HEARTICALLY YOURS

This week I am torn between two events that impacted me so strongly last week that I just have to share them with you.  The first was the commissioning of the Steinway Model O Grand piano at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School’s (ALHCS) auditorium at Campus B and the second was the 11th Annual Bordeaux Farmers Rastafari Agricultural and Cultural Food Fair in St. Thomas USVI.  

There is a history of relationship between the University of the West Indies (UWI) and Rastafari and it is not insignificant that UWI’s birthday is January 7th, is the day of Lidet or Christmas in Ethiopia.  According to an article in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner, ‘It was on January 7, 1948, that…the decision was taken that the lands at Mona, Jamaica, were most suitable for establishing the first campus of the UCWI…  The UWI, which was established that year as a university college in special relationship with the University of London and given its own Royal Charter as an autonomous university in 1962, is the oldest, fully regional institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth Caribbean. 

North Side, Anguilla, Christmas week, 1957.
“Ma Ma bake you Johnny cake
Christmas coming
Ma Ma bake you Johnny cake
Chrismas coming…”

I know you read this column because you often tell me so but after reading today’s article we will need to talk so please call me at 497-2878. What I’m asking you to do today is to think about what YOU can bring to the mix of resources needed for a sustained programme of Parenting Education and Support in Anguilla. Generally speaking, people do not like to have their weaknesses pointed out, especially if this is done without empathy and sensitivity so we can assume that one of the reasons parents do not rush forward to seek support when they need it is because they are embarrassed.

As I eagerly await the birth of my second grandchild (biologically speaking), you will forgive me if my thoughts keep turning to the whole gamut of experience involved in that lifelong process of parenting, in which grand-parenting is involved. Lifelong, because no vows are taken but unlike marriages (where the vows are sometimes broken shortly after they are taken), this is the relationship that really exists, “till death do us part”.

Life often comes at me in recurring themes and this week’s theme seems to have been children out of school without the kind of concerted community attention needed to make that out of school time useful or productive. In each instance the child in question was male – my sons, and in each instance I could see the devil around licking his lips at the prospect of awarding more work to idle hands.

Last week I mentioned in passing, and this week I am earnestly starting, the campaign to have all our radio stations find a standing slot in their opening or closing programmes or both, for “Anguilla My Home”, an excellent CD produced by the Gumbs Family. Many years ago, “Anguilla My Island”, a song by another cousin, Austin Gumbs, was used in just this way, so precedence has been set.

“For the truth is that development means development of people. Development brings freedom, provided it is development of people. But people cannot be developed; they can only develop themselves. For while it is possible for an outsider to build a man’s house, an outsider cannot give the man pride and self-confidence in himself as a human being… He develops himself by making his own decisions, by increasing his understanding of what he is doing, and why; by increasing his own knowledge and ability, and by his own full participation - as an equal – in the life of the community he lives in.” (Julius Nyerere, 1974)

I didn’t even hear about the first Antigua and Barbuda International Literary Festival held last year but thanks to the staff at the Anguilla Public Library Service, I was invited to participate as a panellist in the second one from November 2 – 4, 2007. What a joy. Though I churn out these articles weekly and sometimes you enjoy what I write, I think I had forgotten that the literary self needs to be nurtured, and honed, fine tuned to the point where one earns the right to say, “I am a writer.” Nurturing of that self was what took place in Antigua last week-end.

Something wonderful happened on my last two Saturdays, so wonderful that I am moved to share the experience with you in the hope that you will have it too, on Saturday 10th November at Triple Crown Culture Yard. It all began when a very resourceful sister named Judy Guthrie called up to ask if I would be interested in starting one.

A new shopping experience is on offer in Anguilla and there is more than a hint of promise at In Spire which opened its doors in Lower South Hill last Monday.  Something extraordinary happens when you walk through the door - something that makes you want to enhance the spaces in which you spend quality time.  In Spire Décor and Design enables you to do so without paying a fortune.  My remark to the quietly confident young woman behind the venture was that she was going to make a shopper out of me. 

Now that I’ve got your attention, it’s not what you think. It’s a pitch for volunteers. Jason Allen’s article in last week’s Celebration of Youth column resonated with me. His mention of the “business of charity” made me reflect on the Caribbean tradition of charity, which isn’t really referred to as charity or as anything at all. People just give and much of it is informal, not counted, but not everything that counts can be counted. I was raised in a family that somehow instilled the value that to give and to talk about it was un-Christian.

During my chequered career I was privileged to represent both government and non-government organisations at numerous international meetings including my first UN Preparatory Committee meetings (PrepCom) and other meetings leading up to the UN Conference on Small Islands Developing States (the SIDS Conference) in 1994, the UN Conference on Women in 1995 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002.

I have returned to my island to put the reinvigorated Spirit of Africa within me to work. What is she talking about now, I hear you asking yourself. I am talking about the will of the people of Azania/South Africa that is still being tested as that country struggles to shake off the yoke of apartheid.

The town of Shashamane has a timelessness that may be partially explained by the fact that time is counted differently in Ethiopia. This is not about time zones but about a different way of measuring dates and times so what would be 6.00 a.m. for us is twelve o’clock here so an invitation to breakfast at one o’clock means showing up for 7 a.m. I have not yet made the adjustment to living in these two very different worlds.

The flight to Ethiopia was filled with anticipation. This ancient land is the Holy Land, the New Jerusalem, not only for the Rastafari family but also for those who know, as the Kebra Negast recounts, that this is the home of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, the powerful presence of the Most High JAH. It is going to be very difficult for me to leave this place and the spirit-filled charge of the overwhelming Rastafari presence for the New Millennium.

It is a cool African morning in Johannesburg. I have abandoned my tour group, which has gone on to Cape Town, while I returned to Johannesburg en route to Addis Ababa for the Ethiopian New Millennium celebrations. This is what happened. I left Anguilla for South Africa with the thought that by some miraculous means (my feet would grow wings or perhaps by astral travel), I would get to Ethiopia to usher in the New Millennium.

As is usually the case with every visit to the Africa I am dominated by the thought that my mother continent needs me more than the islands in which I was born and nurtured. The global village also manifested itself on the night of our arrival in South Africa as we sat to dinner and were approached by a young Anguillian man, a former student, who greeted us with pleasure and surprise.

Once again Barbados is host of another significant gathering of the African family, this time under the auspices of the Government of Barbados’ Commission for Pan-African Affairs, the African Union and the Government of the Republic of South Africa.

Writing online in The Dread Library http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/winnick.html, Jill Heather Winnick in an article entitled “A Defiant Symbol of Black Nationalism”, describes Marcus Mosiah Garvey as ‘…one of the world’s most renowned Black leaders. Garvey was no ordinary man, but one of those rare creatures of history whose fate it is to be seized with the social and economic oppression of a people and who see this oppression as his or her own spiritual mission.