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Thursday, December 26, 2013

MAN VS NATURE: THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS (IN PHOTOS)


Despite the proliferation of barrels on the wharf, there wasn't any sign that we would celebrate Christmas this year. Somehow, the "Christmas feeling" wasn't there. Up to two shopping days before, Super J was practically empty of shoppers. 

Then Christmas Eve arrived and perhaps the most epic battle in recent memory happened. It was a battle between Man and Nature! And nature won hands down!

Here are some photos of the collateral damage that Choiseul suffered:

ENTERING CHOISEUL VILLAGE FROM CONSTITUTION PARK


A MASS OF SILT JUST BEFORE THE ENTRANCE TO THE FISHERIES
MAYEE'S POPULAR FOOD AND FISH STALL GOT A HIT, TOO
FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE "MOCOGHEE" DRAIN WAS OVERWHELMED WITH SILT
NO THRU ROAD ON THE MAIN CHOISEUL BRIDGE

LUCELEC WORKING LATE CHRISTMAS NIGHT TO RESTORE POWER IN CHOISEUL AND SOUFRIERE
THIS MANGO TREE SLIPPED UNTO THE SOUFRIERE-CHOISEUL ROAD AND IT STAYED THERE!

Friday, December 20, 2013

BARBADOS PRIME MINISTER CHALLENGES UWI TO PRODUCE 'INTELLECTUALS WITH GOOD IDEAS'

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Friday December 20, 2013, CMC – Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who four months ago ended a five-decade-old policy of funding tuition for Barbadians at the University of the West Indies (UWI), on Wednesday called on the UWI to graduate intellectuals with good ideas to ensure the Caribbean's future development.

“The possession of a university degree should begin to mean that its holder is equipped to meet a wide range of intellectual challenges because his mind has been developed to a level that admits of a certain flexibility based on a firm grasp of logic, of sequence and of a basic ethics,” Stuart said at a ceremony marking the end of the UWI Cave Hill Campus’ 50th anniversary celebrations on Wednesday night.

“Yes, the university will produce professionals and academics. But it must also concentrate on producing intellectuals. As I see it, the true intellectual is a man or woman who believes in the generation and elucidation of ideas. He or she has to earn a living and must, of necessity, live off of what he or she knows. But he or she must live also for what he or she knows.”

Stuart said that developing countries, like those in the Caribbean, could not afford to lose the battle in the area of ideas.

“We may not win in areas like oil, commodities and military hardware.   But we can be equals or, better still, superiors, in the realm of ideas,” he said, adding there was much ado nowadays about the need to produce graduates who could satisfy the demands of employers in the public and private sectors.

“What I find troubling from time to time, though, is when the end result is a graduate so narrow in focus, that he or she gets lost in his or her ‘professionalism’ and, taken beyond the immediate perimeters of the specific area of study, that graduate can reflect too little of the roundedness that graduate status should imply,” he said.

Mr. Stuart told the ceremony that there was a perception within the society that the university was no longer commenting on issues critical to the development of the region.

“It is the university which should be helping the population to perceive some kind of structure behind the complexity and seeming confusion of life today; some kind of ordered drama behind the daily whirl of events. If the supposedly leading thinkers in our society are not doing this, I ask, who should?

“If Barbados and the Caribbean ever needed clarifying voices it is now.   My sense is that these voices are either in too short supply at the university or are certainly too muted.   We live in a multidimensional world, and we have to manage even the things that we cannot see by effectively managing the things that we can see,” he said.

The prime minister noted that the world had changed drastically from the years when the UWI was established in 1963, noting also that socially, the region was experiencing a situation where an increasing number of people, across classes, face mounting frustration, hopelessness and insecurity as they seem to be losing control over the forces that determine the quality and content of their lives.

Stuart said that education provided the solid foundation for a society to develop its true potential, adding “the public services of this region are now better resourced than at any other time in the region’s history, thanks to the University of the West Indies; and to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, the Cave Hill Campus has contributed immeasurably in that regard.

“Many an individual, old and young, has been able to actualise a God-given potential through access to this campus and has set out on the path to a vertebrate life,” he said, describing the university as one which could stand head and shoulders above many in the world of universities, despite the many challenges.

“Its icons through the years now dot our landscape and have continued to serve the Caribbean and the world with distinction.”

But he acknowledged that a university in the West Indies had to reflect the legitimate aspirations of a post-slavery and post-colonial people, and not mimic the priorities of universities which were responding to a different set of historical and developmental imperatives.

“I concede that the task of the university can be made that much easier if governments are clearer about what kind of societies they want to create.  But the task of crafting a regional vision is not one from which the university can afford to divorce itself.  While not hostaging itself to governments of whatever stripe, the university must see itself as a partner in the process of development of the wider community which it is supposed to serve,” he said.

Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Chris Sinckler in his 2013-14 budget on August 13, said that effective 2014, Barbadian students pursuing studies at the university’s three campuses will be required to pay their own tuition fees, while the government continues to fund economic costs.

The decision effectively ended a policy of free university education for Barbadians dating back to the Cave Hill Campus's opening in 1963, a year after the government introduced full free secondary education to Barbadians.


Sinckler said tuition fees would range from BDS$5,625 to BDS$65,000 (One Barbados dollar=US$0.50 cents) and that the new policy would reduce the transfer to UWI by an estimated BDS$42 million a year.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

OUR VOICE, THE VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY: A POWERHOUSE GUT REACTION

DR & MRS CHARLES AND GRANDSON
I felt awestruck by the outpouring of empathy demonstrated on Social Media for the cause of Choiseul. To me, that empathy is a reflection of the extent of humanity and care flowing in our blood for our fellowmen; it may also be a suggestion that St. Lucia may still be a country “intact”, with perhaps just a minority of us “dabbling” in counter-instances of humanity.

Perhaps, we can even set those "counter-instances" aside and attribute them in part to normal distribution theory.

The (unfortunately) noteworthy observation is perhaps that those who should demonstrate the greatest degree of sublime humanity are generally those who are trapped to the “left of the humanity curve”. Wouldn't it have been a much better Christmas season (for all of us) if only those who hold the relevant “levers of power” could foster greater optimism, hope, and joy in the hearts of “the deprived ones”? Indeed, Christmas is an ideal platform to make the assault. They did got the opportunity but frittered it away!

JIMMY AND LORNE SHARE A MOMENT
I cannot camouflage my position on the excoriation of Jimmy Haynes by his own parliamentary rep for the former's community activism. I ask: Why can’t we put the "dirty politics" aside for a moment, especially when we were responsible caps like "parliamentary rep"? Why should the SLP (who claim to know better than Jimmy’s Party) do just like Jimmy’s men?

Let me inform readers that I have been speaking with Jimmy; and I’m happy to inform you that we have agreed to put away the “political cannibalism” (according to the Minister for Social Transformation) and to come together for the greater good of Choiseul – and it is in this context that I take issue with the cannibalistic pronouncements that were made at the SLP constituency conference last month. Frankly speaking, they were uncalled for and déclassé!

DEDAN HONOURED  BY THE CREDIT UNION
But here’s the reality: Augustin Charles (Bolo), Jimmy Haynes (Jimmy) and Dedan Griffifth Jn Baptiste (Gillo) with all our imperfections have tacitly agreed to bury the political hatchet for the greater good of Choiseul! We have pledged (not only want to make “a good place better” but) to start the process to also make our community a great place! Choiseul has all the elements and ingredients of greatness - all we have to do is to "bang start" the "reconfiguration process".

Regarding the pursuit of that process, the pundits perhaps may have many questions: "Is that 'unity' initiative sustainable?" Isn't that Bolo-Jimmy-Gilo 'triumvirate' a charade? Can these opportunistic guys ever bury their hatchet for the good of Choiseul (or, for that matter, anything good)? Wouldn't that battle among these notorius triumvirate gladiators soon resume and Choiseul not suffering from major collateral damage?

While these questions are legitimate, they also express a deep existential pessimism. To some of us, the success of any initiative involving those three fellahs is simply impossible (even if those guys may be "success stories" in more than one sphere of life)!

But here are some facts you should know. I know Gillo and Jimmy very well; and they know me very well, too . . . and that mutual knowledge should  provide us with a sound platform. We all have done SWOT analyses of each other. I went to school together with Gillo; I also taught with him for a number of years. We played in the same Bands (Black Inspirations and Dread Tones). Gillo also taught me a lot about cricket to the point where I became the captain, opening bat and the frontline leg spinner for my club.  I never dreamed of those achievements and perhaps they would never become reality without Gillo.

I have to admit that I had a totally different relationship configuration with Jimmy which is grounded in familial of filial relationships. My first son is a close relative of Jimmy, who I first met when I visited my son in Delcer and thereafter, for all our lives we have been close, treating each other like relatives, like brothers. Yes! we've had bitter political exchanges but those have never torn asunder our filial connections.  His late Dad and mom are like mother and father to me.

No doubt, Jimmy (like all of us) has his imperfections and idiosyncrasies; he must have made an inordinate number of mistakes but isn't it also fair to say that those may have been far outweighed by his infinitesimal intellectual and organisational talents and commitment to community. It may well be a fact that the former may well approach zero when compared to the latter! 

Forget the politics, Jimmy perhaps may have done more for Choiseul than many of the politicians who have represented us and that gives him an indisputably well-deserved presence among us.

Jimmy like many genuinely patriotic Choiseulian wants to elevate his community above the Carib/Arawak "paradigm" which is perceived to circumscribe our existence and causing those who are in command of the levers of power NOT to treat us with the respect we deserve.  

Be that as it may, we are nonetheless prepared to be the sacrificial lambs on the altar of political cannibalism for the sake of a greater Anse Citron!

The “authorities” have obviously embarked on a campaign of "the excoriation of Jimmy" for his articulation of the problems of the constituency. Perhaps their hidden agenda is the pre-emptive destruction of the ROPE initiative before it gets off the ground; but the fact is Jimmy (like me) does not live on Mars or Jupiter! He lives in the heart of constituency and understands the trajectory of constituency problems because he, too, lives those problems everyday! His 70-plus year old mom lives mere metres away from the Delcer water facility and yet she is deprived of water – as is the entire community of Delcer!

Morne Sion, Lower Mongouge, Upper Reunion, parts of Cafeiere are also critically affected. Hence, when we speak, we lay no claim that our voice  is the "voice of God" but it not the "voice of Lucifer" either; our voice is simply the voice of our community. We hope that "those who ignore it" (and even excoriate us) when they hear it understand the full extent of their actions. 

This article is no tribute to Jimmy; it is no defense of him, either! it's just a gut reaction.