THIS TIME LAST YEAR the Morgan Lewis Hoads were battling to put their house and lives back in shape after Tomas. Which makes us ask: is it Government’s job to provide citizens with houses?
Nowadays you can scarcely open a paper without seeing people waiting to get their houses repaired after Tomas. Or waiting to get a new house after building one illegally on slip-prone land.
Or waiting to get a new house, period. Or simply moving into a Government unit and refusing to leave until handed the keys to another rent-free unit.
A nice lady with a clipboard did come visiting after Tomas. She looked sympathetically at my ravaged house and farm buildings. But not a berry came my way. “I was in the area,” she explained, “and wanted to see who the fellow is that writes in the paper.”
Not that I minded. My heroes are the old plantation Bajans who scraped together to build a “one house” with a brick fireplace for cooking and moved on from there. I don’t want no handouts from politicians.
But if handouts don’t bother you, the message out there is loud and clear: don’t get any insurance; don’t try to replace a rotten board yourself.
Get a few destitute pictures in the Press and bingo – you could be receiving the keys to a new bungalow from a beaming minister.
Two warnings. It has been said: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.
After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy . . . .”
In similar vein, my former Trini colleague Dr Morgan Job says the welfare state mentality and government handouts are to blame for the present difficulties in many countries. Governments can borrow their way out of trouble for a while, but some day the chickens will come home to roost.
By now my few remaining readers are muttering “Who cares?” and glancing hopefully over by Rickey Singh.
I can’t blame them.
Working for what you want has no place in a modern, human-rights-riddled society.
We prefer the El Negrito Del Batey approach. VOB has been playing the Guataka version of El Negrito ad nauseam as a filler.
Not because they like it, the cynics say, but because they don’t have to pay royalties to Guataka. Nothing wrong with that. That’s me leading on mandolin, by the way. Ladies, feel free to throw your undies or stick fivers down my pants.
El Negrito has nothing to do with Christmas.
It’s about attitude to work. “Batey” is the barracks for Haitian sugar workers in the Dominican Republic. The words mean: “They call me the black boy from the Batey because working is my enemy.
I leave all working to the ox because God made work as a punishment.” It sounds better in Spanish.
El Negrito was written in 1942 but could also be called the “Obama Song”. That’s what the Honduran foreign minister Ortez Colindres has called another Barack on three occasions. Said he, “I am not racially prejudiced. I like ‘el Negrito del Batey’ (the little black sugar plantation worker) who is president of the United States.”
Anyhow, thanks to VOB for playing our tunes. Guataka took a break this year, which usually means one or more of the ladies are pregnant.
My good friend Cy Fields was the expert spotter, but I don’t have a clue. Linda looks possible. Michelle? Beth? Myrna? Juliette?
Better leave it there. Time alone will tell.
All told, it hasn’t been a bad year. True, I was knocked out for the count in February. But the family rallied round in spectacular fashion to treat me like a king and keep the farm going.
Special thanks to my caregivers, Heather Connell and assistant Gwyneth Squires, whose pudding and souse make my weekends, THE NATION sub-eds who handle my articles, the Shorey posse always ready to help, my readers at home and abroad, you, you and especially you whose names I’ve forgotten.
And Happy Birthday, Jesus, the reason for the season and the friend who never fails.
