STATE VANDALISM?BY?DEFAULT best describes the disintegrating state of the Rock Hall Monument Of Freedom in St Thomas.
For while it would be reasonable to expect that if any of the youth of the area had any respect and love for that symbol that best represents them and most of the rest of us, they would have helped look after its care, the Government of Barbados has an even more responsible role to save it from peril.
That Rock Hall, the first free village of Barbados, is earmarked to be developed into a major heritage tourism site is even stronger reason why the current monument there ought not ever to have fallen to the shameful sight that villagers and visitors alike must endure.
This is not the latest rant against the Government, or our younger generation, or our elders; it is a lament over the disinterestedness of citizens of proximity and the inertia of the powers that be.
We as a nation cannot be serious about heritage or heritage tourism when we cannot keep a triumvirate statue and its pedestal clean and free of water and brush – one that symbolizes our independence of mind and freedom of spirit.
There can be little doubt in which direction the accusing finger will be pointed.
In governance and citizenry there is this common thread of lack of respect and a disregard for things essentially Bajan and rooted in the common and ordinary man.
Otherwise the ugliness of the Rock Hall Monument Of Freedom would not now be.
Future plans for a community that includes shops and a museum – for a heritage village – don’t cut it. The present is what requires more urgent attention: the unkemptness, the overgrown shrubbery, the pastured cattle and their droppings, the mosquito-breeding stagnant water.
The Rock Hall Monument Of Freedom, officially unveiled on August 5, 2005, by Prime Minister Owen Arthur, now Leader of the Opposition, deserves better.
The statue, representing a family of three former slaves, stands and looks over the Rock Hall Village that would become their very own.
We are facing quite hard times now, and so implementation of the once mooted idea of a Rock Hall heritage village may understandably be a challenge. But securing tidier surroundings of the sole monument from where the village must spring is for the Government neither insurmountable nor unaffordable.
We cannot overemphasize that as a nation we must be serious about our heritage – if indeed we will boast independence of mind and freedom of spirit.