LAST FRIDAY was World Egg Day. How do I know this? Because it was the lead story on the television news last Thursday night. World Firetrucking Egg Day.
Fan me. I almost can’t stand the excitement. Clearly life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in Barbados.
Okay, maybe it was the second lead story – I hesitate to call it “a number two story” – because I did tune in at two minutes past seven, and there may have been an even more thrilling report before.
But, even if they’d scrambled, or resorted to poaching, I doubt the TV news could have found a story to beat World Egg Day, though I suppose the Grasshopper Appreciation Society of St Lucy might have held a cake sale that might have taken the top spot.
Audley Walker, the septuagenarian Barbados Honorary Consul who has lived in Trinidad all his working life, told me (in the As Bajan
As Flying Fish feature I do for the Thursday NATION) that, when he comes to Barbados, he confirms he’s on vacation by watching the television news.
“I listen,” he told me, “and chuckle. It’s a different sort of news.”
Now, coming from Trinidad myself, where three people were shot dead in one month in separate incidents in the riverbed a stone’s throw from my desk, and where five people I’ve had Christmas lunch or meals of celebration with have been murdered – four in their own homes – I don’t relish excitement enough to want the Six Dead In Robbery brand of lead horror story we had recently. That’s too much excitement.
Given the choice between being put in fear for my life and being bored to death, I’ll take boredom every time. But, really, World Egg Day?
Dude, that’s taking the “sunny side up” approach to news way too far.
Barbados, as an entity, has done a better job of making its way in the world, alone, than the other English-speaking Caribbean territories. In my wilder flights of fantasy, though, I imagine what a united Caribbean could have been like; perhaps even could still become, with serious-minded Bajan leadership harnessing Trini creativity (and cash), Guyanese grace (and land), Jamaican aggression (and ganja/reggae) and small-island good nature.
If we had the sense, if we could discern ourselves and our potential, we could take care of, and live for ourselves; and I include amongst “us” the “foreigners” who choose and love these islands. They are every bit as Caribbean as people born here by fluke.
To have a chance of achieving the one Caribbean which Bob called One Love, though, we have to be real, as well as true, to ourselves. No news might be good news, but “news” that makes headlines of eggs is nothing to write home about. Airing that sort of non-story is asking people to watch the BBC or CNN.
If Barbados is to amount to something more than a well appointed destination for others to arrive at, its media – and its top stories – have to do its people justice. It’s bad enough having to throw off the yoke of our history without having to also throw off the yolk of World Egg Day. BC Pires will be seen as Eggs Benedict Arnold. ID cards next week.
