I SAW TWO visitors at Browne’s Beach a few Saturday mornings ago picking up our garbage. I was embarrassed. They filled two jumbo garbage bags with all manner of litter before they could do what we invited them here for – enjoy the sea and the sun.
This is what proud Barbados has come to as we approach 50 years of what we call Independence, buttressed by the motto Pride And Industry.
A few days later I read this short letter to the editor from a visitor: The wife and I spent six days on Barbados recently. Nice enough. Nothing special. Expected more beach views. Expected more ‘unspoiled’ paradise, etc. – from your commercials. Did not see any flooding but did see your garbage everywhere. That’s some friendly advice. Wouldn’t come back, not because Barbados ain’t nice, it’s not special. Other places to see. Been to Barbados, got the T-shirt.
I wondered if it was that couple at Browne’s Beach but I had no way to tell. The message is as crystal clear as the water they later enjoyed that morning looking across picturesque Carlisle Bay with Historic Bridgetown in the distance and its Garrison a stone’s throw away.
The way we treat our environment is symptomatic of our general outlook on life. So many Barbadians are comfortable with litter. I can find no other way to put it.
There are two bus stops – at lower Hindsbury Road and Upper Barbarees Hill, maybe more – where adults and schoolchildren mingle among the overflowing garbage as if they were relaxing in a garden of roses and marigolds. The styrofoam plates with residues of fast food and the plastic cups ready to become incubators for mosquitoes seem to mean nothing to most people.
The average Barbadian of the 21st century does not push back; he or she simply adjusts to things as they deteriorate.
How many more visitors will it take to warn us that we are rapidly destroying our environment? Hardly a week passes without a letter in the newspapers drawing to our attention the disgusting way we pollute our island home.
Visitors comment on the litter and the garbage strewn all around; and we seem unable to make the connection that we court disease by increasing the rat and mosquito populations, not to mention what it costs us to keep the country clean.
They comment on the acrid black smoke we willingly inhale, as if it were oxygen, from the badly tuned vehicles; and we seem unable to make the connection that the spiralling cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments are the direct consequences.
While we can’t do much about the occasional DDT particles coming across with the Sahara dust, we can enact and enforce legislation to tackle the carbon monoxide we take into our lungs daily.
They comment on the loud noise emanating from nightclubs and homes well into the wee hours, the altered mufflers on cars and motorcycles, the racket on public service vehicles, the boom boxes in homes, the dogs, the kites flying all night, the karaoke parties; and we seem unable to make the connection that the 800 schoolchildren with hearing impairment – identified five years ago – are so affected because of this very situation.
So we trudge along, merrily oblivious that we are trashing the 166 square miles we inhabit.
Not to worry, we know how to fix the problem. When tourism collapses, we will throw a few million dollars at the problem and the Barbados Tourism Authority will mount a campaign to woo the visitors back.
They will board planes (the minister will likely go first class, as usual) and fly around the United States, Canada and Europe with a 20-member retinue of cultural ambassadors, fire-eaters, stilt walkers and limbo dancers, and beg the visitors to come back to “Beautiful Barbados, our island in the sun”.
To pick up our plastic bags and condoms at Browne’s Beach?
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator. Email [email protected]
