I am a Barbadian. I am a Bajan. I is a Bajan.
But not primarily in the ways that “nation” songs by those titles (and others) see me. And I don’t recommend that fellow countrymen take those as critical clues to who they are as Bajans.
In their nation songs, the British do not identify themselves as pub-goers, fish and chips eaters, football maniacs, having a “cuppa tie”, wearing mackintoshes for the foul weather and so on. Nor do the Americans highlight their yodelling, Saturday night boozing, NFL zeal, square dancing, backyard barbecuing as the essence of their Americanness. No, these people promote their heart and character and values.
So you very wrong to be pegging me in our nation songs as flag (in a fete) waving, happy-go-lucky, wining, smiling, feting. They make us sound so Third Worldish. Might sell CDs or MP3s for you to the unsuspecting. But it don’t do nothing for an adult view of my country.
When our song heralds portray national quintessence as the waving of blue, yellow and black (sorry, Mr Farley, I going the informal route) flags by people who may or may not be flagging in the face of hard work and discipline; and as people jumping up in a band when we need to be jumping higher in commitment to law and order and other things, I say that it is perhaps those low-level notions of Barbados that contribute so much to our failure to deal meaningfully with important issues – ’cause heart and character and values en even big in our depictions of ourselves.
And one big issue is the state of our mass transportation system.
Only recently, in a debate in the House of Assembly about guaranteeing a loan of $40 million for CBC, the representative for St Michael North East, Mia Mottley, in putting forward the case for reducing transfers and various kinds of Government financial support to statutory corporations, nearly gave me a heart attack.
She suggested that Government should stop supporting the Transport Board and, essentially, let the sector look after itself – since, she said, we have all the vehicle stock we need to service the island and all we would need is the proper regulatory framework.
And I almost froze. I actually stopped breathing.
For while I take the general point about statutory bodies, and the CBC in particular, I think that the mass transportation of the citizens of a country is, as a SATURDAY SUN editorial on September 3 called it, a “sacred trust”.
And in the thirty-something years of a truly widespread PSV mass transportation system in this country, I have seen little evidence that we intend to man up to the grave responsibility of transporting people with utmost dignity, decorum and discipline.
Indeed, check that SATURDAY SUN editorial: “While loudly trumpeting our First World aspirations, we have seemingly designated the travelling public as the lowest of the low, as cattle, as those who can be offended with impunity.”
In fact, I don’t think that it is at all far-fetched to say that since law and order are the fundamental underpinnings of any civilized society, organized public transport – especially of the PSV variety (minibuses and ZRs) – is the most pervasive, ever-present, in-your-face evidence that we are on very shaky ground as a nation.
I will quote the paper again. It said that the authorities had, as it were, “handed [passengers] over to the unruly, to have their lives imperilled as drivers ignore traffic lights, drive on the wrong side of the road; take them the wrong way along one-way streets; to be treated with arrant contempt as the operatives assault their ears with loud music – all the while abusing their minds with filthy lyrics – and play fast and loose with their passengers’ schedules . . . .
“Is there anything in our existence on this rock that brings us so skin-close to pervasive lawlessness?”
My sentiments exactly. Is like the editorial writer was reading my mind.
But nobody in Barbados has to take my word for it. Just go out on the road now. Now. Almost anywhere. You won’t have to wait long to see the law massecreted by ubiquitous boorishness masquerading as public service.
We dreaming of First World status while living daily the very Third Worldish, Freddie Kruegerish Nightmare On PSV Street.
And, Ms Mottley, you want to send it to permanent reruns and syndication?
Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor. Email offwally@gmail.com