of Marco Polo, the tirade was ravenous and juicy to the rapacious crowd. So that when those who had gathered wrongly assumed an ebb and break in the tide, St. Michael roared and soared again and waxed lyrically and mercilessly into the potted holes of the man who was once in the lion’s den. This he did with gnashing teeth and weeping willow, pouncing upon him as children were wont to do in “dolly ketch a man”. Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer. Rise Sally, rise. Wipe your weeping eyes. Turn to the east, Sally. Turn to the west, Sally. Turn to the APUA that Sally loves the best.
And when it was all over and the people had laughed their bellies full and joyfully cried their eyes dry over the vocal massacre, the Tax Collector spoke softly and gentlemanly. Whencesoever, he wondered loudly, St. Michael could have so much stomach (wherefrom did he not lose some), stamina and gumption and be so boldfaced as if the hardest thing was to know. Yea, the time for combat had not yet come. For a wise warrior knows when to strike and when not to strike. Thus the people look forward to the second coming of the combatants in political Armageddon with Power Point, hardware and all in the lower house on the hill.
Who amongst them in our Parliament will come to us and speak of true forgiveness and mercy. “The quality of mercy is not strained” because it requires no force. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” for it is the very quality of God himself. Verily, verily, we mortals are closest to God when we temper justice with mercy. But mercy and forgiveness for national wrongs cannot be offered lightly and unknowingly. If the princes of light have forgiven their named princes of darkness, that offer of forgiveness must be in the sunlight and not in the shade of a tent.
Forgiveness comes easily, much too easily in this blessed, Christian land. For when forgiveness is too freely had, there is but little or no point in doing right. This land will never be at peace until true forgiveness is as transparent as the dazzling sunshine. True forgiveness is much more than ceasing forbidden actions, regretting wrongdoing, confessing through Jesus before God and resolving never to repeat those actions. This entire Christian act is simple and easy.
True forgiveness for wronging the nation demands that you make it up to the nation. If you stole from the nation, you must return the stolen treasure. If you caused national pain you must placate the nationals (and non-nationals, in English ) to achieve true forgiveness. Wherefore was this laughing dagger dragged across our throats with sounding brass and tinkling cymbals in our Parliament? Was this the Day of Atonement and reconciliation offered to us in cheap, finger-pointing and khus-khus perfumed talk?
If forgiveness and mercy have been proffered by deed or by default so that wanton speeches make vulgar mockery of us all, the people must be told; for true national forgiveness is a public act. Or henceforth, in this land where the people hunger and thirst for righteousness, all politicians on all sides, in the lower and upper houses and in no houses at all shall be branded forever and ever as merchants of menace, unfit to be heard, unfit to be seen and totally and decidedly unfit to rule over us. Rise Sally, rise!
Dr. Lester CN Simon
And it came to pass in the land where the sea rolls gently onto 365 inlets, a din rose up upon the utterance of St. Michael. For in Parliament he spoke as bespoke a man seeing within and seeing without. Lo, there can be no greater speech than when an orator espies himself in the words and syntax he hurls at others. For is it not written by the famed author, P.D. James, in paraphrase, that St. Michael was incapable of passing a mirror without that moment of narcissistic stillness?
Verily, the callers to the wireless Observer, the Voice of the People, were rent asunder. And yet, divided, they rejoiced in measure for measure in their own division. In one camp they hoisted the message and ignored the messenger. In the other camp they observed the obverse. Woe be onto a people who cannot see two sides (let alone all) of one subject or object with their two eyes.
Behold, the days of rejoicing and reckoning cometh after we the people wondered in our own wilderness for 28 years. For it is written that there shall be no rejoicing without due reckoning. But alas; some of my dear good people are short of sight and shorter yet of memory. For in the new dispensation they have not yet come to understand how the victory over the 28 years of wilderness was won. It is as if many of them have become but vegans and know not the meaning of a pound of flesh. And yet, some do say, quietly and in camera, that they do know that a pound of flesh must be taken but, “for crying out loud”, without the drawing of such a large moiety of national blood.
How silly and simple are those who know not that the enemy is best defeated by its own ways and means. So now they rant and rave and misbehave because they truly believe that all the glamour and all the glitter for all the campaign came out of the barren sky and not from the golden coffers of men like unto the one whose place was (and some say, still is) on the road to the first, old town of Parham.
And the children of schools gaily said that St. Michael laced heavily into the Honourable Member of Rural East with darts of vigour and shards of pepper and vinegar that would make Susie proud. Nay, he was neither courteous nor curt in the court of Parliament. And he pushed and pulled and tugged and swayed him all over, even to the far off land of Italy. For he said the people wanted to know the role of the good, merchant Senator in the Italian debt forgiveness, and if more pounds of national flesh would be forfeited as in the softness in the hard rocks at Bendals.
And even though the loan and forgiveness bond with Italy had been spoken to many times before, as many times as the travels of Marco Polo, the tirade was ravenous and juicy to the rapacious crowd. So that when those who had gathered wrongly assumed an ebb and break in the tide, St. Michael roared and soared again and waxed lyrically and mercilessly into the potted holes of the man who was once in the lion’s den. This he did with gnashing teeth and weeping willow, pouncing upon him as children were wont to do in “dolly ketch a man”. Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer. Rise Sally, rise. Wipe your weeping eyes. Turn to the east, Sally. Turn to the west, Sally. Turn to the APUA that Sally loves the best.
And when it was all over and the people had laughed their bellies full and joyfully cried their eyes dry over the vocal massacre, the Tax Collector spoke softly and gentlemanly. Whencesoever, he wondered loudly, St. Michael could have so much stomach (wherefrom did he not lose some), stamina and gumption and be so boldfaced as if the hardest thing was to know. Yea, the time for combat had not yet come. For a wise warrior knows when to strike and when not to strike. Thus the people look forward to the second coming of the combatants in political Armageddon with Power Point, hardware and all in the lower house on the hill.
Who amongst them in our Parliament will come to us and speak of true forgiveness and mercy. “The quality of mercy is not strained” because it requires no force. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” for it is the very quality of God himself. Verily, verily, we mortals are closest to God when we temper justice with mercy. But mercy and forgiveness for national wrongs cannot be offered lightly and unknowingly. If the princes of light have forgiven their named princes of darkness, that offer of forgiveness must be in the sunlight and not in the shade of a tent.
Forgiveness comes easily, much too easily in this blessed, Christian land. For when forgiveness is too freely had, there is but little or no point in doing right. This land will never be at peace until true forgiveness is as transparent as the dazzling sunshine. True forgiveness is much more than ceasing forbidden actions, regretting wrongdoing, confessing through Jesus before God and resolving never to repeat those actions. This entire Christian act is simple and easy.
True forgiveness for wronging the nation demands that you make it up to the nation. If you stole from the nation, you must return the stolen treasure. If you caused national pain you must placate the nationals (and non-nationals, in English ) to achieve true forgiveness. Wherefore was this laughing dagger dragged across our throats with sounding brass and tinkling cymbals in our Parliament? Was this the Day of Atonement and reconciliation offered to us in cheap, finger-pointing and khus-khus perfumed talk?
If forgiveness and mercy have been proffered by deed or by default so that wanton speeches make vulgar mockery of us all, the people must be told; for true national forgiveness is a public act. Or henceforth, in this land where the people hunger and thirst for righteousness, all politicians on all sides, in the lower and upper houses and in no houses at all shall be branded forever and ever as merchants of menace, unfit to be heard, unfit to be seen and totally and decidedly unfit to rule over us. Rise Sally, rise!
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Cause and Effect
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Dr. Lester CN Simon
When you stab or shoot someone in Antigua and Barbuda, are you planning to run and hide in the mountains to escape from the police? There are no mountains here. With all those antennas on top of Boggy Peak, the highest hill, you might think, quite wrongly, that one of them will expose you. Notwithstanding the problems in the local Police Force, the act of committing seemingly senseless murder in a small country like Antigua and Barbuda must be driven by unique motives and circumstances.
Most people refrain from doing something wrong or evil if they know there is a very good chance of getting caught. Yes, there have been many unsolved murders here for many years. However, over the past two to four years or so, most of the murderers have been caught. So why is the crime rate rising? Some writers believe that poverty and joblessness are responsible. I beg to differ. To be unemployed in Antigua and Barbuda to the point of stark hunger would be like successfully keeping your hair completely dry and free from sand at a picnic at one of our 365 beaches. Antiguans and Barbudans would not recognize abject poverty if it came up to us at high noon on moko jumbie stilts in the middle of the Antigua Recreation Grounds and spat in our faces. I posit that wealth and empowerment by illicit and licit means are at the root of the crime wave.
Think about it. Power and control generate emotive forces that are extremely hard to supersede. Raw power and control by any means necessary may be at the root of the crime wave here. These causative factors do apply worldwide as well but they take on accentuated forms here, when other factors, like escaping and hiding out, are reduced by geography. Obviously, the lack of trust between the community and the police adds to the ease of escaping capture, but it is not the predominant, causative factor.
The first paycheck I got as a teenager fresh out of school saw me stuffing myself at the Kensington restaurant on St. Mary’s Street. I ate and drank to my heart’s content (and later to my body’s relief). Yet, to this day I cannot recall precisely what I ate although it must have been chicken or lobster, and lots of lime squash and Coca-Cola. This is because the type of food I consumed was immaterial. It was the power of having my own hard earned money in my pocket that I remember. I still recall the sensation of ordering the meal, sitting in the canopied chair, waiting to be served and listening to the music. In those days we had small and large bottles of Coca-Cola. I sat back, relaxed and, having practised to perfection, proclaimed to the waitress, “Go thither to yon vendor of effervescent beverages and purchase me a taller member of the Coke family”.
Some of us also remember the power and control we felt when we were the only one to solve the math or physics problem in school. All of our friends and some of our enemies gathered around as we dictated who would be privy to the solutions.
The rise in crime after the “freeing up” of the country since the last general elections might also be part of the “talk as you like” newly found freedom. If this is true, the slowness to meaningfully empower people in legitimate ways relative to their expectations, might lead to the shunting of empowerment in other, pathological directions.
In a recent book, The Challenge of Affluence, described as sparkling and provocative, Professor Avner Offer opens his tome with the sentence, “Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines well-being”. You know you are in for a very good read when he prefaced his opening with a 1955 quote from Robert McNamara, the then general manager of Ford Motor Company, who prophesied that the test of this generation will not be how well it stands up under adversity, but how well it endures prosperity.
There are many parts to the whole solution to crime and violence but understanding the root causes will help us to find the right solutions. Preventative action must be centered on education. We have to direct the young towards the all powerful and embracing emotions of the joy of discovery and the enchantment of possessing and utilizing real and useful knowledge. Youths must be groomed to realize the self-defining, authentic and enduring satisfaction that comes from positive social interaction in contradistinction to short term self-indulgence.
There will be at least one unintended consequence of creating an enabling environment for entrepreneurs. Those who want to move from the informal to the formal economy will have easy, hopefully one-way avenues of transition. History is replete with stories of crooks who became philanthropists This would be similar to other enabling environments that allow an exit from prostitution, drug addiction, sex addiction, overeating, smoking and other modern ills, with all the frustrations from varying degrees of failure.
The solution is not to remove the affluence since affluence to an extent is desirable. When affluence reaches the level where short term rewards take over from long term objectives, we are, as now, in deep trouble. Hence the conjoining of the impatience from affluence and the impatience from unfulfilled political and social desires put us in a state in which senseless and brutal crimes conspire to overrun us.
A key part of the long term solution is to prevent the problem from worsening. We have not yet reached the stage where the illegally empowered have passed on so much of their wealth to so many of us that we have dons, drug lords and war lords who are ardently protected by grateful members of civil society. We will know when we get to that stage. The demand for soap, detergent and bleach will rise. My maternal grandmother was right in reminding me to always wash my hands after handling money.
The reason why we do not see crime and violence as by-products of affluence, with
its attendant power, control and impatience, is because some of us want to deny the relative affluence in Antigua and Barbuda compared to real, abject poverty elsewhere. Alternatively, those who make the connection between affluence and crime and violence refuse to talk about it. Why? Because they would have to admit that affluence also existed under the former government.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
When you stab or shoot someone in Antigua and Barbuda, are you planning to run and hide in the mountains to escape from the police? There are no mountains here. With all those antennas on top of Boggy Peak, the highest hill, you might think, quite wrongly, that one of them will expose you. Notwithstanding the problems in the local Police Force, the act of committing seemingly senseless murder in a small country like Antigua and Barbuda must be driven by unique motives and circumstances.
Most people refrain from doing something wrong or evil if they know there is a very good chance of getting caught. Yes, there have been many unsolved murders here for many years. However, over the past two to four years or so, most of the murderers have been caught. So why is the crime rate rising? Some writers believe that poverty and joblessness are responsible. I beg to differ. To be unemployed in Antigua and Barbuda to the point of stark hunger would be like successfully keeping your hair completely dry and free from sand at a picnic at one of our 365 beaches. Antiguans and Barbudans would not recognize abject poverty if it came up to us at high noon on moko jumbie stilts in the middle of the Antigua Recreation Grounds and spat in our faces. I posit that wealth and empowerment by illicit and licit means are at the root of the crime wave.
Think about it. Power and control generate emotive forces that are extremely hard to supersede. Raw power and control by any means necessary may be at the root of the crime wave here. These causative factors do apply worldwide as well but they take on accentuated forms here, when other factors, like escaping and hiding out, are reduced by geography. Obviously, the lack of trust between the community and the police adds to the ease of escaping capture, but it is not the predominant, causative factor.
The first paycheck I got as a teenager fresh out of school saw me stuffing myself at the Kensington restaurant on St. Mary’s Street. I ate and drank to my heart’s content (and later to my body’s relief). Yet, to this day I cannot recall precisely what I ate although it must have been chicken or lobster, and lots of lime squash and Coca-Cola. This is because the type of food I consumed was immaterial. It was the power of having my own hard earned money in my pocket that I remember. I still recall the sensation of ordering the meal, sitting in the canopied chair, waiting to be served and listening to the music. In those days we had small and large bottles of Coca-Cola. I sat back, relaxed and, having practised to perfection, proclaimed to the waitress, “Go thither to yon vendor of effervescent beverages and purchase me a taller member of the Coke family”.
Some of us also remember the power and control we felt when we were the only one to solve the math or physics problem in school. All of our friends and some of our enemies gathered around as we dictated who would be privy to the solutions.
The rise in crime after the “freeing up” of the country since the last general elections might also be part of the “talk as you like” newly found freedom. If this is true, the slowness to meaningfully empower people in legitimate ways relative to their expectations, might lead to the shunting of empowerment in other, pathological directions.
In a recent book, The Challenge of Affluence, described as sparkling and provocative, Professor Avner Offer opens his tome with the sentence, “Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines well-being”. You know you are in for a very good read when he prefaced his opening with a 1955 quote from Robert McNamara, the then general manager of Ford Motor Company, who prophesied that the test of this generation will not be how well it stands up under adversity, but how well it endures prosperity.
There are many parts to the whole solution to crime and violence but understanding the root causes will help us to find the right solutions. Preventative action must be centered on education. We have to direct the young towards the all powerful and embracing emotions of the joy of discovery and the enchantment of possessing and utilizing real and useful knowledge. Youths must be groomed to realize the self-defining, authentic and enduring satisfaction that comes from positive social interaction in contradistinction to short term self-indulgence.
There will be at least one unintended consequence of creating an enabling environment for entrepreneurs. Those who want to move from the informal to the formal economy will have easy, hopefully one-way avenues of transition. History is replete with stories of crooks who became philanthropists This would be similar to other enabling environments that allow an exit from prostitution, drug addiction, sex addiction, overeating, smoking and other modern ills, with all the frustrations from varying degrees of failure.
The solution is not to remove the affluence since affluence to an extent is desirable. When affluence reaches the level where short term rewards take over from long term objectives, we are, as now, in deep trouble. Hence the conjoining of the impatience from affluence and the impatience from unfulfilled political and social desires put us in a state in which senseless and brutal crimes conspire to overrun us.
A key part of the long term solution is to prevent the problem from worsening. We have not yet reached the stage where the illegally empowered have passed on so much of their wealth to so many of us that we have dons, drug lords and war lords who are ardently protected by grateful members of civil society. We will know when we get to that stage. The demand for soap, detergent and bleach will rise. My maternal grandmother was right in reminding me to always wash my hands after handling money.
The reason why we do not see crime and violence as by-products of affluence, with
its attendant power, control and impatience, is because some of us want to deny the relative affluence in Antigua and Barbuda compared to real, abject poverty elsewhere. Alternatively, those who make the connection between affluence and crime and violence refuse to talk about it. Why? Because they would have to admit that affluence also existed under the former government.
Friday, November 3, 2006
The Outlandish Knight
ANGELS FROM HEAVEN
Dr. Lester CN Simon
There is a quote in The Devastation of the Indies by Bartolomé De Las Casas that says, “……for in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from heaven.” Some years later, Las Casas described butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food: “Give me a quarter of that rascal there,” one (Spaniard) customer said, “until I can kill some more of my own”.
Some relationships start badly and end well, others start well and end either well or badly, and yet others start badly and are destined to end very badly. The celebration of 25 years of independence was a bad joke; a masquerade. The badness started with the Spanish interlude in recognition of the growing Hispanic community at the Independence Church Service. That threw me for a Sir Vivian six out of the Antigua Recreation Grounds. Somebody really went up their fundament.
The farce continued with three female politicians meeting the Prime Minister of Jamaica in honour of gender politics whilst the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda was on island. Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller should not have been met on arrival at the airport by three merry and sympathetic ladies-in-waiting like three Nerissas attending Portia in the Merchant of Venice.
The tragicomedy ended with a deeper division of the people of this country on independence day. Someone must tell us the criteria for becoming national heroes and Sirs. They must offer suggestions on what national heroes do afterwards and how they cope with the burden of receiving this maximum elevation at age fifty something.
It is very often a good and wise thing to allow controversial persons to talk so they can explain themselves and remove the controversy. Everyone knows that the dictionary defines an investor as someone who expends money or effort in something from which a return or profit is expected. Simple arithmetic works out for us when an investor is given the equivalent of, say, 10 million dollars and he gives back 1 million dollars, he has given back 10% of what he got.
The same simple arithmetic also works out for us when “picky head people” (as some are wont to say) give back 50 cents out of the miserly 1 dollar they received, they have given back 50%. And 50% is proportionately more than the 10%. There are many 50% people in Antigua and Barbuda. The abject failure to recognize the 50% people, including past and present members of the Antigua Labour Party, bespeaks a national blindness that is historic, slavish, self-humiliating and self-destructive.
The elementary point must be made that there is not a single person, family or investor in this country whose wealth in this country is independent of the government and people of Antigua and Barbuda. None.
When an investor defies definition and tells us on our twenty fifth anniversary of independence that he is not here to make money; that he comes with his own money to develop the country in the name of the people, notwithstanding what our government says, beware of Greeks bearing gifts and reincarnated Columbus bearing trinkets, my dear good people. It’s like onto a man telling a woman that he does not want to have sex with her; he just wants them both to get naked and lie down so he can invest in her and watch her develop.
Such an independent woman should jump out of the bed, turn on the lights, freshen up, put on her national dress, fix her hair, powder her nose, slowly apply her lipstick smacking her lips together, look him straight in the eye, hands akimbo, and exclaim, “Sir?”
Dr. Lester CN Simon
There is a quote in The Devastation of the Indies by Bartolomé De Las Casas that says, “……for in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from heaven.” Some years later, Las Casas described butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food: “Give me a quarter of that rascal there,” one (Spaniard) customer said, “until I can kill some more of my own”.
Some relationships start badly and end well, others start well and end either well or badly, and yet others start badly and are destined to end very badly. The celebration of 25 years of independence was a bad joke; a masquerade. The badness started with the Spanish interlude in recognition of the growing Hispanic community at the Independence Church Service. That threw me for a Sir Vivian six out of the Antigua Recreation Grounds. Somebody really went up their fundament.
The farce continued with three female politicians meeting the Prime Minister of Jamaica in honour of gender politics whilst the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda was on island. Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller should not have been met on arrival at the airport by three merry and sympathetic ladies-in-waiting like three Nerissas attending Portia in the Merchant of Venice.
The tragicomedy ended with a deeper division of the people of this country on independence day. Someone must tell us the criteria for becoming national heroes and Sirs. They must offer suggestions on what national heroes do afterwards and how they cope with the burden of receiving this maximum elevation at age fifty something.
It is very often a good and wise thing to allow controversial persons to talk so they can explain themselves and remove the controversy. Everyone knows that the dictionary defines an investor as someone who expends money or effort in something from which a return or profit is expected. Simple arithmetic works out for us when an investor is given the equivalent of, say, 10 million dollars and he gives back 1 million dollars, he has given back 10% of what he got.
The same simple arithmetic also works out for us when “picky head people” (as some are wont to say) give back 50 cents out of the miserly 1 dollar they received, they have given back 50%. And 50% is proportionately more than the 10%. There are many 50% people in Antigua and Barbuda. The abject failure to recognize the 50% people, including past and present members of the Antigua Labour Party, bespeaks a national blindness that is historic, slavish, self-humiliating and self-destructive.
The elementary point must be made that there is not a single person, family or investor in this country whose wealth in this country is independent of the government and people of Antigua and Barbuda. None.
When an investor defies definition and tells us on our twenty fifth anniversary of independence that he is not here to make money; that he comes with his own money to develop the country in the name of the people, notwithstanding what our government says, beware of Greeks bearing gifts and reincarnated Columbus bearing trinkets, my dear good people. It’s like onto a man telling a woman that he does not want to have sex with her; he just wants them both to get naked and lie down so he can invest in her and watch her develop.
Such an independent woman should jump out of the bed, turn on the lights, freshen up, put on her national dress, fix her hair, powder her nose, slowly apply her lipstick smacking her lips together, look him straight in the eye, hands akimbo, and exclaim, “Sir?”
Thursday, November 2, 2006
Spanish Everyone?
THE MAN WENT UP HIS FUNDAMENT
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Have you ever been so upset you go to bed and wake up still upset? Imagine yourself at a national church service to open the celebration of 25 years of independence. I am at the Antigua Recreation Grounds (ARG). I am no ultranationalist; not because I am running from the label that says patriotism is the last bastion of scoundrels. It’s just that I loath extreme positions; yet I love this country the way I love my family and close friends even though they upset me from time to time.
I am enjoying the national independence service. The pastor is carrying on far too long but I can do with a little (or a lot of) extra prayer. Then when he is through, I am invited to listen to some part of the service in Spanish in recognition of the growing Spanish community. Well, who tell him to say that? I am incandescent with rage and I throw myself for six out of the service by walking out of the ARG. In this country the official language is English. The misguided pseudo-national who engineered this nonsense must be joking, in Spanish. This is the mark of separation. I draw the line, not in some “wishi washi” sand but in indelible ink and lambent lights in the blue skies over this land. The official language of Antigua and Barbuda is English.
I love Spanish people and many things Spanish. It is said but unproven that the Simon families in Antigua and Barbuda derive from four brothers who came here from Venezuela. In the good old days when BWIA stopped in Puerto Rico en route to Antigua from Jamaica, I danced to Spanish music so well one night, you would think I was the joker of Seville, and all I wanted was mucho más (much more). I love the music of Willie Bobo (Puerto Rico), Manuel de Falla (Spain), Juan Luis Guerra (Dominican Republic) and virtually any music from Cuba. I love to hear Spanish people talk. I have at least 30 books and cassettes and compact discs on the Spanish language. I think all of us should learn to speak at least one, preferably two foreign languages, including Spanish. But the misguided national who decided that part of the independence service should be in Spanish must apologize for the nonsense he started and vouch never to repeat it. Otherwise I will seek residence on Redunda lest I become redundant in this adagio, moko jumby land.
We seem to be collapsing and losing our national nerve, leaving a gaping void to be filled by whosoever will speak and speak in their own tongue. I wish to remind the lento, misguided national that the first time there was such an open defiance of common sense and confusion over a common tongue for communication, the work on the Tower of Babel was halted and the people were scattered. Let this first time be the last time we disgrace Antiguans and Barbudans like that, or someone will have to find a tower high enough to disappear into his own fundament. The official language of Antigua and Barbuda is English. No comma, no semicolon; full stop.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Have you ever been so upset you go to bed and wake up still upset? Imagine yourself at a national church service to open the celebration of 25 years of independence. I am at the Antigua Recreation Grounds (ARG). I am no ultranationalist; not because I am running from the label that says patriotism is the last bastion of scoundrels. It’s just that I loath extreme positions; yet I love this country the way I love my family and close friends even though they upset me from time to time.
I am enjoying the national independence service. The pastor is carrying on far too long but I can do with a little (or a lot of) extra prayer. Then when he is through, I am invited to listen to some part of the service in Spanish in recognition of the growing Spanish community. Well, who tell him to say that? I am incandescent with rage and I throw myself for six out of the service by walking out of the ARG. In this country the official language is English. The misguided pseudo-national who engineered this nonsense must be joking, in Spanish. This is the mark of separation. I draw the line, not in some “wishi washi” sand but in indelible ink and lambent lights in the blue skies over this land. The official language of Antigua and Barbuda is English.
I love Spanish people and many things Spanish. It is said but unproven that the Simon families in Antigua and Barbuda derive from four brothers who came here from Venezuela. In the good old days when BWIA stopped in Puerto Rico en route to Antigua from Jamaica, I danced to Spanish music so well one night, you would think I was the joker of Seville, and all I wanted was mucho más (much more). I love the music of Willie Bobo (Puerto Rico), Manuel de Falla (Spain), Juan Luis Guerra (Dominican Republic) and virtually any music from Cuba. I love to hear Spanish people talk. I have at least 30 books and cassettes and compact discs on the Spanish language. I think all of us should learn to speak at least one, preferably two foreign languages, including Spanish. But the misguided national who decided that part of the independence service should be in Spanish must apologize for the nonsense he started and vouch never to repeat it. Otherwise I will seek residence on Redunda lest I become redundant in this adagio, moko jumby land.
We seem to be collapsing and losing our national nerve, leaving a gaping void to be filled by whosoever will speak and speak in their own tongue. I wish to remind the lento, misguided national that the first time there was such an open defiance of common sense and confusion over a common tongue for communication, the work on the Tower of Babel was halted and the people were scattered. Let this first time be the last time we disgrace Antiguans and Barbudans like that, or someone will have to find a tower high enough to disappear into his own fundament. The official language of Antigua and Barbuda is English. No comma, no semicolon; full stop.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Big People
THE V.C. CODE
Dr. Lester CN Simon
As we approach the noteworthy milestone of 25 years of independence, we may look back to see how far we have come, or we may look ahead to see how far we have to go. The one view is not independent of the other. We all have eyes in the back of our heads; that’s where the vision area of the brain is located.
Independence begins in the mind. It must constantly run through and around our thinking. It should be manifested in our actions. We become an independent nation when the sum total of our individual, independent actions makes us exponentially bigger and better and, ironically, dependent on each other. In short, independence means that we can choose our dependencies.
Reflection on the basic elements of an independent nation requires, firstly, serious consideration of citizenship. This reflection is occurring at a time of collision between seemingly unlimited immigration and emigration and seemingly unlimited demands for salaries and other newly found rights, such as the right to be respected in trade negotiations. This multiple accident is threatening to diffract Antigua and Barbuda into a rainbow of independent and mismatched colours.
Citizenship is firstly about what we owe Antigua and Barbuda; not firstly what Antigua and Barbuda owes us. To be a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, we have to firstly meet a sacred set of obligations to fellow citizens, to the law of the land and to the nation. Any benefits, including education, free school meals, medical benefits, roads unpunctuated by potholes, etc. must come after meeting these obligations. We have to put in to take out. That is why it is better to give than to receive. Simple arithmetic says that receiving is predicated on having given something first.
However, we must be very careful about unequal and unfair practices of giving and receiving, lest we end up with each endeavoring and only some achieving. Worse, an entire nation can become subsumed under the personas of a few or the enigma of a maximum leader. This leads us to the need for a fair and dispassionate consideration of the second most enigmatic citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, the late, premier (as in first) Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Sir Vere Conwall Bird Snr.
Tim Hector referred to the phenomenon of V.C. Bird. It would be useful but too lengthy to recount the details of his writings. Those who have Outlet will read and those who do not will either borrow or wait for the library. Tim noted that like all great men of history, there were positive and negative attributes to V.C. Bird. It was written that V.C. Bird was his own worst enemy, his own worst contradiction, and that he negated himself. It is this enigmatic idea, not the persona of V.C. Bird, but the V.C. Code, that we have to come to terms with in order to move on for at least another 25 years.
The concept of role models and national heroes can be a dangerous one unless we accept the V.C. Code. Role models and national heroes are phenomenal figures that show us, or allow us to see and accept their positive and negative attributes. They teach us to accentuate the positive and reject the negative we see in them and try, as only we can try, to do the same with what we see in ourselves.
An economist Professor, Robert Rowthorn observed that a nation is a community of mutual obligation that is based on a shared history. What then does it mean to be an Antiguan and Barbudan? What is our codified set of mutual obligations? It seems that an old nationhood is drifting away and a new one is berthing.
The divisive politics of the past and the present suggest that we look to another medium or institution to
define our evolving, new nationhood. The single most important institution for the guarantee of civil society is the family. We cannot choose our family and there are some family members some of us wish we never had. However, despite all its frailties, marriage is the best institutional context for raising and nurturing children. It should be the nucleus of the extended biological and social family and the simple but profound idea and ideal at the center of nationhood.
Without falling prey to the victim culture of slavery, we, the West Indians, black and white and all races of Antiguan and Barbudan must regard our shared history of transplantation to these lands and the historic decimation of the family. This will lead us to realize that incentives for marriage and maintaining the family should be our foremost priority and the basis of our civil society and nationhood. Many of us were called bastards, stigmatized and ostracized from civil society. As painful as that memory is, we must accept that we too must see that all relationships and all family types are not equal; or at best, some are more equal than others. Rewarding single parentage is a recipe for perpetual fatherlessness and motherlessness.
As we celebrate our silver milestone through our rites of passage to a truly independent nation, we must register and testify our hypocrisies, our paradoxes, our frailties and, most important, our common strengths. We must decipher and understand the V.C. Code to set us on the right path for the next, fiftieth, golden anniversary. At that time we may be ready to use the V.C. Code and other parameters to decipher the foremost enigmatic and exemplar citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, the late master, headmaster and teacher, Leonard Churchill, “Timoshenko” Hector. May his soul rest in peace as the soul of our nation finds the peace for which he struggled all his life.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
As we approach the noteworthy milestone of 25 years of independence, we may look back to see how far we have come, or we may look ahead to see how far we have to go. The one view is not independent of the other. We all have eyes in the back of our heads; that’s where the vision area of the brain is located.
Independence begins in the mind. It must constantly run through and around our thinking. It should be manifested in our actions. We become an independent nation when the sum total of our individual, independent actions makes us exponentially bigger and better and, ironically, dependent on each other. In short, independence means that we can choose our dependencies.
Reflection on the basic elements of an independent nation requires, firstly, serious consideration of citizenship. This reflection is occurring at a time of collision between seemingly unlimited immigration and emigration and seemingly unlimited demands for salaries and other newly found rights, such as the right to be respected in trade negotiations. This multiple accident is threatening to diffract Antigua and Barbuda into a rainbow of independent and mismatched colours.
Citizenship is firstly about what we owe Antigua and Barbuda; not firstly what Antigua and Barbuda owes us. To be a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, we have to firstly meet a sacred set of obligations to fellow citizens, to the law of the land and to the nation. Any benefits, including education, free school meals, medical benefits, roads unpunctuated by potholes, etc. must come after meeting these obligations. We have to put in to take out. That is why it is better to give than to receive. Simple arithmetic says that receiving is predicated on having given something first.
However, we must be very careful about unequal and unfair practices of giving and receiving, lest we end up with each endeavoring and only some achieving. Worse, an entire nation can become subsumed under the personas of a few or the enigma of a maximum leader. This leads us to the need for a fair and dispassionate consideration of the second most enigmatic citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, the late, premier (as in first) Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Sir Vere Conwall Bird Snr.
Tim Hector referred to the phenomenon of V.C. Bird. It would be useful but too lengthy to recount the details of his writings. Those who have Outlet will read and those who do not will either borrow or wait for the library. Tim noted that like all great men of history, there were positive and negative attributes to V.C. Bird. It was written that V.C. Bird was his own worst enemy, his own worst contradiction, and that he negated himself. It is this enigmatic idea, not the persona of V.C. Bird, but the V.C. Code, that we have to come to terms with in order to move on for at least another 25 years.
The concept of role models and national heroes can be a dangerous one unless we accept the V.C. Code. Role models and national heroes are phenomenal figures that show us, or allow us to see and accept their positive and negative attributes. They teach us to accentuate the positive and reject the negative we see in them and try, as only we can try, to do the same with what we see in ourselves.
An economist Professor, Robert Rowthorn observed that a nation is a community of mutual obligation that is based on a shared history. What then does it mean to be an Antiguan and Barbudan? What is our codified set of mutual obligations? It seems that an old nationhood is drifting away and a new one is berthing.
The divisive politics of the past and the present suggest that we look to another medium or institution to
define our evolving, new nationhood. The single most important institution for the guarantee of civil society is the family. We cannot choose our family and there are some family members some of us wish we never had. However, despite all its frailties, marriage is the best institutional context for raising and nurturing children. It should be the nucleus of the extended biological and social family and the simple but profound idea and ideal at the center of nationhood.
Without falling prey to the victim culture of slavery, we, the West Indians, black and white and all races of Antiguan and Barbudan must regard our shared history of transplantation to these lands and the historic decimation of the family. This will lead us to realize that incentives for marriage and maintaining the family should be our foremost priority and the basis of our civil society and nationhood. Many of us were called bastards, stigmatized and ostracized from civil society. As painful as that memory is, we must accept that we too must see that all relationships and all family types are not equal; or at best, some are more equal than others. Rewarding single parentage is a recipe for perpetual fatherlessness and motherlessness.
As we celebrate our silver milestone through our rites of passage to a truly independent nation, we must register and testify our hypocrisies, our paradoxes, our frailties and, most important, our common strengths. We must decipher and understand the V.C. Code to set us on the right path for the next, fiftieth, golden anniversary. At that time we may be ready to use the V.C. Code and other parameters to decipher the foremost enigmatic and exemplar citizen of Antigua and Barbuda, the late master, headmaster and teacher, Leonard Churchill, “Timoshenko” Hector. May his soul rest in peace as the soul of our nation finds the peace for which he struggled all his life.
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