People in St John have already publicly dubbed Mara Thompson “The Queen”, as she seeks to gain their favour in the January 20 by-election to elect a representative to replace her husband, late Prime Minister David Thompson, who represented the rural parish from 1987 until his death last October 23.
Mara, 49, spoke to the SUNDAY SUN’S Associate Editor Wade Gibbons on Friday about her early days in St Lucia, her move to Barbados and her involvement in politics.What were your early days like in St Lucia?I was born at home in Vigie . . . . My mother refused to go back to Victoria Hospital where she had her first child. I am the second of my mother’s two children and second of my father’s nine. I grew up in Castries. My parents were divorced and my mother [Monica Giraudy] raised us alone. My father [Henry Giraudy] remarried and I spent weekends and holidays with him and his wife and son in Vieux Fort.
My life consisted mainly of school and sports. I was always involved in sports: tennis, squash, badminton, football, cycling. I was actually St Lucia’s women’s cycling champion from 1979 to 1983. In 1979 I went to the University of Western Ontario in Canada where I did a Bachelor of Arts degree in physical education. Then I went to Jamaica where I taught at the Immaculate Conception High School. I remained there for a year, but it was expensive trying to live there on a teacher’s salary.
I returned to St Lucia and taught at Castries Comprehensive Secondary School and then I got an OAS fellowship to go to Howard University where I did a Master’s degree in physical education with the focus on curriculum planning. Describe your move to Barbados.[After Howard University] my intention was to go back to St Lucia and plan the curriculum for all the schools. But I did not do that because I met David . . . through my sister Janine. He introduced her to Arnold [brother-in-law] and when they were getting married, David, who was both their friend, was invited to the wedding and I met him there. He was the emcee at their wedding and we became friends.
Sometime in 1987/1988 we developed into more than a friendship and by the end of 1988 I was engaged and spent pretty much the end of that year organising for my wedding. We were married on January 7, 1989, and came to live in Barbados on January 10, 1989. I got a teaching post at Christ Church Foundation and taught there from 1989 to 1993. Encouraged by my Combermerian husband I then went to Combermere after a vacancy came up for a PE teacher in 1993 and taught there until 2005. Those were the best days of my working life.
In 2005 I realised that I was 40-something years old and couldn’t handle the sun as I used to, so I decided to get out of teaching. I went and did a paralegal course at the Barbados Community College for two years and then worked as a paralegal with Thompson & Associates. The Dems won the general election in 2008 and David left the firm; but I remained as office manager and paralegal until he became ill last March. I went on indefinite leave and have not returned yet.What influence have your father and husband, both politicians/lawyers, had on you politically?I didn’t think my father had a great effect on me politically, since I did not actually live with him on a daily basis. But looking back at those years now, something must have rubbed off because I easily bought into what David was doing. I liked the idea of serving, and working with people and helping people. So I never had a problem with David being in politics.
My only problem was that I would often tell him that it would interfere with our closeness, with our marriage. But perhaps because I told him that so often, both of us then worked even harder to ensure that didn’t happen. In the final analysis the politics actually helped our marriage. So the view that it is good to serve people would have been my father’s major influence. David was a total influence on me. I keep being asked what I am going to do with St John as though people are lookingfor a difference – a Mara thing as opposed to a David thing. But my intention is to continue the work he was doing.What made you decide to get involved in elective politics?At the time I made the decision I was influenced by the people of St John, not by David. I told him that I was not going to do this. But it was really their insistence that made me do it. But having made that decision I realised that I was also doing it for him. He had wanted me to do it and I told him that I was not a politician and he said, “Yes, you are”. When I told him that I wasn’t going to do it, that was the end of the conversation. He didn’t pursue it, he didn’t insist on it or anything like that.What are you offering the people of St John, and why should they vote for Mara?I am interested in the welfare of the people of St John. I have been involved in looking after their welfare for some time and I really want to continue doing the work that I have been doing for the last 20 years. I want to continue with their development. I want to be involved in activities that will involve people, whether sporting, community activities, or otherwise.
People might want me to talk about building roads, erecting buildings and the like. But these things are expected of a representative and they should be done and will be done in St John. But along the way I still need to ensure that the social side of things are taken care of. David and I did a lot of that in the past and that is why he formed Families First: to get people together and have them function as families among each other. I want to continue this.If you win the by-election, do you want to be assigned a ministry?Let me put it this way. If I were given a ministry, I can handle it. If I am not, it is no big deal for me. I think, though, not yet. I am not sure that I would want it as yet. I am happy to be busy and occupied because when you are in the kind of state that I and the girls are in right now, in the midst of our grieving, which clearly is not over, it is good to be occupied. But maybe having a ministry at this stage might be stressful.How have you and your daughters been coping since David’s death?It is tough. I can’t say that we are fine and everything is okay now. We have our moments. There are simple things that make me burst into tears. This morning [January 7] I was driving across St John to meet [Cleeton] Coppin to go canvassing, and I started to cry. I do not know where it came from, it just started. Incidentally, today would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary. I know this happens to the girls too. Oya can be pretty miserable sometimes because of missing her father. She was pretty close to him.Do your daughters support your entry into elective politics?They definitely wanted me to do it. They are very much behind me. I do not know if their reason is the same as mine in terms of serving the people or anything like that because they are maybe still too young for that. I think their reason is because they do not want to leave St John. St John was not just David’s thing – his being the MP. The entire family was involved in St John.
The girls are very comfortable in St John; they have numerous friends in St John and there are numerous houses in St John that they go to. I can leave my children with people in St John. They are not just constituents, they are friends, family. It is bad enough that they have lost their father. For them to lose St John too would be even more traumatic. So I think they were happy to hear we still have that St John connection.Can you handle the pressure of being a full-time politician and a full-time single mother?That is what I had to give the most thought to and the reason why I took a while before I eventually made up my mind. Because as much as I knew that David wanted me to do it, and the girls wanted me to do it and St John people wanted me to do it, I still had to work out in my mind how I could manage it. But I only have one small child now.
Before David was in politics, I had three little children and definitely had to be home with them. But now it is just Osa and she has two older sisters and they help me a lot. I also have what I like to call my network of friends, family, Osa’s godmother, David’s family, numerous people that will readily help me. So I do not think that is an issue at all.Are any of your daughters interested in becoming involved in elective politics?I think both Oya and Osa’s personalities lend themselves well to politics; but I think these are early days yet to determine whether that’s the route they are going. But one of them could easily do it.How has the early campaigning been going?It has been going fine. It has been exactly the same as when I canvassed for David. When I canvassed before I canvassed for him and not with him. So it was really me out there. The only difference now is that I am doing it for myself, but that doesn’t seem to make much difference to the people of St John. They are greeting me the same way; they are happy to see me; they are supportive; and the response has been pretty much the same.Describe the experience of speaking for the first time on a political platform Thursday night before a crowd estimated at over 8 000.[Laughing] I don’t know. All I remember is that I was shaking, shivering like when you are cold, but I was not cold. I just went out there and did the speech as I had practised it – and I practised quite a bit. So, I really do not know. I am hearing from other people what it was like and they seem to be very pleased. So I feel good about it. But I find that I was like in a daze.Next week: Barbados Labour Party’s Hudson Griffith.wadegibbons@nationnews.com