So many people have committed suicide by cruel and painful methods now so overused that they can be considered old-fashioned.
I will attempt in this article to teach those people who are interested in committing suicide, a new method which is far more sophisticated than those methods of the past. However, the one fear I have is that it could be so attractive that it might result in genocide.
First, you must import everything – even parsley that used to grow here like grass. The fact that we import $400 million worth from Trinidad yearly and only export $100 million worth to them is a good start but not good enough. That $300 million difference is “small potatoes” for a country like ours.
Next, do not buy local products. If you buy local products, Bajans would keep their jobs and their children would get something to eat and they would be able to send them to school to learn. Please don’t let that happen. That could mess up this new plan.
For example, earlier this year, Banks Beer, the “Beer of Barbados”, was awarded its fifth gold medal from the internationally recognized Monde Selection, the Belgium-based international institute for quality selections. Following awards in 1983, 1992, 2001 and 2003, Banks Beer once again triumphed over several international brands to secure the blue ribbon in the Beers, Waters and Soft Drinks category.
This beer, the “beer of Barbados”, directly contributes to the incomes of more than 300 Barbadian households through its brewing, bottling, sales, distribution, and marketing personnel. That means that about 1 200 to 1 500 people in this country “live off” Banks beer. If you drink this local product, you will be contributing to the survival of these 1 500 people. Do not let this happen. Drinking foreign beers, which are nowhere near the quality of this local beer, will make these people suffer.
Please do not follow those Jamaicans who would drive a 100 miles to buy a Red Stripe just because it is made in Jamaica. Those Jamaicans are people who love their own things. They don’t have the same plan as we. They’re just looking out for Jamaica. Don’t you see what they did with that reggae music? They love it and play it everywhere they go and now the whole world loves it and plays it too – even we.
If you employ that same attitude, it would gravely affect this new approach to suicide.
I noticed breadfruit in a can in a local supermarket. Fantastic! Buy that instead of supporting a local hawker.
There is now coconut water in a can from some foreign country. Excellent! It is extremely important that you purchase that rather than support the street vendor because coconut water, even when refrigerated, “goes-off” in 3 days, so just imagine how the coconut water in a can for 6 months would have to be “preserved” for consumption.
Purchasing this product is perfect, for not only will you be helping the vendor to suffer but the “preservatives” in the coconut water will contribute heavily to the cause.
Also, you must continue to throw garbage out of the car windows and make sure and block as many drains as you can so that we will have a major health hazard.
And furthermore, it is absolutely necessary that you stop those white Bajans from cleaning the beaches that the black Bajans “dirty-up”.
The good work of contaminating the sea must be maintained because this would help to prevent tourists from coming to this beautiful Island. This is of the utmost importance and urgency simply because tourism is our lifeline and when you cut off your lifeline you are definitely on your way to committing suicide.
Isn’t this beautiful? Isn’t this far better than cutting your wrists or taking drugs? And to think that this approach can carry so many people at one time. This is truly heart-warming.
The last thing, and most vital of all, is hard work.
Hard work and making sacrifices for your children and other citizens is a custom that has been practised by other countries like America, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore.
But you can’t follow these countries. They are more interested in longevity, having a stable economy, prosperity, building legacies, protecting and educating their children, good health practices, promoting their own products, and all the things that would work against what this new guide hopes to achieve.
Citizens of Barbados, if you would just continue to follow my simple instructions, the goal would just be around the corner and I would never have to wish you a happy new year.
• Mac Fingall is an entertainer and retired secondary schoolteacher.
